News

Tiddles and I have been in the process of moving CoN to a new box for the past week or so. We think the thing is just about ready to go, so we're going to fieldtest it by directing traffic to it starting tomorrow. We're planning on porting the DNS over early tomorrow morning on the American east coast, but that's contingent on me waking up, really.

Those of you who have been with us for a while are probably have a vague recollection of the routine. But here's how it will go.

• We will first close the forums.
• We will back up an absolutely current database for the forums, and copy that database to the new machine.
• We will open the forums on the new machine.
• We will move the DNS entry for cavesofnarshe.com to point to the new server.

Now, this is technobabble to most, but what it boils down to is this: for a while, the forums will be closed. They will appear to reopen for different people at different times, due to differences in ISPs updating their data. Everyone, assuming all goes well, should be back in no later than Monday morning EDT.

So, there's not much to discuss here, so just let me know if you need clarification on this move or if you want anything explained. It makes me feel like less a nerd if someone actually wants to know more.

I normally don't use news to draw attention to site polls on the main site, but in this case I'd like to. Please visit any page of the content area of the site, and vote on the poll regarding Adopt a Chocobo. We're reconsidering its place and future with CoN, and we'd like your input. Thank you.

Square Enix released a new design for its company website at www.square-enix.com on Friday, April 15.

The new site combines all of Square Enix's previous sites (for North America, Europe, and Japan) into a single domain name, and incorporates a sleek new flash design to improve continuity among each language's section of the site.

As stated at The Register (much thanks to Iceman for linking us to the article), Sony and Microsoft will be presenting their new consoles, respectively the PS3 and XBox2, on May 16th.

Sure fact? Well, not exactly, as none of the companies said why they would want to make a press conference, but the fact that the E3 starts the very next day hints towards that direction. The real deal is probably when the two consoles will be available for sales: Christmas, early 2006...? Nonetheless, the E3 will probably emphasizes a lot on the two new consoles, which would make it an interesting event.

Square Enix, on its Official Grandia III Page, has announced a tentative Japanese release date for the game in Summer 2005.

The site features short descriptions of the game's plot, world, and characters. The story centers around Yuuki, a 16-year-old boy who dreams of building a plane and flying away from his island home, and Alfina, a 16-year-old priestess searching for her missing brother.

Grandia III will be the first title in the series to be published by Square Enix. Previous Grandia titles were published by Enix alone before the company's merger with Squaresoft in 2003. However, all Grandia games to date have been created by the same developer, a company named Game Arts.

The CoN image demons have been hard at work again - you might recall us adding sections for "Official Art" for Final Fantasy I, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy VI, and Final Fantasy VII all pretty recently. Thanks to Neal and Kame, though, we've added even more art in the form of bonus art captures from FF Anthology and some scans from Nintendo Power magazine. The affected galleries include those for Final Fantasy IV, V, and VI.

In the realm of Final Fantasy VII, again thanks to Neal (and, of course, myself), you'll see filmstrips containing selected frames from every Limit Break in the game. You can find them on the Limit Break and the Characters pages.

Hope you enjoy the new eye candy we've given you, and as always watch this forum to find out what we're doing as we do it.