Category Archives: Gaming

Starcraft II Ship Date

Blizzard announced the ship date for StarCraft 2 today… kind of.

Technically, they announced that it *isn’t* shipping in ’09, but the announcement does say that it will be in the first half of 2010.

Blizzard information here.

Text of release here:

Today we announced that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty will not be ready for release by the end of 2009. Over the past couple of weeks, it has become clear that it will take longer than expected to prepare the new Battle.net for the launch of the game. The upgraded Battle.net is an integral part of the StarCraft II experience and will be an essential part of all of our games moving forward. This extra development time will be critical to help us realize our vision for the service.

Our mission is to develop games that deliver an epic entertainment experience. As part of that commitment, we will always take as much time as needed to ensure that our games and services meet the expectations of our players and the standard for quality that we set for ourselves as developers. As we work to make Battle.net the premier online gaming destination, we’ll also continue to polish and refine StarCraft II, and we look forward to delivering a real-time strategy gaming experience worthy of the series’ legacy in the first half of 2010.

We will share more details about the beta, Battle.net, and StarCraft II’s launch in the future. Keep an eye on the official website athttp://www.starcraft2.com for updates, and as always, thank you for your continued enthusiasm and support for StarCraft II and all of Blizzard Entertainment’s games.

Warcraft – 3.2

Today is patch day!

Patch 3.2 “The Call of the Crusader” hit the live servers this morning, which means, of course, that Blizzard has extended maintenance beyond the normal end time.  They currently estimate that realms will be up and playable by 1500 PDT.  My guess, is that they’ll actually be up and playable around 1900 PDT.

So far, I’m most looking forward to the increased speed of the non-epic flying mounts. Hopefully, it’ll feel fast enough, that I won’t feel the need to spend 5,000 gold (each) on all my alts to get the epic flying.  I’ll have more comments after I can actually get into the game (after work tonight) and try some of the new things out.

Patch notes, if you haven’t seen them already are on the next page, they’re kinda long. Continue reading Warcraft – 3.2

Warhammer comes to Mac

Mythic announced yesterday that they are starting to Beta Warhammer online for the Mac (see here).  They’re not doing it the right way, since it’s not a native client.  They’re using Cider to wrap it, so it’ll have some issues, just like Eve Online does via Cider.  But, it’s better then nothing.  So, if you’re interested in it.. go download it and give it a shot.

Bad Bioware, Bad!

Go stand in the corner till you learn some manners!

As you may, or may not, know Bioware is developing a MMO set in the Star Wars universe. Specifically, in the Old Republic era that their Knights of The Old Republic game was set in (300 years after KOTOR to be precise).  Bioware has stated on multiple occasions that they were going to attempt to follow Blizzard’s model with WoW (as far as system requirements go), in order to make the game playable by as many people as possible.  They had been dodging questions about Mac support for quite awhile.  Last week at Comic-Con they announced (via a Q&A Session with IGN, you can read the whole thing here) that they were not making a Mac version.  The fact that BW is choosing to intentionally limit their potential market by not making a Mac version isn’t my big complaint (I think that’s bad, and if they’d made a Mac version, I’d play it).  Really, I’m complaining about how they did it, here’s the relevant quote from the IGN article:

IGN: This is another very popular question regarding console or Mac versions of The Old Republic… there are a lot of Mac fans I’ve discovered in these questions — any thoughts on that?

Dallas Dickinson: That’s why Boot Camp was invented.

As you can see, it was done as a very flippant aside, in what could actually be taken (and was by some) as an insulting manner.

Bad form BW, bad form… at the very least, you guys should make a public apology for the manner in which the information was provided.

Mana Potions

I was listening to Casually Hardcore last week while I was at work.  And they were talking about Mana potions (the real life ones you can order from Mana Potions).  Seems some of their listeners (perhaps guild mates, couldn’t tell for sure).. chipped in and ordered them some to try as a sample.  Their on-air reaction was….. interesting.  So, a co-worker who was listening also, and I decided to order some… we got them this past Friday.

We split a 4 pack, and both tried one at work… the taste was…. unique.  I honestly can’t think of anything to compare it to.  Not gross, but very citrusy.

They are actually an energy drink, following the ‘loads of vitamin B, instead of lots of caffeine’ model.  Doing it as a ‘shot’ which, from the size of the bottle, is the intended drinking fashion, does produce a slight buzz, nothing huge (at least, for me).

My only real complaint about it, is that considering the prices charged, the logo should be printed on the bottle, not on the crooked plastic label with the nutrition information.  That way, you can easily reuse the bottle as a shot glass, and keep the cool logo on it.  With it as it is currently, the logo can get washed off with the plastic label if you wash the bottle too many times.

World of Whatcraft?

Umm..yeah.. just when you though’t you’d seen everything.. you see this:

http://www.datecraft.com/

And really, that says it all.. no need to make fun of it more then that…

Edit: after looking around on the site for a bit. it looks like its actually a fake, none of the pictures go to any profiles or anything like that. But still, even the idea of a dating site targeted at WoW players is still pathetic enough to be humorous

Guide to the Dark Side

On my voyage to the dark side (I switched to play on the horde side, for those who have no idea what I’m talking about).  I’ve been following a leveling guide to make my run to 70 as quick as possible.  Its worked out real good.. I’m not setting an records with my leveling, but I am leveling faster then I have before (the no records, is because the guy that wrote the guide, set them all).  I’m using Joana Mancow’s leveling guide, which can be found here.  Yes, its a paid guide, but its worth it.

And yes, is a referral link.. look..there’s even a pretty banner!

banner-468×60.jpg

Gone to the Dark Side

Err.. sorry bout the lack of activity.. I’ve gone to the dark side of WoW and joined a Horde Guild.. so I’ve been busting my butt to get to 70 ASAP.  I did end up in a guild with a bunch of good people, so its been fun… even if I am being ‘evil’  😉

Blizzard Rocks!

Sure, they manage to consistently screw up the most popular MMORPG out there, they let the amount of whining on their forums dictate what changes they make, and they’re about to nerf Warlocks into a unviable PvP class… but thats OK! because in the same patch that they put their heads up their butts and use a stat that mitigates critical hits, to mitigate non-critical damage to nerf Damage Over Time effects (bye-bye Warlock PvP as Affliction!) they put this lovely little change in:

Mac Movie Capture: the Mac client can now capture in-game video to QuickTime movie files using a configurable choice of codec (H.264, Motion JPEG, or Pixlet), resolution, and frame rate. Two new entries have been added to the Key Bindings dialog for start/stop recording and for cancellation of a recording. For more detailed configuration options please see the Mac Options panel in game. Mac OS X 10.4.9 and QuickTime 7.1.6 or better are required. Not all machines have enough performance to smoothly capture video at high frame rates; end user experimentation will be required to find appropriate settings for each system. 

Yup..first they added a Mac only in-game remote control  for iTunes, now, they’re adding a Mac only in-game video recorder!

So…like any good Mac user.. I created a character on the test server, installed the test version of WoW.. and went to work..

Its broke… kinda… any attempt to do a recording at full screen resolution only lasted about 2 seconds..I didn’t play around too much to see how high it could go.. I picked one kinda in the middle, and ran around for a few minutes…

Test Video (about 33 Megs) .

Someone else made one, and uploaded it to YouTube.. so its been hit with the crap quality bat from them…but it still looks pretty good.

Wonder how many Windoze using WoW players will be switching to the Mac, so they can not have to run a third party app to record any more…

Missing In Action

Ok..so the posts have been.. well non-existant lately..

Blame Blizzard..no really.. I got the expansion pack for World Of Warcraft.. and now I’ve been:

A) Trying to get my Mage to 70 (He’s almost 67 now)

B) Get my Rogue to 70 (She’s 56, I’ve stopped leveling her to concentrate on the Mage)

C) Farm up lots of gold to be able to afford a flying mount in 3 levels (not looking good so far)

D) Level up my poor ignored Druid (she’s like 26 now)

E) Level up my new Dranei (they’re in there low 20s)

F) Started a new guild…need to start recruiting soon so there are more then just the founding people in it.

I’m going to try and get better at updating..got lots of stuff I should have posted about what the kids have been up to.