I’ve had some issues with this domain and it ended up being dead for quite some time. I’ve just managed to move everything to a new host and now you should be able to read me again.

To keep you up to date with what has been going on game-wise, I’ve disbanded my old WoW guild and started a new one called Edge which is, again, a high end raiding guild but tailored to the new 25 men content released with TBC.

My game project is still under development. It’s going quite slow but it’s progressing nonetheless.

I am compiling this post to keep track of pages around the net talking about World of Warcraft servers issues and their architecture. I hope to be able to come up with a clue about the reason why we’re experiencing so much lag and disconnections every single night. Feel free to contribute to this list.
Post discussing some server issues
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2006/4/26/3760

April 2006 CNET.COM article about wow server problems
http://news.com.com/2100-1043_3-6063990.html

Interview to Rob Pardo, not much about the game architecture
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187331,00.html

Lag issues report:
http://www.ferrago.com/story/6445

Evidence of BG3 lag problems:
http://forums.worldofwar.net/showthread.php?threadid=376004

Similar problems with Chinese servers:
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/03/06/china-threatens-mass-boycott-of-wow/

No answers to the press about the issues:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/worldofwarcraft/news.html?sid=6153703

Intwerview to John Lagrave on EuroGamer about the login issues of the first months of 2006:
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=62790
Some stuff that is no longer available online but that I managed to copy & paste here:

Telia press release

12/9/2004 09:00 CET (TeliaSonera International Carrier)
TeliaSonera International Carrier and Blizzard Entertainment® Announce Hosting Agreement in Europe
European Hosting Solution Confirmed for World of Warcraft®

TeliaSonera International Carrier and Blizzard Entertainment® today announced that TeliaSonera International Carrier will provide the hosting solution in Europe for Blizzard Entertainment’s upcoming massively multiplayer online role-playing game, World of Warcraft®.

The massive deployment of several hundred servers will be connected with multi-gigabit IP links to the TeliaSonera International Carrier’s wholly owned Viking IP network. This will allow for seamless access to Blizzard’s virtual world. TeliaSonera International Carrier will provide the hosting services through its Internet Data Centres in Paris and Stockholm.

In addition to providing hosting for World of Warcraft, the new agreement significantly expands the hosting services in Europe that TeliaSonera International Carrier currently provides to Blizzard Entertainment for its free online gaming network, Battle.net®.

“We are very proud of our close relationship with Blizzard Entertainment, one of the world’s dominating companies in the gaming industry”, says Eva Lindqvist, President of TeliaSonera International Carrier. “Online gaming has had enormous growth in the gaming sector. This agreement confirms our position as the leading supplier of IP connectivity in the Pan-European market.”

“TeliaSonera has been providing a best-of-class hosting solution for Battle.net in Europe for many years, and we’re very pleased to be expanding this service for World of Warcraft,” commented Paul Sams, senior vice president of business operations at Blizzard Entertainment. “We’re confident that TeliaSonera’s high-quality, highly accessible IP network will provide a stable infrastructure in which European players can easily explore and enjoy World of Warcraft.”

About World of Warcraft
In World of Warcraft, players assume the roles of legendary heroes and interact with thousands of other players online as they explore and adventure across a vast world. Whether journeying together or questing on their own, players will engage in heroic battles, develop friendships, forge alliances, and compete with enemies for power and glory. The game features customizable character classes with thousands of weapons, spells, and abilities. With an innovative, easy-to-use interface, an action-packed combat system, and thousands of quests that build an immersive storyline, World of Warcraft offers an MMORPG game that will appeal to both veteran and casual players alike.

About the Warcraft Universe
Since its debut in 1994, the #1-selling Warcraft® series has won industry acclaim and has shattered sales records worldwide with over 14 million copies sold*. In 1995, Blizzard followed the well-received Warcraft: Orcs and Humans™ with the highly acclaimed Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness™, considered by many critics to be one of the best games ever made. In 2002, Blizzard expanded the boundaries of the Warcraft universe with the third chapter of its legendary saga, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos™, which garnered numerous Game of the Year awards. With the release of World of Warcraft, Blizzard now extends its epic storyline into the MMORPG realm, expanding the genre with a massively multiplayer gaming experience of unparalleled quality.

* Based on EDI sell-through, internal company estimates, and reports from key retail accounts around the world.

About Blizzard Entertainment
Best known for blockbuster hits including the Warcraft series, StarCraft®, and the Diablo® series, Blizzard Entertainment (www.blizzard.com), a division of Vivendi Universal Games, is a premier developer and publisher of entertainment software renowned for creating many of the industry’s most critically acclaimed games. Blizzard’s track record includes nine #1-selling games and multiple Game of the Year awards. The company’s free Internet gaming service Battle.net reigns as the largest in the world, with millions of active users.

About TeliaSonera International Carrier
TeliaSonera International Carrier provides wholesale international IP, Capacity and Voice services to selected high volume destinations in Europe and across the Atlantic. Services are based on TeliaSonera International Carrier’s wholly owned European and trans-Atlantic networks. As well as owning one of the largest network footprints in Europe, TeliaSonera International Carrier also has peering points in the US. TeliaSonera International Carrier is the leading carrier of IP and Voice traffic in the Nordic and Baltic Sea regions, and has extensive reach into Eastern Europe. TeliaSonera International Carrier is a company fully owned by the TeliaSonera Group. For more information visit our web site www.teliasoneraic.com

For further information journalists can contact: TeliaSonera International Carrier Katharina Gullaksen, Press Officer, +46-70-562 07 51 Blizzard Entertainment, Europe Julia Gastaldi, Director of Communications and Community, +33 (0) 1 0 67 91 33
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During the last month I’ve spent quite a bit of my spare time working on the engine for the little game I have in my mind. I have codenamed it after the name of my WoW guild, Anathema. Here’s the first screenshot of it. Not much to see as I’m still working on the framework of the game and there’s not much going on. I think it could be of interest to know that today I’ve discovered that my game engine design is very similar to the one used by Epic Games’ Unreal Engine. Of course mine is a lot simpler, but the basic concepts of Actors, Pawns and Controllers are all there. And the same can be said for the event triggering system.

Why the hell am I even thinking about migrating my old site? I’m going to keep it in its place until the server dies. Moving all the old stuff would take too long and I have no spare time to do it. And by the look of it, most of that stuff is so old that it can only be archived and everybody should just forget about it unless google comes up with a link to it.

My priority for this site is now to find a new theme that suits my needs and subsequently start working on a project I’ve been thinking for a long time.. writing about my experience as a Guild Leader for a high end raiding guild that managed to be one of the top guilds on its server and that also has a social approach to the game.

After years of inactivity I finally decided to make One Man Crew the hub for all of my personal projects. I’m slowly migrating the content that could still be of interest to someone from http://tanis.hateseed.com/ and the old One Man Crew (expecially the forums about the NWN scripting stuff).