Filed under: Realm Status

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone! As you probably know, Diablo III's release date is today. With over 1 million Annual Pass subscribers set to receive free digital copies of the game, chances you or a guildmate is going to playing this game. As someone who's been a huge fan of the Diablo series for over a decade, I can vouch for the series. If you need something else to keep your attention while we wait for Mists of Pandaria to go live, you could easily do worse, that's for sure.

If you're interested in checking out Diablo III, I'd suggest you look at the following articles we've published to get you up to speed.

• Here are six blue posts that you must read.
• We offer some tips on fixing common Diablo III installation issues.
• We have a quick guide to the basics of Diablo gameplay.
• Rossi gets you up to speed on the lore of the Diablo franchise.
• My basic introduction to Diablo is a few months old, but it's a good read.
• Alex explains why we're covering Diablo III on a WoW site.

If you're not into Diablo, don't worry. We still have plenty of the WoW coverage you expect. With new beta patches coming all the time, there's a lot of it, too. Downtime today is just a series of rolling restarts at 5 a.m. PDT, so that's at least enough time to read a quick article or two.

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. With a new wave of 400,000 Mists of Pandaria beta invites having gone out this past week, everyone with an Annual Pass should now have their invites. If you have yours, you may want to read up on our guides to being a better beta tester.

I have to admit, when I am not testing my death knight, one of the things I have been doing is creating monks of various races to get a feel for whose combat animations look the coolest. Of course, none of them quite face up to pandaren just because they all have the whole issue of being old models, but you get some cool moves. I'm finding I really like Forsaken monks. They almost hearken back to the old ghouls of WCIII that they came from.

Whether you're in the beta or not, you'll want to keep reading. We have all the latest beta news you'll want to know about, as well as class news, opinions, and the rest. Downtime today is from 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. PDT, so you should have time to get caught up. Keep reading for more.

Hot news and features

• Patch 4.3.3 is live, and with it, some changes to the customer support UI. We'll show you the ropes.
• Check out the latest patch 4.3 hotfixes for April 17.
• World bosses are coming back with a vengeance in Mists of Pandaria, and Matt has a quick guide to etiquette and expectations for taking them down.
• Chase takes a look at three monk abilities that call back to classic fighting games.
• Rossi offers a beginner's guide to WoW lore.
• Anne offers some advice for dealing with in-game harassment.
• Brian takes a look at what WoW players search for on Google.
• We offer more transmogrification looks based off old Nintendo favorites.
• Rossi wonders if flying mounts caused more harm than good.

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. We seem to have settled into a nice, mid-beta groove with Mists of Pandaria. There's nothing earth-shattering going on, maybe, but we're still getting a steady diet of awesome news coming our way and the promise of even more as the beta continues. Overall, it's a pretty exciting time to be a fan of WoW.

Scheduled realm maintenance this morning is from 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. PDT, so you should have plenty of time to get caught up the week's news. Keep reading for our usual roundup.

Mists of Pandaria news and features

• Check out these awesome new jewelcrafting mount models. And if that's not enough, there's even a super-expensive version.
• There are also new emote animations for female pandaren.
• Here's a video of some more awesome new mounts coming with Mists of Pandaria.
• Josh takes a look at five super-exciting new monk abilities.
• When's Mists of Pandaria's release date? We took a look at past patch and beta development cycles for clues.

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. The beta invite floodgates have opened. If you didn't get a beta invite yet (or even if you did), have no worry. Our tireless team is constantly scouring the beta, ready to bring you the latest news and guides to exploring the new areas, using the new features, and taking in the sights of Mists of Pandaria.

You can check after the break for a special Mists of Pandaria section, along with a roundup of the rest of the past week's news. Downtime is currently scheduled for 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. PDT, so you should have plenty of time to read through it all.

Mists of Pandaria news and features

• In the latest Dev Watercooler, Ghostcrawler explains the new Mists of Pandaria loot systems. He also explained spec-specific quest rewards.
• Have a look at our gallery of screenshots from the pandaren starter zone.
• Check out our overview of Temple of the Jade Serpent, one of the first new dungeons in Mists.
• Pandaren totems have been uncovered.
• We also take a gander at the new Dungeon and Raid Finder UI.
• Check out some of the awesome new archaeology items from the beta.
• We have a gallery of pandaren male customization options. We also have a pandaren male facial hair gallery. Finally, we take a look at male pandaren hairstyles.
• New quest markers should making questing pretty fun and easy. There are even quest markers for the world map.

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. The Mists of Pandaria beta is now under way, but if you don't have an invitation yet, don't feel too bad. Blizzard hasn't even opened up the continent of Pandaria yet. That said, there's still plenty of stuff to uncover, both from datamining and from exploring changes to the system and to the old world. Even if your beta invitation never comes, though, don't worry. We have you covered.

Keep on reading for a roundup of all the juicy beta info we've uncovered over the past week, and stay with us in the weeks to come as we keep you abreast of all the panda news that's fit to print. Downtime today is scheduled for 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. PDT, so you should have plenty of time to get caught up.

I'm sure by now, everyone's heard the biggest news of the week. With the NDA expired on the press tour, we've been hit with a glut of information the new Mists of Pandaria expansion. I'm not sure what my favorite part is. Is it the identity of Mists of Pandaria's final boss? Is it the fact that I'll get to play some Team Fortress? It's hard to choose, really.

But don't let me decide for you. After the break, we'll have our usual roundup, including a section devoted to all the new expansion news you can handle. You'll only have to deal with rolling restarts this morning at 5:00 a.m. PDT, but expansion news is worth a few extra minutes, right? Keep on reading for the full rundown.

Happy Tuesday, everyone. As we inch closer and closer to the Mists of Pandaria press event, the Mists news still continues to come out in a small trickle. This week, hot on the heels of Mat's mount speculation, Blizzard announced that we'll be getting yak mounts in the upcoming expansion. Whether those will be the pandaren racial mount or come from some other source hasn't been clarified -- but hey, yaks are cool.

We should also repeat the warning here that patch 4.3.3 may be dropping this morning, and when it does, it will break the 64-bit client, so beware if you've been trying that out. Luckily, a new version is expected soon. Other than that, it may be a slow news week, but that doesn't mean that we've slowed down. Stay with us for our usual roundup of news, features, and opinions, including more analysis of the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator changes from last week. Maintenance this week is from 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. PST, so you'll have plenty of time to catch up.

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. Well, things may seem deceptively lull-like, signs seem to point to the idea that the Pandaria train is building up steam. This week bought us an update to the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator. You can check the class news section below to see if we've dissected the updates for your favorite class yet. If we haven't, it's coming soon (maybe even today!).

Scheduled maintenance this morning is from 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. PST, so you should have time to catch up on all the latest WoW news while your realm's down. Read on for a list of some of our best articles from the past seven days.

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. As expected, we marked yet another week without any significant Mists of Pandaria news, but it's all good. We did get some gaming news about another pretty huge upcoming release, including a glimpse at the girl I'm spending Valentine's Day with. So I'm fine. Pandaria can wait.

That said, there was still some prime WoW news in the pipeline over the last week. We had the Activision Blizzard investor conference call, where we learned that WoW lost only 100,000 subscribers since last count, mostly on the strength of the WoW annual pass. Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street held a discussion on class roles. We also got a new Blizzard representative on the story forums, Nyorloth, who's already starting things off we a bang with a shipping thread. Heck, we even heard that a Warcraft Monopoly game is in the works. There's a downtime filler for you.

Downtime this is week is from 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. PST, so in lieu of Warcraft Monopoly, we have plenty of stuff for you to read, both in the paragraph above and in our usual roundup below.

For the past few weeks, Blizzard's toyed with us just a bit. Monday night bought a posted announcement of extended downtime, only for the morning to feature naught but rolling restarts. As of this writing, we're once again starting with a 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. PST downtime announcement. Will it stick this time? I suppose by the time you read this, we'll know.

Still, it's a win-win situation. If I'm right, I'm right. If Blizzard changes back to rolling restarts, we get to play the game again sooner. In the meantime, there's still stuff to read while the game's down. The biggest news we've gotten out of Blizzard thus far has been one of negatives: BlizzCon is gone, at least for this year. This means we'll have to party even harder in 2013, but what do we do in the meantime? For now, I suggest we catch up on reading. We've kept busy even with the dearth of news, offering guides and opinions you'll want to read. While you wait for the servers to come back up, why not read on? Our usual roundup of the best stuff from the past seven days awaits.

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. The steady trickle of blue posts hinting at the possibility of maybe kind of sort of somewhat having some new news about Mists of Pandaria keep coming, but they also speak of a long time before we get something like an alpha test or any meaty updates. And so we are in something of a drought, and it looks like we'll be journeying toward Pandaria for some time yet.

Of course, that's not say we've had no news at all. The Dragon Soul nerf news came down the pipe this week, for example, and as you might expect caused a whole lot of uproar. In addition, the Lunar Festival has started up for the year, and we have our usual achievement guide ready to guide you. We even have an interview with a guy who made 1 million gold and gave it all away. Realm maintenance this morning is a nice, extended 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. PST, so you'll have plenty of time to get caught up on everything. Read on for our usual roundup.

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. The big news of this week is probably patch 4.3.2, which is on the PTR. For the most part, it's bringing us minor balance changes and bug fixes, but there are a few big things in there, including a 64-bit client and the advent of raiding with your cross-realm friends. You still can't raid Dragon Soul with your friends from that PvP server you refuse to roll on, but you can at least do Raid Finder runs, as well as any classic raid your heart desires. Now you can sucker even more people into those legendary farming runs!

With a new patch on test the servers and the last of the post-holiday doldrums more or less shaken off, you better believe there's plenty of good news and interesting stuff to read from the past week. Downtime this week is a series of rolling restarts at 10 a.m. PST, which of course gives you time for a nice mid-morning or early afternoon break to catch up on the news. Read on for the usual run-down.

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. This week has had its share of silence, for sure. I'm not sure if the folks at Blizzard's just enjoying the last bit of the holidays or secretly playing that other game, but either way, they didn't have much to say this week. That's not say there wasn't activity and stuff to discuss, not at all. The Darkmoon Faire's back in town, for one, and we've all been looking back at some of the best and worst stuff to come out of 2011. This is also the week we had to say goodbye to that freaking sweet corgi in the picture above. We can only pray Blizzard gives him back to us a pet some time in the future. If they do not, it shall surely go down in the annals of history as one of the greatest MMO tragedies of all time.

Downtime this morning is a series of rolling restarts starting at 10 a.m. PST, so you should have time to dig in to all the retrospectives and guides we have ready for you. Read on for the usual roundup.

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. I would just like to make it known that I agree with Sacco. In fact, just to show solidarity, above please find the most awesome karaoke rendition of the song yet distributed via mass media.

As far as WoW news goes, the post-patch 4.3 world has been, as expected, a bit tumultuous. Paragon was sorry they cheated by exploiting the Raid Finder, but Blizzard handed down some hefty bans anyway. Still, don't let all that drama that dampen your spirits. Patch 4.3 is pretty awesome, and Blizzard's even offering some sweet deals if you want to buy it for a friend or get yourself a second (or even first) account. It's a great Christmas gift idea, right?

Maintenance this morning is short, from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. PST, but there's plenty of stuff to catch up on, from hotfixes to raid boss guides. Read on after the break for a full roundup.

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. It's Darkmoon Faire week this week, and since this is also the first week of patch 4.3, that means it's a brand new faire. There are new games, new quests, and new mount and pet rewards to get excited over. If you haven't visited yet, I strongly suggest you do. I don't think you'll regret it, unless you hate fun or something.

If you're still trying to get a grip on the wide, wide world of patch 4.3, be sure to check out our patch 4.3 guide. I've also put a pretty awesome fan-modified version of the patch 4.3 trailer above for your amusement. If you're in the midst of pugging those new dungeons, you'll also definitely want to check out our 5-second guides to each of the new bosses. They're perfect for pasting into chat just to make sure the other newbs in your group know what's up. We also have a 5-second guide for the bosses of Dragon Soul's Raid Finder version.

Scheduled maintenance today is from 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. PST, so you should have time to read up. Check out our usual roundup after the break.