Although this is old news by now, its still very much up for debate across many threads in the Community Forums. Keep reading for the details.
The whole fiasco surrounding July 22nd’s 12 hour turned 16 hour (and longer for some realms), and the Armory not updating, and missing characters, and loading issues…. Its still a hot debate on the forums. While Community Managers and SFAs (Support Forum Agents) are attempting to keep the peace, a lot of doomsayers claim this is the beginning of the end for WoW. Personally? I don’t feel that way, and here’s why.
World of Warcraft is an MMORPG. That means Massively Multiplayer (7 million+ players) Online Role-playing Game. When you have 7 million+ players accessing over 100 servers in the US alone, its a lot of work to maintain them and make sure they are at peak operating efficiency. Blizzard has a 24 hour support network, automatic system notifications, etc. If a service goes down, system administrators are automatically notified. This is made possible by a system called Nagios. Nagios is a network monitoring package designed to help system administrators pinpoint problems and fix them quickly. Admins can be notified via pager (who uses those anymore?), text message, email, or automated phone call. Here at Warcraft Daily, we use Nagios to notify us if a server goes down. We’re able to fix it almost immediately to ensure you continue to get content. Of course, a web service and an MMORPG are two totally different beasts.
Blizzard SFAs have been fighting forum fires with sticky posts such as:
Good morning folks!
There are a few issues that are currently being looked into.
Character Services Delays.
This is being investigated. At the moment you may see significant delays in processing, but they do seem to be coming through – albeit quite a bit after they would normally process.
Character Boosts
Related to character service delays, also being looked into.
Characters not in the Armory/Armory not updating
Known issue, no eta at the moment – some realms may also not see certain characters on their character services lists.
Missing Characters
If you seem to be missing a character in-game, try making a fresh level one on that realm. That may force your list to update. If that doesn’t help, placing a petition with the name(s)/realm(s) of the characters involved would be the next best step so we can have a look.
Higher Ticket Times
Queues have gone up a bit the last couple of days due to various issues – but if your petition is currently in the 2-3 day range it’s probably from a realm that is having backend work done. To be able to address certain types of issues those need to be held till they can be looked into. Just make sure to leave those open and we’ll be tending to them as soon as possible.
Valor Buff/Raid Locks resetting
Those realms that are having backend work done, unfortunately, that’s a side-effect and not one there is really any resolution for. The same thing happens when a realm is connected. The Valor Buff can be regained by using another character. Things should return to normal by the next maintenance week.
Thank you all very much for your patience, I know the last few days it seems when it rains it pours 
I think Orlyia really summed it up in the last sentence. When it rains, it indeed pours. This is after Blizzard suffered a power outage due to a fire at a local power substation. Although many services were not affected, it definitely had an impact on ticket times.
Please stick with Warcraft Daily on this developing story!