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Forum post of the day: Check please
As evidenced by zombies and Necropoli, the time of the Lich King is nearly upon us. Most players who intend to have a copy of the game preordered have already done so. Soon we'll be zipping open our prized expansion and ready to install. Well, most of us anyway.Zachriel of Kirin Tor found a surprise today when he checked the status of his preordered game. Without notification the complete order of two collectors editions and two regular Wrath packages had been canclled. He was upset that he did not receive any communication that his ordered had been canceled. Some suggested that it may have been an issue with a credit card or some other technical problem. Most of the posters indicated that their orders were still active. But it's time for Tuesday maintenance; could it really hurt to peek at your order status?
Rolling restarts for selected realms this afternoon
Fresh from the news bulletin upon login is an announcement of rolling restarts for a handful of realms this afternoon. At 12:00 noon PDT the realms of Dreadmaul, Caelestrasz, Nagrand, Aman'Thul, Barthilas, Thaurissan, Dath'Remar, Frostmourne, Khaz'horoth, and Jube'Thos will be going down for restarts.Many people have still continued to experience connectivity issues and major lag since patch 3.0.2 dropped nearly two weeks ago. Instances seem to be a particular problem with people not being able to zone in, getting disconnected upon loading, or generally having issues with mobs and other objects appearing correctly.I wouldn't be surprised to see more realms added to this list today, and perhaps some extended maintenance (if not an outright patch) this upcoming Tuesday.
Realms are up
Good news, everyone! Several realms are up and running, with more coming online shortly I'm sure. This means you can get your World of Warcraft fix for the week starting now. And lets be honest, for any serious WoW player the week starts on Tuesday afternoon when the servers go up, and lasts until Tuesday morning when they go down.There is no patch 2.4.3 on the live servers yet - expect that in the next couple of weeks. Additionally, if there are any server stability issues to report on throughout the day you'll see a couple posts go up here.Happy Tuesday!And for the record, I've been wanting to use Buddy Christ in a post for a while, but haven't been able to find an excuse yet. Him seeming all happy for something (like the realms being up) felt like a good enough reason for me.
Server prepares for WotLK...in July
I know that I wasn't the only one that did a double take today when I opened up WoW and saw the "Breaking News" maintenance announcement that included a tidbit about the realm Dreadmaul undergoing hardware upgrades for Wrath of the Lich King.I find this interesting for several reasons. First, the expansion hasn't even had a release date announced yet and they're already making hardware changes. Now this is obviously a good practice – getting ready for things before hand – but then again, if it's not going to be released in October / November of this year all these hardware changes could be done later and for much cheaper. No matter if you agree with my pricing analysis or not, it is definitely a bit odd to hear about hardware upgrades when the release date hasn't even been made public yet.
Rolling restarts
A friendly reminder that there will be a number of rolling restarts for U.S. realms this morning starting at 5:00 a.m. PDT, and lasting until 6:00 a.m. PDT. Several realms will be offline for approximately 15 minutes (if everything goes okay). This is a welcomed event as some servers have noticed stability issues in the past couple of days. The U.S. realms that will be restarted are: Arathor, Azjol-Nerub, Bloodscalp, Bonechewer, Boulderfist, Bronzebeard, Crushridge, Daggerspine, Darkspear, Draenor, Dragonblight, Dragonmaw, Dunemaul, Eldre'Thalas, Fethermoon, Firetree, Frostmane, Gurubashi, Nathrezim, Scarlet Crusade, Shadow Council, Shadowsong, Silvermoon, Skywall, Smolderthorn, Spirestone, Stonemaul, Stormscale, Suramar, Terenas, UIdum, Windrunner If there are any major down times that come up, WoW Insider will let you know will all due haste.
Raid Rx: Unkicking butt (a Grid story)
Raid Rx is designed to encapsulate and cure the shock and horror that is 25-man raid healing. Ok, so it's mostly horror... Anyways, if you're a big fan of X-TREME Whack-A-Mole (or are being forced into it against your will) this is the column for you. See that up there? That's Grid. Honest. No, really. The names have been blanked out to protect the wicked. Ok. Stop the QQ'ing right there. I know WoW Insider has covered Grid before and mentioned it last week, and even I've talked about it in passing. What's the difference now? I'm covering nitty gritty, the stuff you need to know to make your raiding life easier. We're talking a full-body assault on one of the most popular healer raid frame addons out there. And it's our secret, kk? 'Cause the Addon Spotlight people will prolly kill me if they caught wind of it. If there's no article next week, you know someone ratted me out. Grid has long been worshipped as the ultimate compact raid frame, a place where all of the information you need to know about your raid is provided in a single display. In fact, Grid's raid frame so small only those with binoculars strapped to their head and serious affection for tiny squares have been able to use Grid right out of the box. For those that have neither, they tend throw in the towel at the first sign of the configuration menu. And that is what I intend to stop. Put your textiles back on their racks and prepare to become a... /insert dramatic music... MASTER OF GRID!
Officers' Quarters: The wrong stuff
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.A big reason I love writing for this Web site is you, the readers. Whenever I write a column and ask you for feedback, you always provide some insightful comments. And whenever I fail to mention an important point, you guys always manage to catch it and comment on it. It's a supportive and intelligent community here, and it certainly makes my job easier!Last week, I wrote about the "right stuff" to look for in a good officer candidate. I mentioned five traits to value in a candidate: maturity, generosity, good communication skills, emotional intelligence, and game knowledge. Necessarily, that means someone who is immature, greedy, barely literate, emotionally stunted, and a total noob would have the "wrong stuff." But, as several readers pointed out, there are other warning signs that someone will make a bad officer.
Maintenance extended three hours
In a regularly-scheduled world, the servers would be up and we'd all be playing WoW 2.3 right now. But did any of us really expect that to be the case? Turns out maintenance has been prolonged until 1:00 2:00 PM PST, two three hours later than the previous estimate (Drysc). But let's try to look at this in a positive way. Now you have more time to: Figure out how you'll work around the Sweeping Strikes/Deathwish swap Look for AddOn updates (or write some updates, if you're a mod author) Plot your guild's takedown of Zul'Aman Just plain get excited about the changes What are you going to do with your free downtime extension?
iPod touch: state of the jailbreak
%Gallery-7612% The iPod touch jailbreak attempts continue but there's little progress and less to report. Martyn, one of the hackers, has disassembled his touch and has attempted to read the chips directly. This hasn't been a huge success. I have been using iPhuc's grestore mode and my digital camera's video to try to see if we can learn more about the vocabulary the touch uses to communicate with iTunes. You can view my extremely blurry pictures in the attached gallery. Does the touch indicates the future of the iPhone? The news looks bleaker by the day.
Three month cooldown on US and EU character transfers (and free transfers in EU)
Thundgot, one of the EU CMs, has confirmed that the character transfer cooldown has been reduced for the EU realms (and raised for the US Realms, as here it was previously one month, and three months, and six months before that). Currently, the cooldown for both EU and US transfers is three months. That means that any character you transfer has to stay put for at least three months before it can be moved again, which most players (and Blizzard, obviously) seem to agree is a good period of time.And on the heels of that news, Thundgot has also posted that free character transfers are available on select EU realms, as listed below:From: Frostmane, Grim Batol, Kazzak, OutlandTo: Boulderfist, Burning Blade, DaggerspineFrom: Stonemaul, WarsongTo: Shadowmoon First free character transfers in a while (the last I can find were these Oceanic transfers). Since BC was released, it seems like Blizzard has a pretty good hold on population control (or maybe it's just that the populations aren't changing that much anymore). I remember when free transfers used to come almost every week on US servers, but nowadays they are few and far between.[ via MMO Champion ]
Subsume: Facebook updates via Growl and Address Book
If you're looking for the 'next thing' with which to boost your Facebook ninja status, Subsume just might be it. Right now it's an alpha so it's a little rough around the edges, but it primarily displays updates from your Facebook friends with Growl, a TUAW favorite that allows applications to display useful popup alerts when something happens (your song changes in iTunes, new email arrives, a buddy goes offline, etc.). Setting up Subsume is easy, just like with any other app that hooks into Facebook; you're taken to a Facebook login that prompts you for your credentials (if you aren't logged in already), then Facebook asks you to authorize Subsume to display your info. At an interval that Subsume's site doesn't describe yet (remember: it's an alpha folks), the app will check your Facebook account for any status updates from your friends, then display them in Growl's handy, unobtrusive update alerts. For the Facebook obsessed, this could turn out to be a great app that keeps you on top of what's going on without having to keep some kind of a window always open and taking up space.Subsume is provided as free for now at subsume.info. I should note that the developer, Jacob Jay, developers one of my favorite picture sharing utilities: PictureSync, which we've mentioned on TUAW a few times before.
Why Tuesday mornings?
Maintenance is going on right now on some servers, so now's a good a time as any to ask a question I've never really considered before: why 5 to 7 am PST on a Tuesday morning? Why did Blizzard choose this time to refresh and update the servers every week?The obvious answer is that that's when the least number of players will be bothered, and indeed, that's what the wise and kind Nethaera says. But there's no way that time is always the lowest population every week, and sometimes maintenance, as it will today, runs long anyway. Why not Wednesday morning, or Sunday morning, or Thursday midafternoon, or Saturday evening? Actually, that last one would be a problem. But you're always going to inconvenience someone, so why not move it around a little and give those Tuesday players a break?Neth says they're "always going to choose to do what needs done for the most benefit of the health of the game and servers." Which is fine by me-- back when I worked in retail shifts, I usually had Tuesday mornings off and couldn't play, but with my 9-5 now, it doesn't bother me anyway (and the recent changes to have restarts rather than downtime help, I'm sure). But are you someone who's been screwed out of gametime every Tuesday? And if you're not, would you mind giving up your playtime one week just so the folks on Tuesday morning wouldn't have to deal with the downtime and the restarts?
Juhu for Jaiku: A Mac OS X client for the other lifestream service
We've definitely caught the Twitter wave here at TUAW (we even have our own account), but it is by no means the only 'what are you doing' or lifestream service on the block. Another big player is Jaiku, which brings a fairly different perspective and set of features to the table. While Twitter focuses primarily on asking 'what are you doing?' and offers straight text input, Jaiku allows you to add RSS feeds from virtually any other blogs, sites or communities you post content, generating a sort of play-by-play for almost everything you're creating on the web. This definitely swings Jaiku over to the lifestream category, and it has a number of other features that will likely appeal to those who are looking for more than a plain text mini-blog, such as 'channels' that allow Jaiku users to all post in one theme-specific area (likening it to a giant chat room), as well as an actual comment system on posts. A major boost for web services like Jaiku (where we also have an account), in my opinion, is great software that can hook into them. While using a browser to interact with these services is fun and all, nothing beats the speed, flexibility and (ideally) extensibility of a well-written desktop client, and Juhu for Jaiku is exactly what I'm talking about. Doing for Jaiku what Twitterrific does for Twitter, Juhu is an app that lives in the menubar, giving you a resizable window for peeking in on what your Jaiku contacts are posting. Posts, RSS links and channel chatter are all available in Juhu's nice, compact UI, as are some of the nice little touches Jaiku offers, such as adding an icon to your posts and specifying your location. All in all, Juhu is a great client for a feature-packed service that's been progressing very nicely. Fortunately, just like Jaiku, Juhu is provided free and is also open source under the MIT license. If you've been looking for a different take on the lifestream service, Juhu makes Jaiku a great option for Mac OS X users.
Widget Watch: DreamHost status
I'm a pretty happy DreamHost customer, though I've been with enough basic hosting plans to realize that many hosts (at least the ones in my price range) might experience some hiccups from time to time. It just seems to be the way hosting is, at least in my tax bracket. Fortunately, DreamHost offers a status website and RSS feed to help customers check in on the network, but a fellow DreamHost customer by the name of Geoff has created a Dashboard widget just to give us one more option for staying on top of things. The widget simply loads the same status text one can read via the website or RSS, but it offers a compact, quick-access window into the world of DreamHost's status without having to refresh a website or add yet another feed to your exponentially increasing RSS list.
AddOn Spotlight: Grid
I used to raid heal using mainly the CT_RaidAssist emergency monitor. Call me a bad healer if you want; it was a lot nicer than having 40 health bars all over my screen. The emergency monitor is not clickable in WoW 2, and thus began my hunt for a way that I could see everybody's health and still see the fight. CT_RA bars, Blizzard's bars, and the like were all out due to being simply too big. Furthermore, I find them a bit overwhelming, making it hard to spot who's low on health. I mostly heal main tanks, but I like to be able to easily see if a Rogue or something takes a big hit. So where does one turn for a set of raid health bars that's small, legible, and informative?
Europeans disgruntled by unreliability
As usual, this Wednesday is maintenance day for European players, and it also marks the second in a batch of hardware upgrades for selected servers -- upgrades which have already caused an extended extended maintenance. These upgrades are long-overdue by many players' reckonings, with plenty of stories of fatal lagspikes during raids or other adventures flooding the forums.Reader Hammer writes in with a few other complaints of note (thanks!): The main wow-europe.com website is frequently down, with many parts of the site either bad links or inaccessible -- including the all-important Account Management section. Several servers are repeatedly experiencing problems and random downtime; poor Draenor is an example. Here's hoping the upgrades help with this. The new forums may look good, but they're often down -- for example, when the EU login server was broken for several hours yesterday, nobody could get on the forums to find out more. The forums, designed for European players, run on American time, adding extra confusion. We Europeans may have been sitting smugly through US players' tales of woe for the last few months, but it looks as if the game's popularity has caught up with itself on our continent as well as across the pond. So, it's not just the Americans and Australians who have material for complaint; Asian players haven't spoken up yet, but we'll give them time.
iChat Extender - tweak iTunes status message, chat bubbles
iChat Extender is a little app that lets you tweak various settings of iChat that unfortunately don't have a pref pane of their own. Features such as the format of the 'iTunes now playing' status message and the style of chat bubbles can easily be adjusted with this handy and free app.For more fun with little apps, check out the developer's other utilities such as illis, an iTunes controller and Growl notifier, as well as Star, a menubar utility for rating your iTunes tracks and notifying you when a track is un-rated.All of these utilities are free and Universal Binaries.
Login Server Down for Emergency Maintenance
I knew I should have just gone AFK when I went to get something to eat. Because, sure enough, as soon as I come back & try to log on, I get the good ol' "unable to connect" message.There is a message from Blizzard on the login screen that states 'We will be performing emergency maintenance on our login server this evening which may result in an inability to log in to the game', along with a bunch of other stuff that doesn't make me feel any better. Apparently, the maintenance is extended until 11PM PST. And there's not a darn thing on TV....*UPDATE* The message has been changed to read 1:00 PDT, as of a few minutes ago. Totally weak...*UPDATE* Make that 4:00 PDT. Yippee...
