Here's a heads-up to all our North American night owls early risers and Oceanic readers: It's Tuesday morning, and that means maintenance. Luckily, it's a short one today. Bornakk has said that they expect most servers to only be down a half hour, starting at 5AM PDT and ending a 5:30AM PDT. There are some extra servers that will be down slightly longer, until 6:30AM PDT. Those servers will be listed after the break. Aussies can rejoice as well, as any Oceanic servers not on this list won't be taken down until 5AM AEST (Which is noon over here on the American west coast).

For the list of servers that will have a longer downtime, read on:

I've heard this idea many times before, but I don't know that we've ever officially covered it here on the site: there is a fairly large movement in the player base, especially among the shorter folks, to have Blizzard continue the Gnomeregan story line -- and give Gnomer back to the Gnomes. Gnomer is pretty much the most hated of all the instances (well, Uldaman might barely overtake it in some circles), and as happy as the Gnomes are in Ironforge, a lot of the pint-sized ankle-pokers would like to have their city back.

Unfortunately, Blizzard has given the idea short shrift (ha!) to say the least -- while there are lots of rumored expansion plans, even beyond Wrath of the Lich King, it's mostly the Maelstrom and the Emerald Dream; nothing about the Leper Gnomes in Gnomer. You'd think they wouldn't be that hard to clear out (lower level groups regularly make short work of them -- ha!), although radiation is tough to fight off. Even the best Gnomish scientists seem to hold the belief they'll be able return to Gnomer, so it must be possible, right?

But to make a long story short (ha! OK I'll stop), retaking Gnomeregan just isn't on Blizzard's priority list. The city might work great as a portal hub, or even a new setting for a BG or Arena, but as it is right now, Gnomeregan is staying in the hands of the Lepers and the Troggs.

(The sinister Baron Soosdon felt that Vimeo was the best quality stream, so he made me change it from the Veoh stream. Now it has a funky looking aspect ratio! However, he does not blame me for destroying his non-existant PR campaign, so it's okay.)

The year is 1985. Gnomeregan merges with Aperture Science, which causes a chain reaction, altering history forever. In 1987, they decide to install GLaDOS on a mechanistrider, which leads to a killing spree in 1989. In the distant future, only MechaMurlocs exist, except for one determined little gnome.

If you can believe it, Baron Soosdon completed this movie in one day! He was apparently inspired by an infectious tune that was mentioned in #machinima on Quakenet IRC. For more information about This Device Has Been Modified, check out his blog, but be sure to download the high quality version.

[Thanks, Baron!]

If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.

Previously on Moviewatch ...

Drysc reports that a number of realms are under investigation for performance issues and will be undergoing a scheduled maintenance at 5:00 AM PDT on Wednesday, March 12 with a foreseeable downtime of 1 hour (update: Zorayn notes that downtime will be extended to 2 hours as opposed to one). As Drysc edits the thread, realms are added (or removed) regularly. From a quick perusal of the realms, it seems as though it is the Nightfall Battlegroup that is affected. Blizzard currently lists the affected realms as follows:

Aerie Peak
Altar of Storms
Alterac Mountains
Anvilmar
Arygos
Blackwing Lair
Deathwing
Demon Soul
Doomhammer
Gnomeregan
Icecrown
Jaedenar
Kel'Thuzad
Lethon
Onyxia
Sentinels
Tanaris
The Venture Co
Uldaman
Undermine

Drysc further notes that other Battlegroups are under close observation and will be taken down for maintenance should any issues arise that might require it.

Well, actually the title of this little video is "Battlestar Galactica opening, World of Warcraft style," but to me it suggests a whole realm of possibilities that could actually fit within the WoW lore. We know already, for example, that a certain gnome in Stormwind has created a Spybot which can take on the appearance of a human girl, well enough to fool a high ranking Defias leader into coming out and meeting his doom. What if some group of evil gnomes or goblins took it upon themselves to create the equivalent of cylons for the Warcraft universe? They could be called "Spylons!"

Well whatever you think of that idea, it would be a cute little easter egg quest to fight against the spylon menace for a little while, at the very least.

Thanks to our very own Barb Dybwad, via her blog, Geeked.org

Previously, on WoW Moviewatch...

Blizzard's plans to speed up the old Azeroth leveling experience 1-58 have been pretty vague so far, about some additions to Dustwallow Marsh and some kind of general speed increase at some point in the future. Drysc has made things a little bit more clear though: we can expect to see a "pre-expansion change to the experience curve and gain." You won't have to wait until the expansion comes out to finish leveling that alt you've always wanted to play but couldn't make time for. Exactly when "pre-expansion" this will be isn't clear of course, but it's nice to know it shouldn't take as long as some had feared.

In addition, Drysc goes on to add that they are interested in "refining (?)" a couple of the old-world instances, namely Gnomeregan and Uldaman, because apparently those dungeons tend to get more people more often during the leveling process. "Refining" those dungeons could mean anything from changing some of the trash mobs to really reorganizing parts of the instance, and the effect could be for better or for worse -- several of my friends tremble with hatred at the mention of those two instances, and would much rather Blizzard removed Gnomeregan and Uldaman altogether than encourage us to go back to an "refined" version anytime soon.

For my part, any refining of old-world content is a good thing. It would be good to speed through content that most of us have already seen before, and it would be refreshing to revisit some old dungeons with new twists for those of us who haven't already done them to death. Some players, however, are crying bloody murder -- apparently ones who enjoy repeatedly slogging through hours and hours of the same old content and think that everyone else should have to also.

When you need to block, look no further than this amazing tanking trinket, used by aggro-grabbers the world over. Could it be the only thing the Gnomes have made that actually works?

Name: Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600
Type: Epic Trinket
Damage/Speed: N/A
Abilities:

• Equip: Increases the block value of your shield by 59.
• Use: Increases the block value of your shield by 200 for 20 seconds.
• If we're going to talk about why this trinket is so phat, we've got to talk about Block-- blocking is when your shield absorbs part of the damage that you've been hit with. The math gets complicated (it's not just a reduction in the block value, as your opponent's strength plays a part as well, and while some blocks can completely negate damage, not all do), so I won't go deep into it here, but higher the block value, less damage done when you block (and when you do is determined by your block rating, not your block value). Additionally, certain talents can add to your block value as well, as a percentage of what you've already got. So this trinket (with talents) adds a whole lot of damage reduction.
  
• But wait, there's more-- Warriors have an ability called Shield Slam, which adds your block value to the total damage of your slam. Since popping this trinket adds 200 to your block value, that's 200 directly pushed onto the base damage of your slam. If you build up a good base block value (350 is pretty good), add this on top of it, throw in Shield Master (the Warrior version of the block talent), and throw in a crit for good measure, you're talking a Shield Slam of around 2500. You're beating people down with just your Shield!
• And there's even more. Shield Slam isn't even a damage ability-- it's a threat ability (even better than Sunder Armor). You better believe a 2500 Shield Slam generates aggro. Pop this trinket, crit them with your shield, and not even that smarmy DPS clothie who refuses to install KTM will be able to peel that mob off of you.

How to Get It: Heroic badges again, which means you need to down bosses in Heroic dungeons. And this ain't no walk in the park-- you need a whopping 41 badges to get this one. Then again, if you're a main tank who's good enough to want this trinket, you'll probably have no problem running all those dungeons.

Getting Rid of It: You probably don't want to-- even if you have DPS trinkets to switch out, trinkets like this are always good to have around, just to see how much you can max out things like Block. But if you do have a sudden aversion to anything Gnome-made, you'll have to destroy-- vendors won't take it back.

The year is 2012. WoW fans are excitedly awaiting the game's 5th expansion, Revenge of the Gnomes, which brings two new races to the game (Sporeggar and Goblins, at last!), as well as a new class (the Tinker), and a slew of other features. As everyone knows, this is the expansion where the gnomes finally take back Gnomeregan from the troggs, pushing them back all the way into the "Undergloom," a vast and ancient network of caverns beneath Azeroth. Of course, the gnomes also accidentally stumble upon the long-buried prison of the Old Gods and unleash unbridled havoc on the World of Warcraft, but that's where the fun is, right?

I could go on and on about the new features included in Revenge of the Gnomes, but I'm sure you've heard about most of them already (like the subterranean hovercraft group-mounts and blue-pill, red-pill potions for alchemy). Suffice it to say that the feature everyone is most excited about is that the level cap is once again being raised another 10 levels, to a grand total of 110.

Like everyone else, you're probably wondering how in the world (of Warcraft) are you going to level your new Goblin Tinker character all the way through those tedious levels of 1 to 100? Everyone wants to try out the new content, but no one wants to slave away through Stranglethorn Vale for the 48th time. To complicate things further, Blizzard still doesn't want to add any more 1-60 quests in the lower-level zones (not to mention any of the Outland, Northrend, Emerald Dream, or Great Sea Expansion zones)!

Fortunately, though, Blizzard's got what you need! Are you prepared for the "/level" command?

Did you know that Auchindoun is pronounced "Aw-kin-doon," not "Aw-chin-do-in," as I've been saying it? As a shaman main, I know that the plural of shaman is shaman, but I always mess up Silithus-- for some reason I called it "Sith-il-us" all the time (it's really "Sil-i-thus," of course). Maybe too much Star Wars. Orgrimmar isn't that hard, and Gnomeregan is pretty easy once you know what it is. But those of you who are longtime readers may remember the trouble I had here on the site with spelling Draenei-- for some reason, I thought it was "Draenai" for the longest time. I messed up Maraudon a lot, too.

Because so many of the names we see ingame aren't always spoken out loud, there's lots of little linguistic quirks in the proper names and language of Azeroth. What else have you seen that you were confused with, either with the pronunciation or spelling?

If you're a Warlock (or a Shammy with Shiny Fish Scales), you won't have much use for this item. But for the rest of us, it's the perfect equip in certain wet situations.

Name: Hydrocane
Type: Rare Staff
Damage / Speed: 48-73, 2.80 (21.6 DPS)
Abilities:

• +21 Frost resistance, which might be nice in Naxx if there weren't about five million better weapons to take to that instance. But the real draw of the Hydrocane is this:
• Equip: Allows underwater breathing. Yup, equip this staff, and that annoying "drowning" thing becomes a nonissue. Do "Deep Ocean, Vast Sea" with ease (well, relative ease-- it still sucks). Pick up the Big Iron Fishing Pole by farming those traps without coming up to breathe. And explore all of underwater Azeroth at your own pace, not the pace of that stupid little blue meter that slowly ticks your life away. Neat little item to have, whether you're level 27 (required) or beyond.

How to Get It: If there is a catch with this thing, here it is: you have to go into Gnomer to get it. In fact, this might be the only reason to go into Gnomeregan at all (ok, Techbot made me laugh, so he's worth it, too). The item drops from "Viscous Fallout," a named poison elemental at the bottom of the very first room in the instance. Because he's so close, he's easily farmable by a rogue or druid (and of course Gnomer is soloable for most any higher levels, as well). Drops at 18% or so, so farm him a few times, and you should be amphibious.

Getting Rid of It: BOP. Sells to vendors for 82s 10c. Disenchants into Small Glowing Shard.

Four more new realms opened today - for PvP players, there's Onyxia and Blackwing Lair,  while PvE players can enjoy Gnomeregan and Anvilmar.  So if you were feeling like a fresh start in Azeroth, here's your chance.  The realms appear to be in the PST time zone, so if that's what you're looking for, this is your fix.  There are ongoing complains on the forums about low population servers, but perhaps the combination of newer realms and pay for realm transfers this will aid in evening out population imbalances across all the servers.  However, only time will tell!