Newslist For MMOValue

It’s the middle of the week again and once more unto the breach, my friends. Yes, tomorrow is maintenance Wednesday for European players. Fortunately, we told you this morning how EU Blue Wryxian had spilled the beans on the reason for all the recent rolling restarts and weeks of extended maintenance for a few select realms. I always find it’s easier to exercise more patience once someone proffers a reason.

So, this week it’s time for some rolling restarts. These will take place on all realms between 5:00am and 7:00am CEST, with the usual fifteen minute warning. The following realms (the same will be undergoing an extended maintenance from 3:00am until 11:00 am CEST.

Balnazzar, Bloodfeather, Darksorrow, Defias Brotherhood, Earthen Ring, Frostwhisper, Genjuros, Haomarush, Hellscream, Laughing Skull, Lightning’s Blade, Magtheridon, Neptulon, Nordrassil, Quel’Thalas, Ragnaros, Ravencrest, Runetotem, Shadowsong, Shattered Hand, Silvermoon, Skullcrusher, Spinebreaker, Stormrage, Stormreaver, Stormscale, Sylvanas, Terenas, The Maelstrom, The Venture Co., Thunderhorn, Turalyon, Twisting Nether and Vashj.

As usual, I intend to sleep right on through the rolling restarts. My cats probably have other ideas though. If you’re bored and looking for something to do, don’t forget to check out Daniel W’s helpful post collecting up all the important news from the last week.

Catherine World of Warcraft Blizzard, europe

Blizzard EU has released a long and detailed statement concerning the recent waves of extended maintenance and how it’s connected to the problems associated with launching instances. For several months players have been plagued with the message “Additional instances cannot be launched.” The message was being caused by overloaded instance servers, and for a long time there was seemingly nothing Blizzard could do about it.

Blizzard’s statement today clearly informs us that all the extended maintenance we’ve been seeing is directly due Blizzard implementing fixes for the problems server-side. While the statement comes from an EU source, once can assume rather easily that it applies to the US as well.

While no timeframe is given as to exactly when this will be done for all realms, it is very good to know that stuff is getting done behind the scenes. And this look at exactly what Blizzard is doing to their servers represents a rare glimpse into their inner workings. Usually Blizzard is pretty tight lipped about what exactly is happening with their hardware.

The full statement after the break.

The full post from Wryxian reads as follows:

Recently there has been a number of extended maintenance periods for certain realms. Some of these we informed you about in advance and some we were unable to until during the actual maintenance period. We want to take the time to explain the reasoning behind these extended maintenance periods, and also those that will need to occur in the future.

These extended maintenances are directly linked to the message we posted in early July (http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=9941934722) about our investigations in regard to instance capacity and our plans to implement hardware modifications to achieve positive change for your play experience. As we said we would do in that message, we are now informing and updating you of our progress.

These modifications are typically a two stage process, requiring two lots of extended maintenance for each group of realms being worked on. For the realms listed below, the first stage was completed successfully on Wednesday the 15th of July during a pre-announced extended maintenance period.

On Wednesday the 22nd of July we also began to complete the second and final stage of this process on the affected realms. However, we encountered unforeseen difficulties in implementing the modifications. We were left with two options; either to further extend the maintenance period well into the evening and thus the busiest playing hours, or to take just a couple of extra hours to roll back the changes so that the realms could be back up and playable quickly. Since we did not want to disrupt your ability to play the game during the prime time, we decided on the latter option.

Since the final stage of these modifications did not complete successfully, we will need to do a further extended maintenance for the realms listed below. This is currently planned for the next maintenance period on Wednesday 29th of July. Because of this, we wish to inform you in advance that the realms listed below will again experience extended maintenance as we implement changes that we believe will bring positive change for your play experience, especially in regards to the ability to enter dungeon and raid instances.

After these modifications are implemented successfully, we aim to post up a feedback thread so that you can share with us your thoughts on how they have affected your play experience. At that stage, we will greatly appreciate it if you are able to help us with your feedback.

Catelet World of Warcraft Blizzard, Realm Status

If you’re looking for a way to relax this weekend, why don’t you hie off to Houston and get tickets to the Gamer MusiCON ’09, an all-day event celebrating music from the video game industry. If you’re familiar with the Video Games Live, the whole event has expanded somewhat with the help of Blizzard Entertainment and will now have a full hour-and-a-half Blizzard Live! to go along with the traditional Video Games Live! concert.

Blizzard Live! will feature music, both old and some never performed ones, from Blizzard’s different game worlds – Diablo, Starcraft, and Warcraft – paired with exclusive game footage and synchronized lighting. The Video Games Live! segment features music from other popular games like Chrono Trigger or Mega Man.

Of course, just like any great geek and gamer event, Gamer MusiCON will feature a lot of fun in between, such as costume contests, Guitar Hero faceoffs, a Q&A with Blizzard’s composers, autograph signings, and lots of swag. The event, conducted by Jack Wall and hosted by Tommy Talarico, comes to life with the help of the Houston Symphony. It will be held at the Jones Hall in downtown Houston. You’d better get your tickets today! Oh, and don’t forget to bring a date.

Cephalonie World of Warcraft Blizzard, Events

This got somewhat lost in the news shuffle over the holiday weekend, but Blizzard has posted another issue of their extremely irregular Gadgetzan Times fan-fic-oriented newsletter, for the first time since May 2008. This time around it consists of two pieces of short-form fan fiction, an amusing “classifieds” section, and a slightly half-hearted crossword about the dungeons of WoW.

It’s an interesting thing for Blizzard themselves to come out with, as it has been from the start. I really like the idea — characters from Azeroth report on events in and around their world — but it could use a little more polish and effort, not to mention a more regular timetable. On the other hand, they’re still publishing more regularly than my Illusionary Tactics column. Maybe I should not call this particular kettle black.

Cephalonie World of Warcraft Blizzard, Virtual selves

Yes, Druids, it’s that time again! After eking out their reveal of the Tauren and Night Elf bear forms and the Tauren cat over the past fortnight, it’s finally time to see what your Night Elf Druid cat form is going to look like come patch 3.2. We told you earlier how Zahrym let everyone know they would be announcing the final revamped druid form today, but it seems Allison is nowhere to be found so you get to hear my impressions instead. However the rest of the team really don’t seem to like the new look at all.

My first thoughts are actually quite positive. I love the cat versions of the Night Elf tattoos and the shiny gem collars are a lovely touch, even if the leather bracelet/anklet/pawlet seem a little weird and out of place. When did Night Elves get a leather fetish exactly? The colours are nice, all a variation on Night Elf skin tone but I confess I prefer the colouration of the old cat design. Over all it’s quite a nice selection of designs and I think players are going to be rather pleased come patch day to be able to stand out in a crowd of druids, even if not everyone is going to like the new look. My only question is: what’s the deal with the different coloured eyes? It’s nice but somewhat creepy looking.

Castro World of Warcraft Blizzard, Druid

Yes, if you were around on Saturday, you know that the first round of BlizzCon tickets sold out, and sold out fast. Tickets went on sale right around 10am PST (which was 1pm EST), and sold out just about 28 minutes later. If the queue numbers are trustworthy, over 21,000 people (we’ve heard as high as 25,000 at a time) logged in to buy tickets that day, and from unconfirmed reports around the web, it seems like about 5,000 to 8,000 tickets were sold: most people who got in line around number 5,000 were able to pick a ticket up, and that was a few minutes in already. Some of those people are already selling tickets on eBay as well.

We believe (though aren’t sure) that they’ll be selling more than 15,000 tickets this year, since that’s what they sold last year and they’re using even more of the convention space. If that’s true, then Blizzard probably went through only about half of the tickets, and will sell the rest during the second session on the 30th. But that’s probably not much of a consolation — given the frenzy around this last Saturday, there’ll probably be more people trying for tickets, and given the prices on eBay, possibly more scalpers clogging up the queue. We’ll see.

Update: Lots of people point out, rightly so, that I missed something in my guesstimates of how many tickets were sold: you could purchase up to five. My personal guess is that the majority of people bought only one or two, but even if you go with three as the average, 5,000-8,000 people in the queue is actually 15,000-24,000 tickets. Blizzard probably did sell the majority of tickets on Saturday then, not just half. So the process on May 30th will presumably go even faster.

Mustapha World of Warcraft Blizzard, blizzcon

Over the past couple of weeks, European players have been receiving plain text emails (like the one above) from Blizzard. I know what you’re thinking … scam alert but for once you’d be wrong. It might not be full of the usual sparkly Blizzard graphics but it’s no less legit – and a quick call to Blizzard Europe confirmed it.

From April 14th (that’s this Tuesday), Blizzard Entertainment Inc. (USA) will no longer publishing the game in Europe. Pause for dramatic effect. Rather that will be done by a new European arm of the company, Blizzard S.A.S. (France). The email itself is basically a courtesy — after all, you wouldn’t actually cancel your account just for an admin change, would you?

Personally I think this a great move, it means that we, the European players of World of Warcraft, are finally being recognised as the legion we are. We’re a separate territory (as should be obvious from Blizzard’s European job site) and proud of it, it’s just nice for it all to be official.

Castres World of Warcraft Blizzard, europe, france, publishers

So there’s been a feeling in the air lately that some of the blues have been in a bit of a teasing mood. Sure, that’s not neccessarily new, but what is interesting is what exactly they may be teasing us about. For example, here’s a recent post in which one Sulmus of Aerie Peak asks for the Greymane Wall to be opened. Zarhym soon jumps in to say that they would be “out of their mind” to open the wall… then follows up with random ellipses. To top it all off, Bornakk and Crygil jump in with silly punctuation of their own.

Now when Alex and I were discussing this the other day, Alex insisted that they were basically admitting that the Greymane wall would be opened, likely in conjunction with the next expansion. He says it’s already in the planning stages, and the blues are just waving the knowledge tantalizingly out of sight because they’re not allowed to officially announce it yet. Now, at first I wasn’t really on board with it, but then I noticed another post Zarhym commented in.

Imani of Aerie Peak posted a thread with the aim of advocating for more Old World content along the style of the Un’goro detour or Stormwind Harbor in Wrath. With the Maelstrom, she said, Blizzard should focus on fleshing out different areas of the old world, such as Gilneas, Azshara, and Grim Batol, weaving them in with new expansion content to give a sense of continuity. It’s certainly a good idea to begin with, but what caught my eye is that Zarhym himself commented that it was a good post, thus surreptitiously tagging the thread with the air of officiality via blue text and providing a tacit endorsement of the idea.

Now of course, Zarhym’s not a member of the dev team proper, and he could just simply be saying he thinks it’s a cool idea (because it is), but considering his other post, I can’t help but wonder if Alex had a point. Maybe these are ways to say, “Yeah, we’re headed to the Maelstrom and filling out Azeroth for the next expansion, but we can’t tell you that officially, so here, have some oblique references and teasing!”

It could all be wishful thinking, sure. Maybe the blues are just having some fun and commenting on some cool ideas, but still, I’m thinking I’d put good odds on a Maelstrom-related announcement at the next BlizzCon. Time will tell, but I’m starting to feel sort of optimistic.

MMOvalue World of Warcraft Blizzard, Expansions, Lore, Rumors

Blizzard Europe poster Ancilorn posted the lowdown on Arena Season 6 (Bornakk posted the same on the US forums), which is slated to begin at around the same time that Patch 3.1 is released. There will be some key changes to this season, the biggest of which will be that all teams will start at 0 rating instead of the traditional 1500. This way, players will generally have an upward progression throughout the season before plateauing at their estimated skill level.

Another change is that Blizzard has reevaluated the item requirements, feeling that many of them were too difficult to obtain. The lowest rating requirement for an item is currently set at 1250, which may seem low but considering players will be progressing from 0, that’s a 1250 point spread. In Season 5, the lowest rating requirement is 1615, which is a mere 115 points from the starting point of 1500. It remains to be seen how much of the continually changing Arena system will award points and how easy or hard it will be to move upwards from 0. More details on the ratings after the jump.

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MMOvalue World of Warcraft Arena-Season-6, Blizzard

BlizzCon 2009 tickets will likely go on sale soon, and before then, Zarhym is here to reassure you: Blizzard is doing what they can to make sure things will not go the way they did last year. Unfortunately, he doesn’t go into detail on exactly what that means. We’d have to think that they wouldn’t just open up the floodgates on a site that wasn’t ready again, but while most thought that the lottery that ended last year’s ticket sales worked pretty well, it looks like that may not be the plan just yet. Whatever they plan to do, we hope it works out in a fair way and with a minimum of fuss for those who do try to go. Anything without the Failoc or the FailSCV is a plus in our book.

Zarhym also says that they will be giving us advance notice before the tickets actually start selling, so people will have time to make travel arrangements if necessary (and/or ask the wife or parents for the money to go if need be). And he says that a pay-per-view type of event, as they did last year, or even a live stream of some of the events online, is not beyond the realm of possibility.

Of course, even if you don’t make it for whatever reason, you can be sure that WoW Insider will be there and covering everything that happens, from the awesome costumes to the possibly blogger-threatening danger. Stay tuned for more info soon.

MMOvalue World of Warcraft Blizzard, blizzcon, Virtual selves

The Egotistical Priest has a good series of posts up attempting to somehow quantify whether Wrath has been an overall success or not. Of course, it’s definitely a financial success, but has the game’s second expansion delivered what both players and Blizzard expected it to? Vonya sets out to find out in what has turned into a three part post: you can find parts one and two on the site now, and part three is set to come out tomorrow.

So far, the answer is yes: while the area of Tradeskills is noted as less than a success (it seems to me, too, that tradeskills had more variety and options in Burning Crusade than their current state in Wrath, though that might be because we’re only partway through the expansion cycle), everything else is noted as a win for Blizzard: they’ve really beefed up questing, balance has been intriguing since Wrath (and even if one class has rubbed you wrong, consider how many players came running back with the expansion patch to re-try their class), and of course, Achievements have (predictably) brought the game to new levels of addiction and given players of all kinds new things to do.

Vonya still plans to tackle instancing and raiding as the other two criteria for Wrath’s success (and there are probably a few other ways you could test it — lore? setting?), but by the reasoning so far, Wrath is a win no matter how you slice it. Blizzard has outdone themselves with the second expansion — the only question is where they’ll go from here.

admin World of Warcraft Blizzard, Expansions, raiding, Wrath of the Lich King

MMO Champion has posted all of the in-game maps for the new Northrend dungeons. We’d heard a while back that they’d be added in, and though there was no mention of them in the 3.1 patch notes, sure enough, they’re out on the PTR.

They obviously use the same style as all of the other in-game maps, with labels of each area and concept art of the dungeon itself behind each layout. But here’s something we didn’t expect: each map has a skull placed where the bosses are, so with just a glance at the map you can see where the big bad guys are found. Right now, obviously, we know where they all are, but that will be interesting when maps of future instances become available.

And right now, on the world map, areas get drawn in as you discover them, but we’d guess that these maps will be opened up as soon as you enter the instance (you don’t discover parts of an instance, you discover the whole thing). It’ll be interesting to see, next time we explore some new instanced content, just how these maps can affect gameplay.

Kins World of Warcraft Blizzard, bosses, Expansions, Odds and ends, ptr, raiding, raids, wow-ptr

It seems that patch 3.10 for World of Warcraft, the biggest since the release of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, in the last months of 2008, has just entered testing at Blizzard. Based on the previous track record of the company, it appears that MMO players will have to wait between four and six weeks, as the patch is being thoroughly tested before it goes live on all the game servers.

The biggest piece of content added through the patch will be a new raid instance, Ulduar, but the patch will come with a pretty big list of tweaks and modifications. Listing it all is pretty futile at the moment, as Blizzard is testing it so that it can make more changes, as the release date is drawing near. Still, there are some big features that are unlikely to be cut during the testing period.
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dreadmage World of Warcraft Blizzard, MMO, patch 3.10, test realms, World of Warcraft