As many of you are probably aware, those crazies over at Blizzard update the snot out of the World of Warcraft, a popular online video game for super nerds. Yes, I play this game occasionally. However, today I am going to talk less about me being a nerd and more about cryptic and often misleading error messages, which are being seen more often lately.

As you can probably tell from the above screenshot, there are two things happening. 1) There is breaking news stating that there will be extended maintenance on Thursday and that there will be a period of downtime (a period in which you will not be able to play the game) and 2) We are unable to connect. This message says, and I quote, “Unable to connect. Please try again later. If the problem persists, please contact technical support.” … But why?

I believe that the above-stated error message is simply too vague. Granted, anyone with half a brain can put two and two together and come to the realization that you are probably unable to connect because Blizzard is performing “extended maintenance”. However, this message never appears when they are performing maintenance. Usually, the person is able to log in and view the realm list (that’s sort of like choosing which “world” you want to play in). Long story short, a lot of people are probably wondering wtf is going on, why they can’t connect, is their internet broken, do they need to open firewall ports, etc.

What they didn’t tell you is that they’re temporarily taking their servers offline.

Just then, a very basic, easy-to-implement solution popped into my head. Why didn’t Blizzard just tell everyone that this would probably happen? And what better way to do that than by utilizing the news section of the game launcher? Something like, “Oh, hey guys. Just so you know we’re taking our servers offline and moving them so the game will run better. By the way, you’re probably going to get a connection error. Please don’t freak out and do anything rash like throw your firewall through a window.” If you look at this screenshot, you’ll notice a section titled News. It’s big, it’s orange and you can’t miss it. My guess is that anyone looking for news pertinent to the game would probably look at this screen first, considering it’s displayed every time you launch the game.

But no.. Instead of using this space for actual news, they use this space to try and sell things like mounts, posters, mouse pads and tankards (yes, the kind you drink out of).

Why has Blizzard done this? I don’t know. They do a lot of weird, unexplained things. They make really fun, visually-stunning games. I just don’t think they do a good job of letting everyone know what the hell is going on. :) But hey, that’s what happens when you’re making billions of dollars per year. You come up with vague error messages to confuse your customers.

Okay, so I’m a closet World of Warcraft player. My friends Ryan Reid (of rynotec.com) and Greg Manning finally got Level 68 (don’t laugh) and we decided it was time to buy the expansion and go to Northrend.

I went to upgrade my account this morning and download the expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, and after the installation files had finished downloading, an error popped up: No installer data could be found. If this problem persists, please contact Blizzard Technical Support. What the heck does that mean? Could you be a little more vague…

After poking around on the internet for a while and not finding any solutions that didn’t involve physically having the installation disks in front of me, I decided to just delete some files and pray for the best.

I did this on a mac: Navigate to Macintosh HD : Users : Shared : Blizzard and rename the folder “World of Warcraft Installer” to anything else. (I renamed mine to “Crap”). You can probably delete it and it should be fine.

Either way, I just ran the installer again and it worked. I’m sure there is a very similar process to solving this problem if this happens on a Windows machine.

I’ve decided to share a previously-unreleased movie poster from the 48-Hour Film Project with the members of this site. This poster, titled The Moneyshot, didn’t make the final cut for release on this site because of it’s.. um.. slightly provocative nature. Click here to download the The Moneyshot movie poster.

Okay, so the 48 Hour Film Project was a bust, but that doesn’t mean you can’t watch the film online for view count sake. Here is a quick recap of events from the 48HFP:

The team shows up at Orbit Media Studios on Friday night. Joe and I track down Ed and the rest of the team at a bar that is (and I quote) 4 blocks South, 1 block East from the parking lot. Joe and I start to get hunger pengs, so we walk across the street to Papa Romeo’s Pizza where our needs are catered to by six Asian men (?) working the counter. We get back to Orbit to start pounding out ideas for this year’s film submission. A good idea is formed and we begin brainstorming possible shooting locations, filming styles, wardrobe options, etc. I watch The Hangover. Hilarity ensues. We all get tired and leave for a few hours to hunt flying sheep. The remaining members of the team reconvene at Orbit only to learn that the entire script has been thrown out the window, with the lead writer stomping off the set. Ed and Kiya go rogue filmmaker and submit their (properly titled) movie, “Last Resort”.

Click here to view their submission.

I’ve finally gotten around to converting the Maximum Attraction and The Ringer movie posters into desktop-friendly wallpapers. The wallpapers come in four different sizes: 1024×768, 1440×900, 1600×1200 and 1920×1200. All four sizes come bundled in a single .zip file. Click here to download the Maximum Attraction desktop wallpaper or click here to download the The Ringer desktop wallpaper.

As you can tell by this very well-put-together poster, Joe Kessen (of jkessen.com) and I were very busy at Orbit Media Studios this weekend. Tom Jalana (of tomjalana.com), Joe, Cheryl, the lovely Kiya and myself held multiple photo shoots attempting to get the perfect shots for this year’s movie posters. Three posters made the cut this year, with many decent runner-ups. They are (in order of production) The Ringer (download hi-res, 1262kb), The Ringer 2 (download hi-res, 985kb) and lastly, Maximum Attraction (download hi-res, 1040kb). Scripts have yet to be written for these future blockbusters, but there is no doubt in my mind that the European suave, Tom Jalana, is up for the challenge.

Movie posters aside, the 48-Hour Film Project turned out to be a bust. No real decisions were made and no one could agree on anything for more than a few minutes. After a long Saturday night, The Orbit Crew, Joe, Cheryl and myself parted our separate ways while Tom, Ed and Kiya went rogue-filmmaker. I’m not sure what the final piece looks like, but I’m sure I can get an advanced copy.

Spread the word that officially licensed The Ringer and Maximum Attraction movie wallpapers are in the works. Be sure to check back later for an update.

Update: We’ve been given permission by Tom Jalana and Ed Sochacki to air this quite interesting film. It’s called Last Resort, and I believe the title is a perfect reflection of the events that unfolded that weekend. Click here to view the beast.