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Hurricane Ivan Hits Gaming Hard

Posted by Zonk on from the pinballs-are-people-too dept.

Hurricane Ivan's US landfall has affected gamers across the country. The World of Warcraft Beta is still down this week while the data center it's housed in is dried and brought back up. Star Wars Galaxies also experienced outage due to adverse weather conditions. And many thanks to Leon Kiriliuk for alerting us to the Pinball Association Notice that "two-hundred thirty two classic pinball machines and some rare video games were destroyed, including an extremely rare Tattoo Assassins prototype and a sit-down Omega Race!" Update: 09/21 02:33 EDT The World of Warcraft Beta is back up and running with a new patch.

8 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. You know... by nekoniku · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If the worst problem you have all day is that you can't play Star Wars Galaxies, you're having a pretty darn good day.

    --
    "It's a wonderful idea. But it doesn't work." -- Tad Danielewski
  2. Re:Why not store them in a safer location? by Planesdragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Actually, yes. Iron Mountain, MI would be a great place to be a data center. Same as Upstate NY, but more centralized.

  3. They Aren't Human Casualties, But... by DLWormwood · · Score: 4, Insightful
    ...losing 200+ pinball machines all at once, with only some of the case art being salvagable, is a terrible, terrible thing. With the game format almost extinct, restoring these things is going to be a pain, if not impossible.

    In its own way, it's as bad as if one of the Smithsonian buildings or a Science & Industry museum was destroyed. There's a great deal of technological and popular cultural history that's been lost due to Ivan The Terrible. Ugh.

    --
    Those who complain about affect & effect on /. should be disemvoweled
  4. Re:Why not store them in a safer location? by Deraj+DeZine · · Score: 2, Insightful

    He's suggesting that important data be stored in multiple places so that a single natural disaster won't cripple the company. It's very unlikely that a hurricane will hit the East and an earthquake will hit the West in the same week.

    --
    True story.
  5. Re:I.. by Ayaress · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Insightful?

    Ok, I gotta say it:
    Overlord post==joke
    When modding a joke, you:
    A. Mod it funny if you find it funny.
    B. Mod it overrated if you're tired of cliche jokes.
    C. Maybe mod it redundant if twenty people have already made it in the same thread.

    Where do you get insightful in this?

  6. Quite a loss. by Firehawke · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's truly sad. A lot of those are lost permanently as a result-- only MAME romsets left, and MAME can't truly get the feel for such things as a sit-down cabinet for some of these.

    Even worse when some of these are incompleted prototypes that just never made it to the production stage.

  7. Pictures of the Tornado by nuxx · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A friend of mine works on the AOL Campus in Dulles, Virginia. On September 17th, 2004, one of his coworkers, Steve Gibson (not of grc.com) captured some images of what I believe is the tornado that caused this damage. The photos can be seen here, here, and here, if anyone is interested.

  8. Meanwhile, in Haiti by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
    Haiti's president has appealed for aid to help the island in the aftermath of tropical storm Jeanne whose floods have left at least 600 dead.

    Pinball machine don't matter in the best of times, and they certainly don't matter now. It's going to be long storm season this year.