Fatherpeteus

Good luck with the authenticator - I've been trying for more than a month (since I got hacked myself). It looks like they just aren't available from Bliz anymore. You can always try eBay gougers, of course! The good news is I got all my stuff back from the GMs! (And after installing additional virus protection and cleaning the keylogger off my PC, no more attacks... I still want an authenticator though!!)

I can has... Ham and mashed potatoes! And punkin pah!

"Civil union". But depending on the jurdisdiction, it may not have all of the financial/asset perks, in some cases including dependant insurance coverage and (big one) the ability to automatically inherit property upon death, such as the home the couple may have been living in for years (if the deceased was the sole owner.) Personally, I'm in favor of doing away with "marriage" altogether. Nobody takes their vows seriously anyway. Raise kids communally! The level of childcare provided by parental units today is at an all-time low, so we wouldn't be losing much (except those of us who happen to be divorce attorneys.) :-/

Did you see the "John Henry" terminator learning to play D&D with one of the scientists on The Sarah Conner Chronicles this week? "Look, I rolled a 20!" lulz - I love that show!

Sucks you lost out! To be fair though, it's been months since I was in a pug raid where the loot rules was anything but mainspec priority. Normally, "mainspec" = your role in that raid (so people can't claim that they are another spec in disguise, just because some best-in-slot offspec piece drops. I always assume it's mainspec first. If the raid leader didn't specify at the start, then rolled on something for their offspec, that would bug me much more. Always good to ask before the boss though! I know none of this eases the pain of losing out. Hopefully you get your trinket next time!

Kidney stone. OMFG. I'm told it's like having a baby. Yeah... An elephant baby! With a week straight of labor! lol. Not really. But on the plus side, no comforters were destroyed!

Tears are still running down my face - lmao!

Account admins would need to be able to reset the security settings for you, after validating your identity with your personal info/secret question. Can't have the keychain as a single point of catastrophic failure. BTW, did anyone else notice that the Authenticator is no longer listed on the Bliz Store site? Oh wait, I just looked and it's back now - But only the US version, not the one that could be shipped to Canada. And surprise, surprise, it's still sold out as it has been for weeks. Sheesh!

...And an illuminati agenda to take over the world, I heard!

Brightpetra - Tankadin. Unfortunately, I'll be late! Rare 7-10 curling this Thurs. There's always some chance of getting out early - If I shoot the lights out and the other team concedes. I cleaned the frick up in my last two games, so it's possible! But in any case I'll check in as soon as I get home to see if you're needing a tank. You only really need three for Patchwerk anyway, so hopefully it will work out. --Edit-- Oops - I fail at my appointment book. Curling is next Thursday - This thurs I should be home ~9!

\m/

I expect they have the bandwidth more-or-less covered (at least at the client's end - You have to wonder how much bandwidth the server would need at that end, when connected to a million clients though). I'm more questioning how they would come up with the CPU power to render all of those graphics in the first place. Despite being a "server", it's still limited in how many polygons it can render per second. I guess they can aproach it by figuring out how many clients one server/router/T3 or whatever can handle, price the service so that many clients pay for that equipment with profit left over, and just buy up a big ol' warehouse and start filling it with more and more servers as people enlist. Could work, I guess!

So... The client-side hardwar is easy... The delivery of the streamed images to your TV is easy-ish... But isn't a server, at its heart, a jacked-up PC? It may have quad processors, a big RAID array with lots of storage, and a lot of bandwidth... But can it really replace the processing power of a million, or a hundred million PCs and their video card GPUs? I'm a little skeptical on that side of it. Sounds cool though! WoW (or SCII) on my 50" plasma would be slick!

Clear to KT in nice order... And then it was getting late, some people had to leave, and we got stuck on him. Great job though everyone, and the plan is to reconvene Sunday night at 9:30 to finish off the ol' Lich!

Eh - I expect that Bliz figures WoW is getting old in the tooth, and a lot of their millions of subscribers are going to start gravitating away... Might as well gravitate to a new Bliz title, right?

I'll tank on Brightpetra

Stuff is changing as we approach patch day (I guess?) http://www.wowhead.com/?patchnotes=3.1.0-ptr Should make a significant change to best-in-slot gear ratings calculations! Ow - Did Father's whole gear setup just get gimped? Just as I got to the point of being pretty well good for mana through the more intensive fights... Could make Razuvious interesting?!

Sunday, 9:20, check!

BTW, let's seriously consider making it six healers. Tanks dying on Patchwerk is bad! : /

I'm available to tank on Brightpetra

Hmm... Jut started the patching process (automatic on entering WoW), and as I was putting game boxes back on the shelf I realised I hadn't installed TBC before WotLK. I hope it's included, so my n00b L60 DK isn't lost in Outland!

I just reinstalled WoW, uninstalling the game and starting over from scratch. (55% of the way through upgrading from vanilla WoW to WotLK as we speak). When I finish that, I anticipate that there's going to be a looooong series of automatic upgrades from 3.01 to 3.02 to x to y to z and so forth. I made the mistake of deleting those upgrade files from my drive this morning (I was cleaning up fragmented files, and it seemed like a good idea at the time - There were many Gb of patch files there, clearly not being used by the game!) So... Simple enough question - Is there a master patch file somewhere that will upgrade directly from the WotLK release version (3.01something) to the current version (3.09something)? I'd like to get this patching process done tonight... And also avoid filling up my disk with huge obsolete patch files. A quick search of the Bliz WoW page didn't provide any satisfaction quickly, but I'll keep looking!

Clickity-clicking on each of my swarm of zerg queens in turn to zap enemy siege tanks with their spawn broodling instant-kill thingie... Was maybe the most horrible example of painful click-festing I've ever experienced, in 30-odd years of gaming. In WCIII, you'd do the same thing with the whole group selected, and each unit would cast their spell in turn, picking whichever one was closest to the target for you. Now I'm sure at your play level you have mastered the SC interface to a point that these micro tasks don't give you trouble... But I need the help. Hey, I turn 40 next month - Cut a geezer some slack! I played both games *a lot* (thousands of ladder games), and can't think offhand of a single thing the SC interface had over the WCIII one. Now if you said that the factions were more interesting, gameplay had a certain je ne sais quoi, or whatever - I might be inclined to agree. SC was an awesome game, and I await SCII with baited breath! (When the heck is that coming, anyway?) But the interface was simply - Dated, imo. We may just have to agree to disagree on the "non-auto-casting features StarCraft has is what makes competitive gaming so intense, and that's what I love about it". I know some people think this way, but you'll never convince me that fast reflexes and optimized keyboard configurations are what makes the best strategy gamer! Keep in mind too, that "The majority of the Starcraft community" are probably silently playing WCIII and waiting for SCII to come out and draw us back. (Or SCII may be their first RTS game!) Not to diminish the expertise and contributions of truly hard-core SC folks who have stuck with it all these years, but I'm sure Bliz wants to make a game that will sell to many more than the current regular SC players. The best games of any sort are intuitive and accessible. A perfect RTS will translate the "general"s strategic thoughts into unit responses as seamlessly as possible. As the player, I want to concern myself with asessing the enemy's moves and organizing the best counter - Not worrying about what button to push or losing a huge army simply because my hand slipped on to the wrong key. I want to command an army of reasonably intelligent units who know how to fight and just need my direction at the strategic level - Not "Unit one, attack enemy unit B with your gatling gun. Remember to turn the safety off! Unit two, move to point X and then attack enemy unit C with your missle launcher." I think it was Sun Tsu who said something about how real wars are won off the battlefield - i.e. by Strategic thinking, not individual unit tactics. Telepathic interface go! For WoW too!! (I know I'll never be any good at WoW PvP because I can't be bothered learning the keyboard tricks you need to use to properly kite while shooting, etc. That stuff just isn't my idea of fun, and I play games for fun.) Maybe WCIII (the interface, that is) just suits a player like me better, and SC just suits a player like you better. Vive la difference - And let's hope Bliz is successful at satisfying both groups (as much as you ever can)!

Bliz has always seemed really good about tinkering with their UI to perfect it. I remember when WC3 came out, what a huge improvement it was over Starcraft or previous Warcraft games (autocast spells, control groups, etc.) It really did a good job of pushing the micromanagement and can't-click-fast-enough-gah! into the background, and letting the player get more into the game. I've been impressed with their attempts to mainstream various successful user-community-created addons into WoW (scrolling combat text, extra action bars, etc), even if they didn't always catch on (WoW voice, that is a great idea conceptually at least). Staying the best in an industry as competitive and progressive as gaming takes more than a catchy vision - It requires a whole lotta ongoing attention to detail, even (especially?) for stuff that seems really menial. And deep pockets. Does anyone do those better than Bliz?