As I am sure you all noticed we had a little trouble over the past week or so. Hopefully that is behind us now for the most part. You will undoubtedly notice that occasionally a page might have broken images or a bad link. We are working hard to get all of them fixed, so please bear with us while we dig through all the content on the site.

Additionally, you may have noticed that the Stratics Forums were affected as well. We have a Temporary Forum setup for the Sratics Community to use, and they can be found by following this link: http://vboards.stratics.com/index.php

You will need to register a new account to post.

Here is a quick FAQ of the events and about the Temporary Forums:

What's the deal with these forums?

These are temporary forums that we've put up so that communities across Stratics can continue without impediment while we work towards recovering the old forums. Again: if all goes well, these forums will be brought down in approximately five to seven days.

Why are these forums different?

We decided a while ago that VBulletin offered most of the features we custom built in to UBB out of the box - that would make it much easier for us to do things like forum upgrades, etc. We've been doing small alpha tests of VBB over the past month or so. In terms of this downtime specifically, VBB let us get these temporary forums set up and configured far faster than doing the same with UBB. Moreover, this will be a great opportunity for users to give us feedback on VBB and suggest features/customizations (keep in mind there are *many* "rough edges" here - our goal was to get these boards up ASAP).

What happened to the forums?

It's important to note that we take lots of precautions to prevent the loss of data. Stratics is hosted on five production servers. The forums sit on a brand new machine with eight SAS drives operating in a RAID configuration. In the unlikely event that machine loses enough drives for there to be data loss, we contract for both local daily backups as well as local backups to remote datacenters in New York and the mid-west. That's an eight drive RAID configuration with brand new SAS drives and three daily backups. In this case, our primary data center accidentally wiped the data off the forums server while trying to install a new operating system on a similar looking machine. At the same time, we discovered that the system administration firm we contracted with at the time had not performed any recent backups in spite of correspondence with us to the contrary.

Thus we were forced to send the machine out for data recovery by a leading firm. Unfortunately, the process is very slow. Thus these temporary forums.

Why are some forums missing?

Some forums were omitted for the sake of expediency in getting temporary boards up. No worries though - those forums that are missing will return.

I have a suggestions/comment/complaint - who can I contact?

Please feel free to contact directors@stratics.com. Some one will reply within a few hours.

ComputerandVideogames.com has published a preview of Warhammer Online:

AOR stands to be the first truly war-based MMO. While I have hated PvP in its past forms for being a selfish, meaningless game of barrel-shooting, AOR's RvR gives it substance and a point. In the past MMOs have stressfully forced combat against players away from the main game, but EA Mythic have, successfully I might add, made it not only useful, but enjoyable and accessible to the masses.

No new information, but a great read for those looking at making WAR their new obsession. Though I can't say I approve of the acronym...

You can view the article HERE.

Warhammer Online will be featured in the preview section of the June edition of PC Gamer Magazine.

You can view the news at the official WAR site.

Details to follow as they come in! WAAAGH!

For the next look at the racial rivalries, we look at the relationship between the Empire and the Forces of Chaos.

Whether you're planning on playing a half-insane Chosen knight of Tzeentch or a pious Warrior Priest of Sigmar, a thorough understanding of this conflict will make slaughtering your enemies all the more fun.

Behold, the armies of the Empire vs Chaos...

Welcome to part one of our look at the rivalries that put the war in WAR. Over the the course of this three part series we will take a brief look at what its like to be on each side of one of these rivalries and break it down to the most basic level for those new to the conflict.

We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed putting it together. So, without further ado we present the Dwarfs vs Greenskins...

This is a guide for those poor souls of WoW. The red headed stepchildren of MMO's if the world was neck deep in half bastard ginger children. Yes this is your one stop shop for everything WAR explained for even the simplest minded Warcraft player.

Today we will cover the origins of Warhammer, how the game stands overall, RvR, Waaagh!, and the infamous Chicken/Chaos Chicken.

TenTonHammer.com's Garret Fuller had a chance to talk with Community Relations Director Bob Mull at the New York ComicCon this weekend.

Head over to TenTonHammer and see what Bob had to say about how beta is going and where they are at in the testing.

New "News from the Front" reported by the WAR Herald. This edition comes with some great WAR beta correspondence and is packed with new screenshots, including one of a chicken having a bad day:

The conflict on the Blighted Isle is more than a battle between good and evil; it’s the story of brother fighting brother. Can the High Elves maintain their dominion and push the Dark Elves back into the sea, or will the forces of Malekith be able to seize control of their homeland?

You can see the news and view the screenshots HERE.

Its a confusing time for some of us who have been waiting for WAR Beta invites. Some of the answers have been out there for a while, but you really had to search for them.

Mark Jacobs has helped us solve some of this by posting a new Beta Q/A:

Folks,

It’s been, ahem, a rather interesting couple of months here in Mythic-land hasn’t it? Fortunately, I’m not here to announce anything nearly as interesting as our recent news. I’m here to talk about good things, some changes and as always to give the community the facts straight from the horse’s (wait for it, wait for it) head.

First, we are finishing up the initial stage of our first major RvR testing and it has gone really well. Our server is almost full nightly and the beta testers are having a great time. The kudos are flying fast and furious and while nothing is perfect, it is safe to say that this stage is exceeding our expectations.

If you live in the New York area and have some time this weekend, consider catching WAR and not to mention Jeff and Paul at the New York Comic Con.

If your interested in going head over to the WAR Hearld to get the  details.