Posts with tag realms

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

Home. It's where the heart is. It's where you can relax and be yourself. Sometimes, it is where you have been all your life. Other times, you have to move around several times to find the best place for you. The feeling of home in World of Warcraft is no different.

Because of a lack of guild activity, I've thought about moving my main to a new realm for several weeks now, but I have been hesitant to just do it. Part of it is the anxiety that comes with going to an unfamiliar realm. I've done research on several different realms and even rolled low-level characters on them to see what the environment is like, but the one thing I've learned is that you can't get a sense of what the raiding scene is like unless you are in it. The other part of my anxiety is getting to know everyone all over again. Sometimes, the hardest part of moving to a new town is introducing yourself to the neighbors. I thought about rerolling but have too much invested in my main to retire him.

So, fellow citizens of Azeroth, how did you find your WoW home? Is it the first realm you rolled on? Did you transfer somewhere else or reroll altogether?

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Sport for arena enthusiasts and The Art of War(craft) for fans of battlegrounds and world PvP. Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more.

Listening Music: Kay Pettigrew's beautiful cover of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. It's two years old, but still awesome nonetheless.

Recently, players have started asking me, "Where should I transfer before Cataclysm hits?"

There are so many variables involved in that question, it's hard to know where to start. After all, it's difficult to say a single realm name when I know very little about the inquiring individual. Most people like different things in different realms.

I assume the people asking me where to transfer to are probably inquiring about PvP. After I give a few tried-and-true strategies, I usually get asked about arena teams and battleground imbalances. To tell you the truth, I'm not exceptionally knowledgeable about whether Horde wins more Alterac Valleys on Emberstorm/Whirlwind than Alliance. Unless you play on that battlegroup, you probably don't know much about that, either.

Whenever I choose a new realm for one of my PvP alts, I systematically go through a series of checklists. This article is that checklist. If you're wondering about where to transfer for Cataclysm because you have battlegrounds or arena in mind, this article is for you.

Ever imagine what that guy you always see hanging out before raid time in Dalaran is like in real life? Players are finding out at the realm meetup tables at BlizzCon. Realm mates are meeting and mingling at scheduled times for each realm. At any given time, the meetup area is peppered with curious players who've stopped by to see if they can't find a few familiar names and faces.

These Moonguard (US) players not only did just that -- they managed to take over a good one-third of the entire meet-and-greet area with their enthusiasm. While a handful of players did share a guild in common and were attending BlizzCon as a group, most of the Moonguard gang were at BlizzCon on their own (two of them all the way from Australia!) . While not many players were familiar with one another's characters in game, that didn't seem to dampen the enthusiasm -- and I have to say they were great sports with a little gentle teasing about their realm's somewhat exotic reputation.

The realm meetups continue Saturday on the con floor. Stop by and discover what new faces might be friends you already know.

---

BlizzCon 2010 is upon us! WoW Insider has all the latest news and information. We're bringing you liveblogging of the WoW panels, interviews with WoW celebrities and attendees and of course, lots of pictures of people in costumes. It's all here at WoW Insider!

---

New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide.

Back in the day, I never would have believed that players would be so willing to up and transfer realms. It's not just the $25-per-character fee -- it's the loss of your alts and all their skills, as well as your friends and social circles. Yet here we are, with players hopping from one realm to the next at the drop of a hat. This apparent willingness to pay to move from realm to realm in search of an optimal play experience has forever altered the solidarity of the realm community experience. Today's players are much more likely to view a fresh start on another realm as merely one more way to chase down the precise playstyle they're after.

In the face of such a massive list of available realms, how on earth can you start whittling down the choices?

1. Read our basic article explaining the different types of realms.
2. Join us after the break for more specific tips for realm-hopping players.

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.

We are getting numerous tips that servers are crashing. Blue poster Aredek says it is a realm connectivity problem and that their technicians are looking into it. Currently, there is no time for when they will have an update.

We will keep you posted as usual.

Update 6:45pm: The realms are expected to be back up by 7:30pm EST.

Update 6:27pm: The Realm Status forum has posted the realms affected, which we have listed after the break.

[Thanks to all who sent this in!]

Yes, that's right, all of them. You've probably heard about this already (we're a little late to the party, just because it seemed a little fishy to us at first), but a player in Taiwan has an Armory profile that claims he (or she, though the character is a male tauren druid) has achieved all 986 achievements available in the current version of World of Warcraft. That's everything, from Loremaster, to all the ToGC Tributes, to the Pilgrim's Bounty holiday rewards, even Insane in the Membrane. If there's something you can do in WoW, this guy seems to have done it. He hasn't finished this year's Winter's Veil achievement yet (it's not actually possible until the 15th), but he has done a PvP achievement twice, apparently, so he's still 986/986.

I'm still a little doubtful: as you can see above, the Feats of Strength bar looks like it's empty, but this guy actually has lots of Feats done as well, including all of the realm first feats (including First Aid, and Leatherworking, all within days of each other). It just doesn't seem possible that one character could do all of that. But it all seems to check out, so we'll give him his due: Congratulations, "Littlegray" of Wrathbringer. And just in case you hadn't heard: there are other games to play.

Update: I thought Insane in the Membrane was an achievement, but it is actually a Feat, and he does not have it. Thanks commenters for the clarification.

Our good friends at loot card database WoWTCGLoot.com (they've helped us out with some good contests in the past) are giving away some loot card codes of their own this week. They've put a short quiz on their site, and just for filling it out, you'll be eligible to randomly win one of twenty-three loot card codes, including a chance at an X-51 Nether Rocket mount (seen above), a Foam Sword Rack, an Imp in a Ball, or a Path of Cenarius. All of them are awesome (though, let's be honest, that rocket mount is a little cooler than the others), and all the cards work on US or EU realms, so no matter where you're reading this from, they could be yours.

Like I said, just run over to the site and answer the quiz questions (hint: both answers can be found by following links from this post) before November 25th, and after that, 23 of you will be giving thanks for the loot card codes you've won. Good luck to everyone, and thanks again to WoWTCGLoot.com for putting this on.

Blizzard has announced that they are conducting urgent maintenance on several realms. Though the official Warcraft twitter account announced it would only go on until noon PST (the tweet was about account maintenance), the in-game and forum messages state that they do not know how long the maintenance will take. They expect to have more information by 12:30 p.m. PST / 3:30 p.m. EST.

The list of affected realms is after the break (which includes Zangarmarsh, the It came from the Blog server).

We will keep you informed as the status changes.

3:25 p.m. PST: All realms are (supposedly) online and playable.
Update 3 p.m. PST: More info at 3:30 PST.
Update: More info at 1:30 p.m. PST.

Excited to jump in on the Icecrown Gunship battle today on the PTR? Too bad -- Daelo has posted on the forums that due to instance server issues, today's testing has been canceled. He posted that on the EU forums, so we're not sure if that means it's also canceled on the North American realms, but we'll presume so. If we hear otherwise (as this is the PTR, all testing and data is subject to change at a moment's notice), we'll let you know.

As for what this means for the testing cycle, probably nothing at all -- delays and changes are pretty standard for the test realm, and even as they said in the original announcement, bosses can go up and down whenever the devs want. I do think we will see the gunship battle tested on the PTR at some point, though -- it seems like one of the more complicated encounters in the instance, and Blizzard will surely want to put it under a microscope sometime before the patch goes live.

Update: Apparently the gunship battle is live right now (4:40pm Pacific) on the test realm. If you want to see what it's like, get yourself a raid and head on in.

The long wait is finally over -- World of Warcraft's servers are finally back online in China after they went offline all the way back at the beginning of June, due to a switch between former host The9 and current host NetEase. It took a while for the government to approve the move (and some have even suggested that the delay wasn't completely legit), but things are finally back to business as usual, according to a few sources out of China.

A few more interesting facts have arisen with this news as well: apparently NetEase has spent over a million yuan (about $146,000) per day to keep up and maintain the game and its servers during the past month of closed beta and free play. Of course, that includes customer support and all the other costs.

Even with that price, however, the company is still expected to grow. We haven't heard any population numbers worldwide for WoW since this whole deal began, but you have to think that they lost at least a few players due to all of the problems. Of course, the release of Wrath over there may bring back some players, but even though they were planning to have it out before all of this happened, the switchover has delayed it even further. All they need is more government approval, but as the outage proved, that can sometimes be hard to get.