Billing Migration Update posted

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We've just posted an update on the upcoming Billing Migration.

Read the article here.

Give us your feedback here.
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

Worlds being brought down ASAP

We are bringing all game worlds down as we work on determining what is causing the subserver and landblock crashes. We have decided that it is better to bring them down now than to risk data corruption and a potential rollback.

Currently there is no ETA for when they will be brought back up. We will post further updates in this thread.
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

Great change
Good Luck for a change
Surprise finding
Really pathetic
IBN makes it official
Adventure week
Blackmire 2
Turbine Reward System or the luck over skill attitude
Building ties
Blackmire Adventure
Exploit?
SIK Turn in
Guest Writer: Molcavian
The problems with “Power leveling” and how to avoid them.

So we finally got to the dungeon, well behind Rigryn. The map I got from AC Maps made this look like a short run. We started down a ramp, with a handful of the human monsters in our way. With my Magic Defense (359) I was sure I need only walk up and kill them. Big surprise! Not only could they land on me, but I never resisted, even once! I was blasted to hell and back before I knew it. I ran back up the ramp with 21 out of 309 hit points.

A few attacked me from the other side of the ramp, but I had sucked an elixir and healed by then. I quickly buffed up an Acid and Slashing weapon (I had only buffed up a Fire) so I could properly fight.

We advanced along a long set of passages. I’m glad we had Rigryn with us, as my map was useless. I knew there was something wrong when Rigryn had us going in the opposite direction my map showed, at the first passage.


http://www.crackednuts.com/asheron/index.php3?journal=3

Remember When We Used To Do This All The Time?

"The plan, if I can be so humble, was pure brilliance. First, everyone would run up the tunnel to the entrance of the n00b dungeon. Then, when the bully squad came charging up after them, the trap would SPRING!"

Noobs vs. bully noobs... guess which 'team' Kwip is on?
( http://www.neenerneener.net/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=700 )

September teaser posted!

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This was not his home. He had been ordered to T'Gru Kookur to wait and to watch for the phenomenon of the Eye to begin. When it did, he was to send word to Reeshan, his liege. Then he was to walk through the portal, round up Morgluuk and Torgluuk, and find a way to force the eye open at T'Kuruul Reeshan. Reeshan would then enter the new portal and find the way to bring the other Kukuur Masters to the world of the Fiazhat Gods. There the Burun would complete their destinies and become the rulers of both their own world and the world of these would-be usurpers. That had been the plan.

Read A Small Victory here.

Give us your feedback here.
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

Rollback Recompense

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This is going to be in the Rollout Article, but I figured I'd post it here today as well:

As we'd previously announced, all characters on Frostfell, Solclaim, Thistledown, and Leafcull will have the opportunity to obtain one free level's worth of experience this month as an apology for a server outage in late July.

After yesterday's server outage affecting the other five worlds, we have decided that the free level will be for all characters on all worlds.

So each of your characters, on all nine worlds, will have the option of receiving one free level's worth of XP.
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

Update

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Status update, with some unfortunate news.

We attempted to continuing using the existing server cluster for these five worlds but ran into additional problems and database corruption on Verdantine.

The decision has been made to migrate these worlds to the brand new server cluster that had been earmarked for the other four AC1 worlds. It is a bit of good timing that the cluster is up and ready and was in the final phases of load testing this week. The other four worlds will remain on their current cluster until, at minimum, we determine what caused today's problems.

The current status of the five worlds that are down: Due to the database corruption that continues to occur, it is unfortunately necessary to roll back all five worlds to the backup that was made at approximately midnight last night.

We expect the restore to be finished and the worlds to be back up shortly after 12:30 Pacific tonight -- 3:30AM Eastern time, 7:30AM UTC.

We've begun discussing a rollback recompense similar to what we've previously announced for TD, LC, FF, and SC. More details on this will follow later this week once we've got a handle on the total impact.

We apologize again for this unexpected downtime and rollback. As I said, we'll be posting more details about some sort of in-game recompense in the near future.
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

Broadcast from +Admin Gator> This world is coming down NOW. Please log out immediately.

Broadcast from +Envoy Paris> Attention. All worlds are coming down now for a hotfix. Please log out now. Thank you

As you know, earlier today Wintersebb and Morningthaw went down unexpectedly. Wintersebb restarted immediately, but Morningthaw began having problems with its database.

On further investigation, we have found issues with the database cluster that maintains Morningthaw, Wintersebb, Verdantine, Darktide, and Harvestgain. This is likely the cause of the earlier downtime, and the cause of the issue that requires us to restore MT from its last good backup.

To prevent any database corruption on the other four worlds, we will be bringing them down at 3:15PM PDT / 6:15 PM EDT / 10:15 PM UTC. We do not currently have an ETA on when the five worlds will be brought back up -- we'll know more once we bring the worlds down and we can start running diagnostics on the database cluster.

At this time we do not expect any world other than MT to require a rollback. If this changes, I'll let you know immediately.
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

MT and WE being restarted

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Morningthaw and Wintersebb went down without warning at approximately 11:30AM PDT / 2:30PM EDT / 6:30PM UTC. The worlds are being restarted and we expect them to be back up 12:30 PM PDT / 3:30PM EDT / 7:30PM UTC.

I'll post in this thread if there are further updates or delays. We apologize for this unanticipated downtime.
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

This and That
There are times when I hate Microsoft
Tradesmen
Congratulations to Molcavian and Sushi-Ma
The return of Jeff

You can make a tradesman with maxed Endurance, Strength and Focus. That will mean you only have to raise a minimum of stats. Doing it the way I’m doing is a lot harder, but has several big advantages, which are; Majors, Space and Weight.

My weapon tradesman is packed with weapons and salvage bags. I had to off load salvage bags I don’t use much, and weapons that are on the low side, just to have any room at all.

The Armor Tradesman has a different problem. He has room, but the armor weight has him at close to 300 burden. I again had to pass off any odd salvage and armor.

http://www.crackednuts.com/asheron/index.php3?journal=3

Turbine Jolts AC in Europe!

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We've just announced an exciting agreement with Jolt Online Gaming Ltd.!

Read the Press Release and AC1 FAQ here.
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

The Stratics Network is pleased to announce that the next two Dragon Empires House of Commons chats will be today, August 30 at 8:00 PM GMT and 10:00 PM Pacific in the #StraticsHoC channel on Stratics IRC with the Codemasters dev team. The topic for this chat will be General Discussion.

You can connect to one of our IRC servers through the use of your favorite IRC client, such as mIRC, ircle, xchat, or whichever you prefer. Connect to irc.stratics.com port 6667 or whichever server is closest to you:

• irc.epaxsys.net port 6667, USA - Colorado
• stratics.frws.com port 6667, USA - Colorado
• irc.glowfish.de port 6667, EU - Germany
• stratics.afraidyet.net 6667, USA - Atlanta

For those who don't have an IRC Client, you can connect directly to the HoCs with our Java IRC Client. If you need more information about joining IRC, surf to chat.stratics.com and if you want to learn more about Dragon Empires, check the official Dragon Empires website and Dragon Empires Stratics!

Ring of Drudge

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So... Scenario was testing some... interesting ideas today... and... well, you can see for yourself.

It's important to note that this is NOT going into the game ANYTIME in the forseeable future... but it's interesting to think about how it could.

Check it out on Warcry's Crossroads of Dereth or AC Vault.
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

August 24, 2004

This and that

It has been a nightmare week. Do to mistakes and lack of talk communication; I lost my Internet for a week. Fortunately it is up in time to submit my column. Unfortunately, there was nothing to write about.

So rather than dig up some old stuff, or do a “Meet the Fists” column, I have worked on a story I wrote a while back. Few have seen this story. Those that did will find the ending changed. I’ll be back to my normal column next week.

September Letter to the Players posted!

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We've just posted the September Letter to the Players.

Read it here.

Comment here.
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

Upcoming change in Tech Support hours

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As of August 30th, Turbine's Asheron's Call Technical Support will be available from 12:30 PM to 8:30 PM Eastern time, Monday through Friday.

After analyzing our call patterns, we decided to make this chance to ensure staffing during our busiest call periods.
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

FFXI Stratics is proud to host the application for the FFXI Beta for the
countries of Australia and New Zealand. The Beta application form can be
found here, http://ffxi.stratics.com/content/beta/betasignup.php Up to
100 players will be granted free user accounts for the duration of this
beta test!

Akara
FFXIS AE

Make-a-Movie Winner Posted

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The winning movie, from Div' of Harvestgain, is now posted on the Make-a-Monster page. Congratulations Div'!
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations