For a rather disappointing World of Warcraft episode-slash-drama for regulars at certain realms, Blizzard announced that they were very much aware that the following U.S. realms still remained down, after a scheduled maintenance downtime executed on Tuesday this week:

 

After almost one hour, Blizzard was able to correct one of the login issues that prevented players from logging onto the realms. But they needed yet another hour to resolve the second issue involved, because the engineers anticipated the need to execute multiple solutions.

But after a realm notification from Molliee, a Level 13 Blood Elf Rogue, stating that Vashj was now up, it seems that Blizzard took less than an hour to bring up some of the realms to fully working status. So daily WoW players, most especially the battlegroup contenders, can now get back to their planned daily grind.

What started the downtime in the first place? We're not sure, and Blizzard didn't care to comment either. But it looks like it could have been related to the authentication maintenance downtime that happened a few days ago, since most of the issues restricted player login access. But if you are experiencing login access problems, you might want to keep Blizzard informed of the situation.

Engineers are becoming more irate than ever as their pleas continue to yield no fruit. Engineers are now demanding a substantially powerful BoP (Bind on pickup) gun that can aid them in PvP arenas and hunts.

Despair is setting in on the community as there is little hope that the time-consuming and costly leveling of the class, it seems, will see an end any time soon. Players find themselves threatening to switch classes if nothing is done about this.

Perhaps the most painful blow came when the useful grenade was nerfed so bad that it hardly even helps in actual combat. Let's not even add insult to injury by mentioning the flares. They make nice fireworks but not much else.

Bottom line, give engineers a good gun, beef the grenade up again and bring in more schematics, Blizzard. That should make everyone happy. It's not like engineers can take over the game, can they?

Life hasn't been to good to engineers lately, says Chris Miller of WoWinsider. Plagued with bugs that prevent you from making potentially useful items and a dire lack of gear to equip as you go up in level have caused a lot of engineers to jump ship and use other classes.

The forum posts reveal that the sadder part is that there's really no patch coming soon  to correct these problems. Blizzard people say that there's one coming "in the future," but players aren't sure how long members of the class can hold on. Miller pondered the whole notion of the engineer's PvP utility, but as grenades are barred from arenas, how many options are left, if any at all?

The community has also viewed Tradeskills as mostly underwhelming. Add to that the fact that flares are almost as negligible as the items that can't be made, and a fiscal issue adds to the already crippling scenario.

Does that sound bad? You haven't heard it all. Follow the read URL and decide if you still want to be an engineer. We're keeping our fingers crossed that Blizzard does something for the engineers to stay.

If you're on one of the newer World of Warcraft servers, you may have noticed a distinct inability to log on and check your leetness quotient in the past few hours. That might be because of an unexplained downtime that Blizzard is working to fix at the moment.

The following realms were affected by the unexpected downtime:

• Area 52
• Auchindoun
• Azuremyst
• Blade's Edge
• Blood Furnace
• Coilfang
• Exodar
• Shattered Halls
• Terokkar
• The Scryers
• The Underbog
• Velen
• Zangarmarsh

As of 2:27 a.m. PST, Drysc has noted that there may be an additional two hours of downtime for the affected servers as Blizzard's engineers work on the problem. We'll try and keep you posted, but for now, you can also watch the thread we're linking to for more information.

Blizzard's Aeus started a thread over at World of Warcraft's official forums regarding updates on various professions. The discussion started with Engineering and eventually ended up with Skinning and Leatherworking. The blue poster commented that the update will be included in the next content patch.

Blizzard also promised to bring back the much-missed LFG Channel in the said patch. Everybody happy now? Well, not quite because those who deal with skinning and leatherwork to up their leatherworking skills feel that they're being overlooked. Aeus explained,

The post you linked (regarding ignored professions) is the same issue we see here is about Outland, so it automatically goes down in the queue. I did not say "bottom" of the queue, just that Engineering comes first. Now that that is settled. We'll bring this up and see what comes out of it. Which does NOT mean we'll be updating it next week. There is NO ETA, there's NO certainty this will be getting looked at next.

WoW Engineers nowadays are having a hard time as there is little demand to buy or sell most items that require their skill to equip or use. This is because potential consumers are engineers as well, potentially able to craft the items for themselves. A good overhaul in the next patch is certainly welcome.

We've already talked about Fel Reavers even when The Burning Crusade was still in beta phase. They're actually level 70 demonic machines which guard the Hellfire Peninsula. Then, a couple of days ago, Blizzard Entertainment provided a fix for the "It's a Fel Reaver, but with Heart" quest to keep the thing from breaking.

A stealth change was implemented last Tuesday to the Gnomish Universal Remote. The change was rather saddening because prior to that, engineers could actually control Fel Reavers and even mechanical mobs in Tempest Keep.

One warrior was even able to control Doomwalker. But because of the fix, everything is nothing but a proud memory now. (If you're not familiar with Doomwalker, it is actually an elite boss Fel Reaver. It can be found outside the Black Temple in Shadowmoon Valley.) The warrior mentioned that it has the same exact abilities as that of a normal Fel Reaver except for a few differences that are more demonic than you can even imagine. For one, Doomwalker is level 80.

The added abilities include a chain lightning that bounced up to 10 times, a 10% sunden armor, and a channeled AOE that does 2000 damage a tick that is known as Earthquake. Oh well, what we can tell the warrior is you're one lucky player and you can boast around Azeroth saying, "I owned Doomwalker once."

Here's another round of bugs, bugs, and more bugs on the World of Warcraft. It concerns the Eye of Kilrogg, Shadoweave Cloth and Spellfire cloth.

First off, the Warlock summon Eye of Kilrogg seems to have gotten sand on its eyes - err... eye. It was reported over at the WoW Europe forums by Golgoth. The Eye of Kilrogg is usually used for scouting and pulling mobs. Apparently, the Eye currently doesn't show any unseen entity out of the player's field of vision. Other scouting skills like the Hunter's Eye of the Beast and the Dream Vision potion are also bugged.

Shadoweave cloth is required to make the Foreman's Enchanted Helmet. The problem that has Payuco at the WoW forums baffled is that the Shadoweave cloth does not exist in game - or atleast not yet. Another item that is still not existent is the Spellfire Cloth, commonly confused with Spellcloth. Spellfire Cloth is a requirement for an epic pattern called Gnomish Power Goggles (for master engineers).

Blizzard posters have assured players that these bugs are currently under investigation and would be addressed possibly on the next patch.

Most World of Warcraft players may already be suffering from community forums posting withdrawal, as today marks the second day that visitors can't view or write posts in the forum due to repairs.

Last September 20, the WoW Team announced that the community forums are currently and will remain offline only for that day, but up until now, the sites aren't up yet. Good thing, they are always giving up to the minute reports on what's going on or else panic stricken fanatics will spell chaos.

September 20

• Engineers are creating a new server to house the forums.
• PvP rankings on the website are also unavailable.

September 21

• Window of resolution has been pushed back due to corruption of data during transfer.
• Community forums will be down for the remainder of the day