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It looks like Blizzard really did mean it about putting a rush on patch 2.3: I'm told it's up on the PTRs (thanks, Addie), and here are the patch notes! Edit: PTR not live until after 6 PM PST, apparently (thanks, Basic). There's a lot of sizable changes in there, many of which we haven't seen yet, so it's definitely worth taking a look. Keep an eye out for specific subject analyses; for now I just want to get this information out to you all as fast as possible.
Zul'Aman is a 10-player, level 70 outdoor instance located in the Ghostlands. Players will be able to confront six new bosses including the Forest Troll Warlord Zul'jin.
Guild Banks Introduced
The Guild Bank is a shared repository for an entire guild and will be accessible through new NPC's called guild bankers. The Guild Bank will allow players with the appropriate permissions to store items and money for use by the rest of the guild. Permissions to withdraw and deposit money and items are controlled by the guild leader through the guild controls menu. The Guild Bank is divided up into separate tabs so that the guild leader may restrict access or group items into distinct categories. - Up to 6 purchasable tabs each containing 98 item slots - Permissions to view/deposit/withdraw per tab - You may use your Guild Bank withdraw limits to pay for item repairs (now enabled on all merchants) - Transaction logs of the last 50 actions in the bank viewable on a per tab basis
Problems with the 2.2.2 holiday mini-patch, perhaps? Or is this just a continuation of a slightly bumpy voice chat launch last night? We don't have any official word on the reasoning for this extended downtime, but the login screen is currently telling us that maintenance has been extended for two hours and not to expect realms back online until 1:00 PM PDT, or 4:00 PM EDT.
Need to pass the time? Well, I always find going through the day's posts on Cute Overload! to be a worthwhile diversion, but if that's too much cute and not enough funny, there's I CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER for all of your lolcat requirements.
Tipster Shewa sends in this interesting forum discussion from an RP-PvP server (Defias Brotherhood - EU) about what, exactly, is in bounds on such a server. Is it griefing to attack an RP function? Or is it okay as long as you're in character as, say, a malevolent Alliance warrior who hates all blood elves and attacks them whenever he can, even when they're peacefully congregated for (as a possible example) a picnic in the woods?
I tend to be more in line with poster Rumbalt in this page of the thread, when he says Perhaps I expect to (sic) much of people, when stuff like this happens I have no trouble weaving unexpected stuff like this into a storyline, an a mass of the shadow being attacked by a violent and dangerous Horde guild. Back when I played on RP servers, I didn't wait for other people to roleplay, I played and let the chips fall where they may. Other posters point out that, since you can't communicate with the other side anyway, it's effectively impossible to know if they're attacking you in or out of character and so you should just always assume they're in character and ignore stuff like forum posts and message boards that would ruin the RP illusion anyway... since you're already missing one gloriously amethyst eye anyway. (I kid, but it's a good comic strip and deserves to be linked.)
I suppose I fall on the side of the 'it doesn't matter what they intend by attacking, you're on an RP-PvP server, role play your PvP response and just move on'. But it's an interesting debate. What are your thoughts?
Thundgot, one of the EU CMs, has confirmed that the character transfer cooldown has been reduced for the EU realms (and raised for the US Realms, as here it was previously one month, and three months, and six months before that). Currently, the cooldown for both EU and US transfers is three months. That means that any character you transfer has to stay put for at least three months before it can be moved again, which most players (and Blizzard, obviously) seem to agree is a good period of time.
First free character transfers in a while (the last I can find were these Oceanic transfers). Since BC was released, it seems like Blizzard has a pretty good hold on population control (or maybe it's just that the populations aren't changing that much anymore). I remember when free transfers used to come almost every week on US servers, but nowadays they are few and far between.
Realm population problems don't affect me too much, thankfully -- my server has neither too many people nor too few, and the faction balance tilts in my favor. But some people complain that their servers are ghost worlds, with not much at the auction house and not many to group for quests and dungeons. The "Recommended" tag Blizzard is using to help out low-population realms sometimes just doesn't do the trick: people play there for a while, see that no one is home, then decide to go somewhere else.
So, while some people say the only way is to combine two low-pop realms into one, Drysc says that such mergers can only be a last resort:
There are a couple issues with merging realms though that we would need to take into heavy consideration if one were to be considered. As many of the lower population realms are PvP, faction balance has to be taken into careful consideration. Would a merge worsen, improve, or leave any faction balance unchanged? Would a merge move the population up too high, queuing or leading to queues for the realm after that point? Do we have realms of the same time zone and type that would merge well under these conditions? There also many logistical issues with merges which ultimately effect the end user, such as conflicting character and guild names. So, in the end, a merge would only be considered if all other possible options have been completely exhausted.
We're not just throwing recommended tags up on realms, and calling it a day. The recommended tag has done a lot of good for a lot of realms, but if we're seeing that they're no longer helping reach the type of population numbers we would like to see, then we would investigate alternate means. That's sort of where we're at now.
So, what is there to do besides merge realms? Drysc calls that the "million dollar question," which I figure means that Blizzard doesn't know for sure, though at least a couple ideas come to my mind: They could have some kind of incentive to players who join low-population realms (that's what the Army is doing, I hear), or perhaps all but force new players to start out there unless they have a referral from another player. Of course any solution to this problem is going to create still more problems of another sort. What do you think would work best?
Here's something I'd like to hear all your thoughts on. Glue from Nagrand quotes the fact that "only a small portion of the playerbase read the forums," and he claims that those people are the most important players Blizzard has-- they care enough about the game to visit the forums and voice their opinions. But I'd like to play the devil's advocate on this one. What if (and stay with me here) Blizzard deleted the official forums completely?
Do we really need the official forums? They do help-- besides giving us all kinds of fun reads and, yes, occasional insight, they're the main link between the CMs and the player base-- patch announcements and upcoming changes all are made known mostly through the forums, and day-to-day player feedback and questions are centered there. But they don't have to be-- Mythic's Dark Age of Camelot actually runs a daily blog featuring community news and game updates and changes. And it would be just as easy for Blizzard to announce things on their own website, and get player feedback and questions from sites just like this one.
And getting rid of the forums would wipe out all of the lunacy that appears on there-- all the insensitive comments, the jeering and rickrolling, the flaming, the drama (well, actually I'm down for keeping that one), and all of the other wackiness that goes down there every day. If the CMs didn't have to deal with that stuff, wouldn't they be able to spend more time communicating player ideas to the devs? If Blizzard didn't have to pay Timbal to ban rickrollers, couldn't they use that money to come up with a new 5man, or Heroic Deadmines, or any number of other ideas they've had but couldn't carry out? If we lost the forums, wouldn't we have a better game?
Food for thought. It's highly unlikely (at the very least) that Blizzard would ever shut down the official forums. But, even though they may have been necessary in the beginning, WoW's community survives in many other places now. Are the forums really necessary?
The rule on transfers is that you can't start out on a PvE server, and transfer away to a PvP server. Blizzard has said that players can't fight carebear up to 70, and then jump over to gank lowbies-- if you want the ability to kill those below you, you have to be killed first.
That is, unless you're friends with the developers. Players are claiming that someone named Broodthorn has been switched from Zul'jin (a PvE server) to Black Dragonflight, a PvP server. How do we know they're the same? The old Broodthorn's Armory profile is empty, and the new one is right here. All indications are that he switched servers, sometime recently. How is this possible? Broodthorn is now in Fires of Heaven, which is the same guild that Furor used to lead in Everquest. And Furor is none other than Alex Afrasiabi, one of Blizzard's main quest designers (he appeared on the Lore and Quests panel with Chris Metzen at BlizzCon). So bottom line is that if you're a good friend of the developers, Blizzard can make anything you want happen in game, even things they've specifically said shouldn't happen.
And this isn't the first "stealth transfer" to go down, either-- supposedly, entire guilds have been transferred from server to server by Blizzard before. Sure, Blizzard has the right to do something like this (it's their game, their rules), but it's a little hypocritical (at least) to require paying customers to abide by certain rules, while moving your own guild around at will.
Update: Wow. To tell the truth, I was tending towards the camp of "it's a perk, who cares," but Nethaera is having none of it. After someone linked this post on the forums, she sez:
This transfer was based on an internal request that bypassed our checks and balances dictating how such transfers occur. Since the transfer violates our character-transfer policy, the character in question is being moved back to its originating realm, and we have imposed some additional measures to help avoid such situations in the future. We made this correction as soon as we became aware of the oversight; we appreciate everyone's attention and input on the matter.
Hardcore. Way to go Blizzard for making everyone play by the same rules. Kudos.
And does anyone consider the server name in their choice? Would you rather be on Arthas or Thrall?
So if you could conjure up your perfect server, what would it be like and why? If Blizzard offered transfers tomorrow to any realm, what would server heaven be like for you?
Well, this is going to upset some people. Not me, you understand, because I'm not on one of the affected realms, but...well, let me just give you the news straight from Blizzard's Breaking News box:
Beginning Monday, August 13 at 11:55 PM PDT we will be performing maintenance on the following realms. This maintenance will be conducted as a means to optimize our World of Warcraft infrastructure for teh associated realms, and is expected to last approximately 48 hours. Please note that during this time, some services such as the Armory or Paid Character Transfers may be unavailable. Your patience and understanding are appreciated.
Yikes! That's a lot of realms to bring down for two days. For those of you on the affected servers, you have my condolences. I guess it's time to go out, do some shopping, clean the kitchen, watch TV...or just play an alt on another server. I hope players with characters on those servers will get playtime credits.
Maybe it's just because Karazhan is full of undead, but it seems like healers are in dire need by guilds these days-- used to be that tanks were hard to find, but now almost everybody needs more healers-- holy Priests and Pallies, and resto Shamans and Druids. If you can cast a healing spell, we need you!
Guildwatch is your weekly look at drama, downed, and recruiting notices from all over the realms, in both the US and the EU. For this week's glance at guild turmoil and triumph, hit the link below. And to send your own info in, just drop a line to wowguildwatch@gmail.com!
Today's story comes from the realm of Smolderthorn, home of one of the U.S.'s top Horde guilds, Nightmares Asylum (obligatory note: Blizzard apparently doesn't let you use apostrophes in guild names.)
Our tale begins in Karazhan this weekend, where the guild Clockwise was just learning the instance. They didn't have enough people for a full group, so they invited in some puggers to help them down some bosses. Unfortunately, they weren't able to kill too many bosses, so they left half of the instance for the next day. One of their puggers, who was a member of the medium-level guild Dies Irae, invited in some of his guildmates' alts to clear the rest. Dies Irae claimed they didn't know it was another guild's instance at first, but only decided to kill Prince after Clockwise's guild leader got angry at them and told them to get the bleep out. Whatever the cause, no one disputes that it ended with Dies Irae's alts clearing Karazhan on Clockwise's raid ID.
It's been a little while since we had some free character transfers, probably because of the realm population cap increase that came with the BC infrastructure upgrade. Starting tomorrow, residents of two Oceanic realms will be eligible to transfer to some less populated ones:
We will be offering free character transfers from the following Oceanic realms to other, lower populated realms to assist in alleviating population growth. These transfers will become available on Thursday, June 21 at 12:01 PM PDT, and run until Thursday, June 28 at 12:01 PM PDT. In the event that a realm meets our transfer goals before the scheduled end date, the transfers to that realm will be disabled. We highly recommend that if you are planning to transfer that you do so at your earliest convenience.
Are you on any of the involved realms? Will you be transferring, and if you're on Nagrand or Thaurissan, would you in fact advise others to transfer to your realms?
Another weekend, another batch of server issues. This time it's realms in the Cyclone battlegroup, which are having a whole host of technical problems. Seems like a lot of people are having trouble connecting, and the ones that do connect are falling through the world/getting messages saying their characters don't exist/etc. Blizzard says they're working on the issue, although it's been down for several hours.
Update: Nethaera tells us there will be no patch today [thanks, Alex]
The evidence continues to mount for patch 2.1 being released today. I had expected it to go at least another week or two just due to the sheer amount of new content being tested, but a few facts conspire to persuade me that this week is at least possible:
The PTR is now closed to new character transfers (since at least 11:50 last night; thanks, Baxmaniac). Does this imply that they're bringing down the PTR soon? On the other hand, they might just think they have enough testers already. And even if they are bringing down the PTR, they might want to leave it closed for some time before they release the live patch.
This week is a "full maintenance" week on the schedule, and the "Breaking News" box is already saying that the realms will be down for the normal interval of 5:00 AM to 11:00 AM Pacific time. Yes, this would undoubtedly be the case regardless of whether there was a patch this week, but in my opinion Blizzard are slightly more likely to release a patch when they don't have to cause any extra maintenance to do so.
Finally, there's the whole authentication kerfuffle last night. Amanda is inclined to interpret that as patch-related mishaps, and I think I agree.
In the end, of course, this is all sheer speculation. The PTRs might just have reached capacity, with no relation to the patch timeline. And there is usually some amount of time between when the PTRs go down and when the patch is released. Also, on a patch day during maintenance logging in usually causes the patch downloader to download, and that is not the case at present. So perhaps 2.1 today is not so likely after all. Well, we'll find out in a few hours.
This forum thread from Pepe on Zuluhed is a little more than a "QQ need moar realm pls" post, but only a little-- he's wondering why a relatively empty realm like Zuluhed isn't added to the "Recommended Realms" list. Drysc answers to say that while Zuluhed might be low population, there are others which need more help. And then the conversation get a little deeper, and Drysc reveals more about how Blizzard monitors and controls realm population.
First, another player quotes the Warcraft Realms stats page, and says that Zulu actually has less players on it then Azuremyst, a realm that was chosen as recommended. But Drysc answers that by saying Blizzard doesn't take "total players created" on a realm as a sign of population-- they're looking at percentage full (actually logged in) on any average night. Azuremyst is 35% full on average peak, and Zulu is 45% full on peak. He says once they fill those lower pop realms up a little more, they'll change the recommendations, and try to keep player populations as even as possible.
He also says (and he wouldn't lie, right?) that player numbers are actually seeing a "steady increase" since the expansion, but with the free transfers before the expansion and all the new landmass, servers might seem a little emptier. If you're cynical enough to think Drysc would twist the truth about player population, then you basically just heard him say "up is down."
But the strategist in me sees a mischievous idea here-- if Blizzard is watching actual logins during peak and not just created characters, reroll locusts could affect the recommended realms list. If you somehow got a big group to jump off of Zuluhed during peak, and on to Azuremyst during peak for a week or so, would Blizzard switch the two servers around? Could you actually game the realm population system?
It looks like Blizzard really did mean it about putting a rush on patch 2.3: I'm told it's up on the PTRs (thanks, Addie), and here are the patch notes! Edit: PTR not live until after 6 PM PST, apparently (thanks, Basic). There's a lot of sizable changes in there, many of which we haven't seen yet, so it's definitely worth taking a look. Keep an eye out for specific subject analyses; for now I just want to get this information out to you all as fast as possible.
Problems with the 
Thundgot, one of the EU CMs, has confirmed that 
Here's something I'd like to hear all your thoughts on. Glue from Nagrand 
The rule on transfers is that you can't start out on a PvE server, and transfer away to a PvP server. Blizzard has said that 
Spiritus has a good quesiton on WoW Ladies: if you could transfer, right now, to any server, 
Well, this is going to upset some people. Not me, you understand, because I'm not on one of the affected realms, but...well, let me just give you the news straight from Blizzard's Breaking News box:
Update: Nethaera 
This forum thread
