The Wrath beta realms are down as I type this. Not news, I know, for those who are actually in the beta. The realms seem to be unavailable frequently. I chalk this up to the nature of beta testing. However, today we actually got a heads-up on planned maintenance downtime, scheduled for tomorrow at the same time the live realms will be offline. Now, this is news to me because so far the patches to the beta have been released without any announcement. In other words, the only way I've found out updates were coming was that when I try to log on, and then I end up waiting an hour for everything to download and install.

It's Tuesday, and you know what that means - Maintenance. Luckily, it's a a relatively pain free maintenance day today, as there's nothing but rolling restarts on the menu starting at 5am PDT. Each realm is expected to be down for no more than 15 minutes.

Of course, that still leaves you with 15 minutes of no World of Warcraft if this is your usual play time. And what's the easiest way to pass those 15 minutes than with a bit of WoW Insider?

Make some quick plans for what to do on server up by checking out our Sunwell daily quest guides. Whether you're on Phase 2 or Phase 3, we have all the guides you need to get started when your server comes back up, plus Phase 4 guides for when you get those last few percentage points worth of dead elves turned in to get it unlocked. Speaking of dead elves, we have guides for the new PvP dailies as well.

If you're a little tired of Sunwell stuff, how about a trip back to Zul'aman? Jennie Lees has written an in-depth guide to speed running Zul'aman that'll help you get one of the rarest and coolest looking mounts in game, the Amani War Bear -- if you can convince, cajole, or beat the other 9 people in your raid into giving it up to you, of course.

Been a little off your game since 2.4? Check Hortus' list to see if it's just a nasty little bug that's getting you down.

Hopefully, the rolling restarts go smoothly and we'll see you on the flipside. Either way, thanks for reading, and keep your browser here for all the latest news!

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]

Yep, last week most realms had rolling restarts, which means that this week we have a regular maintenance. This week all US realms (which means AU realms, as well) will have a regularly scheduled maintenance period, starting at 5:00 AM PDT and ending at 11:00 AM PDT. Sure, on good weeks, the realms can come back up early, but it's just as common for them to come back up late. So for those of you who usually play during this period of time, my apologies -- maybe you can join me in my downtime hobby of re-playing the original StarCraft!

[Information via the login screen -- nope, there's nothing on the official site, or I'd link it]

This week in server maintenance, most realms will have rolling restarts instead of downtime (these restarts will be starting at 5:00 AM PDT, and such things usually involve around 15 minutes of downtime per realm), but selected realms will have a longer than usual maintenance cycle starting at 3:00 AM PDT and lasting until 1:00 PM PDT. No word on what the additional downtime is for (perhaps this particular hardware simply needed a regular maintenance cycle this week?), but if you're playing on any of the following realms, expect downtime during this week's maintenance cycle. The list includes: Agamaggan, Alexstrasza, Alleria, Azshara, Baelgun, Balnazzar, Blackhand, Cho'gall, Dark Iron, Destromath, Dethecus, Detheroc, Emerald Dream, Garona, Gorgonnash, Greymane, Gul'dan, Hellscream, Illidan, Kael'thas, Kalecgos, Kirin Tor, Lightninghoof, Maelstrom, Malfurion, Moonrunner, Nazjatar, Ravencrest, Sargeras, Spinebreaker, Staghelm, Stormreaver, Twisting Nether, Ursin, Whisperwind, and Wildhammer.

For those of you without downtime tonight, grats. For those of you with extended downtime... well, I can recommend some good books.

You know the PTRs are up and running with patch 2.1.2, don't you? So far, patch 2.1.2 is a mix of bug fixes, minor tweaks, and Season 2 arena rewards (for full patch notes, check here -- though note, these are the PTR notes, and there may be some changes on the live realms). And it looks like we have an official release date for it on the live realms! When asked if we could expect the patch to go live this Tuesday, Nethaera replied:

The Magic 8 Ball had this to say, "AS I SEE IT YES."

She then clarifies:

So far things look good. If there is a delay, we'll let people know.

As of right now, this means US players should expect this Tuesday to be patch day, and EU players should expect the same on Wednesday.

Tseric greets us on this pleasant Tuesday afternoon with the news that today's maintenance cycle has been extended until 1PM PDT for select realms. There is, however, no news as to why the maintenance has been extended -- patch problems, perhaps? Though as far as "select realms" are concerned, I suspect the list of "non-select realms" would be shorter. So if you play on any of the following realms, the wait for uptime just got a little longer:

Agamaggan, Aggramar, Alexstrasza, Alleria, Arathor, Argent Dawn, Arthas, Azgalor, Azjol-Nerub, Azshara, Baelgun, Balnazzar, Blackhand, Bleeding Hollow, Bloodhoof, Bloodscalp, Bonechewer, Boulderfist, Bronzebeard, Burning Blade, Burning Legion, Cho'gall, Crushridge, Daggerspine, Dark Iron, Darkspear, Destromath, Dethecus, Detheroc, Draenor, Dragonblight, Dragonmaw, Dunemaul, Durotan, Earthen Ring, Eldre'Thalas, Elune, Emerald Dream, Eonar, Eredar, Feathermoon, Firetree, Frostmane, Garona, Gilneas, Gorefiend, Gorgonnash, Greymane, Gul'dan, Gurubashi, Hellscream, Illidan, Kalecgos, Kael'Thas, Kargath, Kirin Tor, Laughing Skull, Lightninghoof, Lightning's Blade, Llane, Lothar, Madoran, Maelstrom, Magtheridon, Malfurion, Malygos, Mannoroth, Medivh, Moonrunner, Nathrezim, Nazjatar, Perenolde, Ravencrest, Sargeras, Scarlet Crusade, Shadow Council, Shadow Moon, Shadowsong, Shattered Hand, Silvermoon, Skullcrusher, Skywall, Smolderthorn, Spinebreaker, Spirestone, Staghelm, Stonemaul, Stormrage, Stormreaver, Stormscale, Suramar, Terenas, Thunderhorn, Thunderlord, Trollbane, Twisting Nether, Uldum, Ursin, Warsong, Whisperwind, Wildhammer, Windrunner, and Zul'jin.

(Wow, that was a mouthful.)

Update: Tseric informs us that all realms should be back online in a matter of moments. Huzzah!

Well, this week we don't quite have live maintenance, but we don't have a full regular maintenance, either. Eyonix informs us that starting at 5:00 AM PDT (or 8:00 AM EST) all servers will be offline for approximately three hours for maintenance to the authentication databases. Most US players won't notice an early morning maintenance like this, but sadly, it still falls right in prime time for Australian players, for whom it starts between 8:00 PM and 10:00 PM, depending on their time zone. Sorry, folks -- I'd be pretty frustrated if regular maintenance hit during my prime time play schedule, too.

There will be no regular Tuesday maintenance this week. That would be Tuesday, December 26th for you calendar impaired folks. Is this a late Christmas present from Blizzard? Well...sort of. According to Drysc, the retrofits they have been doing to server hardware over the past year have made it possible to go longer than one week in between maintenance periods. Good news!

For those of you behind a firewall at work, here is Drysc's post in it's entirety:

"Since the game's release, one of our most important service goals has been to reduce the amount of time realms are down for weekly realm maintenance. The various hardware upgrades and retrofits we've done over the past year have put us in a position to begin testing the ability to go longer than a week between maintenance periods.

In the upcoming weeks, we will be testing the effect of a live maintenance, where regular maintenance tasks are run during off-peak with realms live. On Tuesday, December 26 there will be no scheduled downtime for weekly maintenance. We will perform all necessary maintenance tasks while the realms are live. We are anticipating the possibility that we may need to perform rolling restarts off-peak if we find that a realm restart is necessary; however the downtime for each realm would be less than 10 minutes if it was required."

It would be really nice if this holds and we can make the Tuesday downtime a thing of the past.

Of course having the servers back online as scheduled was too good to be true. And at 12:09 PM PST, Blizzard announced that maintenance would be extended by an additional four hours in order to deal with issues arising from the patching process. Yes, that means you shouldn't expect to be online and playing before 4:00 PM PST 5:00 PM PST -- at least if we're optimistic enough to assume this will be the afternoon's only hiccup!

Update: Drysc, always trying to outdo me, posted an update by the time I clicked to post this. We are now looking at 5:00 PM PST.

Update 2: All realms should be online and accepting players as of 6:00 PM PST.

Just a reminder for you guys about a few Blizzard announcements in regards to tomorrow's maintenance...

• Remember those select free realm transfers? Well, if you want to transfer a toon, do it quickly. Blizzard will be suspending the transfers beginning with the maintenance tomorrow. They anticipate bringing them back online in about a week, but the word "anticipate" doesn't mean definitely, so if you want to transfer, do it soon.
• If you happen to be using a European Language Pack to change the default language for your UI, you may want to backup your screenshots before applying the new patch, as they will be erased. For those of you uncomfortable with delving into your Windows folders, Blizzard gives instructions on how to preserve your screenies.
  
• Finally, the Tuesday downtime has been extended from 1 AM PST until 1 PM PST.
  

Good luck downloading and installing the patch, and see you all in the arena!

We've all had to do it time and time again -- the servers are down for regular or emergency or just plain unscheduled maintenance, and your evening plans are suddenly ruined. So what do you do about it? Spend the evening trying repeatedly to log on to your realm? Troll the forums? Switch to a different realm? Roll a new alt? Fire up a different game? Go out for dinner? Go outside and try to remember what the sun looks like? Or something else entirely?

Do you play on one of the following realms? Azjol-Nerub, Bloodscalp, Bonechewer, Boulderfist, Bronzebeard, Crushridge, Daggerspine, Darkspear, Draenor, Dragonblight, Dragonmaw, Dunemaul, Eldre'Thalas, Feathermoon, Firetree, Frostmane, Gurubashi, Nathrezim, Perenolde, Scarlet Crusade, Shadow Council, Shadowsong, Silvermoon, Skywall, Smolderthorn, Spirestone, Stonemaul, Stormscale, Suramar, Terenas, Uldum, or Windrunner. Well, if so, I feel sorry for you, because your so-called Tuesday maintenance will be stretched out until 12:01 AM PDT Wednesday morning. They're down for hardware upgrades to -- hopefully -- improve server stability, but such extended downtime isn't exactly fun for those looking forward to logging on and playing Tuesday afternoon. As an additional downer, friend and ignore lists will be lost for those on effected realms, and paid character transfers will be offline for the duration of the maintenance period.

Why, plan raids of course! This is, apparently, the perfect activity for Tuesday's regular maintenance (or any of those irregular maintenances) -- log on to Second Life and go over strategy with your fellow WoW players while waiting for the realms to come back online. Sounds like fun!

It looks like today's maintenance is being drawn out because of "concerns that have arisen with Cross-Realm Battlegrounds" (at least according to the current login message). So instead of coming back up at 11:00 AM PDT, we're looking at a 1:00 PM PDT uptime for all US realms. However, as of the time of this writing, several US realms have already come back online, so if you're wanting to play, it doesn't hurt to check. Online by the usual 11:00 AM are: The Forgotten Coast, Anub'arak, Cenarius, Lightbringer, Uther, Cenarion Circle, and Hyjal. The rest of us are just going to have to wait!

Update: While numerous realms have come back online, officially, maintenance has been extended until 4:00 PM PDT.