It’s a long maintenance day for WoW as we get ready for Plunderstorm — maintenance is over, and now Plunderstorm is live

Love it our hate it, the Plunderstorm PVP event is returning to modern WoW today, giving us a chance to earn brand new (recolored) piratical transmog. But after being spoiled by several weeks of quick maintenance cycles, this week the modern WoW servers were scheduled to be down from 7am to 1pm 3pm pacific time after maintenance was extended, and they came up a little early and are now live. WoW Classic and Cataclysm Classic realms were down for even less time, only a brief hour from 7am to 8am pacific, and are already back up. All WoW servers are now back online and available for play, and so is Plunderstorm!

Is rolling out Plunderstorm such an ordeal that it requires six eight hours of downtime? It certainly seems that way… because the modern WoW servers came back online with one slight snag: Plunderstorm was nowhere to be found, much like us hiding in a bush while we play Plunderstorm. While there were more technical hurdles than anticipated, after an additional hour and a half on hiatus, Plunderstorm is now live and ready to play. If you’d like something to do while you wait in the lobby, I do have a few content recommendations for you.

So what’s a WoW player to do during this extended downtime? With Classic servers already back online, you could shift the era in which you’re playing — and even though Cataclysm Classic is in a bit of a lull while we wait for Phase 4, Anniversary realms and Season of Discovery realms continue to go strong. But rolling a new WoW character is a commitment, so let me point you to Diablo 3 and Diablo 4, both of which are about to have a season rollover: Diablo 3 Season 33 ends on January 19 (with a new season to follow on January 24) and Diablo 4 Season 6 ends (and Season 7 beings) on January 21. That means you have a little time to catch up on any seasonal goals to close out the season (or you could just log in and smash things for a few hours while waiting for the WoW realms to come back online). And if Diablo just isn’t doing it for you, Path of Exile 2 is currently in early access for a similar-but-different kind of button smashing ARPG fun.

Or maybe it’s time for a little break from screens. Take a nap, read a book, go for a walk (a walk around the house counts if the weather is too miserable to venture out) or do what I’ll probably do and spend several hours scrolling through feng shui videos on YouTube. Is it a good use of my time? Probably not, but it’s an excellent way to make hours disappear.

All WoW servers are back online, and Plunderstorm is now live, after a short hiccup. I’ll see you on the other side of today’s maintenance, possibly on a parrot zooming at high speed down to the Arathi countryside.