Patch 5.1: Realm Event Time Changes

With Patch 5.1: Landfall we’ve reactivated the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza. To accomplish this we reevaluated the way time-based events work in World of Warcraft. The time zone designation for a realm doesn’t always correlate with its real-world location, and that designation has traditionally directed a player to choose a realm that shares their local time. With cross-realm features like zone coalescing (CRZ) and Raid/Dungeon Finder, linking event reset or lockout times to realm times has caused a lot of confusion, such as zones flipping between day and night upon zoning, and created substantial issues with limited-time events, such as Azeroth’s fishing tournaments.

North American Daily Event Times

In Patch 5.1 we’ve moved most time-based events on North American realms to standardized, region-wide times. Below are the updated event times for all North American realms, regardless of your realm’s local time (excluding Oceanic realms).

Times displayed in North American Pacific Standard Time (GMT -8 hours)

Sunrise
5:30 a.m. PST*

Sunset
6:30 p.m. PST*

Daily quests reset
3:00 a.m. PST

Profession cooldowns and farm reset
3:00 a.m. PST

Dungeon & raid lockouts reset
Unchanged (times still shared between NA and Oceanic realms)

Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza begins
2 p.m. PST every Sunday

Battleground holidays
12:00 a.m. every Friday - 12:00 a.m. every Tuesday PST

Darkmoon Faire begins
12:00 a.m. PST first Sunday of every month

Oceanic Daily Event Times

Note that, due to the extreme time zone difference, Oceanic realms have a separate standardized time, and Oceanic realms aren’t coalesced with non-Oceanic realms for cross-realm zones. Oceanic realms are, however, still a part of the North American matchmaking pool for Scenarios, Dungeon Finder, Raid Finder, Battlegrounds, and Arenas, in order to ensure that the matchmaking system is able to draw from a healthy population of players at any given hour. Because of this, raid/dungeon lockouts will continue to reset at the same time for North American and Oceanic realms (i.e. reset times will still vary depending on your local time).

Times displayed as Australian Eastern Standard Time (GMT +10 hours)

Sunrise
5:30 a.m. EST*

Sunset
6:30 p.m. EST*

Daily quests reset
3:00 a.m. EST

Profession cooldowns and farm reset
3:00 a.m. EST

Dungeon & raid lockouts reset
Unchanged (times still shared between NA and Oceanic realms)

Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza begins
2 p.m. EST

Battleground holidays
12:00 a.m. every Friday - 12:00 a.m. every Tuesday EST

Darkmoon Faire begins
12:00 a.m. EST first Sunday of every month

*Day/night changeovers are not currently set to the times listed above and will be updated in a hotfix as soon as possible.

For those folks whose play schedules are adversely affected by this, and who are blaming realm coalescing, let me clarify. It was only a matter of time (get it? ... humph) before we moved to this reset system. The problem with the fishing tournaments and CRZ was just a more blunt reminder that having non-standardized reset times is confusing in a game where realm transfers and cross-realm features are a reality.

We've used a similar system for European realms for quite some time and it's cleaner.

The new system will be better for some people, and worse for others, in terms of life schedules. But people have always had different play schedules that we can't always account for, and there are unavoidable inconveniences in that regard. The new system will just take some adjustment.

I'm on a realm where my dailies have been resetting at 1 a.m. my local time, which I've used to my advantage to do back-to-back dailies many nights before bed. I won't be able to do that anymore. But I don't think that's somehow unfair to me. It's logical, to me, for an online, very "real-time" game on the scale of World of Warcraft to have standardized times for time-based content, similar to a basketball game being broadcast live from the west coast.

11/27/2012 10:44 PMPosted by Negåtive

Why not just CRZ realms with the same time zones together...

Not to patronize you here, but the infrastructure behind World of Warcraft is incredibly complex. As stated in the original post, just because you're on, say, a realm labeled with an east coast time doesn't mean you're connecting to a server cluster or database on the east coast. Look at the Battlegroups. There are no time zone correlations between the realms within each.