In case you're been busy lately, we're reminding you that today is maintenance day for Blizzard's World of Warcraft MMORPG. Several realms will be experiencing hardware maintenance that will affect them for most of the day. Head over to the full article to check if yours is among those in the list.

Remember when certain World of Warcraft realms went down due to certain latency and disconnection problems back in April 30? Blizzard has announced that they will be compensating gamers who were affected. To find out more, check out the full article.

If you're a rogue and have tried doing the five-man instance called Magisters' Terrace in World of Warcraft, chances are you tried using cloak when dealing with the bosses.

Apparently, there's one boss that that negates this skill, Priestess Delrissa. Some players are thinking that this might be a bug, good thing Blizzard QA Hortus clarified this issue. Find out more on this after the jump.

Given that World of Warcraft's game patch 2.3 is a work in progress, expect plenty of changes to be announced regularly. With that said, we're letting the readers know of the latest patch 2.3 notes for the Alterac Valley battlegrounds. Blizzard Forum poster Nethaera posted some of the biggest changes we'll be seeing in the patch.

As she explained, the revamps were geared towards changing how players maintain their reinforcements, and how they can deprive the enemy team of theirs. Here are among the more interesting details she shared - we're hoping they hit the Public Test Realms soon:

• Each team begins with four Warmasters. Destroying a tower will eliminate the associated Warmaster. Unlike the current game play, however, destroying the enemy tower will not add a Warmaster to your own side.
• We will be changing the pace of the battle slightly with a reduction in the time needed to control a tower or graveyard. Where it currently takes five minutes to gain control, the time will be reduced to four minutes. The honor for capturing a tower will also be increased.
• Dead players will respawn at team-controller graveyards. If the team does not have any graveyards under their control, they will automatically respawn at the starting tunnel.
• We have reduced the number of elite NPCs in Stormpike and Frostwolf holds as well as sent all Commanders and Lieutenants out of Alterac Valley 
• Players will only be awarded bonus honor during the battle for destroying enemy towers and slaying the enemy Captain. Once the battle is concluded, bonus honor will be awarded for intact towers, a surviving Captain, and for victory in battle.
  

That's a just a snippet of the things to come - be alert for any possible changes in the upcoming days. At the moment, the changes are garnering very positive reactions from the forum posters - the changes look to make Alterac's PvP scene all the more fun.

 

It's bug watching time! If you've been having a problem in World of Warcraft with certain PvP accessories not removing their "hamstring," as Shardpicker of Frostwolf would like to call it, Hortus said that a fix for the trinkets' issues would be addressed with an upcoming patch to be play-tested on the Public Test Realms.

The fix would come together with adjustments to Frost Nova, Deathcoil and Freeze Tap (nerf alert?), which Hortus points out will also come together with the trinket fix. Certain other bugs found, such as instant "jumping" of pets to areas with massive altitude differences and clipping of your avatar's hair with certain head equipments can't be addressed for their own reasons.

Although Babona of Bloodscalp may have iterated that the glitch in the system - where avatars with pets may jump of from high altitudes and find their trusty companion right at their side after landing - does work for easy navigation, reporting a bug for an engine glitch isn't exactly a massive calling for developers.

And speaking of glitches, hair clipping, we're afraid to say, is a limitation of the World of Warcraft engine, and it appears that Blizzard may not be able to resolve the issue, unless they can rewrite a dated engine to a more robust level.

If you go to the official World of Warcraft community forum, you'll see that one of the most contested topics right now revolves around the Alterac Valley. This discussion was started by Horde members saying that the said map favors the Alliance - that should explain why it's being hotly debated.

A few of the reasons they pointed out include making it past the bridge chokepoint first, and the Stormpike graveyard being more secluded and defended than Frostwolf. On the other hand, Alliance members maintain that the Horde always loses on this map because of AFK players as well as lack of defense.

Anyway, the Horde are now challenging Blizzard to flip the map and make an official win-loss record for both factions. It is a bold challenge indeed and we're excited to see how Blizzard will respond to it.

We all know that World of Warcraft (WoW) is bugged but that doesn't stop us from playing. To compensate, Blizzard Entertainment implements various hot fixes and maintenance schedules every now and then to keep our favorite MMO running. Quite unfortunately, a blossoming love story ended, due to one of the said updates/fixes.

A maintenance schedule was put in effect in Taiwan World of Warcraft (TWoW) a couple of days ago. Now, one player known us Bimmy Frostwolf claimed that he/she was separated from a lover. This happened because after the downtime, when Bimmy was suddenly shifted to another server. Needless to say, our lov birds couldn't track eachother anymore.

Bimmy Frostwolf even made a music video of the sad event because he/she doesn't want to forget. The video clip was rather mushy but we have to remind you, this server shifting incident is a very serious one. Blizzard should try and fix this at once lest its developers want to see more than seven million WoW players lost, angry, and brokenhearted.

Tabards display different things about a character - his guild, his PvP rank, his reputation, or his skill at the WoW card game. Somehow, it all boils down to bragging rights.

There are different types of tabards classified by faction - well except for the guild tabards of course. For PvP, Alliance get a Private's Tabard while Horde gets Scout's Tabard. Officers (Knight and Stone Guard) can purchase tabards for four gold where Alliance gets Knight's Colors and Stone Guard's Herald is for Horde.

Battlegrounds have a different set based on reputation and could be acquired from a vendor or through a quest. For Alterac Valley, a friendly reputation is required with Stormpike Guard (Stormpike Battle Tabard) or Frostwolf Clan (Frostwolf Battle Tabard). Arathi Basin tabards (Arathor Battle Tabard or Battle Tabard of the Defilers) become available when players attain exalted reputation and completing the Control of Five Bases quest. Warsong Gulch also requires exalted reputation for Silverwing Battle Tabard or Warsong Battle Tabard.

Other tabards include:

• Contest Winner's Tabard - prize for Honor Contest
• Tabard of Flame - reward from WoW card game
• Tabard of Frost - also a reward from the card game
• Tabard of the Argent Dawn - can be bought with 10 Necrotic Runes from the Argent Outfitter during the Scourge Invasion
• Tabard of the Protector - complete Into the Breach quest
• Tabard of the Scarlet Crusade - loot from Scarlet Trainees in The Scarlet Monastery Armory

Burning Crusade Tabards:

• Blood Knight Tabard - reward from Blood Elf Paladin's epic mount quest chain.
• Tabard of the Hand - reward from the Draenei starting zones' quest chain
• Honor Hold Tabard - Alliance at exalted with Honor Hold
• Thrallmar Tabard - Horde at exalted with Thrallmar
• Cenarion Expedition Tabard - all races at exalted with the Cenarion Expedition
• Kurenai Tabard - Alliance at exalted with the Kurenai
• Mag'har Tabard - Horde at exalted with the Mag'har
• Lower City Tabard - all races at exalted with the Lower City
• Aldor Tabard - all races at exalted with the Aldor
• Scryers Tabard - all races at exalted with the Scryers
• Sha'tar Tabard - all races at exalted with the Sha'tar
• Consortium Tabard - all races at exalted with the Consortium
• Enchanted Illidari Tabard - disguise tabard

Lately, Drysc from the World of Warcraft forums has been busy announcing and answering some WoW related issues like rep changes, heavily-camped quest mobs, among many other things. Recently, he mentioned that the Blizzard team is aware that some realms are experiencing issues that are disconnecting players or keeping them from connecting.

As of now, their network and database administrators had found a solution for the problem. But Drysc adds that the solution is temporary and it's necessary that they perform a maintenance to implement a more permanent solution to the said issue. With that said, the realms listed below will undergo maintenance from 5:00 a.m. PST - 7:00 a.m. PST today (January 26).

• Aegwynn
• Akama
• Aman'Thul
• Barthilas
• Blackrock
• Chromaggus
• Dath'Remar
• Draka
• Drak'thul
• Eitrigg

The full list of affected realms await after the jump!

Steve Irwin, if he played World of Warcraft, would have been one hell of a Nelf Hunter. We obviously know what his pet would have been, that's for sure.

That being said, some folks over at the Frostwolf server are planning to hold an in-game memorial service for Irwin. The original proposal given by Bubbrubb, the original poster, was to have a memorial on the shores of the Zoram Strand, south of Auberdine. Of course, some people are more or less inclined to want it someplace with actual crocodiles/crocolisks, such as Dustwallow Marsh, followed with a proper memorial of video coverage and a screenshot of someone taming a crocodile for the heart signs.

Here's Bubbrubb's original post:
 

I am deeply saddened by the tragic loss of Steve Irwin, as you all are I'm sure. We need to pay our respects to this man and lay his Azerothian soul to rest , so I propose a memorial service at the serene ocean front setting of the Zoram Strand. I would like to spell out CRIKEY with players as a tribute to his wonderous catch phrase, and then we can dance and swim in the ocean to celebrate his life instead of mourning his death. Horde and Alliance are welcome to come say your goodbyes. If people are interested, we can set a specific time. It would also be good if someone could record a video of it to put it on youtube.

The only thing that's somewhat scary about it is Frostwolf is PVP. You got that right. Doing this on Frostwolf means there's a chance that we could be seeing another funeral/memorial ganking video, instead of a solemn memorial.  Because of this, there are also people asking that the service be moved to a PVE server, but plans for this memorial journey haven't been finalized yet.

If you play WoW, you may want to give the forums a visit for that, and if you want to join in, let them know. Just don't gank people, okay?