World of Warcraft Servers Coming to Australia, Turned on Next Week

Post by Eorl @ 08:50pm 23/10/14 | 100 Comments

After nearly 10 years of suffering a fluctuating 1000ms to 200ms, Blizzard has finally announced what many Australian players never thought would happen: local Australian servers for World of Warcraft (thanks Rominion!).

Yes, this is not some kind of dream and it is indeed happening. The news was announced just moments ago at Blizzard's pre-Warlords of Draenor event in Sydney, with the most simplest way possible: a slide with the words "Australian Servers."

The servers will apparently be turned on during next week's Tuesday maintenance, with free character and guild master realm transfers being offered off North American servers.

“Players currently on an Oceanic realm—Barthilas, Frostmourne, Thaurissan, Saurfang, Caelestrasz, Jubei’Thos, Khaz’goroth, Aman’Thul, Nagrand, Dath’Remar, Dreadmaul, and Gundrak—should automatically experience improved latency once the new game servers go live,” say Blizzard. “To help those currently adventuring on North American realms, such as Blackrock and Proudmoore, optional free character and guild master realm transfers will be offered for a limited time.”

“We want new and returning World of Warcraft players in Australia and New Zealand to have the best possible experience with Warlords of Draenor,” said Paul Sams, chief operating officer of Blizzard Entertainment. “We’re pleased to be able to roll out local realms in time for the expansion’s launch and give Aussie and Kiwi players the ability to fight the Iron Horde from their home turf.”

Blizzard has also offered up a FAQ to answer any and all questions you might have, which you can check out over here.

world of warcraft australian servers oceanic mmorpg blizzard

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Latest Comments

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Reverend Evil�
Posted 12:08am 24/10/14

Found a PVE oceanic server called Caelestrasz that surprisingly didn't have the common name I use taken. Looks like I'll be making that place home.

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DX_Cow
Posted 12:43am 24/10/14

holy cray, i posted before about local servers, i didn't think it was going to happen. and next week.. !!

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Lynx
Posted 12:59am 24/10/14

YES!
Just need to choose a server to transfer too. Ally blackrock atm

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Jeffro
Posted 01:20am 24/10/14

This is awesome news. WoW on 30ms is going to rock.

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NiTrat3
Posted 01:35am 24/10/14

Frostmourne, Barthilas and at the very least Saurfang are the most populated with Aus players from my experience playing in them. I dunno about the others mentioned, but those three are definitely populated by Aussies...and Kiwis.

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koopz
Posted 02:13am 24/10/14

I once used to joke at meetings that I would play WarCraft one day when I retired just so I would know what all of the fuss was about

oddly - my words came back to bite me.

10 years at Computer Alliance Pty Ltd did not serve me as well as it should have.

I didn't play/excel at the video game the 2IC played.

pick your game carefully folks :/

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BladeRunner
Posted 02:29am 24/10/14

Its nice that they are doing this but I don't think I will be coming back. If I did it would probably be for a month or 2.

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TiT
Posted 11:05am 24/10/14

I have never played this game

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Enska
Posted 11:16am 24/10/14

I wonder what it's like to wipe a 25m at 30ms , so excited

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Khel
Posted 11:25am 24/10/14

Will be great for those cases where you *just* get out of the way of something in time but because of latency, the server thinks you're still in it and you get hit anyway. Will be nice to move out of things and ACTUALLY be out of them. Also be good for those clutch saves when healing, so many times on my priest have I tried lifegripping someone out the way only to find myself lifegripping their corpse instead, or trying to put wings on someone and having them die anyway before it goes through.

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ravn0s
Posted 11:56am 24/10/14

I have never played this game

I only played it for a month. I got bored so I went back to DAoC.

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Phandaal
Posted 12:25pm 24/10/14

Exciting enough to get me to reinstall, but I can't see myself staying for long.

Also, pvp battlegrounds vs US players will still be on US servers...

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Hogfather
Posted 12:28pm 24/10/14

Also, pvp battlegrounds vs US players will still be on US servers...

I thought it was going to try to create PVP matches on AU and fallback to US?

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Khel
Posted 12:33pm 24/10/14

Yeah, it will try to match locally and create on local servers first, and only fall back to matching with US if it can't.

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Eorl
Posted 01:02pm 24/10/14

Whelp, re-subscribing for a month I guess. I'll test out the servers and see if it changes my attitude towards the game.

Will be very interesting to see if my time spent playing WoW for the past 10 years at 200ms - 1000ms has made me the better player, and my reflexes will be super amazing. I doubt this.

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deadlyf
Posted 01:06pm 24/10/14

I'd love to know what some of you have spent on this game over the years. I played WoW for 3 years but only really enjoyed the actual game during vanilla and the rest of the time it was just a social platform. The big decider on finally pulling the plug for me was when I worked out how much money I had dumped into the game, pretty sure I had worked it out to being more than $1000. I did come back for the 4th (I think) expansion but only played for like a month before quitting again.

Having Australian servers doesn't change the way I feel about the game at all, even if they had them from the start I would have still quit playing a long time ago because it's just not that good of a game to be spending that kind of money on.

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glynd
Posted 01:25pm 24/10/14

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Vash
Posted 01:26pm 24/10/14

Working out how much money you've spent on the game is kinda silly. Consider how much money you've saved not buying other games, or going out instead of playing WoW. By that logic, WoW has saved you money.
It's just an allocation of entertainment spending.

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glynd
Posted 01:34pm 24/10/14

I just go by the movie equation...$20 = 3 hours of entertainment. If I'm spending at least 2-3 hours of playing WoW a month, I'm definitely getting my monies worth. If I spend $60 on a game, I expect to at least get 9 hours.

WoW is a hit or miss for people but it is definitely one of (if not) my favourite game of all time. So ecstatic about this and so glad it's coming so soon. I've just gotta kill the final boss of the green fire questline before WoD comes :\

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Khel
Posted 02:00pm 24/10/14

I've just gotta kill the final boss of the green fire questline before WoD comes

Should have done it before the 6.0 patch! You would have got a cool title, "Of the Black Harvest". But yeah, that boss was a b**** to kill

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glynd
Posted 02:23pm 24/10/14

Should have done it before the 6.0 patch! You would have got a cool title, "Of the Black Harvest". But yeah, that boss was a b**** to kill

I've only tried it once to see what it's like so i'll look up some guides this weekend.

and nah, found out that the title / achievement is still active up to the release of WoD! So pretty keen to get it done over the next couple weeks.

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Dazhel
Posted 02:44pm 24/10/14

woah... only took them 10 years

They'll definitely need to send the server hardware via express shipping next time.

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DX_Cow
Posted 02:52pm 24/10/14

Last time I played was Cataclysm, do I need to buy Mists of Pandaria to play Warlords of Draenor?

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Khel
Posted 03:03pm 24/10/14

Nope, all the expansions up to Warlords are now included in the base game, so if you've already got a WoW account you've already got everything including Mists

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deadlyf
Posted 03:27pm 24/10/14

Working out how much money you've spent on the game is kinda silly. Consider how much money you've saved not buying other games, or going out instead of playing WoW. By that logic, WoW has saved you money.
It's just an allocation of entertainment spending.

Not at all.

Firstly I am genuinely curious as to how much it has cost people who have played for the 10 years or so the game has been running.

Secondly, you can't say that money you spent on WoW would have gone to anything else. You certainly would have spent that money elsewhere but you can't say for sure what that would have been. For instance I could say the $1000 over 3 years I spent on the game could have bought me 20 full priced games but it's very unlikely that I would have bought 20 full priced games and any games I really wanted to play I bought regardless. There are plenty of really good f2p MMO's out now days as well so the entertainment money thing holds even less weight.

I'm simply not interested in what you might have alternatively spent the money on, I get that people enjoy the game and don't regret spending money on it. I certainly don't regret spending the money for at least the first 24 months of my play time. In fact I regret more that I wasn't able to find the game as fun as it used to be for me than anything else. Any money you spend on something you enjoy is money well spent, I'm just curious as to how much it has been for some people.

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Zapo
Posted 03:50pm 24/10/14

It's pretty straight forward, $15 per month + base game + soon to be 5 expansions. You could have spent over $2k if you had played the entire game the whole time on a monthly sub, so no recurring monthly discounts.

$2k over 10 years, not exactly a lot of dosh either. I don't' see why you needed the magical Internet to work that out for you.

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glynd
Posted 03:53pm 24/10/14

If you've played since launch.

Game: $80
Expansions (up to and including WoD): 5 x 40 = $200
Subscription: 12 x 10 x 16 = $1920
-----------------------
$2200 or $18.30 a month.

So you could have bought a 6 pack of beer a month.

Server, faction, race changes obviously extra.

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deadlyf
Posted 04:10pm 24/10/14

It's pretty straight forward, $15 per month + base game + soon to be 5 expansions. You could have spent over $2k if you had played the entire game the whole time on a monthly sub, so no recurring monthly discounts.

$2k over 10 years, not exactly a lot of dosh either. I don't' see why you needed the magical Internet to work that out for you.

I'm not asking how much you could have spent, I'm asking how much you did spend. Not a hard question sure but also not something I can know without knowing if you were subbed the entire time, what kind of exchange rate was in effect, if you paid for character transfers, extra accounts or vanity mounts/pets.

If people genuinely don't know how much they have spent, even as a rough estimate then that's fair enough. It's just idle curiosity, I'm not going to be all like "oh s*** son you could have spent that on beer and skittles".

If you are too embarrassed to post it then that's fine as well, I'm certainly sensing a lot of defensiveness, I don't think it's something to be ashamed about though.

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Hogfather
Posted 04:13pm 24/10/14

Probably 3 or 4k into WoW. All good, high rolla motherf***as

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Keato
Posted 05:46pm 24/10/14

I want to go back to previous thread and reply to all the dips**** posting "NEVER HAPPEN" "I KNOW!!!" makes me laugh, such wankers

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Newgo
Posted 07:07pm 24/10/14

From memory frostmourne is a great server if you roll alliance and barthilas if you roll horde.

For the Horde B******!! Haha

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Hogfather
Posted 07:12pm 24/10/14

I want to go back to previous thread and reply to all the dips**** posting "NEVER HAPPEN" "I KNOW!!!" makes me laugh, such wankers

haha truth

I said when they put in d3 servers that it might be good news for wow, so I got that going for me.

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Zapo
Posted 07:14pm 24/10/14

With MSoft and Amazon both having Data Centres here it's not surprising. I think the days of us not having severs for popular games are well and truly gone.

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Eorl
Posted 07:34pm 24/10/14

It was pretty clear from the time they announced Diablo 3 Oceanic servers and Heroes of the Storm Oceanic servers that World of Warcraft would be next, just when was the question. Not many people seem to be touching on this but the choice to bring Oceanic servers to World of Warcraft has ginormous effects on Blizzard. Not only the goodwill of Australian/New Zealand players, but this choice now allows Blizzard to go against other MMO's with these servers.

If WildStar was to launch in two weeks time, no one would move there even if the gameplay is absolutely amazing. We have finally received low-ping servers for a rather big MMO, so why bother sacrificing that enjoyment for high-ping again? Just like Star Wars, everyone absolutely loved it and some may have even played purely because of the local server option. This is ammo for Blizzard when it comes to future MMO's hitting up against WoW.

Of course, this isn't taking into fact that Blizzard is pretty much future-proofing any present and upcoming games. They now have the option to rollout Oceanic servers on launch for whatever they want, meaning no twiddling our thumbs wondering if we'll get anything. That alone is pretty huge.

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groganus
Posted 08:00pm 24/10/14

I want to go back to previous thread and reply to all the dips**** posting "NEVER HAPPEN" "I KNOW!!!" makes me laugh, such wankers

Don't be an idiot. These exclamations aren't widely thrown around, they are based on that fact that for 10 years blizzard have constantly said that they know people want it but they won't be doing it any time soon. People give up any hope and its fair enough to be in utter disbelief when rumours of local servers fly around.

On that note, this is great news. I may just play for a bit again, if I can find time.

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DK
Posted 10:42am 26/10/14

7 days free game time given until 5th of Nov. Go into your battlenet account

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glynd
Posted 11:23am 26/10/14

Should have done it before the 6.0 patch! You would have got a cool title, "Of the Black Harvest". But yeah, that boss was a b**** to kill

F***** finally did it and achievement / title definitely still available...f*** yeah!

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DK
Posted 12:09pm 26/10/14

Fk you blizzard you got me again.

Gone back to where it all began, frostmourne level 90 night elf hunter. Who is going to be levelling on that server? Can I add some people cause I have no buddies who play wow any more :(

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Reverend Evil�
Posted 01:44pm 26/10/14

Whats the deal with moving a guild to these servers. Will it be free as well?

EDIT: Looks like you pay but get a refund...

Hi all, I know there are plenty of questions! We have been really busy this morning as you would expect with the announcement so sorry we couldn't clarify this earlier.

Transfers will be refunded back to your original payment method. (Credit card, paypal and bnet balance)

As long as the destination is a Oceanic realm the cost of the transfer will be refunded. The only exception to this is Frostmourne, which you cannot transfer to due to existing high population.

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Khel
Posted 02:02pm 26/10/14

F***** finally did it and achievement / title definitely still available...f*** yeah!

Nice! It's a pretty sweet title

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Meddek
Posted 08:48am 27/10/14

F***** finally did it and achievement / title definitely still available...f*** yeah!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApnZHj7UgsbBdDNZWS1tcEpBcmlIOTY5YVZ4SnFYc3c&usp=sharing#gid=0

Battle.Net IDs are listed, I don't play on Frostmourne but Jubei'Thos but all the PvP servers are linked now.

Nice! It's a pretty sweet title

Best title for me is still the Bloodsail Admiral, I had so much fun getting that with a group of mates!

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Khel
Posted 08:49am 27/10/14

I still mostly use my Hand of A'dal title, for nostalgia's sake

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Hogfather
Posted 10:55am 27/10/14

Sergeant, because the best PvP in WoW's history was the epic Southshore vs. Tarren Mill open world tug of war.

Never forget.

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Meddek
Posted 03:42pm 27/10/14

My Druid is Knight which I run with

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icewyrm
Posted 04:34pm 27/10/14

I never got into it myself (although I tried it for a short while) but I'm really interested to know what prompted this. Did they manage to wrangle a good deal for hosting and transit after all these years or something?

I wonder whether there's any implications this might have for other big players in the industry.

Of course we do have some other big games with hosts here nowadays. It's interesting how a lot of free to play titles have set up here, makes the cost argument seem as flippant and irrelevant as ever.

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Jeffro
Posted 05:06pm 27/10/14

I'm really interested to know what prompted this. Did they manage to wrangle a good deal for hosting and transit after all these years or something?

I have been hearing a lot of different stories but they all point to a couple of big ISPs that caused the hold up.

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Hogfather
Posted 05:36pm 27/10/14

So, what you're saying Jeffro is that all those people who for f*****g YEARS rammed down our throats the story that the AU region was too tiny and insignificant were just making s*** up, and instead Australia was (once a-f*****g-gain) being skullf***ed by Telstra/Foxtel/Murdoch, our very own Axis of Evil.

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Jeffro
Posted 06:07pm 27/10/14

So, what you're saying Jeffro is that all those people who for f*****g YEARS rammed down our throats the story that the AU region was too tiny and insignificant were just making s*** up, and instead Australia was (once a-f*****g-gain) being skullf***ed by Telstra/Foxtel/Murdoch, our very own Axis of Evil.

The most credible story I have heard so far is that WoW would of already had servers had Telstra had their way but they would of been in Singapore. Optus were the ones that blocked that from happening for years because of their routing.

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Hogfather
Posted 07:40pm 27/10/14

Singapore would be an SEA server, not AU. We had one of those for SC2, twas bollocks.

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Jeffro
Posted 03:52am 28/10/14

Blizzard ended up striking a deal with iNet. That's who made it possible. Not Telstra or Optus.

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Eorl
Posted 07:54am 28/10/14

If it turns out to be iiNet I'm all for it. Hopefully that means free quota for Internode.

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Meddek
Posted 10:47am 28/10/14

Kill Garry last night with my guild and got a nice BOA mace upgrade.

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glynd
Posted 11:59am 28/10/14

If it turns out to be iiNet I'm all for it. Hopefully that means free quota for Internode.

Just saw this:

http://games.on.net/2014/10/world-of-warcraft-australian-servers/

The servers will be hosted in the same data centre that powers the Australian Diablo 3 and Heroes of the Storm servers, which means iiNet customers get faster-than-normal access thanks to the peering arrangement we worked out, just for you.

Which that "link" would also send you here about the Diablo 3 + HOTS server:

http://games.on.net/2014/03/diablo-3s-australian-servers-are-now-online-and-iinet-group-customers-get-the-fastest-access/

What does this mean? It means that weâ€™ve set up a behind-the-scenes system to ensure that Diablo 3 players on iiNet, Internode, Adam or any of our other ISPs get faster, prioritised traffic to these new servers.

Free Quota and Priority Access? Winner winner chicken dinner

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Khel
Posted 12:05pm 28/10/14

Well its not like WoW uses tonnes of quota, so that was never a issue for me, but I do like the sound of prioritised traffic

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TicMan
Posted 01:32pm 28/10/14

I don't like the usage of the word prioritised.. isn't this the basis of the whole net neutrality thing going on in the US?

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Khel
Posted 01:39pm 28/10/14

I dunno if it means actually prioritised, or just that they have a more direct route to the servers and say 'prioritised' because its easier for people to conceptualise

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Hogfather
Posted 01:53pm 28/10/14

I'm hoping it means that they have a dedicated fat pipe to the dc for their people, that's fine.

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glynd
Posted 02:11pm 28/10/14

the word "prioritised" was only used in the Diablo/HOTS article. But as hoggy said, I think it's just dedicated pipe for iiNet peeps. Either way, I'm happy I switched from Telstra to iiNet. Telstra no longer uncapped Steam. removal of servers and removal of Ausgamers support. Glad I moved on.

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team666
Posted 01:11am 29/10/14

come to frostmourne best server join ma guild :D @team666

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Eorl
Posted 08:12am 29/10/14

S*** yeah than, good thing I went Internode after I moved.

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Meddek
Posted 08:41am 29/10/14

enjoy your 18ms for being with iinet and i'll enjoy my 28ms lol either way it's still better then the 250ms

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Hogfather
Posted 10:20am 29/10/14

Oceania down for another 24 hours for the move :(

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Khel
Posted 11:59am 29/10/14

come to frostmourne best server join ma guild

Except free transfers aren't available to frostmourne.

Also, its full of tools

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glynd
Posted 03:31pm 29/10/14

Oceania down for another 24 hours for the move :(

Wednesday, October 29, at 3:00 AM PDT - so 9pm tonight?

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Deviouz
Posted 04:47pm 29/10/14

They are online NOW - 21ms wooopp

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Meddek
Posted 04:51pm 29/10/14

Wednesday, October 29, at 3:00 AM PDT - so 9pm tonight?

Assuming there are no issues

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Tiny
Posted 04:54pm 29/10/14

All of the oceanic servers are now back up. Looking forward to checking out ping when i get home. 10 years and i can finally move out of the fire.

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Hogfather
Posted 05:15pm 29/10/14

From Cairns about 60ms home and world :)

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glynd
Posted 06:23pm 29/10/14

Melbourne - 28ms home. 64ms world

soooo good

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Lynx
Posted 07:17pm 29/10/14

Except free transfers aren't available to frostmourne.

baww what? Am I going to have to move to a low pop server?

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Khel
Posted 09:11pm 29/10/14

I think maybe you can still transfer there, it's just not free

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Lynx
Posted 09:40pm 29/10/14

I don't want to pay $20*11. I'll head to Amun'thul.

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TicMan
Posted 10:19pm 29/10/14

Players who are currently on a North American realm will be offered a two-week window to transfer their characters to one of the existing Oceanic realms. While players will be required to purchase a paid Character Transfer service for each character they wish to relocate, full refunds for each toon moved will be automatically processed and returned within 72 hours.

It's only in the FAQ.

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Khel
Posted 12:44am 30/10/14

Please note that due to its high player population, Frostmourne will not be an eligible transfer destination. Players currently on Frostmourne will be able to initiate optional, free character transfers to other Oceanic realms at no cost if they wish to relocate.

Also from the FAQ

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TicMan
Posted 01:01am 30/10/14

Oh missed that bit, but really it seems server choice means nothing now with all the cross realm work?

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Khel
Posted 09:12am 30/10/14

Yeah it doesn't mean much, mythic raiding is about the only thing that isn't cross realm now.

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Lynx
Posted 11:23am 30/10/14

Do guilds span realms yet?

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Khel
Posted 11:50am 30/10/14

Depends, some realms are connected to each other, and in that case yes, the AH and guilds and mail and everything spans all the connected realms in that clump and to all intents and purposes, that cluster of connected realms acts like one realm. Higher pop realms though generally aren't connected, so that stuff doesn't span accross them. You can still do all difficulties of raids besides Mythic cross realm now though, and theres a new premade group finder in 6.0 that makes it pretty easy to form groups for raids or pvp or world bosses or whatever else.

As for the connected oceanic realms:

Caelestrasz and Nagrand are connected.
Dath'Remar and Khaz'goroth are connected.
Dreadmaul and Thaurissan are connected.
Gundrak and Jubei'Thos are connected.

Aman'thul, Barthilas, Frostmourne and Saurfang are not connected and sit by themselves. Regardless of whether they're connected or not though, can still do cross realm groups for dungeons, pvp, raids, etc.

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Lynx
Posted 08:56pm 30/10/14

So connected realms and battlegroups are different things?

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glynd
Posted 09:35pm 30/10/14

So connected realms and battlegroups are different things?

Yep. Battleground is a group of servers that PvP with each other. So when you queue, it's looking for match-ups over several servers.

Connected Realms are exactly that. Two servers co-existing. So I could be running around and seeing people from another server in the open world.

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mick
Posted 09:20pm 03/11/14

yes and it is awesome im getting 40ms and 42-5ms home and world can't believe the diff it makes no wonder people could skin things even if i clicked it first just fantastic to have.

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Jeffro
Posted 02:11am 04/11/14

Yea it's a different game now. I am topping dps charts on my rogue in raids now and never miss interrupts. 36 ms from outer western Brisbane on Internode.

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Khel
Posted 09:09am 04/11/14

22ms on internode for me from Brisbane. Haven't really raided with it, but its really noticeable when doing the dark moon faire stuff, games like the tonk game actually don't feel s*** for a change

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