Good news, everyone! Several realms are up and running, with more coming online shortly I'm sure. This means you can get your World of Warcraft fix for the week starting now. And lets be honest, for any serious WoW player the week starts on Tuesday afternoon when the servers go up, and lasts until Tuesday morning when they go down.
There is no patch 2.4.3 on the live servers yet - expect that in the next couple of weeks. Additionally, if there are any server stability issues to report on throughout the day you'll see a couple posts go up here.
Happy Tuesday!
And for the record, I've been wanting to use Buddy Christ in a post for a while, but haven't been able to find an excuse yet. Him seeming all happy for something (like the realms being up) felt like a good enough reason for me.
The thing I love most about summer is the thunder storms. Forget the constant days of 90 degree weather making my apartment bake even when the air conditioning is on, it's those storms rolling in with lightening striking a few hundred feet from me that I love. My guild-mates are going to love that too, especially when I'm raiding with them.
We've had our first couple weeks of this in game, and already I've heard "Be right back, Tornado," from some guildies living down in Kansas. Luckily everything was okay and no one got hurt, but the fact still remains – we lost our head Mage for 30 minutes, and that's 30 minutes of our life we can't have back!
While a Mage having to take a break in the middle of raids isn't a show stopper, having the main tank (my role) go offline is. I've had the unfortunate situation of having that occur a couple days ago. The computer I was raiding on wasn't plugged into my UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply), so I was disconnected from everything when we lost power for about 30 seconds. However with a bit of tinkering around, I was able to put myself in a situation that lets me stay on even when the power hiccups.
A blue poster on the forums today announced that the updates to Blizzard's websites are now complete. These updates have caused all of Blizzard's sites to work either poorly or not at all for the past few days.
They were doing these updates to provide greater security and new features. While we might never know what the new security aspects are of the site (we can guess at stronger encryption, etc...), we expect to see some new features on their site in the future.
Personally I'm glad their update is done. My credit card recently expired and I had to put in a new number, but wasn't able to because the site kept messing up. However this afternoon I was able to update my billing information without a hitch. Back to the multi boxing for me...
Our team tanked 76 points tonight. Despite winning five straight Arena games worth about 3 rating points each, we ran into a team that was pretty well-geared but were clearly playing below par. Unfortunately, our leader disconnected midway through the match, and even though we were outplaying the opposing team, the loss of our primary DPS and tunnel vision (he plays a Rogue) was enough for the opposing team to eventually burn us down for a 27-point loss. Just like that, all our previous wins were nullified and we found ourselves lower than when we started. Familiar with the opposing team's make-up, we counter-comped and proceeded to beat them thrice in a row until the fourth game where, in the middle of the battle, everyone started running in place on my screen and nothing was happening. It was my turn to get disconnected.
I restarted my router and modem, waited a minute, and logged on to find we'd dropped another 25 points. Eager to recoup our losses against a team we were certain we could beat, we queued again. Not three minutes into the queue, my Vent went silent and I feared the worst. After making certain I had disconnected, I sent an SMS to our leader to tell him what had happened, went through the motions of connecting again and when I finally got on, I found that our team had tanked a total of 76 insane points. And it was largely my fault.
Based on my experiences, and a slew of other folks posting over at the Blizzard Customer Service Forums, it appears many Tier 6 instances are having issues with stability tonight. Half the raid or more is constantly disconnecting at seemingly random points.
Several CMsGMs are looking into the issue – but it is wide spread. This means that it is almost assuredly an issue with the Blizzard servers. Based on testing I've done it is not an issue with addons. After a disconnect, all addons were turned off, and the disconnects still happened.
Stay tuned to HKO Insider for the latest. Hopefully they'll hotfix this one right up.
Updated 11:00 p.m. EDT:Belfaire posted "We're gathering the appropriate info now. I have no ETA on a resolution, only that it'll be [fixed] ASAP." (April Fool's text removed for readability.) Updated 12:44 a.m. EDT:Belfaire also let us know that Q.A. is working on the problem, though no fix has been announced yet. Seems they are at work on it.
Updated 1:00 a.m. EDT:Potential solution from Belfaire: "Please have your entire raid delete or rename your Interface folder and let me know here if you encounter the issue again. [One] group said that they ran without mods, but if what I think's happening is actually happening, even if one person has [an addon], it can affect the raid."
According to numerous reports and several personal experiences, much of the Burning Crusade content is offline on several servers, both in the U.S. and the E.U.. When attempting to access a character in any of these locations you will be presented with an error that says "World Server Down."
This is no doubt from the mass of people who have flocked to the Isle of Quel'Danas in order to see the new content. While the realms and content are being bumpy tonight, checkout our extensive collection of patch 2.4 information.
I'll update this post as the night goes on with the latest realm announcements. Stay tuned!
Update: Realms are all online, although a tad bumpy.
According to Drysc, there's a Blizzard-external network problem in the central United States that is currently affecting several WoW realms. Symptoms include high latency, packet loss, disconnection, or inability to connect; side effects may include broken keyboards and bruised fists, or in severe cases, deciding to stop playing WoW for the evening.
I'm not sure which realms are affected, but it's nice to know that this is being worked on anyway; the glowing tree promises that they are actively receiving updates from the (unnamed) parties involved. There is currently no ETA on a fix. I'll keep you posted if I hear anything else. In the mean time, let's start building a list: if your realm is acting up, let us know in the comments.
Update: Drysc is saying the issue "appears to have been resolved," but they're still keeping an eye on it.
Many of us, both in and outside of the United States, have been having serious connection issues with the game recently. Not only can we not connect to the game, but we can't even get on the main World of Warcraft website. This can be particularly infuriating because we can't go and find help. When I got dropped in the middle of Kael'Thas (the real fight, not the weeksauce one in Magisters' Terrace), I wanted to take my computer out to a field and yell obscenities at it about PC load letter.
WoW Insider feels your pain! After all, imagine having to write about WoW only to find out you can't get into WoW.
I wanted to answer a lot of the comments about what people can do. First and foremost, we're not Blizzard. So we can't really say for sure what's going on. We can make educated guesses through. Continue reading after the break for what you can do and where you can go to solve this problem.
Apparently patch 2.0.5 came out overnight last night or early this morning. A lot of users are getting an "Unable to validate game version" error (pictured above) along with a myriad of other connection problems. The official forums are also down, or so slow as to be effectively down. I'm going to guess that perhaps your game version is fine and this will sort itself out in the next few hours as the patch gets distributed.
Thanks to everyone for submitting this as a topic suggestion, there's too many of you to credit directly.
UPDATE 10:54 from the in-game Breaking News: "The 2.0.5 client-side patch has caused issues with our authentication system. These issues can cause players to be suddenly disconnected from the game, as well as prevent them from logging in to the game. We are working to resolve this issue as soon as possible and will provide you with updates as soon as they are available."
UPDATE 11:30 The realms are accessible, or at least mine is. The forums are also back online and usable.
Lag...the bane of every online gamer. It's even an unpleasant sounding word - "Laaaaaag" - sounds like you're trying to gag on a raw fish. Well, just like any enemy of the people, there are folks out there fighting the good fight against the lag monster, notably the team over at EndLagNow.org, a website dedicated to tracking down & eliminating the menace of the red latency bar.
The latest step is the release of a program called LagMeter, that scans your PC's connection to determine where lag is coming from & what the causes might be. From the description: Finally, the causes of your Lag will not be a mystery because LagMeter will tell you if it is your gaming PC, the network, or the gaming server that is giving you grief. Once the causes of Lag are better understood, then gamers, game developers, and hardware manufacturers can work together to provide solutions to our #1 problem – LAG!!!!!!!
Sounds like a plan to me. Haven't tried out the program myself yet, but it's definitely worth a look. You can check it out over at EndLagNow's website right here.
I
had thought maybe it was just me who has been getting the 'Unable to Connect' message for the last half-hour, but it
looks like plenty
of other folks have had the same problem this evening, so it seems the login servers are indeed down once again, at
least on this side of the Atlantic, as of 9:30 PM CST.
So, if you happen to be reading this while you're in
the game, for god's sake...don't hit that logout button! And let us know, dear readers, what kind of luck you're having
out there...
In addition to authentication
difficulties and emergency maintenance
on several servers, there are also, apparently, ISP
issues that are causing players to become disconnected. Maybe this is some sort of message suggesting that we
should spend more quality time watching television. Hopefully some of you are having better luck tonight than I
am!
Good news, everyone! Several realms are up and running, with more coming online shortly I'm sure. This means you can get your World of Warcraft fix for the week starting now. And lets be honest, for any serious WoW player the week starts on Tuesday afternoon when the servers go up, and lasts until Tuesday morning when they go down.
The thing I love most about 
A blue poster on the forums today 
Based on my experiences, and a 
According to numerous reports and several personal experiences, much of the 
Many of us, both in and outside of the United States, have been having serious connection issues with the game recently. Not only can we not connect to the game, but we can't even get on the main 
I
had thought maybe it was just me who has been getting the 'Unable to Connect' message for the last half-hour, but it
looks like ![[SERVER]
Shutdown in 15:00](http://www.wowinsider.com/media/2006/04/shutdown.jpg)
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