Posts with tag europe

Happy Tuesday to our European readers! We're nearly halfway through August, BlizzCon is just 10 days away and we already know what races we'll be playing in the next expansion. The sun is shining and the internet is thrumming with promise of something Cataclysmic approaching. It can't get any better than that! I'm already thinking of names for my alts. Any suggestions?

(Note to self: hyperactivity in posts is not a good thing. You might want to start drinking coffee to mask the new-expansion-news-high.)

But back to reality for a minute. As usual, the middle of the week is once more upon us. Fortunately things are starting to calm down. Blizzard have just announced scheduled maintenance for tomorrow with all European realms will be offline from 3:00am until 11:00am (CEST). On top of this, a selection of 'lucky' realms will be undergoing an extended maintenance from 1:00am until 11:00am (CEST):

Alonsus, Anachronos, Bronze Dragonflight, Burning Steppes, Darkmoon Faire, Darkspear, Kor'gall and Lightbringer.

That said, it's not too bad as extended down time goes. But as always there's plenty to do in the meantime, especially as we've told you which faction will be getting which race in Cataclysm. Daniel W. has a great post summing everything up from news to hints about Patch 3.3.

No matter what your playstyle or what you're doing in World of Warcraft, I'd say chances are you reach a point where you want to get down to business.

It can be any number of things. Maybe you finally want to grind out Exalted with Warsong Gulch. Maybe your raid group is in dire need of a good clean boss kill. Maybe you just want to head to Silithus and grind out that Guardian of Cenarius title. Whatever the reason, you have a goal, you have a plan, and you are not going to stop until you get enough.

But one thing remains: You have to keep yourself focused on your goal. That's when you put on your game face, and that's when you have those little rituals that keep you pumped up and motivated.

It's the middle of the week again and once more unto the breach, my friends. Yes, tomorrow is maintenance Wednesday for European players. Fortunately, we told you this morning how EU Blue Wryxian had spilled the beans on the reason for all the recent rolling restarts and weeks of extended maintenance for a few select realms. I always find it's easier to exercise more patience once someone proffers a reason.

So, this week it's time for some rolling restarts. These will take place on all realms between 5:00am and 7:00am CEST, with the usual fifteen minute warning. The following realms (the same will be undergoing an extended maintenance from 3:00am until 11:00 am CEST.

Greetings European WoW players! It's that time of the week once more (where time has flown I have no idea). Tomorrow morning sees all the EU servers coming down to the regular bout of maintenance. This week all the realms will be offline from 3:00am until 11:00am (CEST). Hopefully this means everything will go nice and smoothly but just bear those times in mind if you find yourself watching the clock, waiting for your realm to pop back up.

Our very own Daniel Whitcomb has compiled a rather Worgen-heavy post for you all to enjoy during the downtime. Personally, I will be sleeping and replaying the WoW edition of Peggle. If you have an iPhone I'd suggest you download the new (and awesome) Armory app while other phone owners should download the Mobile Authenticator. I'd also suggest listening to this week's WoW Insider Show (and I apologise now for cackling) in which Turpster, the Schramminator and I denounced Brigwyn for his Hunter deletion habits.

Oh and in case you're wondering why this post is illustrated by the new T9 Alliance Druid armour, well I think it (specifically the female version) is the best looking armour in the game ever and I really, really want it. What, you have a problem with me drooling over gear during the downtime?

Update: Blizzard have announced that the following realms will be offline for maintenance until 5:00PM CEST.

Balnazzar, Bloodfeather, Darksorrow, Defias Brotherhood, Earthen Ring, Frostwhisper, Genjuros, Haomarus, Hellscream, Laughing Skull, Lightning's Blade, Magtheridon, Neptulon, Nordrassil, Quel'Thalas, Ragnaros, Ravencrest, Runetotem, Shadowsong, Shattered Hand, Silvermoon, Skullcrusher, Spinebreaker, Stormrage, Stormreaver, Stormscale, Sylvanas, Terenas, The Maelstrom, The Venture Co., Thunderhorn, Turalyon, Twisting Nether and, finally, Vashj.

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Good morning Europe. While many of you are stuck waiting for a large number of realms to finish a lengthy period of extended maintenance, it seems like the rest of us are going to have to wait a little bit longer to get back into Azeroth.

Blizzard has announced that, as well as selected realms getting extended maintenance until 3:00pm CEST, all the non-affected realms will continue to be offline until 1:00pm CEST. These realms were originally supposed to go back online around 11:00am CEST. We'll keep you up to date on more developments as they happen.

Update: Blizzard have announced that the following realms will continue to be offline for maintenance until 5:00pm CEST: Auchindoun, Ghostlands, Hellfire, Karazhan, Nagrand, Shattered Halls, Sporeggar, The Sha'tar.

Live PvP competition is old hat. 2009 appears to be the year of PvE (if you ask me, every year should be that year). At the Games Convention Online, in Leipzig over the weekend of July 31 – August 2, two of the strongest PvE guilds in the world, Ensidia and Method, are competing in a timed run of Ulduar.

It's going to be on 10-man, which is kind of strange, given that most people (and especially hardcore raiders) seem to think of the 25-man version as the "real" version of the raid. Maybe they wanted it to be easier for spectators to follow the action.

Points will be awarded for killing end bosses of a "zone" faster than the other guild, with points increasing from zone to zone. I'm guessing that by "zone" the press release refers to the Siege, the Antechamber, the Keepers, and the Descent into Madness, but the translation is not perfect - I could be wrong.

The Ensidia/Method matchup is going to be on August 2nd; as a prelude, two German guilds (Irae AoD and For the Horde) are going to compete on the same event on August 1st. Apparently the raids will be streaming live on allvatar.com, although I can't really get very far on that site - WTB English translation. Does anyone know if it will be free to watch or not?

European Blue Ancilorn has updated the times for this week's extended maintenance which will affect a large percentage of realms. We mentioned the extended maintenance to you last week and that Ancilorn was keen to make sure players had an "opportunity to plan accordingly".

The selected realms will be offline from 1:00am to 3:00pm CEST, not 3:00am until 5:00pm CEST as we previously reported. The following servers are affected by the extended downtime:

Balnazzar, Bloodfeather, Darksorrow, Defias Brotherhood, Earthen Ring, Frostwhisper, Genjuros, Haomarush, Hellscream, Laughing Skull, Lightning's Blade, Magtheridon, Neptulon, Nordrassil, Quel'Thalas, Ragnaros, Ravencrest, Runetotem, Shadowmoon, Shadowsong, Shattered Hand, Silvermoon, Skullcrusher, Spinebreaker, Stormrage, Stormreaver, Stormscale, Sylvanas, Terenas, The Maelstrom, The Venture Co, Thunderhorn, Turalyon, Twisting Nether and Vashj.

One of my big beefs with MMOs is that I have friends all around the world and can't play with them. For example, most of Team WoW.com play on US realms, a couple on Oceanic and me and the T in the EU. Of course the biggest problem with playing any MMO will be timezones (especially if you like to raid) but that doesn't stop some titles having just one massive server, regionless servers or allowing you to change realms on the fly. Sadly WoW has none of these and it frustrates me that there's such a divide, even though here in Europe there are cross-language battlegroups and more servers than you can shake a stick at. However given the number of players across the US, EU and China I can understand the reasons for it.

So readers, putting aside region restrictions, logic and languages for a moment, do you wish WoW had just one giant server? Would you like the ability to move from server to server for free at a moment's notice, depending on where your friends were playing? Would you rather the game was a bit more like Guild Wars in that it didn't matter where you purchased the game from?

European CM Ancilorn has revealed that, for next week's EU maintenance, some of the realms will be offline for a whopping fourteen hours. The Blue was keen to ensure players were given enough warning of 15th July's maintenance to make sure that players who have toons on the affected realms had an "opportunity to plan accordingly".

The affected realms are: Balnazzar, Bloodfeather, Darksorrow, Defias Brotherhood, Earthen Ring, Frostwhisper, Genjuros, Haomarush, Hellscream, Laughing Skull, Lightning's Blade, Magtheridon, Neptulon, Nordrassil, Quel'Thalas, Ragnaros, Ravencrest, Runetotem, Shadowmoon, Shadowsong, Shattered Hand, Silvermoon, Skullcrusher, Spinebreaker, Stormrage, Stormreaver, Stormscale, Sylvanas, Terenas, The Maelstrom, The Venture Co, Thunderhorn, Turalyon, Twisting Nether and Vashj.

While the problem seems to be specific to these realms, Ancilorn didn't elaborate on the precise reasons for the extensive maintenance. He only informed readers that these realms will be offline from 3:00am CEST until around 5:00pm CEST. I suggest this might be a very good time to explore the opposite faction on another server, roll a twink or level that long-neglected alt. We'll certainly keep you updated next week and hopefully the maintenance should run smoothly.

"Cower in fear, puny mortals! Maintenance time is upon you!"

Maintenance time ho! Yes Europe, it's nearly the middle of the week again. I'm honestly not sure how that happened but once more unto the breach. Unfortunately the downtime is a little longer than normal this week, hence poor Serisa quaking in fear in the picture above. Blizzard has announced that all European realms will be offline from 3:00am until 1:00pm (CEST) tomorrow.

So, that makes a good few hours in which to kick your heels. Kind of annoying but it's a necessary evil. Once more coming to our rescue, Daniel W. has got a nice round up with a heavy focus on the cataclysmic news from last week. Cataclysmic, get it? Anyway, last week was quite news intensive and if you start to get withdrawal, what about hitting the PTR for a bit and trying out all the juicy Patch 3.2 goodness.

Good news, Europe is once again feeling some free character migration love. Blizzard has announced a week-long migration event in an attempt to balance out factions on specific servers. So if you've been looking to migrate, this might well be a good time.

Free character migration is available from July 1st till the 7th which gives you a week to decide if you make the move or stay put. As usual, Blizzard could well end the migration when their desired faction balance on each realm is achieved.

So who can move and where? If you're Alliance and currently playing on the European realms Burning Legion, Grim Batol, Ravencrest, Sylvanas and Silvermoon (PvE) you can move to the Horde-heavy servers of Magtheridon and Vek'nilash. Meanwhile if you're Horde, and on Al'Akir, Kazzak, Magtheridon and Stormscale, you have the option of transferring to the Alliance-dominated realms of Burning Blade, Neptulon, Tarren Mill and Trollbane.

The heat is on here in the UK and we've actually got a summer. Shocking, I know. But, rather than send people outside to soak up the rays the blistering heat and humidity has forced most inside. Suddenly Azeroth is that much more appealing, you can't get sunstroke in there, oh no. After Alex's terrible German accent last week (I'm really sorry about that, German readers, it won't happen again), things have settled down and we're back to the normal cycle of weekly maintenance.

Of course, this means that rather than rolling restarts, all the European realms will be offline from 5:00am until 11:00am, Paris time (CEST). But that's not all, Blizzard are also going to be performing maintenance on their website (this includes the Armory, the main website, the forums and the Blizzard Store) between 3:00am and 7:00am Paris time (CEST). So if you want to check Turpster's stats, buy Diablo II, whinge about (insert class here) being nerfed or just recruit a friend, you might want to do so outside of these times.

Daniel has once again crafted a fantastic little post to keep you entertained and don't forget we'll be giving away some shiny Fields of Honor loot cards in the morning, just for you (don't tell the sleeping Americans). Just keep your eye on the front page and you could win your own chicken mount. In honor of that, I finally met the virtual form of Turpster on the PTR (you can find us both on Fordring). He wanted to practice the lesser known sport of chicken jousting but this mention of that noble and ancient sport caused the world server to crash. As I starred at the blank screen I couldn't help but wonder. Do you think he's trying to compensate for something? What could it be?

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 Wednesday once more in Europe and Blizzard has been busy. After the implementation of multilingual battle groups last week, they seemed to like it so much that they're merging some more, this time on a bigger scale. Hopefully all this should be happening between 3:00am and 11:00am CEST, but judging by some of the problems experienced by Americans yesterday, this could easily changed. Just keep calm and carry on.

So during the maintenance tomorrow, we will not only be getting patch 3.1.3, various battle groups will be shoved together and renamed.

• Bloodlust (hey that's me) and Cataclysme will become Cataclysm/Cataclysme
• Cyclone and Todbringer will become Cyclone/Wirbeisturm
• Conviction and Raserei will become Frenzy/Raserei
• Rampage and Ferocite will become Rampage/Saccage
• Reckoning and Verderbnis will become Reckoning/Abrechnung
• Ruin and Glutsturm will become Emberstorm/Glutsturm
• Vengeance and Schattenbrand will become Vengeance/Rache, and finally
• Sturmangroff and Represailles will become Sturmangriff/Charge

So while you're waiting for all this to happen, there's plenty to do. We've got patch notes for 3.1.3, there are the new Tauren kitty forms to drool over and you could even download the Battle.net authenticator app from EU iTunes stores. As usual one of my American colleagues - this week Alex Z. - has compiled a fun post to read that rounds up all the interesting tidbits which have been happening for your amusement to tide you over until the servers pop back up.

UpdatE: Maintenance has now been extended to 1pm CEST.

Here in Europe, we've been waiting patiently, watching as the Americans frolic with their shiny new Battle.net merged WoW accounts. Blizzard has just updated the news section of the European site with a welcome announcement. European players will now be able to finally merge their Battle.net and World of Warcraft accounts into one shiny new entity.

The process takes about a minute and, after a cool sound effect, you'll see Wrath of the Lich King appear in your games section. The only thing you need to remember is you will need to put in the email address associated with your Battle.net account in the WoW login screen rather than your user name. So, without further ado, go forth and merge!