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Tuesday Morning Post: Faire enough edition
The big WoW news this past week was probably the new Darkmoon Faire that just debuted on the patch 4.3 PTR. It has tons of stuff to see and do, and you'll want to attend. Need a tour? We've got a video tour. There are new replica gear sets and new ways to buy heirlooms. There are new pets and mounts ready to bolster your collection. And that's just the beginning. There are new dailies, new ways to level your professions, and more. The Darkmoon Faire's so amazing, the other four weeks of the month are going to be sort of sad. There was also some interesting news from GuildOx. They sent us a list of the most popular WoW character names by both race and class. As a lapsed RPer, you will excuse me if I trudge off to this corner and cry. I swear, my panda shaman will not have a "bear" or a "shock" anywhere in its name, with God as my witness. ... Then again, Bearshock is pretty catchy ... Scheduled maintenance today is from 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. PST, so you'll have plenty of time to catch up on all the news from the past week. There's a lot of it, from supporting the squish to Guardian Cub price wars, and we have it all for you after the break.
PSA: PSN undergoing 'routine maintenance' from 9AM to 11AM PST today
Pull out your copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and stare straight at it: DON'T PANIC, folks! Yes, PlayStation Network is undergoing maintenance, but only temporarily, Sony says. According to the company's Twitter account, the PlayStation Network will be under construction from 9AM to 11AM PST today (that's 12PM to 3PM for those of us on the East Coast). The maintenance may not affect all users' ability to connect, as Sony says that only "some users" may be affected by the downtime. Look at things on the bright side, though -- now you have a couple hours cleared to play that Uncharted 3 single-player campaign you've been neglecting. Drake would be so, so disappointed.
Tuesday Morning Post: End of Hallow's End edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. I hope no one overindulged too much in candy or alcoholic beverages last night -- or if you did, I hope you're not too bad off. Myself, I'm finding that while I avoided getting the con crud, I seem to have picked up the Halloween party pestilence instead. Downtime this morning consists of a series of rolling restarts starting at 10 a.m. PDT. So whether you're fighting off a fall cold, a hangover, or a tummy ache -- or if you're feeling fine, you lucky bum -- you should have some time to read up on the week's news with us. There's a good mix of patch 4.3 and BlizzCon 2011 stuff to review, so you'll probably want to read on.
Tuesday Morning Post: Glory to the Alliance edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. BlizzCon is over, and we're all recovering here, more or less. However, the news cycle marches on, and we've already received our post-BlizzCon bombshell: In a future content patch, Theramore will be destroyed by the Horde. I'm not going to lie. As a die-hard Alliance player, I'm more than a little crestfallen. Jaina Proudmoore means a lot to me, and so does the city she built. But I have found one surefire way to cure these doldrums. To all my Alliance brothers and sisters, I invite you: Watch that video up there, and remember. This is what we Alliance can do. We didn't need the Horde, and we didn't need the Argent Crusade or the Cenarion Circle or any other neutral organizations. Glory to the Alliance. While you bask in the power of the Alliance, I should also tell you that we have no reported downtime yet for this morning as of this writing. If it comes, though, have no fear. After the break, you'll find a roundup of all the BlizzCon news you may have missed over this crazy weekend, as well as everything else worth knowing about from the past seven days. Read on.
Tuesday Morning Post: Kitten-based economy edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. Once again, Blizzard's let the big news wait until Monday. Yesterday, we learned that the Blizzard store will feature a bind on equip Guardian Cub, allowing you to place it on the auction house. Essentially, you'll be able to spend 10 dollars to buy an unspecified amount of gold. As you can imagine, people have opinions on this. Me, I'm just thinking Cats4Gold was a little ahead of its time. The time of the kitten based economy is upon us. How many cats do you think it'll take to buy a Vial of the Sands? In addition to the cat stuff, we also have more news from patch 4.3 and elsewhere to cover. Downtime this morning is from 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. PDT, so you should have time to get caught up. Join us after the break for a roundup of all the best stuff from the past week.
Tuesday Morning Post: PTR news explosion edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. With the patch 4.3 PTR in full swing, this week was just jam-packed with all sorts of news. From first looks at transmogrification to video from the new End Time dungeon, we have a lot for you to digest this morning. Luckily, downtime this morning is from 5 to 11 a.m. PDT, so you should have time to take a breather and get caught up. Check after the break for our usual roundup.
PSA: PSN temporarily down for maintenance this morning
We're sorry to say it, but you'll have to stop murdering Chimera online for a couple of hours later today, as Sony's PlayStation Network will be going down between 9 and 11AM PT due to "routine maintenance." Sony warned of the impending outage on Twitter and apologized to users. And yes, the Battlefield 3 beta should be good to go when PSN becomes available again later this afternoon. Cool your jets!
PSA: European PSP/PS3 maintenance downtime for select titles tomorrow
A quick heads-up for our friends across the pond: Sony will be taking down a combination of 13 games, websites and services between 5 a.m. and 12 p.m. BST tomorrow, September 25, which is about twelve hours from now. Ish. Look, we're not Time Lords, okay? We can barely grasp the concept of timezones as it is. Sony also says that maintenance may be extended for some titles/services/websites beyond the estimated window for "testing purposes," which we originally read as "testing porpoises," which seemed way more interesting. Click on through for the list of affected titles.
Tuesday Morning Post: Timelords Edition
It started with a leaked article at The Escapist. Then Zarhym started dropping hints. Then our parent site Joystiq posted a preview. Finally, in the wee hours of Monday morning, the floodgates opened and the patch 4.3 info started flowing. Here are the highlights: Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street dropped some info on the Raid Finder and the new rogue legendary, among other things. He also gave up the scoop on epic gems and the secrets of the Deathwing encounter. Blizzard then posted previews of the new 5-man dungeons. First, we'll travel to the End Time, then to the far past of the War of the Ancients, and finally to Wyrmrest Accord in the present day to strike a blow against Deathwing. I don't know about you, but at this point, I figure you ought to just give me a TARDIS and a sonic screwdriver, because Rhonin doesn't have a thing on me after all this time traveling. Then again, maybe Thrall's the real Timelord and we're just his companions. If so, I get to be Rory Williams. If you're eager to dig into patch 4.3 news, definitely read the stuff I linked above. There's lots of juicy tidbits. If you're holding off on patch 4.3 stuff, never fear. There's a lot of cool non-patch news to peruse as well. Downtime this morning is from 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. PDT, so you'll have plenty of time to get caught up. Be sure to stay tuned as well. When the patch 4.3 PTR finally drops, we'll be there.
Tuesday Morning Post: Non-answers edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. Probably one of the most intriguing pieces of news this week was a little quote from Tom Chilton, who was heard to say that the whole "Mists of Pandaria" thing was totally overhyped. Honestly, as much as I used to say that Mists of Pandaria probably wasn't an actual expansion, this answer sort of changes my mind. If Chilton wanted to deny the existence of the Mists as an actual product, this would have been a perfect time to do it. Instead, he gave a perfect, classic little Blizzard non-answer -- sure, he said Mists of Pandaria was overhyped, but he didn't say it wasn't the next expansion. I don't know. Now I'm thinking we are headed to a misty little island somewhere to grind to level 90. Whether you think we're headed to Pandaria for the next expansion or not, there's plenty of new for you to peruse in this week's roundup. While this morning's downtime consists primarily of rolling restarts, a small handful of servers will have some extra downtime from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. PDT, so you'll have at least some time to get caught up. Stay tuned as well for more patch 4.3 news. When it breaks, we'll have it here.
Tuesday Morning Post: Fezzes are cool edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. You'd think it'd be a slow week this time around. Gamescom was last week, and Blizzard doesn't seem to have done much at PAX. Patch 4.3 isn't on the PTR yet. Still, Blizzard managed to get enough news out. The Darkmoon Faire is getting a huge revamp in patch 4.3, with new quests, new games, the ability to semi-powerlevel your professions -- and most importantly, a monkey with a fez. Forget fighting Deathwing; I gotta get me a monkey with a fez. The other good news today is that scheduled maintenance is lasting from 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. PDT. That may not sound great, but that may mean we'll get patch 4.2.2 on live servers, which itself means we're one step closer to patch 4.3. Of course, if I'm wrong about that whole patch 4.2.2 thing, that just means downtime sucks a little more this week. Either way, you should have plenty of time to catch up on all the news you missed in the past seven days, so join us after the break for our usual roundup.
Tuesday Morning Post: Playing dressup edition
So despite the continued lack of a patch 4.3 PTR, the patch 4.3 news came in with a vengeance this week. Not only did threat become trivial, but we're going to see active mitigation for tanks and extra bank storage for your stray item sets and fashion pieces. We found out that cross-realm raiding is in the works. We also learned that Deathwing will be the final boss of patch 4.3. But all that pales in comparison to the #1 news: We're getting cosmetic armor slots. Sure, there are restrictions (some of them more arbitrary than others), but we're finally getting them. I figure it's all about baby steps. Sure, my death knight can't wear an eyepatch for now. My rogue won't be able to wear a Corsair's Overshirt and be a swashbuckler. And I'll have to defer my dreams of my warrior becoming a leather-clad berserker. But sooner or later, maybe Blizzard will realize that it's not a bad thing to offer your players even more choices and that in a game with a distinguished history of poop quests and featuring such NPCs as Mylune, Goblin Hitler, and Linken, maybe a rogue dual wielding fish isn't really all that immersion-breaking after all. All that said, it looks like we're no closer to the patch 4.3 PTR this week, as all we get is a quick set of rolling restarts for downtime, starting at 5 a.m. PDT. While you're waiting for your server to come back up, you'll definitely want to catch up on all the patch 4.3 buzz here. Our usual roundup awaits you after the break.
Dear Aunt TUAW: There's a spider in my iMac
Dear Aunt TUAW, There's a tiny spider running around just behind the glass of my iMac. Hopefully it won't be cause for a service call! [The photo is attached at the end of this post.] Your loving nephew, David R. Dear David, Obviously your Mac isn't running the Robot Exclusion Standard that keeps spiders off of it. That's a little Auntie geek humor. All in all, it's probably harmless if a little unsightly. It probably got in through one of the ports or the speaker grill. Give it a few days and it will either find its way out or fall to the bottom, where it will go peacefully to eternal sleep and decompose to dust. Auntie consulted with Josh Carr of Denver-based MacWorks, who demurred. "If someone brought this in to me, first thing I'd do is disassemble the iMac to take a look around to see if the spider had made itself at home and laid eggs. If the nest is on the board, it could potentially short out." He mentions that the iMac glass can be removed with a couple of suction cups, but that's something that freaks out Auntie's sensibilities. She'd more likely than not break the glass while trying to lay it down on the ground. Your mileage will vary. In any case, you may want to get it looked at by an Apple Authorized Service Provider but things are probably going to be just fine without. Hugs and kissies, Auntie T.
Tuesday Morning Post: Glimpses edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. It's been a sort of weird week in WoW. Patch 4.2.2 is on the PTR but doesn't seem to provide any major changes other than correcting a few tooltips. It does, however, make us all sort of antsier than ever for patch 4.3, and Community Manager Nethaera only stoked those flames with the release of the above screenshot. She neglected, however, to reveal what it signified. This, of course, has set off a firestorm of comments and theories. Could it mean playable ethereals in the next expansion? Could it be a red herring to distract us from the Pandaren? Could it just be a non sequitur thrown up by a bored CM? Myself, I'm going for the theory that we'll see some new features in patch 4.3 introduced lorewise by Consortium vendors in capital cities. That said, only time will tell for sure. For now, the folks at Blizzard aren't saying any more, and so we wait. On the plus side, you won't have to wait too long for the servers to come back up this morning. We're dealing with some rolling restarts at 5 a.m. PDT, after which we should be free and clear. While you're waiting out the short downtime, be sure to catch up all things WoW with our usual roundup, after the break.
Euro PSN down for maintenance tomorrow
The European PlayStation Blog reports that the region's PSN will be down this Thursday, August 11, for maintenance. The service is slated to be down from 4:05pm through 2:00am BST Friday morning. PSN account management and registration will be offline during the maintenance, as will the PlayStation Store. The blog advises those who wish to play online to sign into PSN before the maintenance begins. We suggest you use the downtime to reflect upon firmware 3.7.
Tuesday Morning Post: Stay awhile and farm edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. So. I'm thinking I quit the day job, write freelance articles by night, and spend all day farming the loot mines of Tristram, pulling out bountiful harvests of Tarnhelms and Stones of Jordan to sell in the great markets. Okay, seriously, I wouldn't personally quit my day job to farm uniques, but it's still sort of an awesome feeling to know the option is out there. Also, given Diablo 3 lead designer Jay Wilson's insistence that PVE will never be balanced on the back of PVP and PVP can just deal with it if a PVE ability imbalances PVP, I am officially in love with the man and wish he would come work on WoW too. Anyway, that's enough Diablo fanboying for one article -- let's get on with the rest of the news. With rolling restarts coming at 5 a.m. PDT, you should have at least a little time to get caught up.
Tuesday Morning Post: Held in thrall edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. This past week has been one of those weird ones; it wasn't exactly quiet, but there were just a bunch of little interesting news stories vying for attention. It's still not clear if any of them was "the big one," but if I had to pick one, I might go with the news out of the San Diego Comic-Con. Technically, all Blizzard did there was announce some new merchandise, but all the same, for us lore nerds, there were tasty little lore nuggets aplenty to be gleaned. That said, if you really want WoW info from of a con, you'll have to wait for BlizzCon. Luckily, the next one is coming up fast, and Blizzard's just released a new official BlizzCon site. If lore nuggets aren't your thing (or if you prefer to stay spoiler-free), have no fear. There's plenty of other news for you to catch up on. Downtime this morning is from 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. PDT again, so why not take the time to read up? We have our usual roundup after the break.
Tuesday Morning Post: Guy Love edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone! I recently unlocked the Druids of the Talon dailies on my main, and while doing the daily quests, I've been getting an extra dose every day of the saccharine sweet friendship of Tholo and Anren. They're the Hyjal dream team, nearly always together, nearly always talking about each other. They've got a bromance going that's so huge you sort of wonder if maybe you should just remove the "b" already. I have to admit, it annoyed me at first. Night elves and tauren being all cuddly like that sort of bothered me. The Horde's evil, man. Tauren will betray you, Anren. They're attacking your home in Ashenvale even now! But you know, now that I've gotten to know them a little better, maybe it's not so bad. They're just keeping up a long tradition in the annals of WoW. There's been Asric and Jaadar, Thassarian and Koltira, and now Anren and Tholo. Maybe we could all learn to love each other a little more, just like them. So go ahead. Bask in the warm fuzziness of the bromance. And once you're done, keep reading for the latest WoW news from the past seven days. Downtime this week is from 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. PDT, so you'll have plenty of time to get caught up.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: IceClean
OS X does a pretty good job of maintaining itself due to its Unix core, but there are times when you'd like to run some of its self maintenance tasks manually, and that's where IceClean comes in. Just using the built-in Unix System Tasks that underlay OS X, you can clean out system caches for both the user and root, delete temporary files and remove log files all from IceClean's menu-orientated UI. If you feel your Safari is a trudging a little, there's even an option for a Deep Safari Cleanup, which should go someway to helping speed up your experience. IceClean isn't all about cleaning though, it features a whole host of maintenance options including the usual verification and repair of your system disk, disk permissions and .plist files, as well as database optimizations including Launch Services. You can run the whole lot with one command or even schedule the maintenance tasks to be run daily, weekly or monthly at a time to suit you. IceClean can also poll the system for all sorts of information like system, disk and kernel information. Whois and network lookup tools are there too for network diagnostics. You can also force a Time Machine backup, kill Dashboard, speed up Spotlight indexing, force empty the Trash, modify screenshot settings and perform many other small tasks using the Utilities menu. IceClean is a one stop shop for most of your maintenance needs. It's not as user friendly as other options like Onyx, but for the sheer utility built into one app, IceClean is worth the free download.
Tuesday Morning Post: Choosing sides edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. We're a couple of weeks into patch 4.2, and by now, many of us should have made the ultimate choice. Who did you pick first in the battle for the Firelands? Was it the ancient, mysterious order of the Shadow Wardens, or was it the slightly less hippie than normal flying aces, the Druids of the Talon? I admit, it was a hard choice, but as much as I love Thisalee Crow, I had to side with the Shadow Wardens first. They were amazing in Warcraft III, and I have sort of missed them. They remind me of what the night elves used to be. I have to admit, I was sort of hoping Maiev would magically show up to lead them, proud and powerful, with maybe the ocassional dig at Malfurion for how much of a loser his wife is. Alas, it is apparently not be. But I hoped. Whichever choice you made, right now you have no choice but to wait out the usual Tuesday downtime. This week, it's from 1 a.m. to 7 a.m. PDT. While you wait, you can catch up on all the news from the past few days, including guides to some of the new patch 4.2 Firelands and Tol Barad bosses. Check it all out after the break.
