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Archived News:
This forum post on the Chinese Diablo III website indicates that Blizzard's action/RPG is offline in Asia as they deal with duplicate items. They say (translated) "less than 0.01% of the items have been copied," though according to Blend Games, "the Asian virtual marketplace in Diablo III has become ostensibly flooded with duplicate items and hyper-inflation." Here is Google Translate's rough machine interpretation of Blizzard's Chinese statement: First of all, we are deeply grateful to you for your patience waiting for the development team during this maintenance time in order to restore the service as a whole.
On June 10, our development team has found some error on the stored items in the database, these errors represent a very small part of the items can not be normal trading or selling. This error caused all less than 0.01% of the items have been copied, the majority of players and is not affected by this problem, but the database before removing these duplicated items, is unable to maintain stable. Therefore, we carried out the maintenance of the server, and perform the necessary operations to fix this problem. The development team is currently working to make the server able to resume service as soon as possible.
All original items and their reproductions will be removed from the database, follow-up, we will tell the exact time of maintenance completed, but currently estimated Server recovery services some time in the afternoon of June 11, 8 pm (Taiwan time).
We have also noted that part of the players during a short period of the game after the break and suffered back problems. This issue follow-up will be further instructions.Note: to restore service postponed to 20:00
The Kickstarter Page for Tex Murphy - Project Fedora indicates this project has reached its funding goals, well in advance of its deadline (thanks Todd). Here's word on the detective adventure revival: Project Fedora will reunite creators Chris Jones and Aaron Conners and feature their trademarks of rich interactive storytelling and immersive gameplay. The new game will incorporate the very best of the classic Tex Murphy elements - sci-fi, film noir, witty dialogue, great characters, beautifully integrated FMV, and a deep, engaging story - but it will also enhance the experience of the former games with stunning new graphics, a sleek new interface, and other updates.
The detective-style gameplay takes place in a fully 3D world where you search for clues, solve puzzles, investigate crimes, and question witnesses and suspects. While the gameplay will be fun and challenging, you'll never get stuck with the free, built-in hint system.
One of Project Fedora's most exciting features is how the game and story can unfold in different ways. As you play, your actions and choices will change events, leading to new story elements and gameplay. This "narrative pathing" not only allows you to customize your experience, it will provide unique replayability, as the game will have at least three or more story paths leading to multiple endings.
An update on the Diablo III Website reminds users of Blizzard's stance on cheating, which can result in offenders being banned from playing the action/RPG sequel: Blizzard Entertainment has always taken cheating in any form in Blizzard games very seriously, and that's no different for Diablo® III. If a Diablo III player is found to be cheating or using hacks, bots, or modifications in any form, then as outlined in the Diablo III end user license agreement, that player can be permanently banned from the game. This means that the player will be permanently unable to log in to Battle.net® to play Diablo III with his or her account.
Playing Diablo III legitimately means playing with an unaltered game client. Doing otherwise violates our policies for Battle.net and Diablo III, and it goes against the spirit of fair play that all of our games are based on. We strongly recommend that you avoid using any hacks, cheats, bots, or exploits. Suspensions and bans of players that have used or start using cheats and hacks will begin in the near future.
Hi-Rez Studios announces Accelerate, which is the name of the June update for Tribes: Ascend, saying this will come to the multiplayer shooter. This trailer introduces the update, which takes its name for how it accelerates the player's progress in unlocking new weapons and other perks in the game. Speaking of which, the update also will include 27 new weapon variants and what they are calling "the most comprehensive set of balance changes to date" This is all followed by this trailer announcing Tribes Paper Kraft, some sort of wacky offline riff on the game, promising this offers the chance to win prizes, "and, uh, eSports?"
An article on Blend Games contains a video they say demonstrates that item duping was possible in Diablo III before a hotfix addressed this. All the clip demonstrated for me is my inability to understand foreign languages, but this post explains how this took advantage of the game's checkpoint system to craft items at the cost of no resources, hopefully a moot point now that its fixed. They use this incident to once again question the game's inconvenient always-on DRM. They also discuss how Blizzard is handling account rollbacks in cases where accounts are compromised, taking issue with Battle.net account security as the launch of the real-money auction house for the action/RPG sequel nears. Speaking of which, this post (thanks nin via Kotaku) notes that Blizzard has changed the terms of service for Diablo III to require the use of their authenticator for real-money transactions: Starting today, in order to add to your Battle.net Balance, players will be required to have a Battle.net Authenticator or Battle.net Mobile Authenticator attached to their Battle.net account. For clarity, this means you’ll need to have an Authenticator to add to your balance via Battle.net Account Management or to send the proceeds of your real-money auction house sales to your Battle.net Balance.
Please note that players who previously added Battle.net Balance to their account prior to this change will be able to use it to make eligible purchases on Battle.net and in the auction house without attaching an Authenticator. However, an Authenticator will be required to add to your balance in the future, as explained above.
While we understand that this creates an extra step for players during the login process, we believe this added layer of account protection will help foster a safer auction house environment for all of our players.
You can learn more about the Battle.net Authenticator, Battle.net Mobile Authenticator, and other account security information by clicking here.
The European League of Legends Website apologizes to users over account compromises, saying: "we're sorry to share that hackers accessed some player account information." They say that: "The most critical data accessed included email address, encrypted account password, summoner name, date of birth, and – for a small number of players – first and last name and encrypted security question and answer. (Note: Security question and answer are no longer used in our account recovery process.) Absolutely no payment or billing information of any kind was included in the breach." Saying: "We take your privacy and security seriously, and we're working diligently to improve it for the better," they warn that players should change their passwords in spite of encryption, saying: "security investigation determined that more than half of the passwords were simple enough to be at risk of easy cracking." Thanks Eurogamer.
GfK Chart-Track's list of the 20 bestselling full-price PC entertainment titles in the U.K. shows Diablo III jumping into the number one position previously held by this week's number five game, Max Payne 3. The new entry this week is at number four is (are?) Katy Perry's Sweet Treats for The Sims 3. The full-price all-platforms chart has one new entry in the top 10: The new Game of Thrones RPG debuts at number six, after joining the PC chart at #12.
Well my optimism that we'd turned a corner on the Gunnar-man peeing everywhere was premature, as he had a couple of incidents over the weekend. This is pretty distressing to us, and seems to indicate he is still somewhat distressed himself, and the fact that this is getting MrsBlue more and more (understandably) upset with him is not helping this at all. If this wasn't upsetting enough, this also has her talking about not wanting any more dogs after this, which is about the worst possible outcome I could imagine from all this, as the pooches are the apples of my eye.
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