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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsMaintenance for Tuesday September 8th
by Adam Holisky 
Sep 7th 2009 at 10:45PM
We've had some serious maintenance in the last few weeks, and it looks like they've come to an end. The extended maintenance that's been going on has been to fix the much hyped "Additional instances cannot be launched" error, and by all accounts the bug has been fixed. But let's not kid ourselves, there'll be at least a dozen comments claiming differently after this post goes up. But it's all good, because eventually the cross-server instances are going to take care of that problem entirely.The maintenance tomorrow will run from 3:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 a.m. EDT until 11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT.
Since WoW will be down, I recommend checking out Champions Online if you haven't already. It's a nice comic book MMO that has some real potential. One thing I really enjoy about it is that its graphics are not super amazing -- they look like comic book graphics. In that sense, it's a very immersive graphical experience.
Kyle Horner of our sister site Massively wrote the WoW player's Guide to Champions Online. Check it out for more information about a nice game you can play during WoW's downtime.
Filed under: Realm Status, News items
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
Wishy Sep 7th 2009 11:45PM
is 3AM the new 5AM? maintenance is creeping forward ever so slowly and screwing us Aussies
Shorno Sep 7th 2009 11:55PM
Yeah, you say extended maintenance is over but it's still starting 2 hours early, which is a true pain for us poor Oceanians.
Osprie Sep 8th 2009 2:09AM
My poor Priest will be stuck at 79; how depressing. Was looking forward to maybe having no maintenance when I get home from work.
Lissanna Sep 8th 2009 6:59AM
Wishy, they actually originally moved maintenance from the 3am time to the 5am time to help accommodate Aussies a while back. It looks like it's long on both ends, since the 11am PST ending time is still 2pm on the US east coast. They aren't doing it specifically to be mean to any one group of people.
Cleoselene Sep 8th 2009 11:26AM
As a graveyard shift worker in the Pacific time zone who likes to play a little when she gets out of work before bed, I feel your pain on the maintenance scheduling. It sucks.
bep4815 Sep 8th 2009 9:04AM
i need links to these "surveys" or i don't believe you
Tailica Sep 8th 2009 12:13AM
Actually, you can tell that the cross-server instances have been implemented already, just not the LFG portion of it. Easiest way to confirm that if you were on a server that had lots of issues with the can not be launched message is to check the game/server time once you enter the instance. When you get into an instance on another server, the server clock for the instance shows the time for that server.
I actually play on a central time server and have my FuBar set to show both local and server time. I happened to notice after the extend maint that alot of the times when in an instance now the server time is showing as Eastern time.
Hivetyrant Sep 8th 2009 12:51AM
My Instance clock has always been different to my local clock.
Though I do play Oceanic
rich Sep 8th 2009 1:22AM
Instance time has always been different for me (Azjol-Nerub US), as has cross-server BGs.
Joyous_Oblivion Sep 8th 2009 2:52AM
Even since vanilla wow instance time has been different from server time. As far back as I can remember anyways (2005 and on).
Aceman67 Sep 8th 2009 12:35AM
"But it's all good, because eventually the cross-server instances are going to take care of that problem entirely."
You're forgetting that something that complex is going to cause issues all by itself, and they're going to be worse then just not being able to get into an Instance...
Hivetyrant Sep 8th 2009 12:54AM
Lol, I can see it now:
"We regret to inform you that this piece of loot is not available to your server"
dpoyesac Sep 8th 2009 1:49AM
"You're forgetting that something that complex is going to cause issues all by itself, and they're going to be worse then just not being able to get into an Instance..."
BGs are already cross-server, so they aren't introducing NEW technology, but using already existing technology in a new way. Sure there will be hiccups but most of the cross-server instancing problems have already been found and solved over the past four or so years.
rich Sep 8th 2009 1:21AM
"Additional instances cannot be launched" has not been totally fixed - this evening on Azjol-Nerub, my guild did a nostalgia / achievement run through Onyxia, AQ20, then tried to get into AQ40 and couldn't, with the additional instances error. By the time we reached ZG we were able to get in (and proceed after to MC), but it still happened, even if only temporarily.
Bossy Sep 8th 2009 2:28AM
I have experience of 29 years of video gaming now (started on a TRS 80 back then in 1980). Where is the time ? lol
I'll tell all you kids, the single one most important feature of wow 2010 ... will be the clustered dungeon servers and their LFG tool .... IF well implemented by Blizzard (I mean clustered in 10 or more servers) this will simply be THE major breakthrough in MMORPG design. FAr more than phasing.
You will simply launch the game and you'll hop into a dungeon. It is a wet dream of every dungeon crawler. Oh btw: the BG's mechanism did the same thing for PvP. Let those morons cry about "world pvp". People want to have instance fun, not a pain in the ass to look and sit before a screen for a LFG for 1 hour plus in the lower dungeons or BG's.
Cleoselene Sep 8th 2009 11:29AM
I don't know. Sure, you'll be able to find a group quickly.
But if we think PuGs can be terrible now... boy, wait until it's people who don't even have to worry that the person they piss off is on their server...
We'll see how it turns out.
sammy Sep 8th 2009 2:34AM
I haven't run instances too much of late on my main because I'm levelling my alt through the 70s AV.
Can wowinsider get a line on why AV server-side lag is so brutal (or is at least in the Shadowburn group)?
Tri Sep 8th 2009 3:59AM
My guess would be that the new EXP gains in BG's makes a LOT more people go in there = lag..
Obviously that's probably not why, as it'd make WAY too much sense ;)
(And I've learned that on the internet.. it's rarely the logic explanation!)
Adam Sep 8th 2009 6:23AM
I would love to know what takes 8 hours each week to complete - I know that this Tuesday maintenance has been a feature of WoW forever, but has Blizzard ever said what exactly they are doing every Tuesday even when there are no patches/hot-fixes going on?
At this point they could just be doing it because they can and an 8 hour gap in their server load, electricity load and network load saves them a nice little bundle every week (though most network billing is 95/5, so probably not a big deal there).
Lissanna Sep 8th 2009 6:56AM
The servers come down for maintenance mostly so that they don't bring themselves down on their own. They have to do maintenance on the databases where things like our character data is stored. When they don't bring the servers down every week or two, the servers tend to crash and bring themselves down at more random times. Any time they do rolling restarts instead of maintenance two weeks in a row, bad things happen. Last time, I remember them doing rolling restarts two weeks in a row, we ended up with like multiple issues such as: getting actually stuck in instance loading screens to the point where you couldn't log in and a Game Master was the only person who could fix it (meaning you were out of being able to play for at least 8 hours that week anyway).