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.

Tuesday morning maintenance has been announced, and most of us can breathe easy -- we're only getting a one hour downtime, from 5am PST to 6am PST. However, there are 72 servers that will be getting a larger amount of downtime, from 5am PST to 11am PST, though there's no word on why. Check after the break to see if your server's going down for a bit.

The list of the servers scheduled for a longer maintenance are as follows:

It's a relatively painless Tuesday Morning this time around for those who play in what are the early morning hours at Blizzard HQ. This time, most US servers will just recieve a quick rolling restart at 5 AM PDT, about half an hour from now, which should result in no more than 15 minutes of downtime. However, there are some servers that will get 2 hours of downtime: Agamaggan, Azshara, Baelgun, Dark Iron, Detheroc, Emerald Dream, Greymane, Kalecgos, Lightninghoof, Maelstrom, Malfurion, Moonrunner, Nazjatar, Sargeras, Staghelm, Twisting Nether, Ursin, and Wildhammer.

Also, here's something that should please a lot of Australian players: Their realms won't get the rolling restarts until 5AM AEST -- which translates to noon PDT. That should translate to lots of time for night owls to finish their raids before the restarts kick them off.

So in that 15 minutes to 2 hours of down time you'll have to go through, or if you're stuck at school or work, here's a few WoW Insider articles from the last week that are worth checking out. First, last week's major news and views:

• The WoTLK Friends and Family Alpha is underway, and we have the leaked patch notes.
• A Vivendi earnings statement gave us the first real official word on WoTLK's expected release date.
• The Hunter Growl and Scare Beast changes from patch 2.4.2 didn't turn out so great after all.
• Raiders rejoice: M'uru got a little easier, and those nasty Archimonde and Eredar Twin bugs got a hotfix.
• Death and Taxes, the premiere US WoW raiding guild, disbanded. That set a few of us to pontificating on the problems of raid guild drama here and here.
• We covered a few more tidbits of WoTLK info, such as Death Knight "reruning."
• Check out sister site BigDownload's interview with Blizzard on that whole eSport thing.
• In Hybrid Theory, Alex soothes your fears about Death Knights taking your jobs.

If these aren't enough for you, there's more after the break.

It looks like everything went okay with the server hamsters this morning as the servers are back up and running smoothly. In fact, it appears that all the servers are up right now. This is an oddity since usually there are at least one or two battlegroups that are down longer than the rest.

There is no patch 2.4.2 on the live servers right now, and the PTR (Public Test Realm) is still up and running for additional testing. Hopefully within the next week or two patch 2.4.2 will go live for us all.

WoW Insider will carry any updates on sever outages throughout the day. Enjoy your Tuesday!

The announcement on the login screen tonight tells us that the realms will be down for extended maintenance on Tuesday May 6th, from 3:00 a.m. PDT until 11:00 a.m. PDT. It's curious how extended maintenance used to last from five until eleven, but now lasts an extra two hours – from three until eleven.

Today we've seen the PTR (Public Test Realm) go down, and then come back up again. Earlier we thought this was a good indication that patch 2.4.2 was going to be released on May 6th, however with the PTR still being up, we don't believe that will be the case. Of course I could be completely wrong here – and we all might get a shiny new download screen tomorrow morning.

Only time will tell, and stay tuned to WoW Insider for the latest. We'll also keep you abreast of when the realms come back online, and any lingering issues that may arise.

Sometimes I feel like Blizzard chooses a handful of random servers to Ice Block every few days – not letting players on, and giving a (hopefully) short window when the servers will be offline.

If you're on the unlucky servers of Agamaggan, Azshara, Baelgun, Dark Iron, Detheroc, Emerald Dream, Greymane, Kalecgos, Lightninghoof, Maelstrom, Malfurion, Moonrunner, Nazjatar, Sargeras, Staghelm, Twisting Nether, Ursin, WildHammer, or either of the Tournamenet Servers, you're going to have at least two hours of downtime from 5:00 a.m. PDT until 7:00 a.m. PDT. Blizzard will also be doing rolling restarts across all realms this morning.

For those of you waiting to get your morning fix of WoW, fear not. There are several pieces of news and entertaining reads to catch up on.

New WotLK alpha screenshots – Did you know that WotLK is in alpha, and the first batch of new screenshots has been leaked? We've got them confirmed from an inside source and mirrored here for your enjoyment.

As a tank, I hate to pug. Our Warrior columnist Matthew Rossi agrees with me. Check out his enlightening piece for One reason tanks won't pug. And I hope the subject of his piece, Primula, enjoys his or her new found fame as one lowly ninja-looter.

Do you have a life outside of WoW? Not that I do, but if I did I would be a casual player and appreciate Robin Torres' advice from WoW, Casually: Finding groups fast. Just remember that they don't always have to be random pug groups.

Two pieces of Season 4 gear have been accidently enabled by a GM on the live realms. You can check out the new stats and have look at them. They remind me a bit of the Ori from Stargate, so I have to ask: Hallowed are the Ori, anyone? Hopefully the bosses at Blizzard are a bit more understand than the Ori and will let the GM that made this mistake keep his job.

And finally you can check out my new favorite column of the week, [1. Local] by Lisa Poisso. Lisa takes a look at all the comments posted on WoW Insider and rounds up the best of them for us to marvel over. I know that I've sent her a few lately.

Happy Tuesday everyone!

Maintenance day is underway until 2pET/11aPT and many WoW fans are searching for something to do, while players with day jobs log on to point out that they can never play during these hours. Fortunately, we have lots going on today, as well as some highlights from the past week that you won't want to miss.

Wrath of the Lich King:

• Compilation of everything we know of to date about Death Knights, the new hero class we'll be seeing with the expansion.
• The new expansion is now in alpha testing! Read on to find out what this means, as well as what it doesn't mean.

Arena Season 4:

• A great analysis of when arena season 4 might begin.

Well, it is maintenance day again. Tuesday is the Hump Day (i.e. Wednesday) of WoW players everywhere. The realms are down, and the children are home from school on March Break (at least in Canada).

Fortunately, this past week has been a busy one, and there is plenty of material for you to catch up on while you're bemoaning the maintenance, scheduled from 5:00 a.m. PST to 11:00 a.m. PST.

First of all, you won't want to miss any of our coverage from Sunday's stress test of the TTRs. The GMs were out in full force, pulling all sorts of nonsense.

1. My coverage of the event, signed in as <Vehn>.
2. Alex's coverage, signed in as <Insideralex>.
3. The team's private photoshoot with <Englewood>!
4. Our live blogging coverage, hosted by Adam, signed in as <Insideradam>.

Now that I have dutifully promoted WoW Insider the arena team, I'll point you to other fabulous articles of note. First and foremost, I'll direct you to everyone's favorite controversy of the week.

It all began as part 2 of Alex's latest Hybrid Theory column, and the frenzy that followed resulted in a follow-up post that somehow has not eased the debate.

For other articles of note, make the jump!

According to Blizzard's schedule, the realms should have been back online about 20 minutes ago. So it should come as no shock that today's maintenance has been extended for an extra hour. (Or, to be precise, an extra sixty-one minutes. Why the extra minute? We can't say.) This isn't exactly a surprise, as patch deployment usually takes a bit longer than a normal maintenance cycle (and it seemed odd, earlier, that the login screen announced only a normal maintenance window). And to the European players in the audience -- this is what you get to look forward to tomorrow!

Update: Realms appear to be back online as scheduled!

Is patch 2.3.2 going live today? Though there's no official word, signs point to yes. US realms, currently undergoing maintenance, have a generic downtime message on the login screen (as seen above) and no patch download starts for those attempting to log on. but if you try to log on, the patch 2.3.2 download (approximately 5MB) will start. However, European players, whose maintenance doesn't start until tomorrow, are getting a different login screen message:

This Wednesday there will be an extended maintenance to apply patch 2.3.2. Please note that all European realms will be offline from 03:00 until 11:00, Paris time (CET).

Since we've never seen a patch go live in Europe that hasn't gone live in the US, this is pretty strong evidence that today is patch day. Patch 2.3.2 will include some class tweaks (primarily for Hunters, Mages, Shamans, and Rogues), some UI changes which may mean you have to pick up updated addons, bug fixes and more. See the full patch notes (linking to the PTR notes, as the live notes aren't up yet) for official details.

Update: The patch is now downloading for US players.