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Tuesday Morning Post: Fear and Loathing edition
It was a fleeting dream, but a marvelous one, wasn't it? Attend BlizzCon all day, gamble all night, sleep never. The thought of a Las Vegas BlizzCon pretty much sent us here at the WoW.com into immediate spasms of joy. Unfortunately, they were quickly supplanted by howls of pain and anguish as we discovered that it just the Las Vegas Convention Center jumping the gun, and that we'll probably still be headed to Anaheim for the next BlizzCon. Don't me wrong, Anaheim's pretty cool and all, but it isn't Las Vegas, that's for sure. So unfortunately, I've had to cancel my plans to get a gonzo lawyer and rent an Impala, but what you gonna do? At least we still have the TCG. Maybe one of these years Blizzard will see the light. In the meantime, we'll just continue toiling away in the WoW.com salt mines here as we dream of the big city. This week, there's plenty of news to work through, and with a 3 AM to 11 AM Pacific downtime, you'll have time. Check out the latest gems we've unearthed for you after the break.
Tuesday Morning Post: Premature Patching edition
I honestly did not think there would be any story this week bigger than the microtransactional action of the Blizzard Pet Store (and it's totally going to ruin the game you guys, seriously), but apparently I thought too soon. This very night, as I write this, the servers are in chaotic disarray at the premature issuance of what appears to be a minor patch (sorry, it's not Patch 3.3), causing many people to be completely unable to log into the game. It has been sorted out as of this writing, or should be by the time the servers are back up this morning. Still, I know it soured a lot of people's gaming plans for the night. Oh well, that's what Dragon Age is for, I say. In the meantime, if you're stuck waiting for the servers to come back up and you don't have access to Dragon Age, might I suggest catching up on your WoW news reading? Here's a selection of stuff from the past 7 days or so:
Tuesday Morning Post: Identity Crisis Edition
So race changes are finally live, and with that, you can change your characters in just about every way possible short of class. Different faction? Go for it. Different gender? Change your face? Change your name? It's all good. Heck, you can do it every three days now. It's suddenly like we're all these crazy mutable nameless faceless blobs changing at will and at random, until we're practically a sea of shapeless shapeshifters. Or not. After all, there's still the whole money charge and stuff. Of course, that's not the only big news this week. Chill of the Throne, Icecrown's version of Sunwell Radiance, has been evoking a lot of discussion and a lot of unrest. Did Blizzard make the right choice in adding this much maligned dungeon-specific nerf back into the game? There's plenty of other issues as well, and as we have a nice 3 AM to 11 AM Pacific downtime, you'll have plenty of time to catch up with it all. You can start with some of the links below:
Tuesday Morning Post: The long and short of it edition
I have to say, this is sort of interesting. Downtime today is only 7 AM to 9 AM pacific. 2 hours is slightly worse than plain old rolling restarts, to be sure, but it's better than normal maintenance, if a bit unusual. Of course, those of you who are still after those dumb toothpicks will have a few more hours to curse at Innkeepers for turning you into a ninja instead of giving you a dang sliver of wood so you can get a big purple dragon, so that's always a plus. And of course, for that 2 hour period, you'll need some reading material, which is where we come in. Here's a list of some of the latest and greatest WoW.com news from the Patch 3.3 PTR and beyond:
Tuesday Morning Post: Icecrown and Hallow's End edition
Happy Tuesday morning and happy Hallow's End, everyone. That's right, WoW's coolest holiday's in full swing. Or is when the servers are up. If you're going after the Hallowed title, we have a Hallow's End achievement guide for you. If you're thinking of going after everyone's favorite cackling headless holiday boss, we have a guide to the new Headless Horseman loot. Of course, maybe you just want to do some good old fashioned trick or treating. We have something for that too. Of course, while the revelry continues on live servers, the testing continues on the test servers, and there's been quite a bit of activity.
Tuesday Morning Post: Animal magnetism edition
So. Big news guys: The Three Worgen Moon Shirt is here. Seriously. The Shirt that will change your life, I kid you not. I ordered mine, and I have already sensed the presence of beautiful women gravitating toward the aura of self-assurance and wildness created around me by the very decision made to purchase the shirt.Nah, but seriously. There's been stuff going on this weekend. Mostly, Patch 3.3's been going on, and we've had crack teams poring over the data files and running through the dungeons getting all the latest for you. For example, here's some video footage of some of the team running The Pit of Saron. Also, you're going to need to convert your account to Battle.net pretty soon now.There's much more to peruse of course, so let's get to it. Here's a list of some of our best news and features from the past few days.
Tuesday Morning Post: The Icecrown Cometh edition
What a week for WoW news, eh? Not only did we get a very intriguing sneak preview of the Icecrown Citadel 5-mans, but we also got a fresh new PTR Patch. From there, the patch notes and game files revealed a lot of pretty juicy stuff. Newbies get it ever easier. There's craftable nature resist gear (resist boss fight, anyone?). There looks to be a pretty epic 5-man quest line for the Quel'Delar (Here's a picture of the blade, for the record. Yeah, it's sweet). There's new racial shaman totem graphics. It looks like a Valentine's Day holiday event boss may be in the works. In what may be my favorite development, there's new weekly raiding quests coming. Even the names of datamined NPCs offer their own intrigue.Yeah, anyway, there's a lot of stuff to digest, and with this 5 AM - 11 AM pacific downtime, hopefully you have time to do so. Follow the break for even more news:
Tuesday Morning Post: Cataclysm bombshell edition
So the biggest news from the past week was probably the Cataclysm preview article published in PC Gamer UK, in which more spoilertastic information was revealed about the new races and other storyline minutiae. I have to say, I was surprised. I expected there would be a lot more discussion about the newly revealed level 1-5 stories. Instead, everyone's focused in on one line about... well, some of you probably don't want to be spoiled, so I'll leave it alone. But suffice it to say, if you don't mind being spoiled and you haven't heard the hullabaloo yet, you might want to check out our article and see if you can figure out what has everyone talking. If spoilers aren't your bag, or you already know, don't fear, there's plenty more to keep you occupied as we wait out the 5 AM - 11 AM Pacific maintenance window. For example, you could read up on the week-old Patch 3.2.2 on our guide page. Here's a few more ideas for your browsing pleasure:
Server Status: Coming back online
Not that this should surprise any of you, but the servers are not yet up. 11:00 a.m. PDT has come and gone, and many folks are still staring at a blank screen. A large batch of realms will be offline until at least 12:30 p.m. PDT. That list is after the break.If your realm is offline, I suggest reading up on everything in WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2.2. At least that way you'll be prepared for Ony when the time comes.The full list of realms undergoing extended maintenance after the break.Update 12:20 p.m. PDT: Most realms are now coming back online.
Tuesday Morning Post: A long expected downtime edition
Yeah, weirdly enough, we've been expecting this a while. They've announce this week's downtime pretty early, and it's extended: 3 AM to 11 AM Pacific. We still can't say for sure why they announced it that early. As of this writing, we haven't heard any peep on whether or not Patch 3.2.2 will go live today (and despite my gut feeling, there is that whole november thing that keeps going around). You'll know by the time you read this, most likely, but either way, it can't hurt to read up on the new patch while the servers are down, right? Of course, even if Patch 3.2.2 doesn't drop, there's plenty of other things going on. For example, Brewfest is in full swing. If you still haven't gotten in the spirit, check out our Achievement guide and Coren Direbrew loot list for inspiration. Plus, as always, we have even more news and views to get you through the downtime after the break:
European weekly maintenance: 23rd & 24th September 2009
Many of our characters may be lying face down in the snow, beer mug still in hand, at 3am on a Wednesday morning -- but that's not going to stop the weekly maintenance. Normal scheduled maintenance for most realms means an outage between 3am and 11am, Paris time (CEST).As well as this regular maintenance two English Battlegroups (Reckoning and Ruin) will be receiving optimizations to their instance capacity. This will mean an extended outage on Wednesday until 5pm CEST and also a further outage between 3am and 7am on Thursday. I'm sure players on these servers will be glad to finally join those who have already received this optimisation to help resolve the Door Boss issue. Full list of realms impacted after the break.
Maintenance for Tuesday, September 22nd already announced
Yeah, believe it or not, unlike last week, when Blizzard didn't confirm the lack of maintenance until somewhere close to midnight pacific time, this week we already have confirmation. There will be extended maintenance from 3 AM to 11 AM pacific this Tuesday.What does this early announcement mean? To be fair, it could just mean that they already know they're going to need some extra maintenance time to make up for the complete lack of maintenance last Tuesday. Of course, they could also be planning to push out Patch 3.2.2. Don't take my word for it though, I am 100% just going off a gut feeling. We've been a while without a patch, after all.Just in case, you'll probably want to start reading up on Patch 3.2.2 now, and when maintenance day gets here, you'll have plenty to read right here on WoW.com while you wait for your server to come up, or for news on whether or not we're going to see the patch.
NCsoft's strict server balance policy for Aion
As a result of some vague server messages and a confused player base trying to reserve their characters in Aion's preselect period, NCsoft tossed up an informative preselect server status page. This page lists all European and North American servers and labels them as either 'Temporarily Locked,' 'Elyos/Asmodian Only,' or blank.Some of the servers are jam-packed, while others have plenty of room to grow (no labels). NCsoft has temporarily locked new character creation on the higher population servers until the lower population servers catch up. To maintain faction balance they are also keeping track of Asmodian and Elyos populations. If one side becomes too dominant, new characters of that faction are disabled until the other side can catch up.This has led to some frustration from preorder customers who fear they may not be able to roll on a server with their guild mates. Apparently, everything will work out as the lower population servers start filling up, so our fingers are crossed. We've all seen what can happen when companies get too overzealous with their server launch plans. The situation could be worse.Update #1 (Sep 19 @ 10:48am EDT): Looks like all servers have been unlocked, but 8/24 of them are 'Elyos Only.'Update #2 (Sep 19 @ 12:30pm EDT): Some players are reporting they can make Asmodian characters on the 'Elyos Only' servers. This is probably due to a lag period between real-time server status and web updates.Update #3 (Sep 19 @ 3:00pm EDT): It appears that restrictions have been lifted (see http://twitter.com/aion_ayase).
Tuesday Morning Post: Philosophy Edition
I don't know what was in the air this week, but it seemed like everyone was doing a little philosophizing around the WoW webosphere. Chief among those, of course, was Ghostcrawler, who waxed eloquent about community reactions to balancing and the reasons for killing off 2v2 arena. We got into too, with Adam wondering if Blizzard's just a little too secretive, There's plenty more armchair quarterback philosophy where that came from, and you'll have plenty of time to experience it all, with downtime lasting... Wait. There is no downtime. But hey, it's cool. If you're stuck at work or school with no access to WoW, you might still like to browse. Here's our usual tuesday morning list of news and navelgazing:
No downtime for Tuesday, September 15th
Here's some good news for all of you who play during the early morning hours pacific coast time: There's no downtime this week. Blue poster Wymdar has announced that there will be no rolling restarts and no downtime for the majority of servers, with one exception: the Uther server will experience a quick restart in order to fix an issue with a boat.So enjoy your uninterrupted playtime. Or, if you're at work or school during that time, be jealous that there's other people playing while you slave away. Then read WoW.com to take some of the pain away. But hey, look on the bright side. This means you have at least another week to get that Onyxia achievement or try to farm up a Foror's Compendium before Patch 3.2.2 hits.
Tuesday Morning Post: Not one, but two Heroic Coliseums edition
Good Tuesday Morning, everyone! While we are expecting an extended downtime this morning, Patch 3.2.2 is still in a holding pattern on the PTR and as of this writing does not appear likely to go live this week. But beyond that, We've still had some activity to speak of. With the Crusader's Coliseum's heroic raids unlocked, we've already seen various guilds, such as Premonition, For the Horde, and Paragon claim some of the top achievements. Oh yeah, and the Faction Change Service is up and running, kind of. Also, Blizzard reneged on previous statements and revealed that they do plan to offer straight up intrafaction race changes, eventually.There's more news to catch up on, of course, and with the 3 AM to 11 AM Pacific downtime, you'll have plenty of time to catch up on it. As always, we have a list to get you started after the break.
Power upgrade may affect select realms
Blizzard has just announced that a facility where some WoW realms' servers are located will be undergoing a power system upgrade tomorrow, September 4th, from 8 AM Pacific to approximately 6 PM Pacific. They do not expect the upgrade to have any effect on the realms in question, and they say that they will be working to make sure everything goes smoothly. Of course, the unspoken follow-up here is that there just might be some issues. If you play on any of the realms listed after the break, you might want keep in mind that you may encounter some choppy waters tomorrow, and possibly a full shutdown.
Emergency maintenance for several realms
Many servers have just been taken down for "brief additional maintenance". As you can see above, the realms are due to be back online by 2:15 pm EDT. The list of realms are after the break. We'll keep you up to date if anything changes.Update 2:29 pm EDT: They are bringing the realms back up now.Thanks to all of the tipsters who sent this in!
[Updated] Realm Status: All realms to be online by 10:30pm EDT
Happy Tuesday everybody! Maintenance has been extended to 2:00 p.m. PDT / 5:00 pm EDT. Check out the Tuesday Morning Maintenance post for some good things to read while you wait. And we'll keep you up to date, should anything change.With all of the hardware upgrading being done, there are bound to be some DNS issues. If you have trouble logging in when the realms are back up, try the solutions listed here.Update 5:00 p.m. EDT: The realms after the break will be down until at least 4:00 p.m. PDT / 7:00 p.m. EDT. Realms not on the list after the break should be up by 3:00 p.m. PDT / 6:00 p.m. EDT.Update 7:42 pm EDT: People who can log in are having severe issues and the realms after the break are still down. Isradun says they will give us an update in 2 hours.Update 8:18 pm EDT: All realms should be online within the hour.Update 8:50 pm EDT: No really. They mean it this time. All realms should be up by 9:30 pm EDT. Warning!: The ones that are up are sloooooow.Update 10:11 pm EDT: Now they are saying 10:30pm EDT. With all this extended downtime, Mashable has a list of thing you can do while Gmail is down (Gmail is down today too, if you haven't heard). They apply perfectly well to WoW as well.
Tuesday Morning Post: Remains of the BlizzCon edition
So BlizzCon 2009 is behind us by over a week now, but don't think its presence isn't still felt. This past week alone we had tons of wrap-up analysis and a few freshly transcribed interviews. We've dug a few new nuggets of news and impressions out our coverage too. Here's something for you: The new Battle.net will allow in game cross faction communication. We also discussed the BlizzCon team's first impressions of the new races. And don't forget our footage of the ultimate raidkiller: Hogger.Of course, in all this BlizzCon and Cataclysm tizzy, don't think we've forgotten about Patch 3.2.2 either. We got some pretty juicy news about that as well. Luckily, you'll have plenty of time to read up on it, since we got a pretty huge chunk of maintenance this morning. Let's take a look at some of the biggest stories from the past 7 days:
