Maintenance came and went today, and many people were initially pleasantly surprised to see their realm up early. However this quickly became a thing of disappointment as they found the instance servers were laggier than normal, and the realms themselves were rather unstable.

While there were a series of quick restarts to correct many of the problems, several issues still existed. And of course another maintenance period has gone by without any fix to the dreaded "Additional instances cannot be launched, please try again later," error.

Those words are nearly burned into my monitor now.

Tomorrow morning from 5:00 a.m. PDT / 8:00 a.m. EDT until 8:00 a.m. PDT / 11:00 a.m. EDT the following realms after the break will be down for additional maintenance and hardware upgrades. These short downtimes usually mean that nothing too special is happening, but in case there's a cataclysmic event we'll be sure to let you know. (See what I did thar?)

The list of affected realms after the break!

It's time once again for weekly maintenance, and not only do we have the standard 5 AM - 11 AM Pacific downtime for most US servers, there's also a handful that are down from midnight to noon today. With all that extra time on your hands, you'll have time once again to read up on WoW news.

The big news, of course, is the Cataclysm. Blizzard went on a trademark registering spree around this word, which has everyone abuzz with speculation. Are we seeing the name of the new, maelstrom-related expansion? Or is this another secret project, perhaps even that new top secret MMO? Only time will tell, but it's fun to guess anyway. Once you're done being all atwitter over that little bit of gossip, here's some more stuff to read until your server comes up:

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.

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!

Yes, it's that time again, the time for the Midsummer Fire Festival. Unfortunately, a series of mishaps, bugs, and a lack of meaningful upgrades from last year's celebration have soured the festival for a lot of people, but there is at least some comfort, as we'll have a few Midsummer's fixes rolled out tonight. The only problem is that it will reset all progress on most half-finished achievements, so if you're in the middle of working on the Midsummer's stuff already, you may find that all your hard work was no more yielding but a dream, so to speak.

Apart from the festival, this week has bought us an information overload on patch 3.2 to say the least. Not that that's a bad thing, per se, but it can be pretty daunting to dig through all this crazy information and get at the meat of the patch. Luckily, we've been breaking it down for you all week. While you wait out the rolling restarts or your work day, you can read all about the patch in nice article-sized chunks here on WoW.com. In addition to the roundup of the past week's news below, you can also always check out our guide to Patch 3.2, which is constantly updated. Keep it bookmarked! Otherwise, read on below.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

Today's musical selection for the queue will be the late great John Coltrane playing My Favorite Things in 1961 opposite the piano stylings of the equally great McCoy Tyner. Yes, some people may cover their ears and scream "omg soprano sax!" but others will no doubt spend 10 minutes watching and listening to these master musicians partake in this performance of a quintessential jazz song.

Kayri asked...

"A question about the speculation on the next expansion; everyone thinks it will be either The Maelstrom or The Emerald Dream. How will we quest in The Maelstrom? Are we going to swim around all the time?"

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.

Another maintenance day, another "surprise"-extended maintenance. According to Bornakk, they've "encountered some issues" causing them to extend maintenance on all realms by two hours. Most realms are therefore expected to be up and running by about 1:00 PM PDT.

Many realms, however, were already undergoing extended maintenance to finish some hardware upgrades. The following realms are currently expected to be playble around 2:00 PM PDT:

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, Thorium Brotherhood, Tichondrius, Uldum, Vek'nilash, Windrunner

Whew. In the mean time, you might want to take a look at the notes for patch 3.1.3, which goes live today, or at the new Tauren cat forms.