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Extended Maintenance for tomorrow, July 15th
Here's a quick heads up: It looks like tomorrow's maintenance will be lasting from 3am PDT to 11am PDT, for a total downtime of 8 hours. Anyone who usually plays during that time, it looks like you'll have to find something else to do (such as read WoW Insider). An 8 hour downtime sometimes heralds a new patch, and we do have patch 2.4.3, which features land mounts at level 30 and a Cheat Death nerf, on the PTR at the moment. Then again, there was a new version of the patch applied just a few days ago, which could mean they'll want some more testing time, so we can't say for sure if it's coming. Right now, I'd say that there's an even chance that we'll see 2.4.3 going live tomorrow, but either way, stayed tuned to WoW Insider. We'll let you know as soon as we know for sure.
Mobile Me appears to be up and running
I realize I post this at great personal peril, but Mobile Me appears to be working. Apple has updated the Mobile Me support page with information specific to Mobile Me, and has removed the notice about the update taking longer than usual. After a rough first 24 hours, Mobile Me services appear to be mostly operational, although for me, Mail is still a little shaky, and everything is still pretty slow. Even so, Internet Explorer 7 users appear to be left in the lurch: Apple displays a notice for those users saying IE7 is "not fully supported." Apple mentions on its website that Mobile Me can sync IE7 bookmarks, and features the IE7 logo fairly prominently. Your mileage, as has been the case for the last 48 hours, may vary. It will be interesting to find out in the coming days what precisely happened, and what Apple will do to prevent it from happening in the future. Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
iTunes activation server pining for the fjords
According to a few tipsters, the iTunes activation servers that help do everything from activate brand new iPhones to getting new firmware for iPod touches are dead to the world. Tipster dik said "[A]s of right now, [Apple Retail] has lost all connectivity with the iTunes activation servers. No idea how long this will last, but everyone who is in line right now can expect a MUCH longer wait." This also affects people trying to update to the 2.0 firmware from home, via iTunes for the iPhone and iPod touch. There's a good chance that's where the "We could not complete your iTunes Store request" errors are coming from. Unfortunately, this means that many users have their iPhones bricked temporarily disabled, and only able to make emergency calls. Apple is aware of the problem and is working to correct it, according to a discussion thread in progress. If you have any information about what's happening, feel free to tip us. Thanks!
MobileMe now really, truly up? No.
As Robert mentioned earlier today, the launch of MobileMe has been a rockier road than a Baskin-Robbins convention in the same hotel as a Weight Watchers conference. With .Mac services (including webmail, near and dear to my travelin' heart) down most of the day, all we could do was commiserate with the scores of inbound tip emails and eagerly hit the "refresh" button until the circumstances changed.Looks like we made it, though -- as of 7 pm ET it seems that most Me.com services are up and running from the web side (sync status TBD). Enjoy the cloudy goodness, if you will.... ulp, now it's down again. Y'know, if the idea behind your new service offering is "Exchange for the rest of us," perhaps the first order of business ought to be ensuring some sort of baseline SLA, or an uptime expectation? The last thing Apple needs is the reliability reputation of some other popular communications service...Update: Per Apple's support status page for .Mac, all the back-end services should be running as of 2 am ET, but the web UI is still not available and there is no ETA. If you're depending on .Mac webmail from the road, may I suggest a POP download into another (free) email service.
The MobileMe rollercoaster
MobileMe has been up and down since late last night like so much rancid Chinese food. We know just about as much as you do: we're getting tips that it's up -- no, wait -- it's down. And now it's back up! And now it's down. I was briefly able to log in and explore Contacts and iDisk, but was shut out when the site went back down. What I saw was pretty nifty, but without the larger context of app integration, I can't really form an educated opinion on it yet. I am planning, however, on writing a full-scale review for this weekend. Hopefully the problems will clear up by then -- or at least long enough for me to write the story. We'll keep you posted on the continuing ups and downs of MobileMe as we get more information. I'm hoping the act of writing this post will provide just enough schadenfreude to get the service running for good. Thanks to everyone for the uninterrupted updates on this one!
AoC update pushed back to tomorrow, July 10th
The weekly update for Age of Conan won't be taking place today as would be the norm. During the testing of the latest patch, Funcom's QA department discovered an issue that needs to be fixed up so that it isn't unleashed on the live servers, and the patch has been rescheduled to the 10th of July, at 4AM GMT for the European servers and 7AM EDT on the US servers. While those that are keenly waiting for a big fat update might have to hold on for one more day, it's for the best that things are ironed out properly, rather than having additional downtime on the live servers for a hotfix later on.
The Tuesday Morning Post: I want a pet Tyrael edition
Good Morning everyone. On this Tuesday morning, most of us can rest easy: Just a quick restart at 5 AM PDT, and we'll be good to get back in the game. There a few servers, however, that will have to deal with an extended maintenance period, lasting until 11 AM PDT. You can see the full list of those servers here. For players on those servers, and those of us who can't sneak in some WoW time at school or work, I bring you the perfect solution: A roundup of some of the best news and analysis from the past week here at WoW Insider. Dig in, and keep it here throughout the day for more breaking news, guides, and analysis. Starting your day with a crossword puzzle can be both fun and mentally stimulating. How about giving this WoW-themed one a try? Here's a friendly reminder from Nexus Prince Haramad, just in case you forgot last week: be sure to get your gems for July! There are an amazing amount of actions that annoy Allison. Here's an interesting world first: A multiboxer makes Gladiator in the Arenas. If being Myspace friends with a Murloc isn't enough, how about buying your own? Blizzard COO Paul Sams is calling out Microsoft on the subject of PC gaming. Not only is the Blizzard Authenticator sold out, but some people who made it in under the wire are having trouble actually getting their order. Will we ever see the Scourge Invasion event again? Kisirani is hinting that we might finally get a return engagement. With tank shortages reaching critical levels almost everywhere, now's a good time to discuss how to build and keep a good tanking corps. Be sure to check part 2 as well. The 4th of July was this past week, and nothing says 4th of July like good old fashioned... copyright infringement? Is buying your way through tier 6 raid content an insult to those who work hard to take down bosses on their own, or is a win-win situation for rich casuals and guilds in need of reagent and repair money? Join the discussion. If that's not enough for you, we have fresh Wrath of the Lich King and Worldwide Invitational news waiting after the break.
Short AoC downtime today will fix socketed item bug
At least a few people will be confused when opening their Age of Conan patcher to see that there is some downtime scheduled for today, after having the now-weekly patch take place yesterday. Today's downtime could be considered an "emergency patch" of sorts, as it is intended to correct an issue that arose from yesterday's update.The offending bug causes certain socketed items to lose their sockets -- we are assured, however, that any socketed gems are still intact, and will reappear when the problem is fixed. The blanket figure of "5 hours" has been given for the downtime, which will commence at 7AM EDT on US servers, but community manager Famine has stated that it will likely be closer to 1 or 2 hours. The patch has already been deployed to the European servers, and their downtime was roughly 3 and a half hours going by this thread.
The Tuesday Morning Post: Post-WWI edition
Good Tuesday Morning everyone! We have a long maintenance ahead of us today, from 3AM to 11AM PDT. This downtime is in part to install new hardware on the Dunemaul realm in preparation for Wrath of the Lich King. Adam speculated a bit on what it may mean for the release date, but what it means in the short term is that those of us who play around now have to find something else to do. Since we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 hours to wait until we can play WoW again, this is the perfect time to do a little bit of browsing on WoW Insider. Here's a recap of just some of the great content from the past week. The World Wide Invitational was the big event of the weekend, of course, and there we had a team on the convention floor gathering all the news. You can check out our giant WWI roundup for all the liveblogs and reports on the class panel, the PvP panel, the dungeons and raids panel, and the Q&A panel, and event coverage. You'll also find extensive analysis of all the information broken down by class and subject. We also have a peek at the WWI goodie bag and videos from the Turpster! Check the roundup for all of it. In addition, we posted even more Worldwide Invitational news and analysis on Monday:
