Grulg

As Borg would say: "Click on the Image(s) below to place your order in support of T.H.E website....Fasten your seat belts.....lets go get us some Rebel Scum!!!"

Maybe we can find orcs and elves next? Snippet: "Scientists in Australia have found a new species of hobbit-sized humans who lived about 18,000 years ago on an Indonesian island in a discovery that adds another piece to the complex puzzle of human evolution. The partial skeleton of Homo floresiensis, found in a cave on the island of Flores, is of an adult female that was a metre (3 feet) tall, had a chimpanzee-sized brain and was substantially different from modern humans. It shared the isolated island to the east of Java with miniature elephants and Komodo dragons. The creature walked upright, probably evolved into its dwarf size because of environmental conditions and coexisted with modern humans in the region for thousands of years." Read More...

Har! Lat funni. Tryck kwestshun?

Ser Brightblade's bro, I forgot his new name on the forums (I just changed it too!), is talking about creating a guild in EQ2. I'll have to point this thread out to him. - Balandar

Another positive review for World of Warcraft. Open beta should be here soon! Try to not let that drool hanging from your jaw land on someone else! Something to nibble on: "So downtime is low, the game has the Blizzard polish, even though it's still in beta. What's next? Well, there's that open beta I mentioned earlier, which we're supposed to be seeing within days. The devs expect it last two to three weeks, and many more servers will be available to support the (presumably) huge numbers of people who will be flocking to this one like crazy. An open beta player won't have access to all the content, however--only one or two raids, but there will be PvP as well as "care bear" servers. Hunter and Paladin talents will be in by the time the open beta launches, so you can use that as a marker for the open beta date." Read more...

Yub, me tu. Me nub gud ad skribulz. Haf tu praktice bubhosh sum. Gud skribul howlur wolf!

Bubhosh scalie clomp humie?

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/041025/lam076_1.html Snippet: "SAN DIEGO, Oct. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Sony Online Entertainment Inc. (SOE), a worldwide leader in massively multiplayer online (MMO) gaming, today announced that EverQuest II is scheduled to simultaneously ship to North American and European retail stores on November 8, 2004. EverQuest II is the highly-anticipated follow-up to Sony Online Entertainment's original EverQuest, the most successful and longest-running 3D MMO role-playing game in North America." Looks like EQ2 will hit the shelves before WoW.

Filefront.com has released a preview for World of Warcraft. Let us hope for a release sometime soon! Unleashing A 500 Pound Gorilla Snippet: "Now, Blizzard has created the ultimate Warcraft – World of Warcraft. The burning ruins from a war that brought Human and Orc together have hardly cooled, yet the treaty is faltering. Humans, Dwarfs, Gnomes, and Night Elves have formed to create the Alliance to fend off the Horde of Orcs, Undead, Trolls, and Tauren. It is up to you to defend your lands against foreign invaders and scourges of society"

That's November 15th for the release dates. Lets only hope it is so!

An anonymous reader writes "Sony is going to have well known actors voicing major roles in its upcoming Massively Multiplayer Online Game. Christopher Lee is doing the voice for the Evil Lord Sir Lucan D'Lere, leader of the city of Freeport, and Heather Graham is doing the voice for Antonia Bale of the good city of Qeynos. An interview with Christopher Lee is also available on the Sony site." It will be interesting to see how this affects the fight between EQ2 and World of Warcraft, which are rumored to be coming out on the same day. Links: http://www.sonyonline.com/corp/press_relea...ver_Talent.html http://movies.station.sony.com:7000/patch/...n_interview.wmv http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2004/10/snap.html

LOL. The Horde ones are funny the Alliance needs some work.

Players in World of Warcraft can give voice to their characters by using the Speech command. You can access this command by clicking on the chat bubble next to your chat log and selecting the Speech option. Alternatively, you can type /v at the chat prompt followed by a speech command, such as help, cheer, or flee. For example, to utter a flirting speech file, you would type “/v flirt” at the chat prompt. By typing or clicking these Speech sayings, your character can give voice to many different emotions and actions. The speech files sampled below are from each race’s flirt or silly repertoire. http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/downloads/#b You can download all the wav files here.

Cylar writes "CNN is reporting that Anheuser-Bush has developed a sweet, caffeinated beer they are dubbing B(E). Intended to compete with the trendy sweet concotions popular on the club scenes (such as Smirnoff Ice), it will contain caffeine, guarana, and ginseng." Not sure how I feel about ginseng in my brew, so I'll have to study this with a few cases. Links: http://money.cnn.com/2004/10/05/news/fortu...dex.htm?cnn=yes I think this will be great for college students. Get their coffee and beer all in one dose!

The lunatick writes "IESB and Theforce.net report a Star Wars TV show. Lucas will not direct it just produce it. Kevin Smith (Silent Bob, the clerks series) is named as a possible director." Links: http://www.iesb.net/tv/tvt92804.htm In other news... Mount St. Helens may blow it's top again! DarkHand writes "Mount St. Helens has become even more unstable in the last few hours. The U.S. Geological Surveys Cascades Volcano Observatory has increased the volcanic alert around the volcano to level 2 and released a press release: 'Over night, seismic activity at Mount St. Helens has accelerated significantly, which increases our level of concern that current unrest could culminate in an eruption. We are increasing the alert level to the second of three levels [...]. Earthquakes are occurring at about four per minute. The largest events are approaching Magnitude 2.5 and they are becoming more frequent. All are still at shallow levels in and below the lava dome that grew in the crater between 1980 and 1986. This suggests that the ongoing intense earthquake activity has weakened the dome, increasing the likelihood of explosions or perhaps the extrusion of lava from the dome.' The most recent readings at the SEP seismograph stationed on the lava dome itself are totally saturated. The ground is now literally constantly rumbling." Links: http://www.pnsn.org/NEWS/PRESS_RELEASES/MSH_09_2004.html http://www.pnsn.org/WEBICORDER/HELENS/SEP_...2004092900.html

"Laundry Quest" by Jamie Peckham and "Horde of One" by Chris Byczkiewicz are two of the twenty-five winning submissions from the Blizzard Insider Comic Contest. The rest of the winning entries will be revealed in the coming weeks on WorldofWarcraft.com and in the Blizzard Insider.

Pretty nice eye candy! Clicky

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...korea_explosion U.S.: Korea Cloud Not From Nuclear Blast Sun Sep 12, 6:17 PM ET By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, Associated Press Writer SEOUL, South Korea - A huge mushroom cloud that reportedly billowed up from North Korea (news - web sites) was not caused by a nuclear explosion, South Korean and U.S. officials said Sunday, but they said the cause was a mystery. Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) confirmed that unusual activity had recently been detected at some of North Korea's atomic sites, but said there was no concrete evidence the North's secretive communist regime was preparing for its first nuclear test explosion. The South Korean news agency Yonhap reported Sunday that a mammoth explosion in North Korea produced a mushroom cloud more than 2 miles across Thursday. It said the blast was stronger than an April explosion that killed 160 people and injured an estimated 1,300 at a North Korean railway station when a train carrying oil and chemicals apparently hit power lines. "There was no indication that was a nuclear event of any kind," Powell said of Thursday's incident. "Exactly what it was, we're not sure." Kim Jong-min, spokesman for the South Korean presidential office, told Yonhap: "Currently, we are trying to find out in detail the exact character, cause and size of the accident, but we don't think North Korea conducted a nuclear test." China's government, which has the closest relations with North Korea, had no immediate comment about the reported explosion. Before Yonhap's report, The New York Times' Sunday editions said senior U.S. intelligence officials had seen signs of activities that some analysts thought might indicate North Korea was preparing a nuclear bomb test. Other experts were more cautious in their assessments, but the developments were considered worrisome enough for the White House to be alerted, the Times said. Appearing on ABC's "This Week," Powell said there were "some activities taking place at some sites that we are watching carefully, but it is not conclusive that they're moving toward a test or they're just doing some maintenance at that site." Later, on "Fox News Sunday," Powell expressed skepticism North Korea would stage a nuclear test explosion. The North Koreans "know this would not be a sensible step for them to take," he said. "And it is not just the reaction that they might see in the United States; it's their own neighbors." On Saturday, North Korea said recent revelations that South Korea (news - web sites) conducted secret nuclear experiments involving uranium and plutonium made the communist state more determined to pursue its own nuclear programs. The South Korean experiments in 1982 and 2000, which the South said did not reflect an attempt to develop weapons, are likely to further complicate six-nation talks aimed at dismantling North Korea's nuclear development. Another round of talks involving the United States, Russia, Japan, China and the two Koreas is tentatively scheduled this month in Beijing. Washington is pushing for North Korea to fully disclose all of its nuclear activities and allow outside monitoring before it receives any assistance for its struggling economy. North Korea wants energy aid, an end to economic sanctions and removal from Washington's list of state sponsors of terrorism. "North Korea is looking for assurances that we're not going to invade it, (that) we have no hostile intent," Powell said. "They're looking for benefits for giving up their nuclear capability and their nuclear infrastructure. And what we're debating is what will it take to give them the assurances they need and what benefits would they expect over the long haul." But, he said, the United States will not "reward them for doing something they should've have been doing in the first place. So we're into a very intense period of negotiations." Yonhap said the explosion occurred at 11 a.m. Thursday in Yanggang province near North Korea's border with China. "We understand that a mushroom-shaped cloud about 3.5 to 4 kilometers (2.1 to 2.5 miles) in diameter was monitored during the explosion," Yonhap quoted an unidentified diplomatic source as saying in Seoul, South Korea's capital. Yonhap said an unidentified South Korean official reported seismic activity related to two blasts in North Korea at 11 p.m. Wednesday and 1 a.m. Thursday. It said a source in China's capital said the explosion left a crater big enough to be seen by a satellite. Thursday was the anniversary of North Korea's founding on Sept. 9, 1948 — a date North Korean leader Kim Jong Il uses to stage performances and other events designed to bolster loyalty among his countrymen. Experts have speculated North Korea might use such a major anniversary to conduct a nuclear-related test, but one analyst said an open-air test, as opposed to one below ground, would be difficult in such a small country. "It's difficult to say, but it won't be easy for North Korea to conduct a nuclear test without resulting in massive losses of its own people," said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert in Seoul.

Here is another reason to make you drool for this game. http://www.firingsquad.com/games/world_of_warcraft_preview/

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996341 Mysterious signals from 1000 light years away 19:00 01 September 04 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues. In February 2003, astronomers involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) pointed the massive radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, at around 200 sections of the sky. The same telescope had previously detected unexplained radio signals at least twice from each of these regions, and the astronomers were trying to reconfirm the findings. The team has now finished analysing the data, and all the signals seem to have disappeared. Except one, which has got stronger. This radio signal, now seen on three separate occasions, is an enigma. It could be generated by a previously unknown astronomical phenomenon. Or it could be something much more mundane, maybe an artefact of the telescope itself. But it also happens to be the best candidate yet for a contact by intelligent aliens in the nearly six-year history of the SETI@home project, which uses programs running as screensavers on millions of personal computers worldwide to sift through signals picked up by the Arecibo telescope. Absorb and emit “It’s the most interesting signal from SETI@home,” says Dan Werthimer, a radio astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) and the chief scientist for SETI@home. “We’re not jumping up and down, but we are continuing to observe it.” Named SHGb02+14a, the signal has a frequency of about 1420 megahertz. This happens to be one of the main frequencies at which hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, readily absorbs and emits energy. Some astronomers have argued that extraterrestrials trying to advertise their presence would be likely to transmit at this frequency, and SETI researchers conventionally scan this part of the radio spectrum. SHGb02+14a seems to be coming from a point between the constellations Pisces and Aries, where there is no obvious star or planetary system within 1000 light years. And the transmission is very weak. “We are looking for something that screams out ‘artificial’,” says UCB researcher Eric Korpela, who completed the analysis of the signal in April. “This just doesn’t do that, but it could be because it is distant.” Unknown signature The telescope has only observed the signal for about a minute in total, which is not long enough for astronomers to analyse it thoroughly. But, Korpela thinks it unlikely SHGb02+14a is the result of any obvious radio interference or noise, and it does not bear the signature of any known astronomical object. That does not mean that only aliens could have produced it. “It may be a natural phenomenon of a previously undreamed-of kind like I stumbled over,” says Jocelyn Bell Burnell of the University of Bath, UK. It was Bell Burnell who in 1967 noticed a pulsed radio signal which the research team at the time thought was from extraterrestrials but which turned out to be the first ever sighting of a pulsar. There are other oddities. For instance, the signal’s frequency is drifting by between eight to 37 hertz per second. “The signal is moving rapidly in frequency and you would expect that to happen if you are looking at a transmitter on a planet that’s rotating very rapidly and where the civilisation is not correcting the transmission for the motion of the planet,” Korpela says. This does not, however, convince Paul Horowitz, a Harvard University astronomer who looks for alien signals using optical telescopes. He points out that the SETI@home software corrects for any drift in frequency. Fishy and puzzling The fact that the signal continues to drift after this correction is “fishy”, he says. “If [the aliens] are so smart, they’ll adjust their signal for their planet’s motion.” The relatively rapid drift of the signal is also puzzling for other reasons. A planet would have to be rotating nearly 40 times faster than Earth to have produced the observed drift; a transmitter on Earth would produce a signal with a drift of about 1.5 hertz per second. What is more, if telescopes are observing a signal that is drifting in frequency, then each time they look for it they should most likely encounter it at a slightly different frequency. But in the case of SHGb02+14a, every observation has first been made at 1420 megahertz, before it starts drifting. “It just boggles my mind,” Korpela says. The signal could be an artefact that, for some reason, always appears to be coming from the same point in the sky. The Arecibo telescope has a fixed dish reflector and scans the skies by changing the position of its receiver relative to the dish. When the receiver reaches a certain position, it might just be able to reflect waves from the ground onto the dish and then back to itself, making it seem as if the signal was coming from space. “Perhaps there is an object on the ground near the telescope emitting at about this frequency,” Korpela says. This could be confirmed by using a different telescope to listen for SHGb02+14a. Possible fraud There is also the possibility of fraud by someone hacking the SETI@home software to make it return evidence for an extraterrestrial transmission. However, SHGb02+14a was seen on two different occasions by different SETI@home users, and those calculations were confirmed by others. Then the signal was seen a third time by the SETI@home researchers. The unusual characteristics of the signal also make it unlikely that someone is playing a prank, Korpela says. “As I can’t think of any way to make a signal like this, I can’t think of any way to fake it.” David Anderson, director of SETI@home, remains sceptical but curious about the signal. ”It’s unlikely to be real but we will definitely be re-observing it.” Bell Burnell agrees that it is worth persisting with. “If they can see it four, five or six times it really begins to get exciting,” she says. It is already exciting for IT engineers Oliver Voelker of Logpoint in Nuremberg, Germany and Nate Collins of Farin and Associates in Madison, Wisconsin, who found the signal. Collins wonders how his bosses will react to company computers finding aliens. “I might have to explain a little further about just how much I was using [the computers],” he says. Eugenie Samuel Reich

Too bad most of us have to work.

World of Warcraft Stress Test Beta Set to Begin The World of Warcraft stress test beta is just a [today] away. Hundreds of thousands of gamers applied for the stress test this past week, and FilePlanet was up to the task, issuing over 100,000 accounts and providing the stress test beta client for download. With the signups and downloads complete, we are just about ready to welcome these gamers into World of Warcraft for the very first time. Starting [today], September 2nd at 12:00 noon PDT, stress test beta participants will be able to create their World of Warcraft accounts and begin playing the game. Their participation will help us optimize our account-creation and server infrastructure, and enable us to deliver the best online experience possible when the game launches later this year. We want to thank everyone who applied for the stress test beta, and we look forward to seeing the new testers online [today] when the stress test beta starts.

From Blizzard We were surprised to find out that some of you still had questions about the game. Just kidding; we weren’t really surprised. The dev. team is working hard to prepare the next beta patch, but we did manage to snag some time with EnoYls, who provided the bulk of the answers below. Thanks go out to everyone who helped put together this Q&A, and thanks to you all for bringing up some good topics for discussion. What should players expect in the World of Warcraft end-game? That is, is there an end-game for casual gamers as well as power gamers, small guilds, groups of friends, large guilds, etc.? New content will be continuously added into the game and players can always expect to see new events and things for them to do and achieve in the game. Players that do eventually hit the level cap will have the option to participate in a variety of end-game content, such as: Individual players can work toward a hero class. The PvP System will be more advanced than it is today -- including the addition of rewards. Guilds will have an extensive amount of raid content available to them with many zones and "uber" bosses to defeat. How much of the world, including dungeons, is unlocked and available to testers today? What is the end-of-beta goal that the developers want to see for released/tested content? With the next patch, we will be raising the level cap to level 55 and we will be opening up the corresponding zones and dungeons to accommodate characters of that level. We have almost finished all the adventuring zones for characters up to level 60, and we only have a few more outdoor zones and dungeons to go. We are also adding "raid" content to the game (epic encounters that take several groups to defeat); however, while we intend to have a great deal of this content, we will only beta test a small amount and reserve the rest for discovery by players on release. Will there be any special areas in the game that require a lot of effort before they can be entered? Yes, there is actually a full spectrum of areas that will challenge players and require them to exert some (or a lot of) effort in order to gain access to them. By "full spectrum" we mean that we intend to have areas that are challenging for casual gamers and some that will even test the hardcore "power gamers'" abilities. The Scarlet Monastery is an example of a quest area that requires a small amount of effort to unlock, as players merely need to find a key to gain access to the more advanced parts of the Monastery. Conversely, opening the Dark Portal is an example of a very difficult and epic quest that would require lots of effort on the part of many Warlocks to complete. Does Blizzard have a team for designing world events, role-playing content, etc.? We do have a world event team that will be in charge of maintaining and adding to the calendar of events that will span across the world. World of Warcraft is structured to have world events, contests and other social events regularly so that events can be experienced by all players. The event system, and the world event team that will run it, will ensure that players will always have something to do beyond the quests and activities that players participate in on a day-to-day basis. We don't want to tip our hand just yet, but you can look forward to celebrating real-world and Azeroth-based holidays, world events like having a Human zeppelin raid The Crossroads, worldwide fishing contests and much, much more! What is the target average number of players going to be on retail servers? The concurrency rate is currently planned to be around 2000-2500 players at peak times. There won't be a maximum amount of players that are allowed to "live" on a server, but this is the amount of characters we expect to actually be in the world at any given time. Will there be a role-playing server at retail (one that will have a more strict role-playing and behavior etiquette)? We do not currently have plans to incorporate this in retail, but we'll continue to evaluate demand and see if it warrants the creation of role-playing servers. Will there be more options for character customization in the future -- to include, more faces, hairstyles, maybe weight/height, and even some rare armor recipes that have variable ingredients to modify the color (different dyes)? We don't have a significant number of additions in mind, but we will occasionally be adding new hairstyles, different faces and other customization details to the character-creation screen as we get closer to launch. As for apparel and armor, there will be a very large variety of pieces that can be collected, and we're continually adding new pieces, but there will not be an option to dye armor to change its color. Will maximum guild size be limited in World of Warcraft? Has this size been decided yet? We're still evaluating whether or not we want to put a cap on the amount of members any one guild can have. Will there be secret and hard-to-find pets and mounts that are rarer than others? Yes. =) Will there be pet and mount emotes? It's not likely that we will be able to add this in time for launch, but it is on our wish list of things that we'd like to add as time permits. Is the skill system going to be revised in the future? Yes, you'll see changes to the skill system not in the upcoming patch, but in the one after that. Will letters sent in the mail system be able to hold more than one item/stack? This is actually one of the topics that we're discussing, as a number of players have brought it to our attention. We don't have an answer to this question yet, but we do feel that it is a positive idea that we want to incorporate into the game -- one of a few "polish" tweaks that would be a positive addition to the overall feel of the game. It may or may not make it into the game in time for ship, but we do encourage players to send more feedback about changes like this that they'd really like to see. Will there be top hats to go with the tuxes already in game? They haven't been made yet, but we plan on getting them into the game soon, hopefully by launch. Are there going to be any rules put in place against corpse camping? We're currently discussing what sort of polices and procedures we would like to incorporate in the game to keep instances of griefing like this at a minimum. We'll continue to observe and balance how the PvP aspect of the game works, and we will incorporate changes in the game or policies as needed. Are more riddle/puzzle quests coming? We do plan on adding a few more riddle/puzzle quests into the game, in addition to the ones that are already available, such as Cortello's Riddle or some of the other quests like Captain Sander’s Treasure Map and Sweet Amber. If you would like to see more quests of this type, or any other type, please be sure to /suggest them. Will there be more weather effects than the random lightning by the Dark Portal? Yes, we do plan on adding more of these types of effects. This is on our list of things to do, but we don't have an ETA at this time. Will items produced by the Horde trade-skillers look different from those created by Alliance members when the final product is released? Trade skill items with the same name will not be different across factions, but there already are (and will be more) items that are specific to the Alliance and the Horde. For example, Horde players cannot make Ironforge Breastplates, and Alliance players cannot make any of the Barbaric Iron Armor pieces. Will we be able to untrain talents in the retail product? In the upcoming beta patch, we plan to allow characters to untrain in talents freely in order to better help balance the talents. However, we feel that investing in talents is a commitment that defines and distinguishes one's character and should not be allowed to be changed freely. Although we do not have a structure for how this will work in retail as of yet, we do intend to have a penalty to prevent players from talent-hopping to suit situations on the fly. --- Edit: Changed "With there be more weather effects" to "Will there be more..." and changed "lighting by the Dark Portal" to "lightning by the Dark Portal." Thanks SceneKid and Elfbane. Also, putting a link here to the previous Q&A (from 8/2) so that we can un-sticky that one: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx...&p=1#post172565

yes, I am trying to find aliens.

Rank Change Elder Nobs now have the name of War Chieftains Nobs now have the name of Chieftains We are currently looking at replacing Captain with something else. Language Several words have been changed; please take a look at the language section. Also, we are currently looking for replacements of the following words: Bye Great Troll Sword Bow If you think of anything, let us know. Roster Added Player Name, Age, Location, Timezone and Forum Name to the roster. Users can login and update their profiles to display said information.