There are more server outages hitting this afternoon, unfortunately impacting the same realms that were down for around ten hours last night. The Seattle datacenter was hit with a nasty power outage yesterday, but we currently don’t know the reasons for the current downtime. There are no blue responses yet, but my gut says there’s some lingering damage that will need to be dealt with this afternoon.

Then again, we might be lucky and they’ll be back in ten minutes. Who knows with these things? Keep an eye on WoW.com and we’ll keep you posted should we hear anything. If you’re not sure if you’re part of one of these battlegroups, the full list is behind the cut.

Update #1: Blizzard is aware of the issue. Not much else at the moment.
Update #2: Looks like most servers are coming up. Our poor friends on Quel’Dorei are still down for the count.
Update #3: Maintenance on these realms not necessarily ‘done’ says Malkorix.
Update 11:57pm: Both battlegroups went down 12 minutes ago. More as we know it.
Update 12:18am: Blizzard says they are working on it and that any compensation will come after the problems have been resolved.
Update 3:37am: The servers are up temporarily, but will be intermittently taken down while they continue to resolve the underlying problem.

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Sometimes you’d like to know that there are other MMOs out there, right? Our sister site Massively can provide you with everything you need to know about all those other shiny MMOs! Check out this roundup of the latest news from the wider MMO world.

	A visual tour of LotRO: Siege of Mirkwood If you haven’t had a chance to see Turbine’s latest creation, check out our video tour of the expansion just after the jump below. Also, be sure to watch Massively for more coverage on Siege of Mirkwood from now to December 1st and beyond!
	Win 15 months of EVE Online gametime with Massively We let you know earlier this week that Massively is running a contest where you can win up to 15 months of EVE Online game time! We’re kicking this off today, and the contest will run over two weeks leading up to the Dominion expansion launch.
	MMOrigins: The only living boy in Vana’diel When I was still young, I was out on a walk with my father in the woods next to my great-aunt’s house. The woods were an offshoot of the Devil’s Hopyard state park, which meant that they were old and vast. As the family often congregated around the house, there were a number of paths we knew that wove their way through the forest, but I remember where we always stopped, and I remember the day when I asked what was further along.
	Star Trek Online open beta dates announced According to a press release put out today, Star Trek Online will hold its open beta from January 12th through January 26th. There are some preorder deals that will give you an open beta key, and there are bound to be numerous opportunities to win one at various spots around the net.

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Now this is interesting. Our old friend Jesta, who made the EpicAdvice.com site not so long ago, is working on a new project at EpicPlan.com, and while it’s still hidden away in pre-alpha, you can see what they’re up to in this thread on EA. It’s a slideshow/diagramming web app, basically — you can take maps of the game’s instances, lay out icons and symbols on them as you wish, and then animate and caption boss fights and encounters. The end result is a very clear way to show off different raid strategies, and we’re told the slideshows are embeddable on other sites as well (you may even see some here eventually on WoW.com).

Unfortunately, they’re only taking signups for the beta of the service right now, and while you can watch a show in action on the technology demo, you can’t make your own quite yet. But it seems like a very impressive tool for raidleaders, both to share plans with the public and players seeking help, as well as your own raid members. It’ll be great to be able to make a quick and easy visual display of where to stand and what to do during boss fights and instance encounters.

Following up on their neat entry for Ulduar, Blizzard has released their newest Bosstiary, this time for The Frozen Halls, the collection of new Icecrown 5-man dungeons coming with Patch 3.3. The site serves as an encyclopedia of information on the many and varied bosses of the Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, and Halls of Reflection.

The Bosstiaries often have information that the dungeons never really give you; for example, who knew that Auriaya was the Titans’ librarian? Nobody, that’s who. We just wondered why the heck she was wandering around Ulduar with a bunch of cats and a bad attitude. But now you can go into the Frozen Halls and know exactly who you’re fighting and why, replete with marks on the map indicating the position of the bosses and the instance entrance.

The Forge of Souls sees us freeing the souls of innocents from Arthas’ Soul Grinder machines, run by Bronjahm, Godfather of Souls. Guarding the machines and preventing souls from escaping is the Devourer of Souls.

The Pit of Saron is Arthas’ saronite mining operation; Krick, a leper gnome, oversees the operation from atop his abomination, Ick. Forgemaster Garfrost shapes the saronite into weapons of destruction under Arthas’ command, and Scourgelord Tyrannus lords over the pit with his fearsome Scourge powers.
The Halls of Reflection are Arthas’ private quarters, guarded by his lieutenants in life, Falric and Marwyn. Inside, Arthas himself keeps Frostmourne locked away from those who would try to use it against him.

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com’s Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

It seems like every Wrath patch brings with it more items than the last by an order of magnitude. It was eight hundred of ‘em for 3.1, between the Argent Tournament and Ulduar, and now Ghostcrawler says that 1400 more PvE items will be packed in every box of Patch 3.3, including our big orange buddy up there.

Given the recent interview with Cory Stockton and our man GC, it seems like there’s a lot of attention going into itemization for all of the Icecrown gear, and thus it’s actually a little surprising that there’s so darn much of it. And there’s a ton of new kinds of procs, set bonuses, et cetera, building on the “Epic. Cool things. Proc’y stuff.” mentality that GC says Icecrown items are all based on.

Then again, with what’s going down with items in Cataclysm, fourteen hundred new items seem downright mundane in comparison. It must seem that way to Ghostcrawler, too, given that this whole comment off-handedly came out in a post where someone was loudly complaining about an itemization bug on a piece of Icecrown gear. That’s casual conversation for ol’ Greg. “Yeah, put the finishing touches on 1400 new items today. Figure later I’ll get the number of that waitress at Applebee’s. Tomorrow I personally reitemize all of the old-world quests for Cataclysm. I’ll get up around noon, probably leave work at 3:30 or so.”

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com’s Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

Our friends at Joystiq reported on this fascinating survey by GamesIndustry.com that broke down responses from 13,000 US and EU citizens about how they spend their gaming time. While they don’t have specific numbers for World of Warcraft, the survey says [PDF link] that overall, 15% of gaming time is spent playing MMOs. US players spend about 14% of their gaming time on MMOs, while EU players range from 8% to 16% by country. In the EU, 14% of all players have played an MMO, and in the US, 21% of everyone playing games has played a massively multiplayer online game.

Again, these numbers aren’t specifically for World of Warcraft (and because the survey went down to age 8 and up, they do include the vast virtual worlds aimed at children, like Club Penguin and Disney’s Toontown, which probably throw the numbers off quite a bit), but they do show the effect that WoW has had on the gaming population over the last five years. Five years ago, MMOs were definitely a niche — some hardcore gamers played them, but most people didn’t have the Internet connections to play an online game, much less pay a subscription for one. Nowadays, MMOs represent over one out of every ten minutes of overall playtime, and those numbers are only going to go up.

Ah, Kirin Tor rings. We’ve come to rely on these old standbys as gear that’ll always be there for us. Especially if “we” are elemental shamans. But what’s going on with them in Patch 3.3?

Surprising no one, Bornakk confirmed recently that there’s a new set of Kirin Tor rings on the way for those with lots of disposable income in Patch 3.3. With an item level of 251, they’re a significant upgrade to the 226 ring you upgraded back when Ulduar came out. You should expect the upgrade process to cost about as much as the last one — that is, 1000 gold pre-faction discount.

Good to see that they’re seeing this ring thing through to the end of the expansion. The initial investment is a bit steep, but hey, free Dalaran portal, and the upgrade price is pretty reasonable as you go.

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com’s Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

Pilgrim’s Bounty is a brand-new holiday that in 2009 will run between 1:00 am server time Sunday, November 22nd and 11:50 pm server time Saturday, November 28th. Because it’s new and there’s limited information available on it, expect to see this post updated extensively in the 24 hours after the holiday goes live. We’ll have new information on quests, items, and vendor locations, plus screenshots of WoW’s newest holiday.

As an FYI, Pilgrim’s Bounty is not part of the yearlong meta What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been, so if you fall short on any of the achievements below, you’re not running the risk of having to wait another year for a crack at a violet protodrake. However, you will miss out on the Pilgrim title and plump turkey pet that are rewards for completing the Pilgrim meta.

Let’s get started!

“FOOD FIGHT!” (Alliance) and “FOOD FIGHT!” (Horde)

This is a pretty simple achievement that entails bouncing food off another player’s head at a Bountiful Table, which I assume will be accomplished via targeting them and right-clicking a food item in your bags or on the table itself.

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Okay, I admit it: waiting for Icecrown has started to drive me a little nuts.

Possibly it’s as bad as it is because this time I’m much more aware of the incoming patch than I have been for previous ones. I’ve run the new five mans on the PTR and kept up with the Quel’Delar questline and watched the raid testing on streams. Meanwhile, one of my oldest WoW friends will not shut up about Blood Elf Warriors in Cataclysm. Seriously, he will not be quiet. I’ve tried ordering him to be quiet but then he just starts nattering on about the violence inherent in the system.

To a degree, all of this waiting for future patches and expansions is kind of getting in the way of enjoying what we have now. I’m starting to feel like I’ve lost track of all the current raiding and instance content and am just standing around trying to raid a dungeon that’s not even in the game yet. (And it doesn’t help with the song of Skinny the Belf Fury Warrior constantly ringing in my ears, either.) So now I turn once again to you, the viewers at home, and ask if you’re feeling anticipation syndrome or not.

Cocles over at Loregy.com (who I actually got to meet the other day — good guy, and check out his license plate) has an interesting idea about something he spotted in the information about the Cataclysm zones the other day. Thousand Needles is getting a revamp, including possibly a new instance, and Cocles says that could mean something awesome: the return of the Grimtotem clan (just a warning: there is a more serious spoiler later in that post).

I’m in. I love the “dark Tauren,” and would love to see more from them. Plus, while we’ve seen plenty of troll instances, Cocles says we haven’t seen a Tauren instance in the game (and all we can think of is good old Mr. Smite). And we haven’t really heard from the Grimtotems since that whole issue with the spirit beast taming. It’d be nice to fight some cows for once.

There’s lots of lore to mine there, too: Magatha is the reigning matriarch of the clan, and not only is she buddies with the Forsaken (obviously there’s been something happening with them during Wrath), but she’s rivals with Cairne Bloodhoof as well. It would definitely be interesting. Of course, this is all speculation — we aren’t sure that there will even be an instance in Thousand Needles, much less that it’ll be Grimtotem based (the whole place is getting flooded, so anything could happen — maybe the Naga will get a “fin-hold” there). But the idea of taking on the Grimtotem again seems like fun.