Archived News:
A new
Battle.Net FAQ on the Blizzard Website offers images of the new version of
Blizzard's network interface-cum-marketplace. There are details on how this will
impact various games, including how WoW players will eventually be forced to
migrate, confirmation the service remains free, and word the marketplace will
offer (presumably paid) content. Here's a bit: What will be available to players in
the StarCraft II Marketplace?
After the launch of StarCraft II, we aim to add the StarCraft II Marketplace to
Battle.net, which will create a vibrant ecosystem of user-generated content,
including multiplayer maps, single-player scenarios, challenges, themes, and
more.
How will Battle.net affect my multiplayer StarCraft II experience?
We’ll be implementing a new auto-matchmaking system, with advanced skill
tracking to allow players to be matched with other players of similar skill
level. This will help players consistently face evenly matched competition.
We’ll also be implementing various leagues and ladder systems to allow a more
competitive StarCraft II landscape.
What is the Real ID feature?
Real ID is at the forefront of online gaming as it will allow you to easily
connect, communicate, and play with real-life friends. Connect with old friends
and current guildies, and make new friends with the integrated Battle.net social
networking tools. Beyond simply seeing your friend’s character names (e.g.
“Gorlac” in World of Warcraft or “Snip3r” in StarCraft II), and having to
remember which character name goes with which friend, you will be able to see
your Real ID friend and chat with him or her across Blizzard games. What’s more,
Real ID is totally optional -- the options are there for you to build your
Blizzard Entertainment social network however you see fit.
What are some of the communication tools available in the new Battle.net?
Our vision is for the new Battle.net to become the ultimate Blizzard
Entertainment social network, in addition to its matchmaking foundation. Simply
logging in to Battle.net will make it easy to find and chat with your friends
across World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, and future Blizzard Entertainment
titles, including Diablo III. Keep track of all your buddies in your friends
list, view their online status and presence information, voice chat, send out
party invites, and broadcast messages to your friends. Detailed character
profiles let players keep up to date on friends’ progress and
achievements.
'20 Years
Of Evolution - Scott Miller And 3D Realms' on Gamasutra chats with the
Apogee/3D Realms cofounder about the recently formed Radar Group, his history in
the gaming industry, 3D Realms, and more. Scott overcomes his reluctance to
discuss his pivotal role in the shareware revolution, as well as other old
school topics like BBSes, the early days working with id, and more. Scott also
confirms that the whole Duke Nukem Forever team has been laid off, but
that he cannot discuss the status of the game because of pending legal actions.
As for the future: Our future is fine. We have, I think at last count, 11
or 12 projects in the works. One of them is coming out next week. Another one is
coming out in about six weeks. Both of those are on the iPhone. We have some
major games in production still. So we're fine. That's not an issue at all.
SouthPeak
announces Raven Squad is now available at retail for Windows and Xbox
360. The announcement is accompanied by
some new
screenshots, and here's a bit on how the game combines the first-person
shooter with a real-time strategy game: Raven Squad puts players in the
boots of two groups of mercenaries as their plane is shot down over the
Amazonian jungle. Caught in the midst of a civil war in Brazil, it’s up to these
gods-among-men to fight their way out of this hostile environment as they drop
bombs, one-liners, and a smattering of politically incorrect and geographically
challenged statements faster than you can say “get to da choppa.” Players have
complete control over their gaming experience, whether in RTS mode, FPS mode or
a mixture of both, switching on the fly. Not only that, but the fully
cooperative story mode offers gamers the chance to play the entire game with a
friend or loved one online or locally via system link. Tear your way through 12
awesome levels of intense hot jungle action as you revel in the team’s witty
banter and highly explosive tendencies.
MMORPG.com reports that Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment has secured funding
thought to be desperately needed to continue development of
Stargate Worlds, their MMORPG based on the sci-fi universe of Stargate. They
have word from Cheyenne's Shane Hensley, "Things are actually very good here
right now. We received some funding commitments that will provide financing over
time and allow us to move forward with development and start catching up on our
past due financial obligations, including some back payroll that we paid last
week."
There's an automatic Team
Fortress 2/Day of Defeat: Source Update that has fixes for the Orange Box
Engine and Team Fortress 2 that also adds the following changes to
the bullet spread algorithm (BSA) in the teamplay shooter: • Bullet
spread algorithm changed to fire a bullet right down the crosshair under these
circumstances:
• The first bullet of a spread weapon (except for rapid
fire spread weapons like the minigun)
• The first bullet of a non-spread weapon if it's been
>1.25 seconds since firing
Steam offers a new
automatic update for Left 4 Dead closing an exploit in the multiplayer
zombie shooter and fixing some bugs. Also: "Novint Falcon support is now enabled
by default."
G4's
Attack of the Show Website has full rules and details on The Uwe Boll
Totally Awesome Videogames Filmmaking Competition, though the name pretty much
sums it up. Do you think you can make better movies than Uwe Boll? Of course you
do, so here's word on your chance to do it: Got a great idea for a video
game movie, but playing video games has ruined your attention span and you can't
concentrate long enough to make it? “Attack of the Show” wants you to send in a
movie trailer inspired by your favorite video game(s) to our G4 Panel, for The
Uwe Boll Totally Awesome Videogames Filmmaking Competition, where we will find
the best entries based on creativity and technical execution.
The top two finalists will be hand-picked by “AOTS” hosts, Kevin Pereira and
Olivia Munn, and the two teams will be flown to Fantastic Fest film festival in
Austin, Texas (www.fantasticfest.com),
where the best trailer will be chosen and announced by the amazing Dr. Uwe Boll
himself!
Our power came back after a few hours. Yay!
Link of the Day:
'Dollhouse' season two poster.
Power draining... must... post... links:
38 Studios Appoints Jennifer
MacLean as CEO announces a new boss at the MMOG developer launched by former
Major League pitcher Curt Schilling, as they have promoted this former senior VP
CEO. As for former CEO Brett Close, they simply say this move comes on his
"departure," with Schilling adding comments about Close's leadership.
Gamasutra
contacted 38 Studios for more details, but were simply told Close left "to
pursue other opportunities."
For completeness, this list includes items mentioned in this week's previous on sale story:
There's a Dragon Age:
Origins City of Haven Trailer on GameVideos introducing one of the
cities in BioWare's upcoming action/RPG. We also have some
screenshots of Haven, and here's the description of this location: "Some
years ago, a lone traveler paid a visit to a tavern in Denerim, and after
imbibing a great quantity of ale related a tale of his travels to the
tavern-keeper. The traveler claimed to have stumbled upon a strange village high
in the Frostback Mountains. The village was peaceful, he said, and the villagers
polite, if a little aloof. They fed him and watered his horse, and then urged
him to be on his way. When he lingered too long, suddenly their mood changed.
Their faces grew cold and knives appeared, and the traveler was told that what
was to happen next “was done in Andraste’s name and for the good of all.” He
fled in a panic and could not afterwards retrace his path. The traveler took a
room at the tavern and yet never slept there. He disappeared that night and was
not heard from again."
The storm has caused a blackout here, and I am on a dwindling battery, so it's
possible this will be the final update for the day if the blackout persists.
The BlizzCon broadcast outlines Blizzard's tentative release plans for their
upcoming projects. Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime says StarCraft II and the
just-announced World of Warcraft: Cataclysm are the two
titles Blizzard plans to release next year, so presumably we should not expect
the release of Diablo III next year. Also, in spite of the
recently announced delay until 2010 for StarCraft II, Morhaime
still says they expect the game's beta test to begin this year: "I'm confident
the beta will start this year," Morhaime tells host Geoff Keighley. "We don't
have a date yet, but that is a focus--we're working on getting the beta ready."
Thanks Shacknews.
The
Fallen Earth Forums announce a minor delay to the launch of Fallen Earth,
the MMORPG under construction at FALLEN EARTH, LLC. The game was
planned for a September 9 release, but this has been pushed back
all of six says, as word is: "The Fallen Earth team has decided to move the
launch date for the upcoming post-apocalyptic MMO to September 15, 2009, to
continue work on server and client optimizations as well as graphic
improvements."
Blizzard officially announces the Cataclysm expansion for World of
Warcraft, confirming the title uncovered by a trademark filing
at the beginning of July. The
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
Page has artwork, screenshots, and details. Here's the feature list from the
announcement
press release:
- Two New Playable Races: Adventure as the cursed worgen with the
Alliance or the resourceful goblins with the Horde.
- Increased Level Cap: Advance to level 85 and earn new abilities,
tap into new talents, and progress through the path system, a new way for
players to customize characters.
- Classic Zones Remade: Quest to level 60 as you never have before.
Familiar zones across the original continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern
Kingdoms have been reforged by the cataclysm and updated with new quests and
content.
- Flying Mounts in Azeroth: Explore Kalimdor and the Eastern
Kingdoms from a whole new perspective.
- Guild Advancement: Progress as a guild to earn guild levels and
guild achievements.
- New High-Level Content: Explore newly opened parts of the world,
including Uldum, Grim Batol, and the great sunken city of Vashj'ir beneath
the sea, and enjoy even more high-level raid content than in previous
expansions.
- New PvP Zone & Rated Battlegrounds: Take on PvP objectives and
daily quests on Tol Barad Island, a new Wintergrasp-like zone, and wage war
in all-new rated Battlegrounds.
- Archaeology: Master a new secondary profession to unearth
valuable artifacts and earn unique rewards.
- New Race and Class Combinations: Explore Azeroth as a gnome
priest, blood elf warrior, or one of the other never-before-available race
and class combinations.
The fourth playable class in Diablo III may indeed be the Monk reports
Diii.net
in news sure to bring joy to Tony Shalhoub fans. They have an
image
found on the Korean Blizzard website that appears to add the Monk to the
previously revealed Barbarian, Witch Doctor, and Wizard classes. Update:
Opening Ceremony Live Blog on WoW.com confirms this. Here's a bit: "Lots of
melee, very fast. There's that shielding spell again. Another spell that has the
Monk warping from enemy to enemy in a blur. Touch an enemy and it explodes in
blood and gore. He does carry some mace/staff thing, so it's not all
hand-to-hand like an old-school Monk."
Final
Fantasy XIV Online Gameplay Part I and
Part
II on GameTrailers.com offer another pair of clips shot off a monitor
showing off one of Square Enix's upcoming FF MMOGs. The gameplay clips feature a
pretty steady ShakyCam, but the accompanying narration is in German, except for
the switching between characters for some reason. The clips are mostly characters
running around, the latter part of the second clip features combat against
something like baby dragons or vampire moths.
The GamesCom debut trailer for James Cameron's Avatar: The Game is now
available on
GameTrailers.com, showing Ubisoft's upcoming game tie-in with the Avatar
motion picture. The clip offers fairly stunning imagery, all the more impressive
as it's said to be all in-game footage. As already mentioned, the
trailer for the movie itself is
online, as are some
screenshots from
the game. Both the game and the movie are due this coming December.
The promised free summer trial for Crysis Wars gets
underway a week (and two hours) from now, offering a chance to check out
Crytek's multiplayer shooter gratis.
MyCrysis offers
links to download the trial client and an explanation of how things will work.
Also, the Crysis
Wars Free Trial week FAQ is available if you still have questions.
There is a video on the
YouTube highlighting comments John Carmack made during a Q&A session at
QuakeCon 2009 where he was asked about hardware-based physics solutions such as
PhysX, now owned by NVIDIA (thanks
game\phys). The id Software technical director was already on
record as being against dedicated physics processing units, but in his answer
he elaborates. Here is our hand-crafted transcript: Okay,
hardware physics. I think I was fairly public about my thinking that that was a
really bad idea, and in fact it was pretty clear to me from early on that the
whole idea for that was to do a startup to be acquired.
I didn't feel it was actually... I actually had a really quite negative opinion
about stuff like that because they went out, they evangelized, they got some
people to buy a piece of hardware that I didn't think was actually a good
technical direction for things on there; certainly was going to be supplanted by
later generations of more integrated compute resources on there. I don't think
it was a good idea, I certainly wasn't a backer of the company, and I hope
NVIDIA didn't pay a whole lot of money for them.
gamigo announces
plans to release English and German versions of Futebol by the end of the
year, offering other territories access to the MMO academy football/soccer game first launched in
Brazil. They also say French, Spanish, Turkish, and
Polish language versions will follow in 2010. They have
a video of the
game in action, and here's a bit: "This realistic football simulation offers
players exciting 11-a-side matches combined with action-packed gameplay. The
intuitive controls are a snap for beginners while providing the finesse demanded
by our more advanced gamers – they can even queue commands up to 4 seconds in
advance, entirely eliminating latency issues. Players earn experience points not
just by scoring goals, but by their overall performance in the match – players
at all levels and in all positions will have a great time!"
A new Section 8 video diary on
GameTrailers.com outlines how the dynamic combat missions in TimeGate
Studios' upcoming shooter will work. The clip features developer descriptions of
these missions, accompanied by gameplay footage, while later portions of the
trailer describe the role of deployables on the game's futuristic battlegrounds.
The GamesCom video from Mount & Blade: Warband offers a look at the
upcoming expansion for this expansion for Paradox Interactive's hack-and-slash
RPG. The simple description of the clip is: "Ride into battle with pride in the
new trailer that gives a preview of the adventure to discover in Calradia." The
trailer is posted on the
YouTube.
A video on the
YouTube offers the promised reveal of the new subtitle for
Command & Conquer 4 as Tiberian Twilight. So there you have it, the next
installment in the long-running RTS series will be Command & Conquer 4:
Tiberian Twilight. Thanks Ant and
CNCNZ.com Forums.
There's
A Quick Diablo III Recap before Blizzcon on OS X Reality recalling
what we've heard about Blizzard's action/RPG sequel. There's also a
Blizzard Offices Diablo III Demo Report on Diii.net ahead of this weekend's
BlizzCon. They offer extensive hands-on impressions of the game, and share
indications that the game's fourth playable character probably will not be revealed at
BlizzCon as many have anticipated. They describe how several game functions
have evolved since Diablo II, including the inventory, quests, skills, skill
trees, the lack of mana orbs, and more.
World of
Players announces a version 1.73 community patch for
Gothic III is in the works, in spite of indications that the last
patch would conclude this unofficial support in for the RPG sequel. They
outline the fixes and changes planned for the patch, which they expect to
release next month. Thanks
RPGWatch and
LittleMe.
ArenaNet offers a reassurance that the launch of Guild Wars 2 will not
put an end to the original version of their online RPG, as Guild Wars servers
will not be going away: We won't shut down the GW1 servers when GW2 comes
out. We will continue to support GW1
bitComposer
announces Jekyll & Hyde, an upcoming action/adventure game based on
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson's
seminal 19th century novella (not to be confused with the 2001 game
by French developer In Utero).
Four Jekyll & Hyde screenshots show a bit from the game, which is planned
for release in the third-quarter of next year, and here's a bit from the
announcement: "In addition to classic adventure gameplay, Jekyll & Hyde will
also have action- and skill-based elements. Alternating between the two
protagonists, players will have to utilize each character’s attributes to solve
the thrilling riddles, puzzles, and action-oriented challenges. An adaptive
camera adjusts to the players’ situation, changing to allow for easier control
during platforming portions. Players will also have access to a mobile chemistry
lab to create the transformation potion at any time. The lab will prove to be
vital to solving puzzles."
An article on BBC
News describes the Iranian presence at the GamesCom in Germany, where
representatives from a trade group called the Iran National Foundation of
Computer Games are hosting a dedicated stand. They are exploring the possibility
of getting western investments in their game development scene and getting
western retailers to stock their games, with representative Amir Tarbyatjoui
saying US sanctions against Iran "do affect our industry, but they cannot stop
it." They quote Bahram Borgheai of Ras Games about Iranian game development and
political controversies: Mr Borgheai said that while most Western
developers used Greek, Norse, or Roman mythology to base their games on, Iran
had its own unique mythology that has rarely been used in video games.
"What we have is something quite unique and we are using the event in Cologne to
show that to the world."
Video-game development in Iran attracted global media attention in 2007 with the
release of Special Operation 85: Hostage Rescue. The game saw two Iranian
nuclear scientists kidnapped by Israel with players in the role of Iranian
special forces sent to rescue them, while battling Israeli and American forces.
However Mr Borgheai said he doubted if it was a real game in its own right.
"We never heard about it in Iran," he said. "It certainly wasn't released there
and the first I heard about it was through the international media," he
said.
Thanks Mike Martinez and Ant.
Thanks Mike Martinez and Ant.
For the last couple of years this time of year has gotten pretty hectic with
trade show news. For a while there I was thinking the re-biggened E3 meant this
effect would be diminished, but it seems as crazy as ever. Okay, we can deal.
Hope everyone attending BlizzCon
2009 starting today enjoys themselves.
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