Tuesday, November 11, 2008

RP bets bow out early in WCG 2008 Finals

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines’ top gamers fought but checked out early in all of the games at the World Cyber Games
2008 in Cologne, Germany, according to the game’s official website.None of the Filipino video gamers were able to break through round 16, just three steps closer to the championship finals held on November 10.
The eight-man Filipino team joined four of the 14 games included in the WCG 2008. These are the PC games “Command and Conquer 3,” “Counterstrike 1.6” and “WarCraft III: Frozen Throne.”
The country also sent one player for the Xbox 360 version of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock.
Nevertheless, the Filipino gamers did manage to win a few rounds early on before facing more formidable players.
The Philippines’ Command and Conquer 3 player John Raymond Tan won three rounds and lost two.
Guitar Hero III player Rafael Formoso had three wins and three losses, while WarCraft III player Frederick Pe had one win and five losses.
The Philippines’ Counterstrike team Horsemen of the Apocalypse (HoA) won twice and but lost three times. HoA has been a returning Philippine champion since 2005, though it has yet to win a medal.
Tan, Formoso and Pe are first-time participants in this international competition. The five-man HoA is composed of Gary Guevarras, Arvin Agbisit, Jupiter Mars Gaboy, Paolo Miguel Nacho, and Erwin John Clores.
Champions for some of the WCG-sanctioned games have been announced. Champions include Netherlands’ Manuel Schenkhuizen for WarCraft III; Denmark’s mtw.AMD [spelled as is] for Counterstrike; German Pascal Pfefferle for Command and Conquer 3; British George Boothby for Guitar Hero III.
Tags: wow gold，world of warcraft gold

 

Posted by JImmy at 02:16:37 | Permalink | No Comments »

Kidnapped by a virtual reality computer

WELL, there you have it. It turns out that the boys in Defrag’s third-grade class at St Monica’s were right.
There is such a thing as girl germs. A study at the
university of Colorado has concluded there is more variety of bacteria on women’s hands than there are on men’s.
Presumably research is ongoing to determine whether shouting “jeck” and crossing all your fingers, until such time that you touch someone else and therefore offload the germs on to them, inoculates you from contamination.
But just because some of the things you believed when you are nine turn out to be true, it doesn’t mean all of them are. For instance, when Defrag was that age we firmly believed that not only would we be married to one of The Goodies by now (Graeme, if you must know) but we’d spend our life wearing rollerskates and attending elegant cocktail parties with the cast of Blankety Blanks.
How we thought we’d manoeuvre the skates over the inevitable shag pile carpet we’ll never know.
We can’t help but feel bitter. Not the Goodie-marrying side of things, obviously.
Mr Defrag might not do the funky gibbon, but he has many other fine qualities, and we did awesomely meet Stuart Wagstaff once.
But it’s still disappointing that the entire dream remains unrealised.
Luckily, if the realities of life have taught us anything, it’s that when something bad happens, it’s somebody else’s fault and therefore, you should sue.
We were particularly inspired to read about the case of Jonathan Lee Riches, a prison inmate serving time for wire fraud in South Carolina.
He is suing Blizzard Entertainment, maker of World of Warcraft （ Buy wow gold ）, because, he argues, his current situation is their entire fault.
WOW “caused Riches’ mind to live in a virtual universe, where Riches explored the landscape committing identity theft and fighting cyber-monster rival hacker gangs,” a hand-written filing to a US district court said.
Yes, if there’s one thing that WOW is famous for, it’s the heavy reliance on wire fraud by its troll and wizard characters.
Defrag supposes we must count ourselves lucky that he wasn’t addicted to Tetris, otherwise Riches might have gone on a wall-building spree instead.
We do find it a little suspicious that Riches filed a suit against the makers of Grand Theft Auto a little earlier this year for much the same reasons.
Especially since he has filed more than 1000 lawsuits, naming George W. Bush, Britney Spears, Steve Jobs, Martha Stewart, Plato and the Eiffel Tower as defendants. And yes, this may suggest the guy is a little bonkers, but it doesn’t mean his idea is without merit.
Who hasn’t wanted to sue Jobs at some time, be it because you’ve had to endure a “why Macs are superior” lecture or because the battery fell out of your iBook G4 when you were on deadline?
So if Riches can sue The Appalachian Trail for putting him in prison, Defrag is planning to sue god for creating a world that’s not as awesome as the one in our nine-year-old head.
We’d probably settle quickly if offered a nice pair of rollerskates.
TOP 10
This week: Mail Goggles, a Gmail feature, prevents sending of unwise emails by requiring the user to solve a maths problem before sending email late at night on weekends. Here are your suggestion for other ways Google could stop you making a fool of yourself.
10. Periodically, the computer freezes and can only be restarted by coherently answering a random existential question.
9. It stops people creating user ids such as: sexc4U@ etc.
8. Compose Mail items go straight into Trash.
7. Shut down YouTube.
6. A memory ray erases an urban legend email from your mind as well as your inbox.
5. It caps the number of exclamation marks per email.
4. Your computer shuts down if you use more than the force of one Newton on your keyboard.
3. Cancel your email account.
2. Did you really mean to search for “teenage amputee dwarf porn” from work?
1. Google Wife asks if it is a good idea to post those naked pictures of you and the boss at the office party on Facebook.
Contributors: Keith Cundale, Clifford Hughes, Tim Borten, Ian McColl, Don Knowles, Anthony Long, Anthony Lowe, Emma Crane, James Rhodes.
Next week: Facebook comments by British flight attendants confirms what we suspected all along: they despise passengers. Sends us the top 10 ways you can tell a hostie hates you.
Tags: wow gold，world of warcraft gold

Posted by JImmy at 02:12:03 | Permalink | No Comments »

Without fibre the speed of broadband will drop in the UK

An analyst has warned that there is a serious risk of broadband speeds dropping drastically in the UK if it doesn’t get its act together with regards to next-generation broadband networks.
During a Westminster eForum keynote seminar on next-generation broadband, discussing the fibre deployment business case the research director at analyst house Forrester Research, Ian Fogg warned “If we get this wrong — which we might do — or if we’re slow to do it, tomorrow’s broadband speeds may be the same as today’s broadband speeds. They may be worse without that investment. People use iPlayer, they use World of Warcraft （ Buy wow gold ） , they use these things more and more and if there isn’t the network investment going in, the actual speeds that we enjoy will actually reduce over the next few years. We need to get this right and we need to get this right today.”
With regard to home broadband users Fogg said that fibre is the only means to provide a “step change” in speeds.With a recent trend of pricing drops for broadband in the UK Fogg warned that the fact that many customers expected their fat pipes to be lower rather than higher priced could seriously impact the future of fibre deployment.
The problem may not be with people being willing to pay for higher speed broadband, said the analyst, but that the ability for customers to make a comparison between offers from rival ISPs was made more difficult due to a lack of clarity in the marketing of offers, which meant that shopping by service price was the only option available to them.
Fogg said “We need to fix this because if consumers don’t pay more for broadband, or if they pay increasingly less, the business case for fibre optic broadband and for investment worsens over time. While fibre will play a role in the future of Britain’s broadband — telco BT recently announced a £1.5bn investment to give 10 million UK homes fibre access by 2012 — a consensus is emerging the UK will end up with a ‘patchwork quilt’ of technologies to deliver super high-speed broadband services, rather than one ubiquitous offering.The chief executive of the Broadband Stakeholder Group, Anthony Walker told the eForum delegates “We’re not going to get one single monolithic NGA [next-generation access]. In the
UK we’re going to see a number of different networks deployed that will work alongside each other.”
It would therefore be a critical step that a single standard be established that all technologies must adhere to so that interoperability is ensured, said the principal of strategy and developments at Ofcom, Clive Carter. He advised “The availability of common standards is going to be fundamental to the delivery of the patchwork-quilt model.”
The chief executive of the Community Broadband Network, Malcolm Corbett said that a method of bringing fibre to areas that may, in most cases, be overlooked in a cost-effective way would be to use initiatives for local next-gen broadband which has gained strong backing from the community. The fibre to the home project in Eindhoven, the Netherland by the community owned Ons Net was one of the initiatives he cited, where telcos were given a guarantee of a return on their investments because contract were signed by the towns residents before the service was even built.
Tags: wow gold，world of warcraft gold

Posted by JImmy at 02:10:22 | Permalink | No Comments »

World apart

Pink mohawk. Big ears. Small stature.Woref the gnome mage is adorable for a reason.No one expects to get their butt kicked by the little guy.”He’s awesome,” Corey Cooney boasts. “I’m the tiniest and cutest little guy.”It might be difficult to imagine that the 21/2-foot-tall, waddling “World of Warcraft” （ Buywow gold ） character is actually commanded by a 6-foot-2, 21-year-old Edinboro University of Pennsylvania computer-science junior.But that’s part of the fun for Cooney and others who play video games.All kinds of people have a place in virtual online worlds — although not always in the form one might expect — and such places are becoming more popular for gamers and nongamers. From simple-to-use animation to more complex and realistic 3-D landscapes, there are hundreds of virtual online worlds to suit the tastes of millions of users.Recent releases — such as the online game “Spore” — as well as PlayStation 3’s “LittleBigPlanet,” due out Monday, are helping to draw more curiosity about these virtual places. The “World of Warcraft” expansion, “Wrath of the Lich King,” is due out Thursday.”World of Warcraft,” one of the most popular online games, reached more than 11 million subscribers worldwide in October, boosting annual earnings for its publisher, Blizzard, to more than $1 billion.But it’s just the start, said Kristan J. Wheaton, assistant professor of intelligence studies at Mercyhurst College and an avid gamer.”It’s a worldwide phenomenon and it’s an evolution in technology,”
Wheaton said. “When you have this group of young people growing up with these worlds, much like this generation that grew up with computers, … you’ll see more people comfortable with virtual worlds.”I have the feeling that 2009 is the year when people are going to look back and see that everyone was talking about virtual worlds. We’re going to see so many come out.”These worlds are full of “avatars” — the virtual people or creatures that represent real players. The type of avatar depends on the game: become a warlock, paladin or warrior in “World of Warcraft,” or simply choose your hair, eyes and nose with Nintendo Wii’s Miis.With a click of the mouse, players command their characters’ moves and, ultimately, their fates in these worlds.”You find part of yourself in the character,” said Ken Richardson, of Erie. Although he doesn’t look at all like his avatar, the female night elf warrior MissArmada, it’s his identity in “World of Warcraft.” When another character beats his avatar in a player-versus-player competition, Richardson admits he can’t help but be a little ticked.”A lot of people find themselves invested with their character,” he said.That’s part of the appeal — to explore a different world and fictional way of living for a few hours a week. While others might prefer books or movies, video games offer a similar entertaining experience.”It’s like a world within a world,” Richardson said. “There’s no racial barriers, no religious barriers, no gender barriers. You can actually openly go out and be yourself.”All kinds of people meet in these worlds — young, old, professionals and “average joes” of all races, nationalities and languages. It doesn’t matter who players are so much as how they interact in the virtual world.”You don’t know who you’re up against,” said Richardson, whose 12-year-old son, Kevin, also plays “World of Warcraft （ Currency wow gold ）.” “Could be someone in Canada or Russia. We’re all doing the same thing.”Erie resident Adrian Mailahn, 28, remembers the long-ago video games that didn’t have the details we’re now used to seeing.”I remember playing those and saying, ‘I wish I could see those worlds,’” said Mailahn, who has characters in a few different online games, including “World of Warcraft,” “Guild Wars,” “Warhammer Online,” “Gaia Online” and “Neopets.”"It’s really taking off. In addition to being a game, it’s a social experience,” she said. “This game that brings people together. It’s more than just a game now.”Playing with friends and family is probably the best part of playing in these virtual online worlds, local gamers say. Most virtual online worlds feature an instant-message component or an audio link between players.It’s more fun that way, said Jessica Schweichler, a computer-science junior at Edinboro University.Classes and studying keep Schweichler’s online gaming to only a few hours a week. On nights when she does take her level-20 “Guild Wars” ranger, Cypella Freesia, out for a quest, Schweichler prefers to get a group of online players together.”It’s nice because I have family all over the place and I can’t visit them all the time, but I can play with them all and chat online and see how they’re doing,” said Schweichler, 21. “It’s like an old-fashioned card night. If you have one night a week where all your friends can get together, it doesn’t matter where you are. All you need is a computer and an Internet connection.”There are more uses for virtual worlds aside from games, Wheaton said. Programs like “Second Life” create realistic environments — some of which mimic actual places — that anyone can navigate with an avatar.Mercyhurst, like many colleges, has its own island in the “Second Life” virtual world, he said.Virtual online worlds through video games is a prelude to bigger and better technology.”You have this opportunity to augment reality — to add another layer to it,” he said. “It seems far out and science-fictiony, but it’s coming.”

LINDSEY POISSON can be reached at 870-1871 or by e-mail.
Tags: wow gold，world of warcraft gold

Posted by JImmy at 02:09:09 | Permalink | No Comments »

WARCRAFT THROUGH THE EYES OF THE GAMERS

window.google_render_ad();
If you would like to know how good a game is and how addictive it can be, then your best bet is to go directly to the source – the games’ players and that is exactly what Warcraft-Guides.org is all about.

November 2008 - Warcraft-Guides.org is a website constructed for the sole purpose of reviewing Warcraft Guides as well as selling World of WarCraft （ Currencywow gold ） Guides for the Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK) expansion game. The Wrath of the Lich King game will be released on November the 13th, 2008. The reviews all come from the gamers themselves that give a more personal look and feel to what the games are all about. The website provides three main supplies of Warcraft Leveling Guides with each of them being updated for the Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK) Expansion. The players themselves talk about the benefits and shortcomings of each guide in the review and these three supplies are from Joanna’s Horde Leveling Guide, Brian Kopp’s Guide and Team iDemise Leveling Guide.Each guide portrays a different type of feeling and scenario concerning the Wrath of the Lich King WotLK Expansion with Joanna’s Horde WarCraft Leveling Guide being the oldest of them all. According to WOTLK Leveling Guide, it also lists Joana’s WotLK Leveling Guide as one of the most trusted and detailed in the World of Warcraft community. The leveling guide contains the same leveling strategies, questing patterns, techniques, and secrets used to get the best record time to level on a new server. A quote taken from the site proves just why Joanna’s Levelling Guide is the best “For exact information, and even more proof of the quality of the guide, Joana provides complete videos of the entire leveling process. This allows you to see exactly what what your objectives are and how to accomplish them as quickly and efficiently as possible.” Brian Kopp’s Guide on the other hand provides readers with a comprehensive and well written guide for level 60-70 and players can also get 70-80 Leveling Guide. World of Warcraft or commonly known as WoW by avid fans is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Produced by Blizzard Entertainment with the first introduction of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994, WoW now enters its fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe.According to Northrend.info, Brian Kopp’s Leveling Guide is the alliance equivalent to Joana’s Horde leveling guide. And if its an alliance leveling guide that you are looking for, then Brian Kopp’s is by far the best. WARCRAFT THROUGH THE EYES OF THE GAMERSWoW is considered the most popular online game in the online gaming community with about 88,926 users have been playing an average of 19,188,204 minutes of the game per day. That comes out to an average of 3.596 hours per day for each user, or about 25 hours per week. World of Warcraft’s popularity can be largely attributed to the effort put into its development by Blizzard, said Jason Della Rocca, director of the International Game Developers Association. “They have a very good track record, and they spent three or four years creating this game, which is about twice as long as most developers put into their products,” he said.Banking on the popularity, Warcraft-Guides.org constantly updates WotLK Leveling Guides by including different guides for different games and for each level. Visitors can now truly know what it feels like to play each game since each review is from a players’ perspective. For additional information or a sample copy, Contact: Jack Jameson, Company Name: Warcraft-Guides.org Telephone Number: 800-484-9281About Warcraft-Guides.org: Warcraft-Guides.org is a website constructed for the sole purpose of reviewing Warcraft Guides as well as selling World of WarCraft Guides for the Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK) expansion game. The reviews all come from the a players’ perspective that give a more personal look and feel to what the games are all about and give other gamers an inside look to how each level is played.
Tags: wow gold，world of warcraft gold

Posted by JImmy at 02:07:53 | Permalink | No Comments »

WoW - World Of Warcraft

There currently over 15 million subscribers worldwide to the most popular MMORPG ever, World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft or WoW as it is often called is a fabulous cyber world where members live exciting adventures in league with other WoW enthusiasts. These guilds or clans venture forth towards conquest of territory in this fiercely competitive medievil fantasy environment. But as WoW is great fun and adventure it is not without it’s difficulties. One of these is that in order to prosper in World of Warcraft you need money. And trolls, ogres and wizards do not take Visa. If you want to wear the best armor, hire a few good mercenary monsters and generally reak mayhem in World of Warcraft you will need gold… WoW Gold. Now if you are familiar with the game then you know that there are all kinds of ways to earn gold within the game. Some less savory then others. The one thing constant with earning WoW Gold within the game is that it takes time. And you may not want to wait for that Excaliber replica that will double your fighting power. Should this be the case and you are after wow goldfast, you will need to move away from the game for just a bit and travel via the real world internet to The Game Alchemist. Found online at tgacn.com, The Game Alchemist specializes in quick honest sale of WoW Gold and currencies for all the most popular role playing games. Rates for these currencies are the lowest found anywhere on the net and delivery time is always under an hour. Faster times can be arranged for with live chat. Should you need in-world monies for World of Warcraft, Lineage II, Age of Conan, or Final Fantasy, The Game Alchemist is ready and able to turn your plastic into gaming gold. WoW Gold is also a term used to describe an offspin of World Of Warcraft… WoW for REAL money…
Tags: wow gold，world of warcraft gold

Posted by JImmy at 02:04:37 | Permalink | No Comments »

Review: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

On October 28th of 2008 - just under four years after its launch - Blizzard announced that World of Warcraft （ Currrency： wow gold ）had reached eleven million subscribers around the world. To put those numbers in perspective: there are more people playing WoW than there are living in
Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, or New York City. If Azeroth were a country, it would be the 75th most populated country in the world (right after Greece). With appearances on Jeopardy and South Park - to name a few - World of Warcraft is as much a cultural phenomenon as it is a game, and this November, it celebrates its four-year anniversary with its second expansion pack: Wrath of the Lich King.
If you’re one of the eleven million WoW players, this review isn’t really for you - for a more in-depth look at Wrath of the Lich King, head over to our sister site, WarCry. Plus, you’ll probably buy it anyway. However, if you used to play and are wondering if you should return, or are still standing on the sidelines, scratching your head in confusion over all the fuss, and wondering if now might be a good time to start, then read on!
Let’s get this out of the way: Wrath of the Lich King is an expansion, not a brand-new game, and at its core the game is still WoW - anyone who was expecting otherwise is in for a disappointment. However, with Lich King, World of Warcraft is by leaps and bounds the best it has ever been.
As with the first expansion, The Burning Crusade, Blizzard has retooled and streamlined the different character classes, though this time around the changes are significantly more sweeping and dynamic than they had been in Crusade. It isn’t just the classes that are seeing changes, though: Blizzard has taken up the chisel to overhaul the game’s core mechanics, and the game is better off for it.
The meat of WotLK is the brand-new continent of Northrend, where the eponymous Lich King, Arthas, set up his headquarters after the end of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. Northrend’s various locales provide hunting grounds for adventurers of level 70 and above, eventually leading players directly to Arthas’ proverbial doorstep. It cannot be stressed enough - Northrend is absolutely beautiful. Sure, the WoW engine has never been exactly top-of-the-line, but Blizzard keeps pushing its own envelope, and compensates for lackluster technical specs with absolutely fantastic art direction. From the towering cliffs of Howling Fjord to the luminescent foliage of Crystalsong Forest, WotLK looks great (and is a welcome change from the bleak, war-scarred landscapes of Outland).
Lich King takes everything that Blizzard has already done in WoW and makes it better. While there are still the standard “Kill X enemies, gather Y items” quests, there’s more variety and higher quality than ever, and many of the quests tie in to the storyline in a way that players rarely saw in Burning Crusade. Blizzard has also pushed its own bar higher with the new dungeons - enemy encounters are more creative, engaging, and just plain fun than ever before.
While WotLK makes the core WoW experience better, it does bring some new features beyond the continent of Northrend - the most prominent of which is the addition of the game’s first new class since its launch in 2004, the Death Knight. Death Knights start at level 55, though players will have to already have a character at least at level 55 on any given server in order to create one. The Death Knight is a great addition to the game’s roster, and their class mechanics - focused on constantly regenerating magical Runes and afflicting their foes with diseases - are pretty unique, and most importantly, very dynamic and fun. Blizzard deserves special credit for the Death Knight starting area and accompanying storyline, which is worth starting a new Death Knight just for the experience; it’s arguably the best three or four hours anywhere in World of Warcraft.
For former WoW players who have since hung up their swords, it might be worth checking out Lich King for the Death Knight experience alone - but the quality of the new content in Northrend easily eclipses all but the best parts of Classic WoW and Crusade both. It may just be time to indulge that devil on your shoulder, if only to get a taste of the improvements.
…or Thinking About Visiting?
Something that drives many players away from MMOs - or prevents others from starting in the first place - is the “grind” factor. WoW has always been comparatively light on the grind compared to many other MMOs, though there’s no question that it still exists. Lich King takes further steps to curtail the time-sink requirements, and while some hardcore players might lament what they see as WoW catering to casual gamers, to put it bluntly: these changes make it a better, more accessible game. Perhaps the most significant change is the decision to let players tackle the end-game 25-man raid dungeons with a group of 10 (scaling the enemies and encounters accordingly) - after all, it’s much harder to get 24 other people together than it is to find 9 friends. The 25-man version will still offer superior rewards for the truly hardcore, but this option means that more players will have access to the complete Lich King experience.
For those who have never played the game but have friends or family who do (and really, who doesn’t?) or who have just been curious, … well, the thought of getting to level 80 is a bit more daunting than getting to 70, let alone 60. Burning Crusade came with two new races for level 1 players to start with, but almost all the great new content in Lich King is for high-level characters, and even the Death Knight requires someone to have a level 55 character already. So why start now with Lich King?
Even though changes like the overhauled class and game mechanics or the introduction of more robust interface and graphic options affect all characters and players across the board, it’s true that most of the content in Wrath of the Lich King is aimed at veteran players. Since the launch of Burning Crusade, though, Blizzard has worked on polishing the old-school content, and the trek from 1 to 60 is both quicker and smoother. With Lich King, the journey from 60 to 70 will be similarly sped up, and the brand new Achievement system is an entertaining diversion that old-timers didn’t have.
Furthermore, the leveling experience - questing, discovering new storylines and exploring new zones - has always been one of WoW’s strongest points since the beginning, and that hasn’t changed. For a new player, the journey should be as fun as it’s ever been. For everybody else, the end-game at level 80 is better than it was at level 70 or 60, and getting there is just as fun.
Wrath of the Lich King is a tremendously more ambitious - and tremendously more successful - expansion pack than Burning Crusade was, and feels like a return to the roots of Warcraft. It’s more WoW, but it’s a better WoW in essentially every way imaginable. No game is flawless of course, but Lich King is a title worthy of the Blizzard name and reputation. It might just remind people why exactly there are eleven million people around the world playing the game today. The Kool-Aid has never tasted so good.
Long live the King.
Bottom Line: WoW has never been better. It’s more accessible, there are more options for players than ever before, Achievements and Siege weaponry are awesome, and the Death Knight introduction is phenomenal.
Recommendation: With Wrath of the Lich King, there’s been no better time to start, resume, or continue playing World of Warcraft.
Tags: wow gold，world of warcraft gold

Posted by JImmy at 02:03:16 | Permalink | No Comments »