Good advice, Netti. I was going to say always make a hard copy of your friends list so you will be able to add your friends to a new account in case your old accout gets hacked and stolen. And it’s always good to have a backup account anyway.

I think it would help the situation if Yahoo actually enforced the rules it makes and maybe they should have people monitoring the chat rooms for violations.

From Ensemble Studios: January 4, 2005

Dawn of a New Age: Age of Empires III Announced for 2005 Release

Microsoft Game Studios and Ensemble Studios are proud to announce the return of the king of real-time strategy games: Age of Empires III is scheduled to ship in the second half of 2005. This will be the latest landmark release in the award-winning franchise that has sold a staggering 16 million units worldwide.

Age of Empires III will offer gamers the next level of realism, with advanced battle physics and unparalleled visual detail. The new game picks up where Age of Empires II: Age of Kings left off, placing gamers in the position of a European power determined to explore, colonize and conquer the New World. This time period features stunning scenes, from towering European cathedrals to courageous tribes of Native Americans, and spectacular combat with Industrial Age units like rifled infantry, cavalry and tall ships bristling with cannons.

Age of Empires III will once again demonstrate Ensemble Studios’ reputation for excellence and innovation in the real-time strategy (RTS) genre. The game will set a new standard for visual quality and amaze players with detail never before seen in an RTS. Age of Empires III will excite strategy gamers with new game-play elements, including the concept of a “Home City,“ new civilizations, units, technologies and an immersive new single-player campaign that will span three generations.

There are a number of things that could be causing this problem.

You may have a corrupt file in your Messenger directory. To fix the problem, you must manually delete the Messenger directory on your C: drive, then reinstall the Messenger program.

You may be experiencing an issue because you are connecting through a firewall and/or proxy server. In order to solve the issue, you will need to configure your firewall and/or proxy server.

I just recently started using the new version of Yahoo Messenger. This morning for the first time I got the same “chat took longer than expected to connect” message.

In the Zone Alarm Programs tab, check to see that all the Access Permissions for Yahoo Messenger are set to “Always allow” and “Always accept”.