So we're swimming in news again this week, what with the patch 3.2 PTR well underway (you can check out the latest patch notes right here) and all, but the biggest piece of news for me, remains the faction changes. If nothing else, this should pave the way for me to be able to switch every single one of my characters to the High Elf race once they're finally implemented. Of course, that's not the only race-related news bouncing around this week. It also looks like the Tauren may be looking to make some waves in lore.

But anyhow, we have some nice long maintenance today, so you should have plenty of time to read the above stories and all the awesome news coming out of the PTR while you're at it. Check out a list of some of the highlights of the past 7 days below, and be sure to stick around throughout the day. There's bound to be more patch 3.2 news trickling in.

Once again, we have maintenance off the port bow. You'd almost think this is a weekly scheduled thing, eh?

This week, though, is one of those special extended maintenance weeks, with servers down from 3 AM to 11 AM Pacific. No, despite the extended maintenance, we aren't expecting patch 3.2 yet.

In addition, other servers will be down an extra 2 hours starting at 1 AM Pacific time.

We have the full list of said servers after the break, and it's actually a somewhat long one.

As you may or may not have heard, the World of Warcraft is currently offline in China, thanks to a fight between the game's former licensee, The9, and its current licensee, Netease. Yes, if you think a day or so of downtime is bad here in the US and the EU, that's nothing compared to this: the game has been down since June 7th, and neither Blizzard nor Netease have given an estimate of when the game might be back online. An analyst from China does say that they expect most players to return to the servers once they return, but in the meantime, many players have spread over into Taiwan's WoW server. We don't believe that Blizzard allowed transfers during this time, so they've likely started and leveling brand new characters over there.

And don't think that other games haven't noticed this unique window of opportunity: there are currently millions of MMO players looking for something to do in China, and there are at least three big other games looking to give them something to do. Aion, which is currently in beta here in the US but is apparently up and running in Asia already, is making as much of a play as they can, and there are two local Chinese games, Zhuxian Online and Chibi Online, both developed by a company called Perfect World, that are also aiming to steal some of China's WoW players.

Very interesting situation over there -- imagine how much the MMO world would be thrown off here if WoW just completely disappeared for multiple weeks, if not longer. Blizzard is likely scrambling to get things moving over there as fast as possible.

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.

It's been a week of big news altogether around these parts.

Mount changes in Patch 3.2 were probably the biggest news. Not only will we be getting most mounts earlier, but normal flying mounts will gain a pretty sizable speed boost. Of course, this also means that class travel abilities will come earlier as well. And while we're on the whole faster transportation thing, we'll also see new portals to the Dark Portal for both sides, and a new Thunder Bluff Zeppelin for the Horde. And as long as we're on the subject, if you're looking to get a new flying mount because of the Patch 3.2 changes, remember that Mei Francis in Dalaran can hook you up.

But there were also a few other big stories and interesting happenings going on in the WoW community this week, and since we're coming up on some downtime from 5 AM to 11 AM pacific this morning, you should have plenty of time to read all about it right here on WoW.com. You'll find our usual 7-day roundup below:

As a former player of a Feral Druid main and current player of a Resto/Feral Druid alt, I was looking forward to seeing the new Night Elf Cat Form graphics with bated breath for much of the week. Of course, having now seen them, I have to say that Tauren Cat Form definitely came out on top here. Of course, some people still have their complaints about that, but I think the Night Elf forms are certainly quite a bit sillier. Oh well, at least my hair will get me a set of the slightly cooler looking forms.

But Druid fashion concerns weren't the only thing going on this week. While most servers are getting rolling restarts, others are getting some real downtime (check this post for details), and the authentication servers are taking a nap as well. That means you may just have some time to check out some more of our top stories from the past seven days below:

There is a set of server maintenance announcements tonight from the login screen.

First and foremost, the authentication systems will be undergoing maintenance from 3:00 a.m. PDT until 5:00 a.m. PDT. While Blizzard's announcement on the issue seems rather optimistic that you'll be able to login during that time, don't count on it.

Secondly, all realms not listed after the break will be undergoing rolling restarts beginning at 5:00 a.m. PDT, with Oceanic realms being restarted at 10:00 a.m. PDT.

Finally, the realms listed after the break will be going under maintenance from 3:00 a.m. PDT until 9:00 a.m. PDT.

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.