Concerning Weekend Realm Issues

This just in from Blizzard Community Rep Eyonix:

Over the weekend, a problem surfaced with database servers that had been updated back in January. This problem adversely affected performance and stability on several realms and as a result, we needed to take the problematic realms down for urgent maintenance, which regretfully lasted from Saturday morning through very early Sunday.

We understand the frustrations experienced with this downtime and we will be providing a free extension of play time which we plan to detail shortly. This will show up as free extra time on your current billing period (or on your trial period, for those of you who purchased the game recently). We appreciate your patience and support as we continue to work through issues in order to implement changes for long-term game-play stability.

Further details concerning this issue will be provided as an update post, so please be sure to check back here for additional information.