Last night we were pursuing a key issue of our own, and all we got was an automated response from the email address pointed to in the Beta invitation. Tonight however, that no longer happens – so it appears as if this email address is being staffed by a live person.
This is great news for those that have issues, including any that might revolve around a WWI '08 EU key not working with a US account. Hopefully Blizzard will respond promptly to all of us that have been emailing this address. If Blizzard or any of the blues release any more statements you'll see them here at WoW Insider.
Gamers on the Street logs onto U.S. servers to get the word from the front on what's going on in and around the World of Warcraft.
This week there was only one choice for where to go and interview players -- the Oceanic realm of Thaurissan has been at the center of realm population issues in the last week, as Blizzard opened up transfers from PvE to PvP realms for the first time ever. I rolled a Dwarf on the Alliance side (where Horde reportedly outnumbers players at huge ratios) to see what things were like and if I could find some people with opinions on the transfers.
Things seem to be better than they were before at first glance -- we'd heard reports that only double digits of people were playing during even prime time, but when I logged on (about 6AM server time), there were quite a few people in the /who list. Ironforge was far from bustling, but I saw groups running around the Isle of Quel'danas, as well as running Magisters' Terrace.
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...
A friendly reminder that there will be a number of rolling restarts for U.S. realms this morning starting at 5:00 a.m. PDT, and lasting until 6:00 a.m. PDT. Several realms will be offline for approximately 15 minutes (if everything goes okay). This is a welcomed event as some servers have noticed stability issues in the past couple of days.
The U.S. realms that will be restarted are: Arathor, Azjol-Nerub, Bloodscalp, Bonechewer, Boulderfist, Bronzebeard, Crushridge, Daggerspine, Darkspear, Draenor, Dragonblight, Dragonmaw, Dunemaul, Eldre'Thalas, Fethermoon, Firetree, Frostmane, Gurubashi, Nathrezim, Scarlet Crusade, Shadow Council, Shadowsong, Silvermoon, Skywall, Smolderthorn, Spirestone, Stonemaul, Stormscale, Suramar, Terenas, UIdum, Windrunner
If there are any major down times that come up, WoW Insider will let you know will all due haste.
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."
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.
The fine folks at MMO-Champion have assembled a list of all the known issues associated with Patch 2.3.2 dropping yesterday. In addition to good things like Transmutation mastery being fixed, and changes like AV being hotfixed to buff Balinda and Vandar, there are a host of bugs and minor issues from the Hammerfall wind ride master hiding under her usual spot to Hunter's getting their new Volley graphic revered to its older form due to graphics issues.
The complete list at MMO-Champion is very, very long. Luckily for me and my current leveling project, Draenei Warriors (and indeed all warriors) got off light with a couple of minor bugs. I doubt my level 62 warrior (or any of my 70's) is going to be fighting Landslide again anytime soon. But Priests seem to have several bugs, every class got a few, and the environment, quests and npc sections of the list are quite beefy.
Also, rogues seem upset about the changes, if you follow the forums. While that's probably not a bug I though I should mention it anyway as an issue with the patch.
How's Patch 2.3.2 been treating you? Good, bad, or had you even noticed any differences?
A few readers have sent us tips already to let us know that there are issues with the RSS feed here on the site. We appreciate you all letting us know, and we are aware that some of the older articles are getting published on the RSS feed as new. We've also noticed that the RSS feed will sometimes publish new articles twice, leaving you with two copies of the same article in your reader.
We're aware of both issues, and have forwarded information onto our tech guys about it-- they say a fix is coming. If you have any other issues or questions, feel free to post them in the comments below, or send us tips via our tips page. Thanks for reading, and for sticking with us through these issues-- we're hoping to get them worked out soon.
The realms are down this morning for "scheduled maintenance," and in the meantime, here's a list of what's wrong (and hopefully what's being fixed right now). Blizz QA guy Hortus has posted a list of known issues in 2.1, and I've included it in full after the break.
Most of these are pretty inconsequential and/or already known, but a few of them might cause confusion (I had the "grayed out" icon thing happen to me just last night-- the spell looked like it was unavailable, but I could still use it). They all seem easy enough to fix, and so hopefully when the realms go back up today, we won't see them again.
Strangely enough, there's no mention of the Hunter bug/feature at all, so Blizzard still hasn't confirmed that one officially (or maybe hunters liked using it so much they just didn't want to report it). And though Neth has confirmed the Spellthread nerf as a bug, it's not on this list either. I guess we'll have to see what drops this morning-- we could get a small post-2.1 patch, or maybe we'll have to wait for further hotfixes to see any of these bugs squashed.
In the wake of the paid character transfer service going live recently, a few players have apparently been experiencing some issues with their custom interfaces & add-ons after transferring their characters. Reader Sean Bonner reports that after his characters' move to the Eitrigg realm yesterday, he has been having many add-on problems, and this post over at Metroblogging also reports similar issues.
"6 months worth of interface development and addon fine tuning is UP IN SMOKE. When I started up...on Eitrigg all my custom interface, addons and macro preferences got left behind on Stormrage, or at least in the Stormrage folder. I figured out how to move my macro files over and now all 60 of my macros are available. But, I can't figure out which addon .lua files to move to restore my add-on preferences. I've made copies and dropped them in all the folders I can think of with no luck."
Have any of you who have also transferred your characters experienced any problems after the move? Blizzard, any news on why this might be occurring? Chime in if you have any info on this problem; hopefully this can be brought to Blizzard's attention & the issues addressed.
Vrakthris, a Blizzard blue poster over in the Customer Service forums, posted that any people having issues with their Wrath of the Lich King beta key should send them an email to the address contained in the beta email.
A blue poster on the forums today 
A friendly reminder that there will be a number of rolling 
Based on my experiences, and a 
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 
The fine folks at 
A few readers have sent us tips already to let us know that there are issues with the RSS feed here on the site. We appreciate you all letting us know, and we are aware that some of the older articles are getting published on the RSS feed as new. We've also noticed that the RSS feed will sometimes publish new articles twice, leaving you with two copies of the same article in your reader.
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