"The media tends to portray gamers in a negative, anti-social light, and the overwhelming support Team NeenerNeener.net has received shows how inaccurate this is. Every year, we have thousands of gamers stepping forward to donate what they can," said Shawn. "This year's support from game developers is even more proof that the gaming community is full of wonderful, caring people."

AMEX unavailable for new accounts/migration until Monday

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I've just been informed that we will unfortunately be unable to accept American Express for new accounts or migration until sometime in the afternoon Monday April 4.

Existing accounts using American Express for recurring billing should not be affected by this over the weekend, even if their recurring billing date comes due.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this issue, if you are trying to create a new account or migrate an account and pay for it with an American Express card, please wait until Monday afternoon.

Just to be clear, no, this is not an April Fool's Joke.
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

We've just announced that our partners at Jolt will be opening a new world for European players alongside the Throne of Destiny launch in May.

Read the announcement here.

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

Stratics is pleased to announce our next UO House of Commons Developer Chat
with the developers of Ultima Online on Tuesday, March 29th. It will be
at 5:00PM PST / 7:00PM CST / 8:00PM EST in the #StraticsHoC
channel on Stratics IRC. The topic of discussion 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 6668 or whichever server is closest to you:

• stratics.frws.com port 6668, USA - Colorado
  
• irc.glowfish.de port 6668, EU - Germany
  
• stratics.afraidyet.net 6668, USA - Atlanta
  
• irc.epaxsys.net port 6668, USA - Colorado
  

If you are new to these chats, or wish to check out previous chats to catch up on all that's been discussed in the past, then please visit the UO House of Commons webpage for much more information.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Recently posted on the State of the Network:

Quote:
Monday March 28, 6:00AM - 12:00PM PST
Billing and Login servers will be brought down for scheduled maintenance. Please note that once this maintenance has finished, players may find that a patch to the Asheron's Call launcher has cleared their stored Username. Please re-enter the Username and it will store it again as before.

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Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

Event - Uninscribe Thur- Fri- Sat - Sun

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Event - Uninscribe

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Uninscribe events for Thursday 24th of March, Friday the 25th of March and Saturday 26th of March and Sunday 27th of March.

I have tried to stagger the times on each world to allow European. East Coast and Pacific time zone players a chance to attend at least one event.

Location will be the Holtburg Meeting Hall
Strict duration of 30 mins at each location to allow +Leo's to move around.

We will be on each world at various times on those days, on Saturday and Sunday we will be on all worlds a few times throughout the entire day and night to accomadate all players.

Watch for the Global messege from the +Leo telling you to attend.

This event is for players to bring an item that they want an inscription removed from. We ask that you limit the amount of item's so that we have time to assist everyone.

Thank you
__________________
+LeM Kyoshi
Live Events Team Manager
AC 1 / USA

Stratics is pleased to announce a House of Commons with the developers of EverQuest on Thursday, March 24th. It will be at 6pm PDT / 9pm EDT in the #StraticsHoC channel on Stratics IRC.

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 6668 or whichever server is closest to you:

• stratics.frws.com port 6668, USA - Colorado


• irc.glowfish.de port 6668, EU - Germany


• stratics.afraidyet.net 6668, USA - Atlanta


• irc.epaxsys.net port 6668, USA - Colorado

You may also connect through our handy Java link which may be found right here. You must have Java installed to use this which can be downloaded from the Java homepage.

WESTWOOD, Mass. – March 23, 2005 – Turbine, Inc., a premier publisher of online subscription entertainment, announced today that it has granted Codemasters, a leading developer and publisher of interactive entertainment products, the European distribution rights for the next instalments of the popular Asheron's Call® franchise, Asheron's Call: Throne of Destiny™ and Asheron's Call 2: Legions™.

Click here for the full press release.

Click here to leave feedback on this announcement.


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Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

The Thing in the Basement

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Many players have reported encountering strange new creatures in the northwestern woods and mountains. One of the corpses of these creatures has been dragged back to the castle of High Queen Elysa...

Quote:
Queen Elysa followed Jenavere down the dark, damp staircase. Torchlight flickered against the stone walls. The heat and stench of the place crawled upwards and closed around Elysa like a shroud. She had not visited these dungeons in months. She'd had no cause to. Enemies of the realm seldom allowed themselves to be taken captive. Those who did simply killed themselves and returned to their clans.

Read the story here.

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

Thistledown being restarted

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We are restarting Thistledown in order to resolve an issue that is preventing some players from being able to log in to the game.

The world will be brought down at 12:30PM PST / 3:30PM PST / 8:30PM UTC, and should be back online within half an hour.
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

N3 ~ Kwip's "Fun With Guild Hunts!"

Guildie: "Having fun yet, Kwip?"
Kwip: "Dude, I'm naked, 40% vitae, and surrounded by demons."
Guildie: "So no?"
Kwip: "So YES! This is the BEST!"

Kwip's guildmates do the equivalent of baby-sitting a "special needs" child... click here!

--

I've just posted an introduction from our new Director of Community Relations, Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna.

Read it here!


Give us your feedback here!



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Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

Retail FAQ Update: Amazon

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I've just updated the Retail FAQ to remove Amazon from the list of retailers who will be offering the AC:TD Pre-Order Box.

I apologize for the confusion -- Amazon has never been part of the Pre-Order Box program and should not have been on the list. It was a typo on our part and we'll be triple-checking any further communications on this topic to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Players who currently have pre-ordered from Amazon and want to ensure that they get the Pre-Order Box and all associated in-game and real-life goodies: As Amazon will not be carrying the Pre-Order Box, we recommend that you cancel your pre-order from Amazon and instead go to one of the confirmed pre-order vendors: Best Buy, CompUSA, EB, EB Canada, and GameStop.
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

Stratics is pleased to announce a House of Commons with the developers of EverQuest2 on Thursday, March 17th. It will be at 5pm PDT / 8pm EDT in the #StraticsHoC channel on Stratics IRC. The topic of discussion will be the upcoming Adventure Pack - Bloodline Chronicles. We will also be giving away 10 copies of the Adventure Pack! So be prepared to answer some EQ2 Trivia.

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 6668 or whichever server is closest to you:

• stratics.frws.com port 6668, USA - Colorado


• irc.glowfish.de port 6668, EU - Germany


• stratics.afraidyet.net 6668, USA - Atlanta


• irc.epaxsys.net port 6668, USA - Colorado

You may also connect through our handy Java link which may be found right here. You must have Java installed to use this which can be downloaded from the Java homepage.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Stratics is pleased to announce a House of Commons with the developers of Star Wars Galaxies on Wednesday, March 16th. It will be at 5pm PDT / 8pm EDT in the #StraticsHoC channel on Stratics IRC.

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 6668 or whichever server is closest to you:

• irc.epaxsys.net port 6668, USA - Colorado


• stratics.frws.com port 6668, USA - Colorado


• irc.glowfish.de port 6668, EU - Germany


• stratics.afraidyet.net 6668, USA - Atlanta

You may also connect through our handy Java link which may be found right here. You must have Java installed to use this which can be downloaded from the Java homepage.

MS ~ Kwip's "Mind If I Vent A Little?"

"What a crazy few days it's been. For starters, we're excited about the prospect of this whole NeenerPalooza '05 (N305 - yeah, went back to the old name - that was actually a typo anyway). It's not going to be a Con, and not really a full-fledged party. It's going to be a "Gamers Social." If you're in the area, mark your calendars now for April 16th at 10am til 10pm. I don't really know what we're going to have yet, but the cover charge will likely be $5 (proceeds going towards our team's fundraising in the MS Walk, of course). We WILL have some prizes to give away/raffle off/auction - and hopefully we'll have even more companies than Mythic, Turbine and Monolith stepping forward to help us. Yeah, that's right Blizzard, now would be a GREAT time to drop me an email?"

Help Kick some MS Ass!

A LEO will contact and visit your team in-game.
Start buffing immediately !!
A Book listing your Fellowship name and members must be handed to the LEO.
Shortly thereafter you will be transported to the arena.
Combat starts as soon as you arrive !!

Greetings,

The Stratics Media Group is going to be moving its web servers from the current data center in San Diego to a new Level 3 facility in Las Vegas. This move will help to consolidate our servers into a local facility where maintenance and development can be managed much more efficiently. This server move will require some downtime as the servers are physically shipped to the new location. This move will affect all of our services with the exception of the forums; they should remain available throughout this process since that particular server is located in a different data center.

The servers will be brought down on Sunday morning (March 13th, 2005) and should be back up and running in the new facility on Monday (March 14th, 2005). We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause, but this is a move that is long overdue and once we have the servers in the new location we will be doing a series of upgrades and improvements on all of our servers. This move will also help to ensure that we can considerably improve our services and network stability.

Regards,

Jhariden

Network Director

Stratics Media Group

http://www.stratics.com

We Are Massively Multiplayer

Retail FAQ posted

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I've just posted a FAQ with the latest info on buying Throne of Destiny, including more specifics on the pre-order box, straight from our Director of Marketing.

Click here!
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

Possible short interruptions of Authorization Servers

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We're going to be kicking in a new primary authorization server at 11:40am Eastern/8:40am Pacific. For about ten minutes, you may have trouble logging into the game on the first try.

We expect the new server to be online within 10 minutes, so any interruptions to the log-in process should be short.
__________________
Executive Producer
Asheron's Call