Posts with tag restart

It looks like we have some quick play disruption coming our way this Saturday morning, as Blizzard has announced rolling restarts for all realms at 5 AM pacific, or Noon pacific for Oceanic Realms. Judging by Ghostcrawler's words in a recent thread, this is likely meant to jump start the resilience hotfix.

Either way, if you're one of those folks weird enough to get up early on a Saturday morning, you may as well grab another hour or sleep or so, since you may not be able to jump on WoW for a 15 minute window. There's still no word on Tuesday's downtime, so maybe we were spoiled by the past couple of weeks. Then again, maybe they're just seeing if they can get that minor patch ready for a release this week too. Either way, keep it here, and we'll keep you informed.

We've talked about Internet addiction before a few times here on the site, but it's always been through the lens of the media. Certainly there are players of WoW and other games out there who play the game so much it's affecting their lives, but most of the cases we've heard about have been a little over the top -- parents crying that their children are lost, kids playing nonstop and picking up bad health and social habits from this horrible game.

And so, when we heard that there was a new center opening for Internet and gaming addiction in Washington State, we decided, instead of just listening to the media reports, to sit down with the co-founder herself and have a more thoughtful conversation about gaming addiction: how and why it happens, how they're trying to fight it, and how it's portrayed, from both a media and a gamers' perspective. Dr. Hilarie Cash has been working with Internet addicts for 15 years -- she's the cofounder of two different addiction clinics, including the new reSTART Center, and the co-author of "Videogames & Your Kids: How Parents Stay in Control." You can read our exclusive interview with her by hitting the "Read more" link below.

The opening in game announcement tells us that there will be rolling restarts tomorrow beginning at 5:00 a.m. PDT / 8:00 a.m. EDT. Each realm will be down for about 15 minutes, and all the restarts should be done by 7:00 a.m. PDT / 10:00 a.m. EDT.

This is important in that shows patch 3.1 will not be going live tomorrow. No server downtime means no patch, so everyone can relax and enjoy the game as is for another week.

There is a possibility a few more realms will be down for an extended amount of time – and if that turns into anything major we'll let you know here.

Wrath has been out for about a month now. We were excited about the game, but boy were we angry. We had restarts, extended maintenance, server queues, and whole host of other anomalies. Blizzard's solution was to address as many issues as they could and give us each three days of credit. There are still problems with random disconnects, server lag, and some other bugs. There's still work to be done, but it's getting better.

The one thing that I'm still very frustrated with is the evade issue. This seems to happen to me far more frequently than it did pre-Wrath. I hate it when a mob resets just as it would die, particularly when it's an elite. It always reminds me of Jester diving below the hard deck. I have nothing to do but try to kill the mob again or move on to another one that's (hopefully) not evading.

Over all though, I'm happy with Wrath of the Lich King. There are some dreadful quests, but some awesome ones as well. A lot of things are reused, but many are new as well. I'm over being mad and back to enjoying the game. But Blizz, if you're reading: please stop the mobs from bugging out and going home.

Now readers, it's your turn: Do you forgive Blizzard yet? What will it take to make you happy with WoW?

The announcement on the login screen tells us that there'll be rolling restarts for all realms between 5:00 a.m. PDT and 6:00 a.m. PDT. Each realm should be down for no less than 15 minutes.

These restarts have become a common thing in the past few days. From previous information given to everyone from Bllizzard, we know that restarts correct server lag and other connectivity issues. And there have been quite a few of these issues since patch 3.0.2. A restart fixing these things is nothing new. But you have to ask yourself now, are these updates secretly pushing new things onto the server?

It seems like for the past few days after every "rolling restart" a new phase or two of the scourge invasion has begun.

So I'm going to make an educated guess based on what may very well be completely unrelated variables – tomorrow or Monday we'll see phase five of the invasion, complete with something new we haven't yet seen.

Prove me wrong, Blizzard... prove me wrong.

Between 5:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. PDT today (Sunday July 27th) all U.S. realms will be undergoing a rolling restart. Each realm should be down for about 15 minutes, though these things have a tendency to last longer than scheduled.

The login announcement tells us that the servers are getting a hotfix applied to them, however there is no indication what the hotfix is for.

If anything does happen to extend this restart, you'll see it here on WoW Insider.

A friendly reminder that there will be a number of rolling restarts for U.S. realms this morning starting at 5:00 a.m. PDT, and lasting until 6:00 a.m. PDT. Several realms will be offline for approximately 15 minutes (if everything goes okay). This is a welcomed event as some servers have noticed stability issues in the past couple of days.

The U.S. realms that will be restarted are: Arathor, Azjol-Nerub, Bloodscalp, Bonechewer, Boulderfist, Bronzebeard, Crushridge, Daggerspine, Darkspear, Draenor, Dragonblight, Dragonmaw, Dunemaul, Eldre'Thalas, Fethermoon, Firetree, Frostmane, Gurubashi, Nathrezim, Scarlet Crusade, Shadow Council, Shadowsong, Silvermoon, Skywall, Smolderthorn, Spirestone, Stonemaul, Stormscale, Suramar, Terenas, UIdum, Windrunner

If there are any major down times that come up, WoW Insider will let you know will all due haste.

The announcement on the login screen tonight tells us that the realms will be down for extended maintenance on Tuesday May 6th, from 3:00 a.m. PDT until 11:00 a.m. PDT. It's curious how extended maintenance used to last from five until eleven, but now lasts an extra two hours – from three until eleven.

Today we've seen the PTR (Public Test Realm) go down, and then come back up again. Earlier we thought this was a good indication that patch 2.4.2 was going to be released on May 6th, however with the PTR still being up, we don't believe that will be the case. Of course I could be completely wrong here – and we all might get a shiny new download screen tomorrow morning.

Only time will tell, and stay tuned to WoW Insider for the latest. We'll also keep you abreast of when the realms come back online, and any lingering issues that may arise.

It's Tuesday, and you know what that means: weekly maintenance! This week most realms are getting rolling restarts instead of a full maintenance -- which means the vast majority of US players won't notice a thing. (Sorry, Australian players, as the restarts still fall dead in your prime evening hours.) For rolling restarts, Blizzard brings down all of the realm servers for a quick reboot (no longer than 15 minutes of downtime) one by one. (The restarts no doubt follow some kind of pattern which we are not privy to.) The restarts will begin at 5:00 AM PST, and though your realm may not be restarted exactly at five, the whole thing should be over by six or so. A handful of US realms will have a brief maintenance: an hour of downtime between 5:00 AM PST and 6:00 AM PST. Sounds like a good time for an powernap for players on: Area 52, Auchindoun, Azuremyst, Blade's Edge, Blood Furnace, Coilfang, Exodar, Ghostlands, Shattered Halls, Terokkar, The Scryers, The Underbog, Velen, and Zangarmarsh.

Happy Tuesday, everyone! This week's regular maintenance cycle for US realms will be performed via rolling restarts of all realms, starting at 5:00 AM PDT today. What this means, of course, is that we shouldn't expect more than 15 minutes of downtime while the realms are restarted -- though we can't say precisely when the restarts will occur for each realm. (Blizzard will be working their way down the realm list, so your realm could come up right at five o'clock or could be left for last.)
In addition to the rolling restarts, Blizzard will also be performing some authentication system maintenance during an unspecified time period today. However, the maintenance shouldn't hinder our ability to log on to the game. So play on, everyone!

[via Breaking News on the login screen]

US realms will be seeing rolling restarts beginning at 5:00 AM PST today to apply a small fix to introduce a necessary reagent to vendors across the world. Drysc isn't specific about what he might be referring to, but I can only assume he's talking about Wild Quillvine, a reagent required for a druid to cast Gift of the Wild rank 3 (the group buff version of Mark of the Wild). Complaints about the lack of the reagent go all the way back to beta, so it's good to see them finally getting some notice. To those of you hoping for Drysc might be talking about the missing Khorium veins, his wording seems pretty specific to a vendor reagent. The restart process shouldn't last more than 15 minutes -- perfect time for a breakfast break!

Drysc informs us to expect rolling restarts for all US realms starting at 5:00 AM PST to apply a "minor hotfix." Downtime is expected to be minimal (around 15 minutes), and US players probably won't notice any interruption. But a hotfix? Blizzard's not said what they're fixing, which leaves us to guessing games as to the exact nature of the problem. However, poster Tuhljin seems to be on the right track when he points out that "if they won't tell you what the hotfix is for, at least part of it probably involves fixing an exploit." After all, they wouldn't keep us in the dark just for the fun of it... would they?

Well, they may have already happened on your realm, but starting at 4:38PM PDT rolling restarts began across all US realms. The restarts were apparently necessary to hotfix an issue with enchantments and items vanishing from players' inventories that was mentioned earlier. There's still no details on exactly what the issue with enchantments was, but it would have been serious to merit prime-time restarts...

All realms will be going offline starting at 4:00 AM PDT Friday morning (that's seven hours from the time of this post). They should all be back online by 5:00 AM PDT, with an expected downtime of about 30 minutes per realm. There's no real information on why the restarts are necessary - Drysc only says they're being done to address a server-side software issue. (Perhaps this is connected to last night's database maintenance - though that was only on a few realms, rather than all realms.) So if you usually play during that time, you'll need to find other distractions.