Filed under: Realm News

Updatedx3: Urgent maintenance complete

by Robin Torres Nov 4th 2009 at 2:50PM

Blizzard has announced that they are conducting urgent maintenance on several realms. ~~Though the~~ ~~official Warcraft twitter account~~ ~~announced it would only go on until noon PST~~ (the tweet was about account maintenance), the in-game and forum messages state that they do not know how long the maintenance will take. They expect to have more information by 12:30 p.m. PST / 3:30 p.m. EST.

The list of affected realms is after the break (which includes Zangarmarsh, the It came from the Blog server).

We will keep you informed as the status changes.

3:25 p.m. PST: All realms are (supposedly) online and playable.
Update 3 p.m. PST: More info at 3:30 PST.
Update: More info at 1:30 p.m. PST.

China's GAPP halts WoW review, calls collecting subscriptions "illegal behavior"

by Mike Schramm Nov 2nd 2009 at 3:00PM

Just when NetEase was finally getting back to business in China (they were even planning for a Wrath release next month), they hit a huge snag: China's General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP) office has apparently halted their review of the game and told the company to stop collecting subscriptions and signing up new subscribers. They've also passed on the company's application to go into business, and have called the new subscription signups "illegal behavior," threatening even suspension of the company's Internet service.

We're not sure what happens from here -- an official from the country's Ministry of Culture has also said that the suspension of the review is "not appropriate," especially since the content under review had already been approved while the game was being run by The9, which may mean that it will be overturned just as quickly as it went down (and the game will be back in business before long). On the other hand, Netease may have jumped the gun -- they've been collecting subscriptions for a while, which they apparently weren't supposed to do without official GAPP approval (and we've heard before that GAPP might just want to delay the release of foreign games as long as possible). We'll keep an eye on the issue -- most analysts are saying that despite the threats, this is just another roadbump for NetEase, and they should still be back to collecting payments for the game soon.

Update: Stranger and stranger -- NetEase has released a statement saying they've gotten no official word from GAPP outside of the official press release. When you consider that along with the Ministry of Culture's comments, it seems that the government isn't quite sure whether they're approving the content or not.

Emergency European maintenance this evening

by Alex Ziebart Oct 22nd 2009 at 9:00PM

A little while ago, 2 am Paris time, servers went down in the EU for emergency maintenance. More specifically, "emergency database maintenance." They're estimated to be down until 4 am Paris time, which by my estimate is another hour or so. Should that maintenance be extended any further, we'll be sure to let you know right here on WoW.com.

Many thanks to our followers on Twitter for alerting us of this downtime, because our European staff members are apparently off doing silly things like sleeping. Thanks a lot, guys. Because of that, I'm now inflicting cultural stereotypes on you all in the form of the picture at the top of this post. Don't take your rage out on me, take it out on the warlock.

World of Warcraft in the 'net's traffic patterns

by Mike Schramm Oct 22nd 2009 at 7:00PM

Arbor Networks is a company that continually monitors the Internet and its usage -- they keep track of Internet outages and site visits on a global scale. They just recently released a report of when traffic peaks in the evenings around the world, and at least one of their results is about the game we're all playing, none other than World of Warcraft. In terms of just general consumer traffic online, the numbers tend to peak, according to the report, at around 8-11pm -- the time right before bed when most Americans are done with dinner, and have a little free time to jump online and browse around. In terms of what they're doing when online, simple web browsing makes up most of that traffic (52%), what's the rest of it? Gaming, including WoW.

More than any other gaming service (they also take a look at Steam), WoW's chart is extremely interesting -- it peaks solidly at 8pm every night, and then falls back down just as sharply around 11pm. In other words, the biggest audience for WoW (during this time period -- this is over ten days in July of this year) is raiders, who show up on time at 8 and end the raid around 3 hours later. In other words, if you want to avoid the crowd, show up after 11. Or even better, raid in the mornings. Interesting stuff -- certainly Blizzard has much more detailed information on when people log into the game (and where they go when they do), but as an overview of traffic patterns, Arbor's research all makes sense.

[via Network World]

Breakfast Topic: How to be realm-famous

by Mike Schramm Oct 8th 2009 at 8:00AM

I like this post on the General forums about being "realm-famous" and how to get there. World of Warcraft has a gigantic community around it, but sometimes my favorite part of the game is that there are all sorts of little micro-communities in that big one. There's the player base at large, and then groups of people who read WoW.com or other sites. Then you've got the realm forums denizens, and that's a different group than the factions on either side of each realm in-game. And then you've got your guild, and then within that, your raiders and maybe even your friends list. We're all part of one big group -- we all play the game together -- but there are all sorts of little identities in all of these little micro-groups as well.

And people can become "famous" in these groups. It's tough for us at a macro level to cover all of that stuff, though I like trying to keep up with some of it in our Guildwatch column (and the picture above shows what happens when someone can become "realm-famous," or realm-infamous as the case may be. What's your experience with realm-fame -- can you name people on your own server, or have you ever gotten "famous" for nabbing a realm first or earning a reputation?

Guildwatch: Redemption

by Mike Schramm Oct 7th 2009 at 2:00PM

Many whelps! Handle it! Oh wait, you did. In the Wake on Zul'jin (as you can see in the video above) was just one of the many guilds to take down Onyxia since she returned to the game in a more powerful form, and while obviously there wasn't much new to this fight, most guilds give it a thumbs up: it was a little old-school raiding taste in a new-school difficulty level. Not that it's too hard (c'mon, it's Onyxia), but it's nice to see the fight pretty faithfully recreated. Makes you wish for more, doesn't it?

Lots more raid downings, and of course the usual drama and recruitment notices in this week's Guildwatch. If you've got a tip for us about your guild or just one you saw on the forums, please send it along to guildwatch@wow.com, and please do your best to make it look like the ones below -- if you send us five pages on the entire history of your guild, it probably won't show up here. Read on for more.

Searching for the most popular server

by Mike Schramm Oct 3rd 2009 at 8:00PM

Kris over on the WoW LJ has an interesting question: what's the most popular server in the game? Blizzard never has (and likely never will) singled out one server as the most popular in the game, as the QQ that would ensue might bring the forums down (not to mention that it must change pretty often, as people transfer and reroll on other realms. It seems that everyone on a high population server thinks they must be top dog when they see queues during prime time, but the most widespread concrete numbers we have are probably from the unofficial Warcraft Realms census: they claim that, with over 35,000 characters on it, Whisperwind is number one.

Of course, even that can't be trusted -- those numbers are picked up from the site's addon, all within the last 30 days, and it could just be that WR has more info about more people on that server. But at the same time, I'd guess that Warcraft Realms' numbers are in the ballpark, as long as you're talking about Yankee Stadium. Whisperwind, Cenarion Circle, Stormrage, Moon Guard, and Proudmoore are all big servers, I can promise you anecdotally, while Laughing Skull, Blood Furnace, and Malorne are definitely at the other end of the spectrum. As for a most popular realm, there probably isn't one specifically (it changes periodically, if not even at different times of the day). But if your realm is near the top of Warcraft Realms' list, it's probably busier than the others.

Server maintenance for September 29th

by Alex Ziebart Sep 29th 2009 at 2:05AM

While we were given ample notice regarding last week's server maintenance, this week we weren't so lucky. We were only informed earlier today of tomorrow's maintenance, which will start at 5:00 am PDT and last until 11:00 am PDT. If you're not sure what time that is in your particular time zone, that's what the World Clock is for, you ninnies.

As usual, WoW.com will be here all morning and afternoon to keep you busy ~~while you slack off at work~~ during your WoW-less lunch break. Or, if Valve is a benevolent sort and lets us get our grubby, pallid hands on it early, you could just play Left 4 Dead's new map while the servers are down. That's what I'll be doing the whole time.

Server Status: Coming back online

by Adam Holisky Sep 22nd 2009 at 2:20PM

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.

European weekly maintenance: 23rd & 24th September 2009

by Dominic Hobbs Sep 21st 2009 at 1:00PM

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.

No downtime for Tuesday, September 15th

by Daniel Whitcomb Sep 15th 2009 at 2:35AM

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.

Widespread "Logging in to game server" errors - Updated (again)

by Matthew Rossi Sep 8th 2009 at 9:45PM

We've had tips of a problem some players are having logging in to WoW tonight, but I can attest to it since it's happening to me as well. I can log into any US or Oceanic server except the one I usually raid on. I was on, and about to pull the first encounter in 25 man Trial of the Crusader when I was suddenly disconnected and unable to log back into the server. Several attempts to log back in later, I found that yes, I could log on to other servers, just not Norgannon, my usual home. Attempts to flush my DNS, restart my computer, my router and my modem provided no relief. I could play anywhere, save where I have characters to play. As of 9:40 pm the problem persists. So if it's happening to you, take heart in that you're not alone.

Blizzard is aware of the issue, but currently has no ETA as to when it will be fixed.

Update: Blizzard poster Claudiog says that the issue seems to have been resolved. For my part, I am finally back online and raiding as of 11:12 PM EST.

Update #2: seems that problems persist and Blizzard is asking affected players to help them lock it down. If you can post your ISP and a traceroute to that forum thread you should probably do so. We're also getting widespread reports from EU players that there are several kinds of problems with their login servers as well. We have an image of the European client's Breaking News box after the jump.

Update #3: There's now a list of affected servers. We'll include the entire list after the jump: still no ETA on when the issue will be resolved.

Emberstorm and Whirlwind battlegroups down

by Michael Sacco Sep 5th 2009 at 3:45AM

We're receiving reports that servers on the Whirlwind and Emberstorm battlegroups, located in the Seattle datacenter, are currently experiencing downtime. These were the same battlegroups that were scheduled to recieve their local power supply upgrade today, so there may have been some unanticipated issue in the process.

Don't panic! It's likely only temporary and they should be back up soon.

We'll update you guys with more info when we get it. The full list of affected realms is under the cut -- feel free to hit us up on Twitter @wowinsider if yours comes back up and we haven't reported on it yet.

UPDATE 4:18 AM EDT:

Blizzard has posted a thread regarding the issues on the Battlegroup forums.

Power upgrade may affect select realms

by Daniel Whitcomb Sep 3rd 2009 at 10:15PM

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.

"For the Horde" gets world-first A Tribute to Insanity-10

by Allison Robert Sep 3rd 2009 at 3:00PM

With the heroic versions of Trial of the Crusader going live yesterday, raiding guilds are already venturing into the more challenging versions of Tier 9. As of evening Tuesday EST, the European guild For the Horde has claimed a world-first A Tribute to Insanity-10 (a no-wipe full clear of the instance) on 10-man heroic Trial. Unfortunately, I don't speak German so I might be missing some of the finer points related on their website (anyone who can shed more light on this, please drop a comment!) but it looks like they weren't deliberately aiming for the achievement until they reached Anub'arak with all 50 attempts remaining, and then decided to go for it. Next in achievement progression? A Tribute to Dedicated Insanity -- repeating it without any gear from 25-man ToC, which is broadly equivalent to the Herald of the Titans achievement. Ouch.

Boubouille at MMO Champion has since confirmed that the Swift Horde Wolf and its Alliance counterpart the Swift Alliance Steed are drops from the tribute chest upon completion of the no-wipe clear, and it's quite possible that the mounts also drop from the 25-man version as well. However, I doubt we'll be seeing A Tribute to Insanity-25 this week, as none of the guilds doing the heroic-25 mode have reported a wipe-free experience thus far.

We'll keep an eye on guild progression for you, and congratulations to For the Horde!

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