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WoW’s 11th-hour server issues continue

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

As the axiom goes, you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. If that’s the case, Blizzard’s doing a pretty good job of setting up for the launch of Wrath of the Lich King at midnight. As many World of Warcraft players have undoubtedly noticed, the servers have been down off and on since the regular Tuesday maintenance window. However, history has shown that launches have been generally unkind to Blizzard’s servers.

After the first maintenance extension, many suspected the downtime was related to the Battle.net account collation that Blizzard is implementing with Wrath. The servers came up briefly, but then the word went out that there was a problem with the in-game email system. Blizzard, trying to assure the community, sent a warning email to players letting them know that there was a problem with the in-game email system. The problem is that they notified everyone by emailing players through the messed up in-game mail system. You know, the one on the servers that were going back down to fix the mail problem. To their credit, they did post the message out on the forums, but there was a small catch there; the forums were up and down all day.

Update: As of 1pm EST, the WoW login screen states that all servers are back up and the service should be working as usual.

Late last night the majority of the issues seemed to have been resolved, and Blizzard cautiously flipped the switch, letting players back on the servers. Only there was a problem with the PvP gear vendors, who seemed to think that it was a good idea to give out several pieces of their inventory for free, and without any type of PvP requirements. While many of the players thought this was good fun and snapped up their (knowingly-temporary) rings, trinkets and other odds-and-ends, Blizzard realized the mistake and yanked the servers offline. As of this 10:15 EST this morning, the servers remain offline, with no firm ETR.

How today’s continued server outage plays out for World of Warcraft’s player-base is anyone’s guess at this point. That said, we’re really glad we’re not the Blizzard employees slated to hang out with the crowds at various launch parties this evening.
Article Source: www.massively.com.

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Europe’s WoW players already storming Wrath’s Northrend

Friday, September 18th, 2009

We’ve just gotten word from our sister site WoW Insider that some players in Europe have already gained access to the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft — they’re currently in Northrend and also creating Death Knights. WoW Insider speculates that these lucky WoW players must have had copies of the game and upgraded accounts ready to go, in order to jump in so quickly.

However, for the rest of us, there’s been official word from Blizzard on when Wrath becomes playable. Syndri, a Blizzard Poster on the official World of Warcraft forums, states: “The Wrath of the Lich King will be revealed on all North American realms — including Oceanic realms — at 9pm PST.” So there you go. As for the rest of us, we’re just hoping that the server issues are fully resolved and that everything else goes smoothly with what is likely the biggest midnight launch in MMO history.
One of Azeroth’s millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!
Article Source: www.massively.com.

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Roleplaying Moria

Monday, September 7th, 2009

A few weeks ago, RoleCraft covered some roleplaying tips concerning a few of the new additions to the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Another major MMORPG expansion was released a few short days after that, this one being the Mines of Moria for Lord of the Rings Online. Like Wrath of the Lich King, Mines of Moria comes complete with its own set of new additions, including locations, two new classes, a new legendary items system, and more. For us roleplayers, the opportunities for quality roleplaying has increased tenfold at the very least, and I’ll be sharing some advice and tips for roleplaying in and around the Mines of Moria in this edition of RoleCraft.
Compared with all the most popular and successful MMORPGs, the lore that LotRO is based on is what makes it a much more solid game than the others. Knowing the lore of a game is the most vital element when starting or continuing your roleplaying character. MoM may well be the most widely known of underground location in all of literature, perhaps second only to Hell itself. With that, the lore of MoM is just as deep, and should be the first consideration for roleplayers as they begin their adventures in Khazad-d?.
Of course, the first place to go to is Tolkien’s book, The Lord of the Rings, in particular, the chapters The Ring Goes South, A Journey in the Dark, and The Bridge of Khazad-d?. Reading those along with playing MoM will help firmly establish the where and why of roleplaying your character, allowing you to concentrate fully and freely on the how. If, however, you don’t have access to any of the books (and what a travesty that is!), add The Thain’s Book – Guide to Tolkien’s Middle-earth website to your bookmarks, and take a few minutes to read over the section on the history of Khazad-d? / Moria.
Once you have a solid grasp of MoM lore, you can better set your character with a firm footing within the current events in game. In MoM, two of the most important aspect to keep in mind are found in the phrase ‘dwarven expedition’. As your character starts to make way into the Walls of Moria and towards the Hollin Gate, you may notice that the NPCs are almost exclusively dwarven. It is these dwarves who begin to tell the tale of current events, about how the dwarves have mounted an expedition into Khazad-d? to reclaim their lost territory from the vile denizens that now inhabit within.
If you happen to be roleplaying a dwarf, the width and breadth of roleplaying opportunity is seemingly endless, as I can see it. If your dwarf has merely been wandering Eriador with no aim or goal, you now have a purpose to adventure to a specific region that no other race has! A primary example would be roleplaying a proud and stalwart dwarf who wishes to see the glory of the fabled Khazad-d? return, giving the dwarves another stronghold to rival the current locations from whence dwarves hail. Maybe your character is a Longbeard, or related to that line of dwarves who once ruled within Khazad-d?, and is seeking to learn the fate of a relative. And, there is always mithril, the reason why the dwarves dug so deeply under the mountain of Caradhas. Maybe mithril is still to be found, and if so, what an advantage it would be to have that valuable component smithed into equipment for adventurers to carry into battle against the Dark Lord’s minions!
With a bit of imagination, it is not hard to fathom why the other races would be and are joining up with the dwarves and their expeditions into the Mines. As the elves and dwarves slowly decline, the race of Man is ever expanding their knowledge of and presence on Middle-earth, and assisting the dwarven expedition is but a natural step in that process. The starter quests for the elves and dwarves tell of the brittle ties that bind their relationship to each other. To that end, roleplaying an elven ambass

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Wellness Cat Food – Seven Reasons Your Cat Needs it Now

Friday, September 4th, 2009

Unless you have become increasingly concerned about the health of your cat, in particular the quality of her food, you could be forgiven for wondering what on earth wellness cat food is.

Year by year we see more and more distressing media reports that pets are dying in their droves from one commercial pet food or another.

One brand may be using melamine as a filler in their cat food.

Another brand may be having trouble keeping their commercial premises free from salmonella.

There are as many problems with all commercial pet food as there are brand names.

Lets have a look at some of them: a filler is something all brands use to bulk out the meat (by-products) to increase their profit all brands use cheap meat (by-products), as the expensive cuts go for human consumption the quality of the meat (by-products) varies with different brands, but many contain hair, hooves, beaks, entrails (and contents), laboratory animals (who may be highly toxic from new drug tests), euthanased pets (including toxic flea collars, tags, etc), zoo animals and horses (still containing the lethal chemical), road kill, dead or diseased farm animals cheap meat (by-products) have a very high fat content, as there is little human market for fat the food is cooked for a prolonged time period at high temperatures – cooking kills off enzymes and vitamins and can chemically alter food to try to address this imbalance of nutrients, synthetic nutrients are added later, which are difficult to digest and have limited use as they are all in isolation to ensure the cat 'food' has a long shelf life (which is in everyone's interest except your cat's), preservatives MUST be added (the manufacturer may not have added them, but they will have been added somewhere along the line) and these are typically preservatives that would never be allowed in human food, due to their high toxicity
Horrifying as the above may be, you don't need to go searching to find a brand of wellness cat food that doesn't have any of the above. I'm sure some are emerging from the murk, but even these you may find difficult to be 100% sure they are consistent. We all have bad days, when we can't get the ingredients we want. What happens then? Are their ethics compromised in order not to let their customers down? What happens if the business is sold? Will the new owner or manager have the same high standards?

To have consistently high value wellness cat food, it's best to start from scratch yourself.

I hear you cry “I don't know how”, “how do I ensure it's balanced?”, “it sounds too complicated”, “I don't have the time”, “it sounds expensive”, my cat won't eat anything except one brand”.

Wellness cat food means going back to nature. It means working out what wild cats eat (who are naturally healthy and disease free). It means taking a bit of time to work through your perceptions about what you think the best wellness cat food is. Don't forget you've been programmed (another word could be brainwashed) by those who benefit by spreading this mis-information.
Article Source: www.sooperarticles.com.

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Tanking: Paladins vs. Druids vs. Warriors

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

Please note that this post is written from a paladin perspective. I neither have a druid nor a warrior . Warriors have a bunch of tools at their disposal: stance dancing, disarm, etc…but I don’t really feel like listing every little thing. I’m just trying to cover the basics to give a general idea regarding the differences between Bear Druids, Prot Paladins, and Prot Warriors.

Mitigation & Avoidance
Paladin and warrior mitigation/avoidance is almost entirely gear based. In fact, both have the very similar gearing goals, with the exception that paladins need to be somewhat mindful of their spell damage and mana pool. Ideally, warriors and paladins will want 490 defense with 102% block + parry + dodge + miss. Paladins will want around 200 spell damage and around 4,000 to 5,000 mana.

Druids have a significantly higher dodge rating but can’t block or parry in bear form, making them unlikely to completely push off crushing blows. Also, because of the lack of leather +def gear, they aren’t likely to reach the magical 490+ defense in order to avoid crits. Druids though, have by far the highest HP and AC of any tanking class. They don’t try to completely avoid crits and crushes like warriors and paladins, they just take them. For example: At least pre-nerf, many well geared tanking spec’d druids were AT the 75% AC mitigation cap with 20k HP.
Threat Generation
Paladins and druids have scalable threat generation, warriors do not (druids scale with strength/AP, paladins scale with spell damage). Warrior threat, on the other hand is based off of fixed value talents and abilities. It’s a trade off: Paladins and druids can control how much threat they generate, but at the cost of stat/gem/gear slots. Though warrior threat is fixed, it’s all skill based so they are free to focus on gearing mitigation and stamina.

Paladins can also front load a significant amount of threat because they start off with a full blue rage bar. Avenger’s Shield + SoR/JoR + Consecration = thousands of threat in seconds. The fast a tank can generate threat, the faster the DPS can start nuking. On the other hand, paladins LOSE mana while warriors GAIN rage. Even with Spiritual Attunement, a paladin will expend more mana they they will get back.
Multi-Mob Tanking
Warriors can Demo Shout in order to gain initial threat on a group of enemies, but it doesn’t generate a significant amount of threat. To my knowledge, they pretty much have to constantly switch targets in order to hold aggro on multiple mobs.

Druids are a little better: Demo roar will generate a small amount of threat (similar to Demo Shout AFAIK) and swipe will generate a significant amount of threat on up to 3 mobs. Any more than 3 and the druid will have to tab switch targets ala warrior tanking.

Paladins are ideal for multi-mob tanking. Righteous Defense will taunt up to 3 mobs off of a friendly target and Consecration will generate around 200 threat per tick for 8 seconds on anything it hits. Also, the more the paladin is being hit, the more Reckoning, Holy Shield, and Redoubt will proc.
Article Source: www.hokage.org.

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