Posts with tag europe

From December 17th, players in Europe will no longer be able to order a physical Battle.net Authenticator from the Blizzard online store. CM Takralus broke it down for everyone playing in the EU realms. Why are authenticators going to be unavailable? Because the online store in Europe is being revamped.

Takralus - Battle.net Authenticators Temporarily Unavailable

From December 17 2012, physical products including Battle.net Authenticators will be temporarily unavailable on the Blizzard Online Store in Europe. This is in preparation for a revamp of the store which will take place during 2013. In the meantime, many items can be found on the US Blizzard Store.

Players wishing to acquire a Battle.net Authenticator have several options. The Battle.net Mobile Authenticator is available for many types of smartphone, and you can find out more about it here. For many people, this is the easiest and cheapest option!

If you prefer to have a physical Battle.net Authenticator, you can get hold of one from several sources including the online retailers and high-street stores listed here.
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I admit I don't know how reasonable it is to order an authenticator from the US store for players in Europe, so hopefully the store won't be down for long. It should be noted that Takralus specifically points out that physical products will be unavailable, so presumably you can still buy items like pets and mounts.

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Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.

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EU players will be happy to know that for the seventh anniversary of World of Warcraft in Europe, Blizzard has slashed the price of World of Warcraft yet again, bringing the cost of WoW down even lower for a limited time. Remember, United States and assorted North American nations, these are EU copies and versions of the game.

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- lowering the cost of the barrier to entry to WoW is not a choice but rather a grave necessity. When 90 levels starts looking like a lot of content and too big of an endeavor for a new player, it doesn't matter how good the 85-to-90 content is, because people will never see it. The last thing you want is for price to be an issue when there are so many other factors to consider about the relative uniqueness of the MMO industry.

Here are the EU seventh anniversary sale prices:

• World of Warcraft Battle Chest EUR 7,49 £4.99
• World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King EUR 9,99 £7.49
• World of Warcraft: Cataclysm EUR 14,99 £12.49
• World of Warcraft mount: Celestial Steed mount EUR 10,00 £8.50
• World of Warcraft pet: Lil'K.T. EUR 5,00 £4.50

Hit up the EU Blizzard store to get these deals while they last.

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Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Review the official patch notes, and then dig into what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!

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A few months ago, Blizzard opened a Twitter account for its U.S. customer support team. Though it seems to mostly be used to retweet accolades for support staff and keep followers abreast of ticket queue times, there are also helpful links to hot CS topics and support-related announcements mixed in there.

Now, players in Europe can take advantage of the same service with the Blizzard EU CS Twitter account. Between the official Warcraft Twitter account and the new Game Guide/community site, it's good to see Blizzard finally embracing social networking and web 2.0.

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They already get self-cleaning public toilets, over a thousand distinct kinds of cheese and Kelly Brook. This time around, Europeans get more cool things by way of J!NX, those purveyors of geek couture, who have released three new World of Warcraft shirt designs exclusive to Europe. One design features a poster promoting an arena match between a gnome and a tauren in the style of a bullfight. It's nice and funny, but probably not something I'd mind not being available in my region. On the other hand, the two other designs feature the upcoming new races of Cataclysm -- the worgen and goblin, complete with claw scratches for the former just to add a little more badassness. If you're a fan of the promotional art for these two new races, this probably isn't good news if you live in one of the other six continents.

For the Europeans, the shirts are available for ordering at €17.99 to €20.99, depending on your size. The shirts are available only in black in both men's and women's sizes. For everyone else -- or everyone else in the United States, anyway -- get back at the Europeans by walking into a nearby Hot Topic and pick up an exclusive Save the Murlocs shirt. Sorry Asians, Africans, Australians, South Americans and even that one lone dude living in Antarctica -- we'll have to make do with all the basic stuff.

If you play on EU servers, not only are you probably far more handsome and personable than I am (to be fair, so is just about every other human being in existence) but you now have more options as to what servers you can play on. Wryxian posted a list of realms and free character moves available. There will be Alliance and Horde only transfers off of various realms not only to these realms, but to others as well. (It should be noted that Vek'nilash appears to have been open since February, and Boulderfist since March 10th.)

The full text of the post will be included after the jump.

Welcome to the Lawbringer, your weekly stop at the intersection of law and Warcraft. I am your crossing guard, trying desperately to not get run over myself.

First, I want to apologize for being a day late, but my week was spent preparing for the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam. Unfortunately, the test was channeling Illidian. If I get a letter in a few weeks saying that I'm not yet responsible enough to be a lawyer, I will not be surprised.

Anyway, on to this week's promised topic: European Contract Law. We'll be approaching the same topics we covered on my side of the pond: contract formation, contract termination, and unfairness. These concepts form the basis of players' relationship with Blizzard, just like they do in the US. Whether Blizzard has the right to publish information about your avatars, ban you from the game, delete your achievements, or force you to resolve disputes in a mediation are all affected by the laws of the country in which a player resides.

The first challenge in this column is that there traditionally has been no "European" contract law; these issues were decided at a national level through the home country's common or civil law system. Trans-nationalism being all the rage, however, the politicos of the European Union have formed the Commision on European Contract Law which has drafted Principles of European Contract Law. A Common Frame of Reference "toolbox" to help various European legislatures standardize the various laws of contract across the continent to match these Principles. What this means, though, is that this law is in a state of flux -- and I am not a barrister, abogada, rechtsanwalt, advokat, or avocat. Take everything in this column with a big grain of salt. And possibly a margarita to wash it down.

A little while ago, 2 am Paris time, servers went down in the EU for emergency maintenance. More specifically, "emergency database maintenance." They're estimated to be down until 4 am Paris time, which by my estimate is another hour or so. Should that maintenance be extended any further, we'll be sure to let you know right here on WoW.com.

Many thanks to our followers on Twitter for alerting us of this downtime, because our European staff members are apparently off doing silly things like sleeping. Thanks a lot, guys. Because of that, I'm now inflicting cultural stereotypes on you all in the form of the picture at the top of this post. Don't take your rage out on me, take it out on the warlock.

Blizzard has confirmed that the absence of the Catch the Wild Wolpertinger and Pink Elekks on Parade quests on European realms is not a bug. These "get drunk and see creatures" quests were removed to comply with "regional game rating requirements". We can surmise from this that at least one of the European countries is unwilling to allow virtual inebriation in a game partially targeted to teenagers.

We usually think that the U.S. is more prudish about these kinds of non-violent topics than Europe, but obviously that is not the case here. Personally, I think these quests are pretty innocuous and the near blindness you get when you get hammered in-game isn't exactly encouraging young drunkenness. But I do see how some would disagree with me.

We are researching this, but in the meantime, do you know which region(s) are causing the removal of these Brewfest quests from Europe?

Update: Wednesday morning before the restart, many people were able to do these quests. But after the restart, the quests disappeared again as intended. It looks as though those who did the quests were able to keep their tokens.

Since World of Warcraft's paid faction change service launched in the US at the beginning of the month, not a day has gone by when we have not received tips, questions, and complaints asking when the feature would be available in Europe. Well, European readers, the wait is over! So if you're eager to go from Gnome to Orc, all you need to do is head over to the account management page and be willing to pony up 25.00 Euros or 20.00 Pounds for the privilege. If you're the indecisive sort, remember you can only change your character's faction every 60 days -- but read the FAQ for full details. What the FAQ doesn't tell you, though, is that you should be prepared to lose your Argent Tournement standing if you make the jump -- so, to anyone jumping on the faction change bandwagon I hope you enjoy jousting!

However, if you're just wanting to change races within your current faction, this is not the service you're looking for. Blizzard has said they plan to make same-faction race changes available in the future and Ancilorn confirms this is the plan for Europe, as well.

It's nearly the middle of the week once more as well as the start of September. Can anyone else smell autumn yet? The days are getting cooler (thank you!) and the nights, darker. It will be the Harvest Festival in a couple of weeks with free food outside Ironforge and Ogrimmar and there are only so many days till Hallow's End and Christmas/Winter's Veil (sorry, I couldn't resist). However the onset of autumn, as well as being my favourite time of year, also means more time to play WoW. Just not on Wednesdays.

This week Blizzard will be taking all European realms offline from 1:00am until 11:00am (CEST). However a selection of realms will be down for longer "to address instance capacity." These realms will be offline from 1:00am to 3:00pm on Wednesday and 3:00am to 7:00am (CEST) on Thursday:

Agamaggan, Aggramar, Al'Akir, Arathor, Argent Dawn, Aszune, Azjol-Nerub, Bladefist, Bloodhoof, Bloodscalp, Burning Blade, Burning Legion, Crushridge, Daggerspine (oh boo, that's me), Deathwing, Doomhammer, Draenor, Dragonblight, Dragonmaw, Dunemaul, Emerald Dream, Sunstrider, Twilight's Hammer and Zenedar.

European fans of the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game are in luck as the Darkmoon Faire will be visiting Amsterdam this September. Upper Deck, who host the events, are expecting 350 players to attend and are offering a host of prizes, including a goody bag for every attendee as well as raffle with some really epic loot as prizes. The goody bag contains a T-Shirt, regular and exclusive Mini figures, a Death Knight Starter pack, some battleground cards, a demo CD, a common loot card and an entry form for the raffle.

The raffle is where things get interesting. Upper Deck have fifteen prizes up for grabs which have a combined worth of €5000. They are giving away:

• One Frostmourne sword
• Two Collectors Editions of Wrath of the Lich King
• Five exclusive Wrath of the Lich King mousepads
• Two complete sets of Minis
  
• Five Spectral Tiger mounts

The event will be taking place at Westergasfabriek between September 12th and 13th. Tickets are free so if you're in Amsterdam that weekend, you might want to pop along.

So BlizzCon is over for another year and the road to Cataclysm stretches out in front of us. In Azeroth, things continue as they always do. Wednesday, as every WoW player in Europe knows, is maintenance day and Blizzard have just announced their plans. Tomorrow will see scheduled maintenance, meaning all European realms will be offline from 3:00am until 11:00am (CEST). On top of that, a selection of realms will be getting extended maintenance to hopefully fix that annoying instance-launching problem.

Aerie Peak, Anachronos, Boulderfist, Chamber of Aspects, Eonar, Frostmane, Grim Batol, Jaedenar, Kazzak, Kilrogg, Outland, Ravenholdt, Saurfang, Tarren Mill, Vek'nilash and Wildhammer will all be offline from 1:00am to 3:00pm (CEST) on Wednesday, and also from 3:00am to 7:00am on Thursday 27th August. The sheer length of this maintenance means that hopefully Blizzard might be close to cracking it, so hang on in there, okay?

Wow, okay, we didn't see that coming, at least not this fast. European Blue Wryxian announced this morning on the official forums that the PTRs are back up for testing patch 3.2.2. Character copy is up for both pre-mades and your own characters (the wait time is currently an hour but this is definitely going to change). There are four realms being offered, two PvP and two PvE: Remulos, Brill, Fordring and Naralex. So far, the PTRs seem limited to EU-only but we're sure America can't be far behind. We'll update you with more as we have more but in the meantime, if you have a European account, click here to download the client and copy over a character.

WoW.com is currently hopping onto the PTR as quickly as we can to find anything and everything we can, so keep an eye on the site.

Update: Patch notes are in the process of going up. We'll have them over here on WoW.com as well as soon as we're able.