Its 1:00 PDT

You need to keep an eye on our extended maintenance sticky, as we're updating it regularly. The latest update states:

We are continuing to perform maintenance on all realms but currently do not have a definite estimate on when the realms will be playable. We will provide another update at approximately 2:00PM PDT with further information on when we expect the maintenance to be complete. Thank you for your patience.

Q u o t e:
Twenty-four hour maintenance, here it comes!

We're getting close to uh what...12 hours? Only half way there!

Oh well...hopefully once they get all this crap taken care of, we won't have instability issues.

We're hopeful, but we realize a patch -- especially one of this magnitude has the potential to cause any number of issues. At least know this -- we'll be doing everything in our power to resolve any issues that could potentially crop up. We have designers, producers, community, QA (WoW-team), and programmers, as well as many others prepared to stick around and work until the sun comes up tomorrow if that becomes necessary.

Q u o t e:


just state 7 pm or something take the pressure off, and people will be happy when they come up early.

There is a very specific reason we don't provide an ETA that's too many hours beyond when the realms could potentially go live, and instead just do regular updates when we're not certain, even if it's just, "hey, we're still working on things, no new ETA -- update you shortly".

That reason is this - if we provided an ETA, lets say five to six hours from now, there would be a notable number of players who would go and do other things for several hours. If the realms came up 30-120 minutes after we provided that estimate, it would be very disappointing for many of them. Now some of you many say, "well, the time was an estimate, it's their fault", but the reality is, it's important for us, on your behalf, to provide you all with the most honest and accurate ETA as we're able.

Q u o t e:


That's the exact same thing your last update said, just with the time incremented by one hour.

If you're going to not tell us when the realms will be playable, then say that, and assume we all know you're in the office doing your thing, because most of us do (and the rest will quickly be shouted down). The C&P is a little bit insulting, at least to me.

End of qq.

Providing regular updates letting players know we're working on getting the realms up is important. You personally may not feel hourly updates matter, if they provide nothing new -- but I promise you - most players do. I've been a Community Manager for World of Warcraft since two weeks before the game launched, and have worked every patch day. There were many realm tribulations for the first year, and back then we didn't provide updates unless we had something new or more substantial to say.

As a result, we received a great deal of negative feedback from players, fansites, etc... even more so in many cases than the upset expressed as a result of "realm downtime". Basically, it made players feel "in the dark", and/or like we didn't care about how being unable to play affected them.

We took that feedback, and began providing regular updates during extended realm downtime.

It was the right thing to do.

The bottom line is, realms are down -- people want to play the game. It's frustrating, especially given realms are down and many are excited about checking out all that's contained in the new patch. Given that, the way we handle something like messaging/updates will always be upsetting to some. If we began to accommodate, say players like you who are insulted with regular updates that provide nothing new beyond the acknowledgment that we're here working on things and still aren't sure when things are going to be resolved, we'd upset others who didn't appreciate that even a little.