STATE OF CATACLYSM [News Article]

Fire engulfs Orgrimmar, rebuilding costly due to scarce supplies
Political tensions mount after Thrall appoints Garrosh as acting Warchief prior to vision quest

[Pguinto-Frostmourne-US], 16th day of 11(1) ES 33, hard embargo - immediate release

N.B. Spoilers for Golden, C (2010) (World of Warcraft: The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm) and strategy guide for the Elemental Invasion after the jump

ORGRIMMAR - A devastating fire tore through Orgrimmar today after the recent dry spell throughout Durotar had escalated the [fire hazard] to alarming [levels]. People throughout the Horde territories worry about political, economic and ecological difficulties stemming from it.

Orgrimmar had suffered an invasion of fire elementals, which caused an inferno that reached calamitous proportions and burned down most of the predominantly wooden architecture. Shaman are still baffled as to the reason for the elements’ disgruntlement.

The fire may be related to the recently foiled [arson] attempts by the Doomsday Cult. They had attempted to use special devices and rituals to mass summon fire elementals to the city.

As part of the fire fighting effort, which literally required monsoonal amounts of water, able shaman arrived at the scene to commune with the fire elementals responsible for the blaze. Thrall, shaman and Warchief of the Horde, personally assisted in the effort.

Repairing the unprecedented damage sustained is challenging given the strain the city's coffers are under from drought and restricted trade with the Alliance.

Prior to the fire, citizens of all major cities had complained of minor ground tremors. It is widely believed that action by the earth elementals, or some other related phenomena, would cause a more major earthquake.

Tax-Effect Accounting 101 for Australian Businesses

Governments levy taxes on individuals and businesses to finance its activities and/or (in the economic spirit of things) discourage certain certain activities. More likely than not, a business will be required to pay tax on its income. In doing so, that business would need to look at its accounts to determine the tax that is payable (or, if they are doing badly enough, how much they can claim from the tax agency).

The amount of tax a business needs to pay is often a fixed percentage of the profit they earn. Generally, where they earn revenue, the tax payable increases, while incurring expenses decreases tax payable.

If the business is operating in Australia, among others, it would need to follow the accounting standard AASB 112 Income Taxes, which, in general, would require two things:

1. Calculating current tax payable by reconciling from the accounting profit recorded for the year
2. Calculating deferred tax by recognising the differences between the accounting and tax balances of assets and liabilities

Pictures with Leaders

30th day of 10(1) ES 33

With the Shattering looming ever closer, I figured that now would be a good time to catch up with the Horde's leaders before their worlds are turned upside down. Here I record my travels and the conversations I had with them.

N.B. Spoilers for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm and Christie Golden's World of Warcraft: The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm after the jump

Garrosh Hellscream

• Well known for: Leading the Warsong Offensive in Northrend as Overlord; challenging Thrall's leadership via Mak'gora; losing his composure near Varian Wrynn; being the son of Grommash Hellscream, damner to the original Blood Curse
• Where I found him: (32.81,38.02) Grommash Hold of Orgrimmar, Durotar, Kalimdor, Azeroth.
• What he was doing: Being appointed temporary Warchief by Thrall in a rather plain ceremony

Five reasons to like Treants

World of Warcraft's portrayals of things are noticeably cartoony when compared to real life equivalents. Treants and druids in Tree of Life form are no different, being any combination of cute, adorable, cuddly, pitiable and likeable.

1. Stubbiness
The classic treant model resembles a wide (for its height) sapling with short legs. Not only would they be appealing to hug, they would find it somewhat difficult to run around. In fact, the druid Tree of Life form formerly suffered a movement impairment.

The new Tree of Life form features longer legs, but still retains its width (in fact, it is much wider!).

Full Outer Join

During mid-September, WowStead changed its hosting partner to Curse Inc.. In doing so, it needed to migrate vast amounts of data over to the new Web servers and, among other things, merge the databases of both websites together. This was necessary given that users will log in to WowStead using their Curse Account. Unfortunately, several problems arose from the process:

• WowStead users that do not have a Curse Account cannot log in to WowStead.
• WowStead users that do not have a Curse Account have lost access to their characters and subsequently need to reclaim them.
• In the vice versa of the above, users have access to their characters but do not own the account they were assigned.

While explanations of what went wrong are not readily forthcoming, a likely cause is the misuse of the methods adopted to merge the two databases together. Given the popularity of relational databases in storing website data, one can contemplate how the use of relational algebra can bring about such complications.

Ulduar Constellations [Windows 7 theme]

Ulduar may well be one of the most awe-inspiring and (quite literally) captivating places in Azeroth. This theme brings a few of its highlights (in particular, its many constellation-like sculptures) to your Windows 7 desktop.

As I do not have file hosting available to me for hosting the .themepack file, I will give instructions apply it manually. This theme offers the following appearance customisations:

• Desktop background
• Window colour
• Sounds
• Screensaver

WoW Mathematics: Steady-State Health Level

In the final phase of the Anub'arak encounter in the Trial of the Crusader (ToC), healers must heal through a variety of sources of damage, including Penetrating Cold and Leeching Swarm. While the former deals constant damage over time, the latter does more damage the higher players' health levels are! The raid might be interested in knowing the optimal health level the healer(s) can keep the players at.

At the steady-state health level, DPS of Anub'arak against the raid equals the HPS of the healers for the raid. From here, health levels do not tend to move either way; they are stable, and this determines whether the healers can provide enough healing.

Summary:

• Where h is the total HPS, r is the proportion of current health Leeching Swarm does as damage, p is the proportion of players affected by Penetrating Cold at cast and P is the tick size of Penetrating Cold, the steady-state health level H* is H* = ¹/_r(h - ³/₁₀pP). It is a good idea to incorporate a buffer against the randomness of the damage.
• For Heroic 10-man, the steady-state health level is H* = 5h - 450, and for Normal 25-man, it is H* ~ 10h - 228.
• As long as the steady-state health level is more than zero, the healing the healers provide is sufficient.