Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsEarly maintenance announcement includes 24 hour downtime for select realms
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Jun 26th 2010 at 5:00PM
As with the first batch, the 24-hour downtime will likely be used to get the servers in shape for Cataclysm's launch, and if we're lucky, should mean less downtime in the first few days and weeks as everyone comes in to check out the new content.
Check out the full list of servers with extended downtime behind the break:
Agamaggan
Aggramar
Alexstrasza
Alleria
Argent Dawn
Arthas
Azgalor
Azshara
Baelgun
Balnazzar
Blackhand
Bleeding Hollow
Bloodhoof
Burning Blade
Burning Legion
Cho'gall
Dark Iron
Destromath
Dethecus
Detheroc
Drakkari
Durotan
Earthen Ring
Elune
Emerald Dream
Eonar
Eredar
Garona
Gilneas
Gorefiend
Gorgonnash
Greymane
Gul'dan
Hellscream
Illidan
Kael'thas
Kalecgos
Kargath
Kirin Tor
Laughing Skull
Lightninghoof
Lightning's Blade
Llane
Lothar
Madoran
Maelstrom
Magtheridon
Malfurion
Malygos
Mannoroth
Medivh
Moonrunner
Nazjatar
Quel'Thalas
Ragnaros
Ravencrest
Sargeras
Shadowmoon
Shattered Hand
Skullcrusher
Spinebreaker
Staghelm
Stormrage
Stormreaver
Thunderhorn
Thunderlord
Trollbane
Twisting Nether
Ursin
Warsong
Whisperwind
Wildhammer
Zul'jin
Filed under: Realm Status, News items
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 4)
Moonbrush Jun 26th 2010 5:24PM
It can go both ways I guess. A bunch of EU servers had the 24 maintenance a week and a half ago, and they were done after about 17 hours.
Kylenne Jun 26th 2010 11:28PM
My server was in the first batch, and I can confirm that it did get extended a bit past the initial 24 hours. There was also a lot of weird behavior and lag for a while afterwards.
joggoms Jun 28th 2010 2:31PM
Blizzard is never early. 24 hours in Blizzard speak will likely be 30+
RobynM Jun 26th 2010 5:17PM
While being grateful that neither of my primary servers are on the list, I've still got to say that a patch and 24 hour maintenance for 70+ servers during a holiday event is less than optimal planning on Blizzard's part.
wcmavity Jun 26th 2010 5:30PM
I agree somewhat, the good news is if you can get on during that 8 hour window you can still get the 2 frost emblems and not miss out too much.
Artificial Jun 26th 2010 6:12PM
o.O
Yeah... one day lost... in a two-week long holiday event. THE HORROR!!!
(Repeat after me: "It's just a game. It's just a game. It's just a freakin' video game.")
Xeph Jun 26th 2010 6:38PM
While it may not seem like much of a loss, for people trying to get the new pet it means one less chance at getting it. And I know that several of those servers took several hours longer to come up last Tuesday, so for some people it's two days lost. Twelve days may still seem like a lot of time, but if people have offline commitments (i.e. family, work), a lost day or two could be huge.
I'm not sure why Blizzard picked this particular time to do extended maintenance. It's not not like this event came out of the blue or it was a server emergency. They could have easily done it prior to the event or during this past week and let the rest of the event be maintenance free, instead of there not only being downtime twice but cutting out an entire day for some people. Just a bit of poor planning, imo.
AMS Jun 26th 2010 5:38PM
Can someone tell me (aside from blizzard fanboyz) why a six year old game needs 24 hour down time and a almost two month friends and family alpha? How is it other game companies can release good,well made games every six months? Is blizz just lazy/slow?
theRaptor Jun 26th 2010 5:56PM
Because the game doesn't run on pixie dust and unicorn farts. This downtime is for hardware upgrades at the level of the entire battle group. Which requires a lot of configuration and testing.
Oh wait you said other companies can release good games in under two years... you almost had me troll. You almost had me. No, actually that is sarcasm.
Go back in time eight months and pre-order Star Trek:Online and see what happens when insufficient hardware support exists and the company skips alpha to go straight to beta*. Oh, and develops an entire MMO in 18 months.
* List of what was wrong with STO at launch which showed it was still in alpha state:
No death penalty, making even hard content trivial.
No difficulty scaling and the base difficult set to "Labrador".
Insufficient hardware to even support pre-order customers.
Hitting max level could be done in 2-3 days /played, meaning even non-hardcore players hit it after a few weeks.
Zero high level content until almost a month after launch.
No real class system or group role diversity (it had a tank class that had no way of doing increased threat or taunting).
No ability to respec despite the talent system being changed from unlimited points (you could basically continue gaining talent points once you hit max level) to being so point restricted that you couldn't spec into high level ships AND high level weapons. They made this change about two weeks before launch.
Hoggersbud Jun 26th 2010 6:49PM
>Can someone tell me (aside from blizzard fanboyz) why a six year old game needs 24 hour down time and a almost two month friends and family alpha? How is it other game companies can release good,well made games every six months? Is blizz just lazy/slow?
The game is not the subject of the maintenance here. That'll be later in the year. Right now, its' the physical servers getting worked on. Why? Nobody on the outside knows, Blizzard hasn't told us, but at a guess, it's probably because their performance needs to be increased, and that's something you kinda want to shut down the servers in order to do. Kinda. And you should ask yourself why they might need better performing servers...
Perhaps because unlike those other games, demand is still going up, and Blizzard actually wants their players to have a good user experience.
Perhaps.
But since you didn't name any of those games, or developers, we have nothing but your random assertions to go from, rather than actual facts.
I guess you don't care about facts though.
Drakkenfyre Jun 26th 2010 6:51PM
As programs get larger and larger, they become more complex. It becomes easier to break things. If you have never written any code, you won't understand this. Currently, it's already difficult to replace character models, as Blizzard themselves have admitted in interviews, hence why it took so long for them to finally finalize the new Sylvanas model. Just because the game is getting older doesn't mean it's getting less complex. In fact, the game is getting more complex. The original game shipped with only around 1000 quests. Currently, there are 5 times that put in by the last two expansions alone. The game is also getting technical upgrades. New flame effects, new water, new shaders, experimenting with DirectX11 features (in the Catacylsm alpha) and as it gets more complex, it takes longer testing to make sure you don't break anything. Maybe you haven't been playing long enuf to remember the "Orc shoulders" event. A change somewhere in the game had the unintended effect of shrinking Orc shoulder pads several sizes. Orc players screamed. They thought it could be fixed with a simple hotfix. It took about a month and a half for the fix to go into the next major patch. They weren't going to ship a patch alone for that.
Look at games today, there are games that are barely into alpha, and are supposed to come out a year or two from now. Hell, one I think has a 2013 release date. Don't complain about the length of testing when it beneifts you. Otherwise you would just be here bitching about the bugs and "why didn't they test this in alpha?"
The servers the games run on aren't immune to any technical limits. They are expanding and upgrading the servers to handle the additional load the game will place on them, and the amount of people that will come with the expansion.
RobertS Jun 26th 2010 5:41PM
Something I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is that these 24hr downtimes appear to be for a full datacenter each. A spot check on the downtime a few weeks ago showed all the servers were in the LA datacenter, which makes sense as the first one since it's close to home. This one is the Dallas datacenter.
So I guess this is a bit of a warning - if you chose servers for a low ping, and you have characters you play on multiple low ping servers, they'll probably go down at the same time, if they haven't already.
You can check server/datacenter locations on wowiki - http://www.wowwiki.com/US_realm_list_by_datacenter
Hoggersbud Jun 26th 2010 6:45PM
I mentioned it during the previous batch, was about to look and see where this list was.
Hoggersbud Jun 26th 2010 6:46PM
But yeah, it is a good idea to have toons not on different servers, or in different battlegroups, but in different data centers.
Death Jun 26th 2010 5:58PM
Curse you Blizz my guild can't raid again. Oh well guess I can find something to do.
Obsidian Jun 26th 2010 6:03PM
Yeah... There is not going to be much missed so far as the Ruby Sanc, but the timing of this for a holiday event is really really poor timing on Blizzards part. They could have done it last week or the week after.
Artificial Jun 26th 2010 6:16PM
Yeah, losing a day out of a two-week long festival. That's not "poor timing", that's not even "really poor timing", that is, as the above poster said, "really really poor timing". XD lmfao
Samantha Smith Jun 26th 2010 6:15PM
Am I the only nerd looking forward to a forced night away from wow? No raids, not alt runs, no helping somone lvl...just good ol' TV.
Xeph Jun 26th 2010 6:41PM
Yup, I may actually have to do something productive while my server is down. I both look forward to and dread it.
Hoggersbud Jun 26th 2010 6:50PM
No...if I want a night or day away from WOW I simply don't log in.