The
StarCraft II Website has an apology to players from Blizzard over their failure to live up to a promise for a paid service to allow name changes in
StarCraft II, saying as a result of delays in rolling this out, they have added a free name change to everyone's account in the RTS sequel. Word is: "We’re planning to offer another free name change to all players when
the new Clans feature goes live in the next couple of months, so don’t worry about removing your clan tag from your character name with this one. We will alert you to that when the time comes." There's no word in how much it is costing them to go through the vast expense of changing character names for nothing.
An
article on FX Guide from last month discusses some of the technical wizardry behind
Assassin's Creed III, discussing how modern video games are now capable of rendering scenes in real time that Thanks
Ant via would have been beyond Hollywood not too long ago. This focuses on rendering oceans, saying: "In feature films just a decade ago, rendering oceans was reason enough to seek an Oscar." The article starts as an overview, but as it progresses, it gets steadily more technical. Thanks Richard W.
Valve offers the following list of the 10 bestselling games on
Steam for this past week:
- Arma II: Combined Operations
- Chivalry: Medieval Warfare
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Borderland 2
- Far Cry 3
- Torchlight II
- Counter-Strike Global Offensive
- Spec Ops: The Line
- XCOM: Enemy Unknown
- Call of Duty: Black Ops II
One home team and one road team won yesterday, just like I picked it, but I was still 0-2 in what's turning out to be a remarkably unimpressive attempt at predicting the NFL playoffs. The games were wonderfully competitive though, living up to the cliché that the divisional round is the best week of football of the season. Here's hoping today's games are equally entertaining.
R.I.P.:
Eugene Patterson, 89, voice on civil rights, dies.
R.I.P.:
World's oldest woman dies at 115.
The
Diablo III Website has a preview of the upcoming version 1.07 patch for
Diablo III, saying the update will be on the PTR for Blizzard's action/RPG sequel "soon," though there's no word on when it will go live. The new version will have the promised PvP dueling, though the details they provide indicate this will be at least as barebones as suggested, as it will not include any form of scoring or rewards. They outline changes being made to the Wizard and Monk classes, each of which will get damage buffs, saying they are not done tweaking the other classes yet, but that they had all been the subject of more changes previously. Version 1.07 will also introduce new account-bound items players will be able to craft using new account-bound reagents, a new level of gems, a bump to the damage socketing rubies adds, the ability to use Monster power in public games, bumped Monster Power experience bonuses, changes to the Reflects Damage, Molten, and Plagued affixes, a removal of the incrementing resurrection timer on consecutive deaths, and a slight increase to base pickup radius.
Happy belated birthday to our good friend
Ant. I remembered Frans on time this year, so something had to give. Sorry about that Ant, and thanks as always for passing along all the links of interest.
R.I.P.:
Reddit Cofounder, Digital Activist Aaron Swartz Dead From Suicide at 26. Thanks nin.
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