Posts with tag eu-realms

Happy Wednesday everybody! After the annoying events of last week when the Battle Bots were ripped from the fingers of European players, things have settled down and are back to normal. With that in mind, it's maintenance time. All the realms are going down from 3:00am to 11:00am CEST.

As always, there's plenty to do and read during this maintenance. There's a nice round up of news for you to read if you are up. Hint: if you are reading this at 3:00am, go back to bed! Those aren't birds singing but owls. Go. Back. To. Bed.

Edit: Our beloved Overlady and Editor in Chief has decreed I also link you to our tattoo, license plate and cake galleries. I don't particularly care for the first two but the cakes are awesome and so delicious. The cake is so not a lie.

Welcome to Wednesday in Europe. While the Americans are still sleeping and dreaming of that next boss kill, it's a brand new day and, with it, a bunch of rolling restarts to boot.

Yes, rolling restarts: it's a different kind of maintenance this week. We'll be getting fifteen minute warnings before the restarts take place between 5:00am and 7:00am CEST so do bear that in mind when you start that wee-small-hours-of-the-morning raid in Ulduar. The rest of the downtime is forum and website-side with both going offline between 3:00am and 5:00am CEST.

So it's a relatively painless bout of maintenance this week, one I fully intend to sleep through. If you're looking for something to read on the bus to school or the commuter train to work, then Daniel W. has plenty for your to browse through. Personally I think it's just an excuse to post that Sailor Moon kitty form although I freely admit the anime fan in me is currently screaming loudly for my own senshi makeover.

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.

Greetings folks, it's once again Wednesday and you know what that means? Yes, it's maintenance day once again. Where did the week go? I must be getting older because time is flying by way too fast.

Things finally seem to be settling down as we're back to the normal maintenance routine of downtime between 5am and 7am CEST. Of course, our poor American brethren were once again in guinea pig mode. They experienced a rather lengthy period of extended maintenance yesterday afternoon so, as usual, don't hold your breath.

As if anticipating the whiff of downtime, Daniel W. compiled a rather extensive list of things do to during the (hopefully short) downtime. See y'all when the servers come back up!

Update: All the servers seem to be back up a bit earlier than anticipated. However Blizzard have posted a note concerning 'technical difficulties' relating to the login/authentication servers and promise they're looking into it. Hopefully the problem will be fixed pretty quickly but if you find yourself unable to get into Azeroth, that's why. All you can do is keep calm and carry on, folks.

Good morrow, my European companions, it's Wednesday which means only one thing. Yes it's maintenance time once more.

This week we're getting yet another patch: 3.1.1a and I'm seriously hoping this will be the end of all of the patch 3.1 chaos. That said, we here in European haven't had such a bad time of it thanks to the American guinea pigs over the pond.

As you've probably predicted by now we're getting downtime until 11am CEST this morning. Hopefully this latest patch will make it all better, eh?

In the meantime, I suggest you make some tea, enjoy a leisurely breakfast and install the patch. You can, of course, also check our posts from yesterday which have fun suggestions of things to do during the downtime.

Wednesday is, as always, maintenance day here in Europe and this morning is no different. While any realms escaped last week's post patch chaos, we still had problems so Blizzard are of course keen to fix them so we're going from 3.1 to 3.1.1 and, as usual, we have to wait an extra twemty four hours to get it.

With this in mind, we've got an extended maintenance meaning all European realms are going to be down between 3am and 11am CET. However if US maintenance is anything to go by, prepared for it to be extended to 3pm CET.

Oh and just cause they're nice (and there were some er issues) everyone is getting a free respec tomorrow. Yep, all your talents get wiped so you get to spend the first half an hour of up-time sorting them all out. This doesn't include gylphs though, just FYI.

Anyway, in the mean time, why not check out some of the suggestions in yesterday's US post to kill some time? Alternatively, why not take a peek at the full patch notes here.

Update: Having been tipped off by a number of our European readers and just applied the patch myself, it seems while the weekly maintenance is still being listed all the realms are currently up.

Let's get real here for a second. When I signed off at midnight, the US realms were only just started to pop back up. Did you honestly think we here in Europe were going to get away scott free?

You did? Oh dear, let's not go there, eh?

Folks have been reporting extended maintenance and so we're now looking at 3pm CET. All we need to do now is cross our digits that Blizzard managed to fix whatever was ailing the US realms before starting to roll out 3.1 on our severs.

Needless to say. I'll be keeping you guys in the loop should things change.

So in the meantime, as your waiting, why not enter our EU loot card competition? Your could also check out our 3.1 FAQ and start planning your new primary and secondary specs using Wowhead's new calculator.
Not finished patching yet and having issues? Try this post.

Hopefully we should have a smoother ride of it but I'll be keeping you updated nevertheless.

UPDATE: As of 3pm CET, the realms are slowly starting to come back up. Some of the most popular ones - Vek'nilash amongst them - keep going offline, probably due to being hammered by players trying to login. Hang on in there.

UPDATE: Most of the realms are now back!

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Hello, everybody! I'm going to jump right into things today because I'm sure at least a dozen people will want to shiv me for my answer to our first question, and I'd like to give everyone time to do that.

Andrew R. asked...

"Why do the females in WoW always wear such scantily clad gear? I don't see how plate armor that exposes half your upper body will do you any good when someone wants to stab you. Isn't it kind of degrading to real women who play the game?"

In their continuing efforts to bring some faction balance to Magtheridon (EU), Blizzard has refreshed free character transfers off of the server for Horde, and onto the server for Alliance. These transfers are scheduled to run from today until Feburary 10:

• Magtheridon -> Haomarush, Tarren Mill, Trollbane, Zenedar, Silvermoon (Horde only)
• Aerie Peak, Aggramar, Alonsus, Arathor, Azjol-Nerub, Bronze Dragonflight, Bronzebeard, Eonar, Hellscream, Khadgar, Lightbringer, Kilrogg, Kul Tiras, Silvermoon, Terenas, Turalyon -> Magtheridon (Alliance only)

In addition, the following transfers are now open for European players of either faction:

• Al'Akir, Stormscale -> Vek'nilash, Xavius
• Burning Legion, Grim Batol -> Boulderfist, Trollbane
• Crushridge, Sylvanas -> Chromaggus, Haomarush
• Kazzak, Ravencrest -> Laughing Skull, Sunstrider
• Outland, Twilight's Hammer -> Daggerspine, Lightning's Blade
• Ragnaros, Shattered Hand -> Kor'gall, Shattered Halls
• Argent Dawn -> Steamwheedle Cartel, The Sha'tar

These also are scheduled to run until the 10th of this month, and like all other transfers may close early if the desired population levels are reached.

Magtheridon players, have you noticed an improvement in the faction balance since they started pumping Alliance in and Horde out? WarcraftRealms is now showing a 1:16 population ratio overall on that server, which is much better than the 1:67 ratio it was showing when the transfers started (but still pretty bad).

Man, you'd think they're trying to achieve realm population balance or something. Blizzard has just opened up yet another round of free character transfers for the European realms, these scheduled to be active from now until Tuesday, January 27. Some of these transfers are simply extensions of the last round, and some are brand-new.

• Horde-only: Magtheridon -> Haomarush, Tarren Mill, Trollbane, Zenedar
• Alliance-only: Alonsus, Aszune, Bronze Dragonflight, Bronzebeard, Emerald Dream, Eonar, Kul Tiras, Runetotem, Shadowsong, Silvermoon -> Magtheridon

Both factions:

• Al'Akir, Ravencrest -> Kor'gall, Lightning's Blade
• Burning Legion, Crushridge -> Vek'nilash, Xavius
• Grim Batol, Twilight's Hammer -> Dentarg, Dragonmaw
• Outland, Kazzak -> Burning Steppes, Haomarush
• Shattered Hand, Stormreaver -> Genjuros, Trollbane
• Stormscale, Sylvanas -> Spinebreaker, Zenedar
• Argent Dawn -> Darkmoon Faire, Steamwheedle Cartel, The Sha'tar

Move early if you want to move, because transfers can be closed if the desired goals are met (i.e. world domination). So who's saying goodbye to their home server and leaving to a new world?

An extravaganza of free character moves has just been made available for various European realms:

• Al'Akir -> Bladefist
• Burning Legion -> Chromaggus
• Frostmane -> Laughing Skull
• Grim Batol -> Genjuros
• Kazzak -> Karazhan
• Magtheridon -> Emeriss
• Neptulon -> Shattered Halls
• Outland -> Auchindoun
• Ravencrest -> Spinebreaker
• Stormreaver -> Burning Blade
• Stormscale -> Boulderfirst
• Sylvanas -> Jaedenar
• Twilight's Hammer -> Vek'nilash
• Argent Dawn -> Darkmoon Faire

They will be open from today, the 13th, until Wednesday, November 18th.

This is really not your typical character transfer here. Usually there's a group of source realms with one destination realms, sometimes two. I'm not sure I've ever seen something like this: 14 source realms with 14 different destination realms. This may have to do with the more fractured situation in Europe – with four realm types (PvE, PvP, RP, RP-PvP), five languages, and I'm not sure how many time zones, I can see how it might take some juggling to keep moves within one category. As always, if you do want to switch, you're advised to do it early, because transfers can be closed if the realms meet their desired populations early.

Edit: I see that all of these realms are English and CEST (thanks, Sethox). No clue why they're so fragmented, then.

Although the rest of us have to wait until midnight Eastern/9 PM PST, it looks like some lucky European subscribers have gained entry to Northrend and access to Death Knight creation! We've been getting multiple tips about it from different tipsters over the past half hour; at first it was easy to call it a fake, but at this point there are enough independent claims out there that I'll just have to accept the fact: North America is slow.

Seriously though, how does it feel to be among the first non-beta Death Knights and Northrend questers in the world? Presumably, these are people who managed to get their copies of the game early, and upgraded their accounts already; who would have thought that would actually work? On second thought, maybe it's a good thing we don't have Wrath early. I would be seriously tempted to stay home and skip my own midnight event.

I guess this means the race to 80 is on, and it's a pretty good bet the winner will be on a European realm. They always seem to get the firsts anyway.

Update: this is apparently official: "Remember, there are different time zones, even in Europe." Wrath is live!

Tipster Nimm writes in to let us know that several EU battlegroups have been having serious issues after mergers that occurred post-patch 3.02. The mergers have seen a number of battlegroups acquiring servers with other language-dominant populations, which has resulted in a number of French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian-dominant servers (among others) all in the same battlegroups. While this is probably necessary to a certain degree to guarantee equal Alliance/Horde populations for quick queue times, it's become something of a communication nightmare in battleground matches, particularly those with lots of players using Cyrillic characters. As the player Thoughtless from the Karazhan realm asks, "Can you imagine how hard it is to organise any sort of teamplay in AB with player ???????? from <????????> guild cha(t)ting "?????? ??? ??????? ??????? ?????" in BG chat?" Nimm also notes that differentiating between ??????? enemy players is a nightmare.

We knew that Blizzard was closing four EU realms (Stonemaul, Molten Core, Shadowmoon, and Warsong) and transferring remaining players to other realms in response to Russian player migration to Russian realms opened late summer 2008, and the problem's partially the result of that (which has already resulted in the inevitable "In Soviet Russia, battlegroups merge you" joke). A few amused people are rising to the occasion by translating such phrases as inc 5 schmiede (inc 5 blacksmith in German) or proposing a revival of Esperanto, but the Russian language pack would be the only possible solution for the ???? problem. There's been mention made that this is only a temporary fix on Blizzard's part to faction imbalances on battlegroups, but if you're on an EU realm that's seen a recent battlegroup merge, just be aware that Babelfish might be a useful tool in the near future.

Last Monday, July 21st, many European realms apparently underwent thirteen hours of additional maintenance. Players were understandably upset. Blizzard understands this too, which is why they're giving players with characters on any of those realms a one-day playtime credit, like they do. The battlegroups Cyclone, Nightfall, Conviction, Ruin, and Rampage were affected, which is to say the following realms:

Anachronos, Balnazzar, Blade's Edge, Bloodfeather, Bronze Dragonflight, Burning Steppes, Darkmoon Faire, Darksorrow, Darkspear, Defias Brotherhood, Earthen Ring, Frostwhisper, Genjuros, Hakkar, Haomarush, Hellscream, Kor'gall, Laughing Skull, Lightbringer, Lightning's Blade, Magtheridon, Molten Core, Neptulon, Nordrassil, Quel'Thalas, Ragnaros, Ravencrest, Runetotem, Scarshield Legion, Shadow Moon, Shadowsong, Shattered Hand, Silvermoon, Skullcrusher, Spinebreaker, Steamwheedle Cartel, Stormrage, Stormreaver, Stormscale, Sylvanas, Terenas, The Maelstrom, The Venture Co., Thunderhorn, Turalyon, Twisting Nether, Vashj, and Xavius

Anyone with an active account and a character on any of those realms will get a free day. That must have been some technical difficulty, since well over half the English-speaking European realms are on that list. Enjoy your playtime credit, my friends across the Atlantic.

A bit over a month ago, all the realms in the European battlegroups Crueldad, Hinterhalt, Némésis, and Nightfall suffered some extra downtime, and players on them received a credit for a free day of playtime to compensate. Looks like it's happened again. In exchange for for six hours of downtime on April 6, members on those battlegroups will once again get a free day. Here's a list of the affected realms:

• Crueldad: C'Thun, Dun Modr, Los Errantes, Minahonda, Shen'dralar, Tyrande, Uldum, Zul'Jin
  
• Hinterhalt: Arygos, Der Mithrilorden, Dethecus, Forscherliga, Norgannon, Teldrassil, Todeswache, Un'Goro
• Némésis: Arak-arahm, Confrérie du Thorium, Eitrigg, Garona, La Croisade écarlate, Medivh, Uldaman, Vol'jin
• Nightfall: Alonsus, Anachronos, Bronze Dragonflight, Burning Steppes, Darkmoon Faire, Darkspear, Kor'gall, Lightbringer, Molten Core

Enjoy your free day, folks. I'm just glad I get to use my "1up" image again.