This really annoys me. There’s literally no reason to gate everyone off for a day. Especially when it comes to spoiler sensitive content. People are very vocal about things and it isn’t fun having to basically avoid the entire internet for a day so you can witness something blindly. Does blizz care about its entire playerbase, or just its american players?
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Maintenance. They get it on Tuesday, we on Wednesday,
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And in the past, Europe was able to play expansions earlier than the US. So much for the whole Blizzard only cares about American players bs.
First of all it’s not a day before. It’s about half a day. When the patch rolls out in the US it’s close to the evening in Europe. Also it’s not practical to take down EU realms for patching at the exact same time as US ones. It’s early morning in US but in Europe it’s basicly the busiest time on the internet. The time period when people go back home from schoold or work.
On top of that China has maintanance days on Thursdays so they get it even later.
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Kinda doesn’t make sense still.
The US is behind in european schedule.
OP is right.
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They mess up more than they used to… you should be glad the Americans test it out for us. :>
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I’ve worked in International companies before, and…technically I guess I am now Self Employed with an International Client base (Yes, yes, I am so amazingly happy about that I can’t stop bragging coughs…Ahem…)
This always happens. You never roll something out simultaneously worldwide. You feasibly -could- But you don’t (or at least it can be a very bad idea, dependent upon the industry). When I worked for Fedex, which famously never sleeps, you still say “Get it to us by this time, and it will be delivered by 9 A.M tomorrow morning in New York/Chicago,Washington” People would then go “Well, I was an hour late getting it picked up by you, so does that mean it gets delivered by 10 A.M?”
Nope.
Don’t work that way. We ain’t laying on some special airplane just for your envelope, it will be delivered by 9.AM the -Following- day.
Blizzard, much like any international company has set times they do things, and set times are set that way to theoretically minimise ‘downtime’ of service. Lets say it rolled out the same time worldwide. OK, worldwide by whose definition? California Time? GMT? CEST? Zulu Time? (That last is impossible, and only used by the military, it refers to the same time but in different timezones, which is by definition, -different- actual physical times!)
So when is Optimal Downtime for California? Ehh, probably around 0300 in the morning for a few hours, what time is that GMT? 1100 for a few hours, what time CEST? 1200 in the afternoon for a few hours.
Does that sound optimal for Britain and the European Continent? Heck no. Blizzard HQ is in California, it makes sense they want to keep their finger on the pulse of any new release so that they can fix problems, and so it will be released there. Why? Gives them time to fix any unforeseen problems (Remember WoD and the Garrison mucking around?). If they released it at ZULU Time, so the same worldwide, they would be swamped, and the product -everyone- got would have those glitches.
Really, we should be thankful. The US playerbase are our Guinea Pigs for launch. The only reason we see it as them getting it earlier, is I am afraid, down to us Brits and setting down GMT and the international date line.
Lets imagine for a moment, that Blizzard decided to go by the main time line of the world as it was in the early to mid twentieth century. GMT. SO they shut the servers down in Europe at 3 in the morning, London time. So 4, Paris time, so ranging as far as 6 or even 7 in eastern Europe. California is 8 hours behind London, so 1900 in the evening…So peak playing time?
You can’t do it and keep everyone happy, you simply cannot. You either risk massive mistakes, or you disenfranchise an entire -REGION- by making the game unplayable because the people in another Region want to play.
You have to stagger it, its the only way to do it and keep everyone mildly happy…
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This honestly makes a lot of sense, I appreciate the time you’ve put into your reply. Thanks 
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Hmm, I like the US having a headstart though.
Most of the time this means if something was gonna go bad, blizzard would have fixed it by then and give us the fixed version.
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Who cares? One day this pixels will be forgotten and servers down.
One single day is nothing compared to 15 years history of the game.
No worries, I like being able to explain things (or rather, explain things that I know about!) always used to get wound up about it myself, till I worked for Fedex (and that is just crazy, you have to deal with every time zone in existence) at which point I was like “oh, crap, yeah, I get it.” And it is a head messer, it really is, because you’re trying to work out when is good for all concerned, before finally realising that there -is- no one good time that will suit everyone, when it comes to international business, so it has to be different days. I had that myself this morning, or rather, yesterday morning now (probably hence me commenting here) a contract from Washington D.C “So what would you charge for that?” “To be honest with you, I’m having my breakfast, and I haven’t even had a chance to read what it is you want me to do yet” “What kind of time do you Brits keep?” “The Original time old boy, we invented the concept of time zones…” “But I sent it late from the Office, I stayed till 9 last night!” “Yes, know what time that was over here?” “I dunno, 11?” “No, Two in the bloody morning…I’m just getting to your email now, looks fantastic, I can call in an hour or so, or I can call you at say, 1000 hours?” “My Time, or yours?” “Oh, My time, so that would be…oh, 0500 hours your time?” “Yeah, shall we just…agree that communication is going to be a day off, both ways?” “Couldn’t have put it finer myself, however yes, job will be done, love it… Just never call me at such an unhealthy hour in the morning again…”
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US is a live patch test and PTR for EU.
Exactly, beta testers.
Or more succinctly…time zones.
Also the maintenance hours and days for each region is picked for a reason. They explained it back in days that i.e. in Europe wednesday middle of the night, there is least amount of players.
now this may not be true any more in 2020, but was in 2004, when they planned this ahead. And by now playerbase is used to the ‘maintenance time’. Patches are activated during maintenance times. I am quite certain people would be more upset if and when Blizzard would suddenly decide they want another maintenance and reset day for each region.
Long story short - they chose maintenance days and hours for a reason - mainly due to least amount of intrusion to players.
because theyre a little slow over there and need the extra day to maintain progress with us more evolved beings in Europe.
Don’t be mean, let em have the day and make sure you applaud when they put food in their mouths and not their ears.
^^ This
Indeed, this time we had a global launch, which was hellish on some timezones.
I don’t know if they intend to do that again with Shadowlands.
Asian servers get their patch 2 days later, be happy its only 1 day for us!
And also, most of the time, EU servers got patched faster than NA, since any problem they find during NA maintenance (which prolong the maintenance duration), fixed for EU. Example, 8.2 was live before weekly reset, you can basically get 1 day ahead with reputation, compared to NA players.
If this apply for 8.3 aswell, then you can get 1 extra enterance for vision, aswell as more resource and repu, if you fast and know what to do . 
They are our Guinea pigs!!! The patch testers! 
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Because they always have since day one, and because they’re maintenance cycles are a day before since day one as well. Now that’s the obvious answer done, here’s the cynical answer,
It’s a day for god’s sake, not a year. This is you sitting in front of your pc isn’t it?