Long maintenance precedes WoW patch 11.1.5 launch, but all realms are now back online!

Tuesday maintenance was a long one for modern World of Warcraft placers, but servers came back up about an hour early with WoW patch 11.1.5 launching relatively smoothly. The new patch has quite a bit of content, but has a staggered launch so all that not all of its new content will go live at once. When the servers come back up today we’ll have the new Nightfall event in Hallowfall, the Winds of Mysterious Fortune XP and reputation buff event, and quality of life changes including a built-in cooldown manager and making Shadowlands reputations Warband-wide. Nice additions to be sure, but we’ll have to wait for Horrific Visions Revisited and Dastardly Duos, which will launch in May and June, respectively. Check out our overview of patch 11.1.5 for a quick rundown on what’s coming in patch and check the final patch notes for full details on all features.

However, before we get to that point we have some maintenance to make it through. Here’s the maintenance schedule for Tuesday, April 22:

• The War Within: Offline from 7am – 3pm pacific (10am – 6pm eastern)
• Cataclysm Classic: Offline from 7am – 8am pacific (10am – 11am eastern)
• WoW Classic (including Classic Era, Season of Discovery, Anniversary, and Hardcore realms): Offline from 7am – 8am pacific (10am – 11am eastern)

All WoW servers are now back online!

The good news is that Classic servers are already back online. The bad news is that modern WoW won’t be, with maintenance stretching well through the day. (The good news from the bad news is that modern players could take this as an invitation to spend a few hours in Classic today while waiting out maintenance. Even if you aren’t very inclined towards Classic, Season of Discovery is a whole new game for the exploring.)

If you are in need of additional distraction this afternoon, you could always watch this video of cows listening to jazz (excuse the resolution, it’s 13 years old) or this video of a gentleman playing piano for an elephant. (Just be warned that once you watch one animals-listening-to-music video, YouTube will start recommending more which you will probably also want to watch.) Or if you’d like something more seasonal, we did make a post of adorable bunnies just in time for Noblegarden (even as Noblegarden in modern WoW seems to have gone to the ducks).

All WoW realms are now back online (and early)! So get in and get gaming — I’ll see you in Azeroth.