wow-downtime
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U.S. realm downtime for patch 5.4 Tuesday
Tomorrow -- that's Tuesday, September 10th -- U.S. realms will be going offline for maintenance at midnight, Pacific time and are scheduled to come back up by 10 in the morning. This downtime is, of course, for the launch of patch 5.4: so by tomorrow afternoon the Siege of Orgrimmar should be upon us. We think the schedule is on the optimistic side for a patch roll-out, but here at WoW Insider, we'll keep our fingers crossed for servers popping back online quickly so we can all get back to gaming. Not sure what all the fuss is about? Blizzard posted a roundup of patch 5.4 info to catch you up on all the news, but if you need to go more basic than that you can also check our rookie writeup on what WoW patches are.
Tuesday Morning Post: Elementals everywhere edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. While we're all holding our breaths waiting for Dec. 7, don't think things have slowed down, either. The elemental invasion event is in full swing, with a new phase every week. Before you know it, we'll be seeing Patch 4.0.3 and a whole new world (of Warcraft) laid out before us. Get those last-minute achievements done now, folks, it'll be here before you know it. For now, though, we have a few weeks, and Tuesday morning is as good a time as any to stand back and take stock of what's going in the game we all love. We have the usual roundup of hot news and useful guides straight ahead.
Servers are coming back up [Updated]
Blizzard has announced that the realms that are not down for the entire day are down for an additional two hours. They expect realms to be up at 4 p.m. EDT (1 p.m. PDT). This means that you will have less time to level up a character for the Server Maintenance Party we're having tonight. But that's OK because all levels are welcome. We'll update this post with any more server maintenance news. Update: Servers are up or on their way -- except the ones that are down until at least midnight of course.
Maintenance announced for Tuesday, January 12th, 2010
When Monday night rolls around, I have a ritual that I follow without fail: I check the official server status forums and the launch tool waiting for any word on the maintenance window for Tuesday mornings over and over again. Most weeks, I'm lucky to get it by 10 PM pacific, if not midnight. Every once in a while there's an early announcement, but that's very, very rare. So it was some surprise to me to see a Saturday afternoon announcement from blue poster Enthati. We'll be having some downtime this Tuesday from 5 AM pacific to approximately 11 AM pacific. This is honestly probably the earliest I can recall ever seeing a downtime announcement go up. This, in turn, makes me wonder if something's up. 5-11 is a pretty short window, not enough to expect a patch, I'd think. Of course, I'm all for earlier advanced notice of downtime, so you won't hear me complain if this early announcement is just a new policy. If nothing else, I'll be able to go to bed earlier on Monday nights. And on Tuesday morning, you can head over here for all the latest news on the server downtime and all the other happenings around the world of WoW.
Maintenance for Tuesday September 8th
We've had some serious maintenance in the last few weeks, and it looks like they've come to an end. The extended maintenance that's been going on has been to fix the much hyped "Additional instances cannot be launched" error, and by all accounts the bug has been fixed. But let's not kid ourselves, there'll be at least a dozen comments claiming differently after this post goes up. But it's all good, because eventually the cross-server instances are going to take care of that problem entirely.The maintenance tomorrow will run from 3:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 a.m. EDT until 11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT.Since WoW will be down, I recommend checking out Champions Online if you haven't already. It's a nice comic book MMO that has some real potential. One thing I really enjoy about it is that its graphics are not super amazing -- they look like comic book graphics. In that sense, it's a very immersive graphical experience. Kyle Horner of our sister site Massively wrote the WoW player's Guide to Champions Online. Check it out for more information about a nice game you can play during WoW's downtime.
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:
Boom goes the servers...
....the night before BlizzCon ticket sales.Yes folks. You should be completely confident in Blizzard. I mean, the night before how many tens of thousands of people from around the world try to order tickets, the authentication servers go down. Many users are experiencing it, however a few are not.What on Earth could go wrong tomorrow?Reythur, a Blizzard blue poster, has said that the issue is being investigated. We'll update this post with more information as we get it.Update #4: Things are working now it appears for all Battle.net accounts and all regular accounts.
Patch 3.1.1a coming during maintenance
Patch 3.1.1a, which we previously covered last week, will be coming during tomorrow's extended maintenance. This is according to a small update Crygil gave this evening.While we don't have the full patch notes yet, Patch 3.1.1a will just correct small issues that cannot be hot-fixed into the game. Notably, the tooltip to the Paladin's Exorcism ability will be updated to reflect that it cannot be used on players.Realms will be down from 3:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 a.m. EDT until 11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT. We'll let you know when they're up, and if there will be any additional extended maintenance.
Realms are up
The extended maintenance has ended, and it appears most (if not all) realms are up and available for use.Today's extended maintenance was particularly painful for me. I had to do the following, in order: Wake up and write The Queue Work on a couple other things for WoW Insider Clean the cat's box Go out to Barns & Noble and buy season 3 of Weeds and a couple books Pickup a Strawberry and Cream drink from the Starbucks at B&N Come home and take a nap Wake up from said nap with my cat stepping on my liver Make this post Phew! But now that the realms are up I can get back to the thing I really love... riding in circles around Dalaran on my mount for hours as I wait for groups to form.
Maintenance for Tuesday February 17th
A cool breeze moves across Osull's skin as he looks out upon the Azerothian skyline. The picturesque towering citadels of Dalaran float a mile high in the air before him. The breeze causes him to shiver briefly in his heavy plate armor, something is wrong.The shiver has an almost mystical quality to it."Greetings," comes a wispy voice from everywhere but nowhere."We are performing our weekly scheduled maintenance this morning." Osull gets the feeling that something terrible is about to be said. Bracing himself and looking stoically out towards the bustling city in front of him, he is steadfast in the knowledge that no matter what the challenge before him, Humanity's spirit will always prevail. "No realms will be... available," the voice says with a nearly sadistic tone to it. He gulps as he realizes that his very existence will be naught during these times, "between the hours of 5:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. PST."
Surprise! Extended maintenance extended
All US realms will now be down until 1pm PST / 4pm EST.I really don't know why Blizzard doesn't just change their times for extended maintenance to make it last until 1pm PST every time, or just push it back to 3pm PST and be done with it. That way there are no failed expectations when the servers don't come up.It's a relatively contradictory thing for them to say they'll wait push a patch to live until it's ready and never give a time estimate, and then turn around and give a time estimate whenever the severs are down. Don't you think? Perhaps they should just say the severs will be back up "soon."Of course, I'm probably just QQing because this afternoon my lazy butt is finally going to hit exalted with the Kalu'ak. I'm going to go get that sweet fishing pole first thing. I'm going to dance with it too, a pole dance if you will. But alas that'll have to wait until I can log on.We'll put up a post when servers are back up, or some other debacle happens. Stay tuned.
Tuesday Morning Post: Patch 3.0.8 roulette
Okay, so I'm not saying right out that patch 3.0.8 is today, but with the 3 AM to 11 AM Pacific extended downtime this morning, well, it seems likely, and I was right about the PTR going up in the first place. Still, one week is sort of short, isn't it? Anyway, as long as we're on the subject of 3.0.8, let's go ahead and look at some of the things we've discussed about it in the last week or so, that way you'll be ready if it does drop this morning. Here's the original PTR patch notes for 3.0.8. In one of the most noticeable changes in this patch, expect to see Night Elf Mechanostrider gangs popping up any day now with the removal of race restrictions on PC race mounts. Among some of the biggest class changes are those for Death Knights, with some skill and talent changes meant to bolster them in PVE tanking and scale them back slightly in PvP. Mages, specifically Arcane Mages, are getting some nice buffs in 3.0.8. Yes, this is also the patch of the great Hunter nerf, alas. If you've been stuck trying to complete Northrend Gourmet, new recipes coming with this patch will now make that achievement -- and thus the Chef title -- possible. WoW, Casually discusses 3.0.8's advantages for the casual player. Check out some of the new items, including sigils and rings, that are coming in 3.0.8. The promised Feral Druid attack power changes are coming in 3.0.8, and with them comes a major change to Feral Staves Relics of Ulduar will be non-soulbound next patch, and will garner Sons of Hodir reputation when turned in to them in groups of 10 as well. Unfortunately, there is a small tradeoff. Hope you got your boot flask in time. More good news for tanks: You got some nice new stamina enchantments coming in 3.0.8.
Weigh in on the downtime debacle
It is no secret that servers have been seeing an awful lot of maintenance lately, and today has been the worst. While the blues have been encouraging and supportive, the frustration has been mounting, and many players are threatening to call it quits. Of course, players threaten this on a daily basis, so it comes as no shock. The responses on the forums, when they are available, on our own site, and in our team mail have made the WoW Insider team somewhat curious. How are you feeling about Blizzard today?Jump through the break to take our super-scientific poll!
Realms are being brought back online [Updated at 11:50 pm EST]
The opening announcement just told us all that realms are coming back online now. All the realms will be completely back up by 10:45pm EST / 7:45pm PST. Realms have been down today for an overly-extended maintenance period.There will be an in-game mail sent to all players concerning the mail issues today. For those that are unaware, all mail that was in the mailbox prior to the downtime today was gone when the servers came up for a brief time today. We have covered everything we currently know about this. The mail will be reimbursed.Let's all say a silent prayer that this is not how the next couple of days look. I don't know about all of you, but I actually want to play Wrath of the Lich King when it's released.Update 11:50pm EST - All the realms are coming back up. We'll have more on fallout of this tonight and tomorrow.Update 11:30pm EST - We've sent word to our contact at Blizzard asking for more information about today's issues. We'll let you know the response we get.All previous updates are being kept after the break, check there to see a log of what's been going on.Are you ready for the challenges that await you in Northrend? WoW Insider has you covered with our 8-day guide to Preparing for Wrath. Also, check out our feature on AddOns new, old and outdated and Essential AddOns for Wrath written especially with the expansion in mind.
Maintenance for Tuesday November 11th
There will be downtime tomorrow for the U.S. realms between 5:00 a.m. PST and 11:00 a.m. PST. The maintenance will undoubtedly be getting the servers ready for the release of Wrath of the Lich King Wednesday night.We're hopeful that this will be the only downtime this week. When Burning Crusade was launched the servers were only taken down the a couple days prior to its release. We expect the same thing to happen for Wrath.There is also no indication that a patch will be delivered with this downtime. We give it a 50/50 chance of a small patch coming out the night of Wrath's release however, and wouldn't be surprised at all to see some hotfixes go in place over the next several weeks.Of course, this downtime could be setting up another stage of the world event happening tonight.
Maintenance extended by two hours
Maintenance has been extended by two hours today. The realms are scheduled to come up at 1:00 p.m. PST, or 4:00 p.m. EST. The opening in game announcement told us about this, and is accompanied with the message that they've experienced some issues while maintaining things.But never fear! WoW Insider has you covered for this downtime with all the latest patch 3.0.3 information: Patch 3.0.3 Patch Notes (Patch 3.0.2 Notes) Keeping your patch files Druid changes in 3.0.3 Paladin changes in 3.0.3 Priest changes in 3.0.3 Warlock changes in 3.0.3 Warrior changes in 3.0.3 So sit back, read up on some class changes, and take this extended-extended down time to go and vote if you haven't already.
Server restarts for Friday October 24th
While the connectivity and general lag seems to have gotten better in the last day or so, there are still some lingering issues here and there. All servers will be undergoing rolling restarts on the morning of the 24th from 5:00 a.m. PDT to 6:00 a.m. PDT. Each realm is expected to be down only 15 minutes.Ideally this will solve all the issues we've had since patch 3.0.2 hit last week, but more likely we'll just see things be better for a short time.If this temporary down time turns into anything extended, we'll update this post.Of course, this restart might have something to do with Zombies hungry for brains.
