Good news, Europe is once again feeling some free character migration love. Blizzard has announced a week-long migration event in an attempt to balance out factions on specific servers. So if you've been looking to migrate, this might well be a good time.

Free character migration is available from July 1st till the 7th which gives you a week to decide if you make the move or stay put. As usual, Blizzard could well end the migration when their desired faction balance on each realm is achieved.

So who can move and where? If you're Alliance and currently playing on the European realms Burning Legion, Grim Batol, Ravencrest, Sylvanas and Silvermoon (PvE) you can move to the Horde-heavy servers of Magtheridon and Vek'nilash. Meanwhile if you're Horde, and on Al'Akir, Kazzak, Magtheridon and Stormscale, you have the option of transferring to the Alliance-dominated realms of Burning Blade, Neptulon, Tarren Mill and Trollbane.

Lesley, our European writer, is out of our virtual office at the moment and isn't available to write up the EU maintenance notice for all of you. So I'm doing it. To try and make the experience authentic, please read this post in a very poor fake English accent. No, wait! A fake German accent. Yeah, that's way more awesome. Do that.

Like the (or should I say das) North American realms, European realms will largely consist of rolling restarts with only a few exceptions, which we'll get to in a moment. Rolling restarts will begin at 05:00 CEST and should be finished by 07:00 CEST.

However, there is a set of realms that will need an extended maintenance period that will begin at 03:00 CEST and last until 15:00 CEST. The affected realms are: Auchindoun, Ghostlands, Hellfire, Karazhan, Nagrand, shattered Halls, Sporeggar, and The Sha'tar.

If you're unsure of what these times are in your time zone, please refer to the World Clock.

Should you need entertainment throughout the maintenance period, just take look at Daniel Whitcomb's latest edition of the Tuesday Morning Post, which rounds up our site's best and brightest posts of the week.

Au revoir!

I was pleasantly surprised to see the maintenance announcement for tomorrow morning available fairly early today. Most of the time, we don't actually know whether there will be maintenance or not until pretty late in the evening. Or I'm imagining that and this is the time we see it every week, who knows!

Daytime players will be happy to hear that most realms are only getting rolling restarts. They'll be started at 5:00 AM PDT on North American realms and 10:00 AM PDT for Oceanic realms. There are a fair number of servers being hit with a real maintenance period, but it's only expected to take a few hours: Starting at 5:00 AM PDT and lasting until 8:00 AM PDT. Those realms are: Area 52, Arena Tournament 1, Arena Tournament 2, Auchindoun, Azuremyst, Blade's Edge, Blood Furnace, Coilfang, Dawnbringer, Exodar, Fizzcrank, Galakrond, Ghostlands, Grizzly Hills, Shattered Halls, Terokkar, The Scryers, The Underbog, Velen, and Zangarmarsh.

If you're not sure what those times are in your time zone, the World Clock is a pretty simple tool to help you figure it out.

As always, WoW.com will be here throughout the morning and afternoon should anything come up during maintenance. It's not a patch day, so we can be reasonably sure nothing will come up, but you never know.

For the second Tuesday in a row around the same time (9:00-9:30 pm EST-ish), the US Retaliation battlegroup has crashed. Blizzard has confirmed that it's performing urgent maintenance on the hardware of the affected realms, and they'll provide an update at 11:00 PM EST/8:00 PM PST. Hmmm. Makes you wonder if whatever caused last week's crash was accidentally rolled back during server maintenance earlier today.

The following are the affected realms:

Area 52, Auchindoun, Azuremyst, Blade's Edge, Blood Furnace, Coilfang, Dawnbringer, Exodar, Fizzcrank, Galakrond, Ghostlands, Grizzly Hills, Shattered Halls, Terokkar, The Scryers, The Underbog, Velen, and Zangarmarsh.

My guild's on Retaliation and has consequently found itself without something to raid for the second Tuesday running. Last week their solution was to take off to Mug'thol and do a level 1 Hogger raid, complete with designated tanks and healers, damage meters, and -- to top things off -- a bonafide ninja looter of the Malachite drop. Our server might be down, but our hallowed traditions remain.

Via Guildox, we've just gotten word that Gentlemens Club of Korgath-US, Hordeside, has just become the world-first achievers of Herald of the Titans. This achievement requires that you defeat Algalon on 10-man difficult with no gear above iLevel 226. In other words, they were not wearing a single piece of Hard-mode Ulduar 25-man gear (While we haven't looked closely at their armory, the achievement would allow for normal mode 25-man gear, though even normal mode 25-man weapons would be off limits). [EDIT: iLevel 226 is actually the item level of gear from Normal mode 25-man Ulduar, not Hard mode as previously stated. It is also the item level of gear that drops from Heroic or 25-man Malygos, Kel'thuzad, and Sartharion with at least 2 drakes up. Hard mode 10-man Ulduar also drop iLevel 226 items, which indicates that the Achievement is intended mostly for 10-man progression.]

While 10-man and 25-man raids were technically meant to be seperate tiers of progression, it seems like many raiders freely mix the two, and while that's certainly to be expected, and there's nothing wrong with it, it's cool to see at least a few guilds focus on mastering that path of progression and arguably challenging themselves to at least the 10-man Algalon fight as Blizzard meant it to be fought.

In short, they've managed to proclaim themselves Kings of the 10-man game in Patch 3.1, even if other guilds technically beat them to 10-man Algalon kill itself. Congratulations to everyone involved in the raid!

Rolling restarts are currently in progress on many realms, apparently to address a talent issue that cropped up with patch 3.1.3. These restarts shouldn't take more than 2 hours across the board. Meaning that your server shouldn't be down for very long at all, because that two hour window is for the entire process. The battlegroups being hit with these restarts are:

• Ruin
• Vindication
• Rampage
• Shadowburn
• Stormstrike
• Nightfall
• Whirlwind
• Emberstorm
• Retaliation

We're not sure if this will mean the end of today's maintenance woes, but we can hope.

Update: They're still working on getting the downed realms into working order, but don't currently have an ETA. They say an update will come soon.

Bornakk hopped on to the forums to confirm the fears of many players who don't happen to have their World of Warcraft clients handy to tell them the same thing: some realms are going to be down for a while and Blizzard doesn't know when they're coming back up. According to Bornakk, they are experiencing "additional issues" with some realms as well as issues with the launcher being unable to update game clients. They currently have no estimate for the return of the realms, which do not appear on the game client's realm list, but will provide more details at around 2:30 3:30pm PDT. A complete list of affected realms after the jump.

[UPDATE: Nethaera reports that Blizzard "encountered a serious error" with the listed realms and are working towards a resolution. Unfortunately, there is still no estimate for when the realms will come back up and more details should be available at 5:30pm PDT. The situation has a small silver lining, however, as Blizzard is considering "appropriate compensation" for the additional downtime experienced by players on those realms. Stay tuned to WoW.com for further updates.]

[UPDATE 2: Nethaera updates her post to explain that the network improvements intended for all realms resulted in a connection error which has taken some time to identify and fix. While she notes that the connection error itself has for the most part been resolved (which is why some of the affected realms now show up on the realm list), the affected realms have yet to undergo the regular weekly maintenance and patching procedure. This means a much, much longer downtime than anticipated. Nethaera hopes to give further updates by 7:30pm PDT. Time to reroll, I guess.]

[UPDATE 3: Looks like they're doing a little more work tonight on all realms to address a few issues. More information in our post here.]

Good morning Europe. May is almost over and summer seems to be officially here -- at least in the UK. This week we have something different. For most of us, it's the usual bout of maintenance but some lucky souls are getting extended downtime for a very special reason.

Basically the Big Giant Heads at Blizzard have decided to merge a couple of Battlegroups. What's so special about that, I hear you cry? Well, it's special because the groups concerned are all in different languages. Yes, this will be the first time French, German, Spanish and English will come together to make multilingual Battlegroups. Lovely EU Blue Wryxian has created a quick FAQ to explain what the heck is going on, though I confess to still being a little confused.

This means most of us will have normal maintenance between 5:00am and 7:00am CEST while folks in Nightfall, Crueldad, Nemesis and Hinterhalt (realm-wise, that's Aionsus, Anachronos, Bronze Dragonflight, Burning Steppes, Darkmoon Faire, Darkspear, Kor'gall and Lightbringer) will have extended maintenance between 3:00am and 11:00am CEST.

Anyway, my usual motto of 'keep calm and carry on' applies. In the meantime, Daniel Whitcomb has once again provided a feature packed post to keep you entertained. If you finish reading that with time to spare and just happen to be a druid, well you might just want to stare at those lovely updated forms some more. I know I will be.

We have a maintenance announcement for Tuesday morning, but it's a little weird, so bear with me here. First, starting at 1 AM Pacific, the Authentication server will undergo maintenance. That means if you have a battle.net account, you won't be able to log in. But hey, we can hope this'll take care of all those unable to log in problems later, right?

So anyway, that lasts about 4 hours, until 5 AM Pacific, at which time rolling restarts will begin for all realms, lasting for no more than fifteen minutes per realm, you know the drill. But wait, there's more! A handful of servers will be going down for a 3 hour maintenance window from 5 AM to 8 AM Pacific. They are as follows:

You readers are awesome -- yesterday, when I posted the link to the online server alert page (which, yes, wasn't all that new, but lots of us hadn't seen it before), I suggested that it get hooked up to Twitter somehow, and sure enough, Scyntinth and blkmasta55555 wasted no time creating @WoWStatusUS and @WoWStatusEU, respectively (Ed also pointed out the EU status page). Tsaavik created an RSS feed for the alert as well, if you'd rather use that. And those aren't the only way to track Blizzard's realm status on Twitter -- looks like @wowalerts has been in action for a little while, and @pikestaff pointed out to me that @wowrealms tweets about realm downtime as well. And, hey, even your friends here at WoW.com are on Twitter keeping you up to date with the latest at @WoWInsider.

So yes, there are tons of ways to track what's happening on your favorite realms via Twitter or any number of updating services.

In completely unsurprising news, extended maintenance for the realms that were undergoing it has been additionally extended today. These realms were suppose to be brought up at noon PDT today. The latest news is that there is no current ETA for them to come back, but that we should get another update by 1 PM PDT (at which time I fully anticipate they will tell us to expect another update by 2 PM PDT). The good news is they're doing hardware upgrades, so when the realms come back up, they should be better than before.

The affected realms are: Aegwynn, Akama, Aman'Thul, Arathor, Azjol-Nerub, Barthilas, Blackrock, Bloodscalp, Bonechewer, Boulderfist, Bronzebeard, Caelestrasz, Chromaggus, Crushridge, Daggerspine, Darkspear, Dath'Remar, Draenor, Dragonblight, Dragonmaw, Draka, Drak'thul, Dreadmaul, Dunemaul, Eitrigg, Eldre'Thalas, Feathermoon, Firetree, Frostmane, Frostmourne, Frostwolf, Garithos, Gundrak, Gurubashi, Hakkar, Jubei'Thos, Khaz Modan, Khaz'goroth, Kil'jaeden, Kilrogg, Korgath, Kul Tiras, Malorne, Mug'thol, Muradin, Nagrand, Nathrezim, Ner'zhul, Perenolde, Proudmoore, Rexxar, Runetotem, Saurfang, Scarlet Crusade, Sen'jin, Shadow Council, Shadowsong, Silver Hand, Silvermoon, Skywall, Smolderthorn, Spirestone, Stonemaul, Stormscale, Suramar, Terenas, Thaurissan, Thorium Brotherhood, Tichondrius, Uldum, Vek'nilash, and Windrunner. All other realms should be available for play now.

We will keep you posted as soon as we hear more on when the realms in question will be brought up.

Update: As predicted, they have updated to let us know that they still don't know when these realms will be back up, and they will have another update for us at 2 PDT.

Update 2: Blizzard has announced that they expect these realms to be available for play by 2:30 PDT.

There will be two kinds of maintenance tomorrow.

The first kind will be from 3:00 a.m. PDT until 11:00 a.m. PDT. This is the "normal" maintenance time. This will apply to all realms that are not on the list after the break.

The second kind of maintenance will be from 12:00 a.m. PDT until 12:00 p.m. PDT. The realms after the break will be undergoing this maintenance.

It is likely the Wintergrasp changes we just broke will go live tomorrow. There's a bit of uproar about them, and it'll be interesting to see exactly what the changes are. There is no indication if patch 3.1.2 will be dropping tomorrow or not.

The list of realms down for half a day after the break.

Free character migrations were opened yesterday to the Latin American PvP realm Drakkari. The transfers will go until May 15 at 1:00 PM PDT (aproximadamente). Players on any of the following realms are eligible to transfer:

Agamaggan, Alexstrasza, Alleria, Andorhal, Anetheron, Archimonde, Azshara, Baelgun, Balnazzar, Blackhand, Dalaran, Dalvengyr, Dark Iron, Dentarg, Destromath, Dethecus, Detheroc, Duskwood, Emerald Dream, Executus, Garona, Gorgonnash, Greymane, Gul'dan, Haomarush, Hellscream, Illidan, Kael'thas, Kalecgos, Khadgar, Kirin Tor, Lightninghoof, Maelstrom, Malfurion, Moonrunner, Nazjatar, Norgannon, Ravencrest, Sargeras, Scilla, Spinebreaker, Staghelm, Steamwheedle Cartel, Stormreaver, Thrall, Turalyon, Twisting Nether, Ursin, Whisperwind, Wildhammer, Ysera, Ysondre, Zuluhed

As Bornakk notes, "keep in mind that this is a Latin American realm and people may speak a language other than your own" - which is to say, expect to see a lot of Spanish.

Good morning, my fellow EU players. Welcome to Wednesday. Yes, despite the May Day bank holiday this week and that Tuesday feeling, I assured you it's once again the middle of the week and patch day to boot.

As with the last couple of weeks, we've got an extended period of maintenance. Now I know things on the EU servers are a heck of a lot more stable than those of our friends across the pond, after all, they are our guinea pigs, but we're want them to stay that way right?

Once again, realms are down between 5:00am and 11:00am CEST. The downtime might change depending on how well or badly the maintenance goes so just bear that in mind come the top of the hour. However there's plenty to do during the down time, so check out Daniel's post from yesterday for some suggestions. Me? I'm going to read up on how to get the School of Hard Knocks achievement while I sit in the dentist's waiting room.