Tipster Nimm writes in to let us know that several EU battlegroups have been having serious issues after mergers that occurred post-patch 3.02. The mergers have seen a number of battlegroups acquiring servers with other language-dominant populations, which has resulted in a number of French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian-dominant servers (among others) all in the same battlegroups. While this is probably necessary to a certain degree to guarantee equal Alliance/Horde populations for quick queue times, it's become something of a communication nightmare in battleground matches, particularly those with lots of players using Cyrillic characters. As the player Thoughtless from the Karazhan realm asks, "Can you imagine how hard it is to organise any sort of teamplay in AB with player ???????? from <????????> guild cha(t)ting "?????? ??? ??????? ??????? ?????" in BG chat?" Nimm also notes that differentiating between ??????? enemy players is a nightmare.

We knew that Blizzard was closing four EU realms (Stonemaul, Molten Core, Shadowmoon, and Warsong) and transferring remaining players to other realms in response to Russian player migration to Russian realms opened late summer 2008, and the problem's partially the result of that (which has already resulted in the inevitable "In Soviet Russia, battlegroups merge you" joke). A few amused people are rising to the occasion by translating such phrases as inc 5 schmiede (inc 5 blacksmith in German) or proposing a revival of Esperanto, but the Russian language pack would be the only possible solution for the ???? problem. There's been mention made that this is only a temporary fix on Blizzard's part to faction imbalances on battlegroups, but if you're on an EU realm that's seen a recent battlegroup merge, just be aware that Babelfish might be a useful tool in the near future.

A company called 3 Point Entertainment has apparently been contracted by Blizzard to make some WoW steins -- yes, tired of drinking your ale out of a plain old authentic German stein? Now you can drink it out of a Warcraft-branded, Horde or Alliance themed WoW stein. As much beer as we drink, we can't exactly say we're stein connesseurs, but these look pretty well done to us. Each one features a bas-relief illustration from two artists who've done a lot of work for Blizzard, Glenn Rane and Samwise Didier, and they're made by a company called Ceramarte, apparently a big player in the "beerware" business.

They'll set you back a whopping $79.99, though, which seems pricey (although it's been a long time since we went stein shopping, so maybe that's a bargain). Think we could drink our mead out of something a little cheaper, maybe a Thunderbrew-branded sippy cup?

The good people at Wowhead, WoW database extraordinaire, have just warned me that the French, the Spanish, and the Germans are invading! OK, not really. Actually, the site is set to go live with localizations in those three languages, which will appear in the next 24 hours. You will then be able to read descriptions of quests, spells, and items, and everything else on that marvelous site, in any of those languages (plus of course English).

Each language will have its own comment thread on each page, although the forums will remain English-only. I imagine this will come as welcome news to the many WoW players out there who do not have English as a first language; even on the North American realms, there seem to be a fair amount of French speakers. Hooray for multilingualism!

WorldofWar points us to this forum thread by Fabraz, in which he shows off a video of his WoW wedding. The video is all in German, but you can tell what's happening as two Night Elf druids stand together in Darnassus as onlookers kneel. They finish their vows, and then a party goes down, and gifts are even given.

It's not the first time this sort of thing has been done, of course (that's another German vid, though-- are Germans more likely to do a virtual wedding?), but it is a strange little collision of our social gestures in the real world with the virtual one. Does it mean any less or more (in terms of social meaning-- of course it doesn't mean anything legally) when two people commit to each other in virtual space rather than physical space? We've seen funerals held for players before, and of course there's the famous Serenity Now incident, with my favorite music cues of any WoW video ever. It's interesting that it's these two rituals, perhaps our most important and symbolic, that have made it into Azeroth. I've never seen a virtual graduation, perhaps congratulating the recent class of 70s, but maybe that's the next big ritual to make the jump.

As a player, it's not really my thing (I find social interactions like weddings and funerals much more meaningful in the real world, and would rather leave the virtual world for things like fighting dragons and melting faces), but there is obviously a draw for this kind of thing-- in almost every MMORPG, it pops up at one point or another. Do meaningful social rituals like this belong in the World of Warcraft, or are they just a waste of time?