European players have been apparently encountering lag, disconnections, and neglect from Blizzard Europe for the past little while (or so they keep writing into us and saying). Perhaps this is what the European team has been working on: they've just released official Wrath talent calculators, for all ten classes.

At a glance, I didn't notice any differences between this and the calculators that have been up on Wowhead (and elsewhere) for a little while - i.e., they both reflect the current beta versions of everything. And I actually find that the Wowhead calculators run better for me (after all, talent calculators were Wowhead's original reason for being). Still, it's exciting to see these made official: a sign that the Lich King draws ever nearer. Can anyone spot a difference between the official calculators and what we already knew?

Update: Now up on the US site too (thanks, Darias).

The Ruin Battlegroup of the European servers will be getting a new English language PvE server named Blade's Edge, Thundgot has announced.

It will be a completely new realm, which means no transfers allowed for the first few months. In addition, the Ahn'Qiraj gates will be closed -- which means this is your chance to get a group over there and start powerleveling toward the Qiraji battle tank and the Scarab Lord title. Apparently, some people have been complaining about queue times in the Ruin battlegroup for some time, so hopefully this should ease those problems once people get on and start leveling.

The server will open today at 17:00 Paris time. Good luck to everyone who decides to reroll there!

Update: Strike that, it looks like they decided to let the it go live right after maintenance. Thanks for the heads up, Roelof.

You may remember a week or two ago when Blizzard's US web sites and related services went down for some scheduled maintenance. The same's happening tonight for the EU web sites starting at midnight Paris time. All related accesses (Account Creation, Subscription Renewal, WoW-Europe forums, the Armory) will also be down. The good news is that they'll be back up by 10am Paris time on June 19th. I doubt we'll see any of the oddities we saw the last time there was web maintenance, but we'll keep our eyes out. This could be the last step before converting Blizzard's online presence to something more thematically geared to the Wrath of the Lich King.

If you're affected by this outage, you can use the time to see what Rob Parkins hasn't been up to, or get some overview of what has been happening in your World...of Warcraft.

The date of the World Wide Invitational in Paris creeps ever closer and closer. Of course, the biggest thing we're looking forward to is all the new WotLK information courtesy of the playable WotLK demos and Developer panels, but the contests should be pretty fun too. If you're planning to enter one of them, the signups are beginning.

Submissions for the fan art and machinima contests are being accepted via web form from now until June 17th, so that leaves you a little under one more week to finalize your submission. As for the dance and costume contests, registration will be open from June 16th to June 20th.

Remember, some of the contests are only open to certain European countries, so check the rules to make sure you're eligible -- and remember, if you're not, you may be eligible for the contests at Blizzcon 2008 instead. Good luck with your entries, and we'll see you in Paris!

Our good friend Boubouille at MMO Champion is reporting that the last watermark of the latest content in the Sunwell Plateau has been reached -- The Seven (who, you might remember, also nabbed the first Illidan kill in China), has downed Kil'jaeden over there. Grats to them -- they didn't get Thori'dal, but they did get Apolyon, and who doesn't like rending souls, right?

To tell the truth I'm kind of surprised this happened so quickly -- apparently The9, who runs World of Warcraft in China, were able to drop the Sunwell Plateau patch pretty soon after it came out in the US and Europe. Burning Crusade, we know, took a long time to release over there (it came out months after it did on this side of the world), but either The9 is responding to pressure to release content closer, or patch updates are much easier to localize and distribute.

Either way, grats to The Seven and all of the other guilds worldwide able to topple The Deceiver. Next up, Northrend!

Update: Our commenters remembered something I forgot: All of the Sunwell Plateau gates were released open in China, to make up for the late content releases in the past.

Firstly, I would like to apologize for the image at right, which is really not directly related. However, the only thing I could think when seeing the battlegroup name was Helium going "Miiiisewy" -- watch these flash videos, especially the first one, and understand.

Now that's out of the way, here's what I meant to talk about. Apparently the realms in the European battlegroup Misery had some maintenance difficulties on May 21st and 28th, and will be compensated by the upstanding people at Blizz with a free day of playtime.

So if you have a character on any of the following realms, enjoy your €0.43 worth of credit:
Aerie Peak, Boulderfist, Eonar, Frostmane, Grim Batol, Jaedenar, Kazzak, Kilrogg, Outland, Ravenholdt, Stonemaul, Tarren Mill, Vek'nilash, and Wildhammer.
Oddly enough, they're also giving a day's worth of rested bonus to affected characters, which is something I haven't seen them do before. I wonder if that's going to be the norm in the future.

Here's one more reason to make it out to Paris on June 28th and 29th this year: Blizzard's announced a 3v3 World of Warcraft Tournament. It's even open to most residents of the US, so if you're an American arena junkie with 2 friends planning a European vacation, here's your chance to participate in the contests. You will, of course, be competing for prizes: A Frostmourne replica for first place, a Logitech G51 Surround Sound Speaker System for 2nd place, and a free year of WoW for 3rd place. You can check out the complete information here.

As a reminder, those extra tickets we told you about are now on sale, so if you were planning to buy some, now is your chance. It'll set you back 70 euros (which is currently $108.53 in US dollars), but for everything you'll get, the price is probably worth it. If you still need a little convincing of that, check out our previous World Wide Invitational coverage.

If you wanted to head to the City of Lights this summer to check out the World Wide Invitational this year, but missed the first round of tickets, you're in luck. Blizzard has announced that they will be selling another round on the official WWI website some time next week. If you're still interested, keep an eye out for it!

The World Wide Invitational will take place in Paris, France on June 28th and 29th, and will include developer panels and multiple contests, including fanart and machinima contests, as well as a playable version of WoTLK -- essentially, it's a European Blizzcon. Be sure to check out all of our previous coverage on the event, and stay tuned for all the latest news as we get closer to the date.

Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational contest is becoming quite a production. They've just announced another contest as part of the lineup: a costume contest! Just to recap, let's see what has been announced:

• Fan art contest
• Machinima contest
• Actual gameplay contests, in Warcraft III, Starcraft, and WoW
• Hands-on play of Starcraft II and Wrath of the Lich King
• ...and now a costume contest.

The fourth annual WWI will be held in Paris, on June 28th and 29th. So you have just over a month to scrape together your best Curator suit and learn how to say "gallery rules will be strictly enforced" in that disaffected, slightly psychotic robot voice. Get cracking! I want to hear your costume ideas in the comments.

The Championship Gaming Series has announced its second World of Warcraft Arena championship, to be held in June and July later this year. It'll be a 3v3 tourney, and CGS is taking its cues from Blizzard -- they've got their own Arena realm to hold it on, and all the options on the official tournament realm will be available on theirs, too.

In fact, it sounds like the tournament is actually starting on the live realms themselves -- CGS says that they're going to invite the top 1,000 Arena teams from North America and Europe, so if you're one of those, you can probably expect an email with an invite. The actual tournament takes place in June, with the finals in Los Angeles on July 19th, and the winner netting a $25,000 purse. The second place team gets half of that ($12,500), and the 3rd and 4th place teams will each take home $6,250.

Nice work if you can get it. Good luck to everyone out there.

On the fourth day of the second Sunwell Plateau gates being opened there, the European guild SK-Gaming has achieved the world-first kill of M'uru, the fifth SWP boss. Good job, guys! This is all the more surprising because I don't think of SK-Gaming as one of the big-name guilds, but maybe I've just been missing out. Edit: D'oh! That's the guild formerly known as Curse. I knew the name looked familiar. Also, I would sort of have expected the US realms to get there first because their gates opened a day earlier. But on the other hand, Europe has been on top of the world firsts for a while.

You can see the loot above -- click to embiggen. That Shifting Naaru Sliver sounds fun.

[via MMO-Champion]

A bit over a month ago, all the realms in the European battlegroups Crueldad, Hinterhalt, Némésis, and Nightfall suffered some extra downtime, and players on them received a credit for a free day of playtime to compensate. Looks like it's happened again. In exchange for for six hours of downtime on April 6, members on those battlegroups will once again get a free day. Here's a list of the affected realms:

• Crueldad: C'Thun, Dun Modr, Los Errantes, Minahonda, Shen'dralar, Tyrande, Uldum, Zul'Jin
  
• Hinterhalt: Arygos, Der Mithrilorden, Dethecus, Forscherliga, Norgannon, Teldrassil, Todeswache, Un'Goro
• Némésis: Arak-arahm, Confrérie du Thorium, Eitrigg, Garona, La Croisade écarlate, Medivh, Uldaman, Vol'jin
• Nightfall: Alonsus, Anachronos, Bronze Dragonflight, Burning Steppes, Darkmoon Faire, Darkspear, Kor'gall, Lightbringer, Molten Core

Enjoy your free day, folks. I'm just glad I get to use my "1up" image again.

It seems like there have been free character migrations for Europe constantly for the past few months. Well, this week is no different. Thundgot announced the following free moves, available from today, April 9th, to next Wednesday, April 15th, all for PvP realms (I think):

• From: Frostmane, Grim Batol, Magtheridon, Twilight's Hammer
• To: Bladefist, Dragonmaw, Spinebreaker

• From: Molten Core
• To: Stonemaul

Those of you who want to switch, get your move on soon, because transfers may close early if they get the population balance they want (although I can only remember this happening once). Out of curiosity, European readers: what countries are you in?

Many thanks to reader fLUx for sending me over to the European WoW site, which as usual, has better info than its U.S. counterpart. The service announcement reads "Weekly Maintenance - 26/03. This Wednesday there will be an extended maintenance to apply patch 2.4.0. Please note that all European realms will be offline from 03:00 until 11:00, Paris time (CET)." March 26th over in Europe is March 25th here in the States.

All we're waiting for is the U.S. version of this announcement, which will soon come. After that the final patch notes will drop, which we'll have mirrored here for you as fast as we can get them up. As the posts below this one indicate, down time started about 30 minutes ago and is expect to last until at least 11 a.m. PDT.

Happy patch 2.4 day! WoW Insider will be updating frequently, stay tuned.

Updated 7:06 a.m. EDT: Belfaire has responded again on one of those "is 2.4 today?" threads: "Enjoy the new patch, folks!" This serves as confirmation for the U.S. realms. And you have a tag this time Belfaire. ;-)

Thundgot, the undead European CM, announced today that there are a few free character transfers amongst realms that will be starting today, and go through March 25th.

You can move from Al'Akir, Frostmane, Grim Batol, Outland, or Twilight's Hammer over to Burning Steppes or Spinebreaker. Of course, this only for all our European readers. No U.S. realms are current open for free transfers.

If you want to take advantage of this, do so quickly! They often close down these transfers early when they meet their internal goals.

Enjoy your new realm!