Well if anyone has noticed ive been gone for the past month for a competition and will finally be coming back home tomarrow. Which means I'll finally be back out in the moors tomarrow. And this time I'll have a new headset and a burning desire to fight someone.
The Very Anxious
Ittybitty
Source: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?412127-Miss-Me-I-Thought-not...&goto=newpost
From Minotaur to Myth, Marathon to Master Chief, the House of Halo wasn’t built in a day. Bungie’s got your proof right here, with a ginormous, feature-length documentary that’ll take you on a two-decade journey through one of the biggest developers in the universe. Clear you schedule, because this incredibly well-produced doc is well worth a watch. I mean, for no other reason than it could very well contain your first look at that unseen title Bungie has in development with Activision…
We’re hard at work here, so we didn’t have the required hour to watch the whole thing (but there’s nothing stopping you from reviewing the film in the comments below!). However, we saw plenty of great shit while scrubbing through the vid at the speed of professional journalism, including damn everyone ever involved in Bungie, prototype Halo footage, the Penny Arcade boys, Cap’n Malcolm “Nathan Fillion!” Reynolds, AND potentially the first ever footage of Bungie’s upcoming Activision-published project codenamed “Tiger” rumored to be a sci-fi massively-multiplayer, first-person shooter.
Above: Daggum, ya'll! This shore ain't no Halo map I ever seed...
Watching the teams' excitement during the final minutes of the video certainly adds some credence to that speculation. Oh yeah, then there's this tiny emblem:
Above: This innocuous symbol at the end of the doc could be your key to "Destiny"
We'll let you know more as soon as we do.
Aug 4, 2011
im sooo ossim! i made a post about myself cuz im sooo ossim! i go play wif bunny now! ican joyn vvv now??
Source: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?412096-myself&goto=newpost
Ubisoft's newly released XBLA title From Dust has become the fastest selling digital game in the company's history. Proving there is room for original IPs, Ubisoft confirmed that designer Eric Chahi's Populous-meets-Lemmings god sim sold nearly 45% more copies on the first day of its launch than any other downloadable title before it.
Although Ubisoft did not give specific numbers, a rep told GR From Dust's opening sales numbers eclipsed those previously earned by a number of well known brands, stating, “In no particular order, the closest day one frontrunners behind From Dust were Beyond Good & Evil, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”
Adding his own thoughts to From Dust's success, Ubisoft's vp of digital publishing Chris Early noted, “From Dust is another great example of Ubisoft’s ongoing commitment to bring original intellectual properties and brands to the digital space.”
From Dust is currently on XBLA only, but will be arriving soon on PSN, and on PC August 17th. In a chat with Joystiq, a Ubi rep confirmed the PC version will not be saddled with restrictive DRM, explaining, “Constant internet connection won't be necessary when playing From Dust's campaign and challenge mode on the PC."
Still waiting for your version? Get your fill of earth-shaping, tride guiding news with our review and last week's launch trailer.
Aug 5, 2011
From Dust review
Finally, the game geologists with a God complex have been waiting for
Ubisoft's From Dust launch trailer shows what it's like to play God
XBLA title sold via the modest promise of all-powerful omniscience
E3 2011: From Dust hands on preview – a fantastic, minimalist god sim
Sand castles? No. We build mountains
Okay i was never able to download LOTRO on my desktop PC because our internet would get totally slow whenever i tried. so some months ago i went on a trip with my parents and we brought our laptop. the hotel internet was PERFECT so i downloaded LOTRO and was able to play. now i want to put lotro on my desktop cuz i prefer it to the laptop... how do i do this? can you tell me exact instructions? thanks!!
A handful of Internet service providers (ISPs) in the U.S. are redirecting search traffic around specific keywords to brands’ websites, presumably for affiliate marketing revenue.
A study released today by a UC Berkeley research group revealed that for some Internet users on some ISPs, using a search engine and typing in a word such as “apple” or “bloomingdales” would redirect the user to websites for Apple or Bloomingdale’s rather than to a page or search results about the keyword in question.
The Berkeley project, called Netalyzr, was created to measure DNS behavior. However, over the past few months, the Netalyzr team noticed some unexplained and unexpected redirections across at least 12 ISPs in the United States.
In a blog post on the findings, the team wrote, “The affected ISPs use services provided by a company called Paxfire�to monetize certain web search requests. Paxfire’s main line of business is DNS-error traffic monetization, i.e., the practice of presenting advertisements and search results to users who mistyped a website’s address in their browser.
“In addition, some ISPs employ an optional, unadvertised Paxfire feature that redirects the entire stream of affected customers’ web search requests to Bing, Google and Yahoo via HTTP proxies operated by Paxfire.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation helped the Netalyzr team investigate the matter. As EFF senior staff technologist Peter Eckersley told VentureBeat, “They knew the general category of false DNS responses might be possible and worth checking for, while the details that emerged about Paxfire and what it was actually up to were a bit more surprising.”
The research team found that around 170 specific, brand-related keywords would trigger interference by the HTTP proxies, causing users to be redirected to affiliate marketing landing pages. “In the process, the ISPs and Paxfire presumably earn commission payments for the redirected flows,” the researchers wrote.
Some of the ISPs involved are, according to data presented by multiple organizations involved in the investigation, Cavalier, Cincinnati Bell, Cogent, DirecPC, Frontier, Fuse, Hughes, IBBS, Insight Broadband, Megapath, Paetec, RCN, Wide Open West and XO Communication. Charter and Iowa Telecom claim to have recently stopped doing DNS redirects.
While it’s likely that ISPs had at least some knowledge of at least some of the DNS redirection, if not search traffic redirection, it’s less likely that the brands themselves were involved in the scheme. “There is probably a chain of several intermediaries in these affiliate marketing programs between the brand itself and Paxfire,” said Eckersley.
In other words, it’s difficult to say at the outset where the buck stops in this scheme and whose hands are in the cookie jar. What we do know is that many of the ISPs involved are claiming a lack of knowledge about the search redirects and pointing to third-party vendors as the real villains in the scenario.
A Charter representative told VentureBeat today that when search traffic redirects were occurring across that ISP, “We were not aware of it. It was a third party, and in a sit-down with the vendor, we said, ‘You need to be more careful about putting us into this mix… Charter doesn’t think this practice is acceptable.”
Steven Crosby of Frontier Communications Corportation told VentureBeat, “In terms of Frontier?s practices, we do not hijack any search traffic. We have clear business rules in our legal agreement with Paxfire that allows them to monetize URL address bar errors (e.g., ‘www.abc.cmo’ instead of ‘www.abc.com’ or typing an actual word like ‘PC’ into the address bar). Paxfire is not allowed to touch any search traffic that originates directly from toolbars or search bars.”
While the Charter rep was not able to name the exact vendor involved, Paxfire is just one of many Internet marketing companies that are using technical architectures for commercial and marketing purposes. These firms, which include companies like Barefruit and Golog, engage in murky practices such as search redirects, practices that violate our expectations of how the web should work and that rob us of any trust we might have in our ISPs.
If you use one of the affected ISPs, the EFF recommends running a Netalyzr test and installing a browser plugin such as HTTPS Everywhere to use HTTPS for all your web browsing “With HTTPS, attempts by the ISP or a company like Paxfire to alter the results would cause a certificate warning,” said Eckersley.
Google has also recommended using Google Public DNS and is beta-testing encrypted web search for users who want to better protect their search traffic.
“I’m not an expert on affiliate marketing programs, so I can’t comment on whether anything that Paxfire is doing might be a violation of the rules or norms of that business sector,” said Eckersley. But he did say that the marketing company “has no business” granting itself access to the keywords people are using to navigate the Internet.
“If my search engine is untrustworthy or not returning the results I was actually looking for, I can go and pick a different search engine. But if Paxfire has snuck out onto the network and secretly replaced all my choices of search engine with itself, I no longer get to go elsewhere for my searches.”
And when Paxfire’s proxies malfunction, any search attempts return an error message. “Users will often blame the search engine for that, when in fact it’s the fault of the company that’s secretly hijacking them,” said Eckersley.
In the end, said the EFF spokesman, it all comes back to net neutrality and how the lack of neutrality fundamentally degrades the reliability of the Internet. “Programmers assume that when they send data from A to B over the network it will arrive as it was sent. But if in fact the data is transformed by a series of companies that are trying to find ways to make a quick buck, things become more complicated, unpredictable, and fragile.”
In the ongoing quest to put a stop to deceptive Internet marketing practices, it’s hard to tell exactly where to lay the blame for search redirection and the responsibility for ending it. But Google took the issue upon itself when users were complaining about redirects.
Google’s security teams had been aware of DNS-based traffic interference from ISPs for months, at the very least. Google security engineer Damian Menscher wrote in response to user issues with Frontier back in March, “At Google, we are following this very closely, and trying to get Frontier to fix the issue. The root of the problem is that Frontier is intercepting some traffic, so when you try to use Google your search actually goes through a Frontier server first.”
At that time, entrepreneur and investor Andrew Payne noticed the redirection happening in his own searches. He wrote, “ISPs have redirected DNS queries for a while, but have mostly focused on typos and misspellings. I’ve never seen an example of an ISP actually hijacking a user’s Google search and inserting their own results, and that seems pretty egregious to me.”�Menscher recommends users contact Frontier directly about the practice.
With folks like Payne making waves online, Frontier responded directly. Maggie Wilderotter, the ISP’s CEO, told Payne a story similar to the one we heard from Charter today: “that this had been done by one of their vendors in violation of Frontier’s business rules and it’s been shut down,” as Payne wrote. Around May 2011, Payne said Frontier had stopped redirecting Google search traffic, as far as he could tell.
According to the EFF, Google has repeatedly put pressure on ISPs to stop DNS-based redirects and has been at least somewhat successful. However, the EFF notes that Yahoo and Bing search engines are still particularly susceptible to redirects.
“This is why the ISPs that were proxying Google stopped in the past couple of months,” wrote Berkeley researcher Nicholas Weaver in a Slashdot thread today. “Google’s abuse-detection threw up a CAPTCHA on the queries, and then Google posted about it.”
Evidently, the combined noise from the web and pressure from the search engine were enough to put a stop to search redirection in some cases. A Google spokesperson confirmed, “We aren’t aware of any DNS providers that are currently doing this hijacking for searches intended for Google.”
Hopefully, continued pressure and the watchful eyes of the media, Berkeley researchers and advocacy groups like the EFF will help to end the practice of search redirects.
Image courtesy of Magic Glasses.
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Basically...Cell_1 And Cell_2 Wont Let me Download.It's Corrupted.Along with pretty much all the File's.I Then Go through the download...And then Unistall it.Through the Setup.But when I Try to Reinstall,It Display's the Bar Thing where you can stop and pause.it Insta Go's Finshed.And It Just goes through the Same Corrupted Stuff again.
Source: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?412047-Major-Download-Problem-s&goto=newpost
Blizzard Entertainment chief executive Mike Morhaime said the company is still not committing to a 2011 release date for Diablo 3, one of the company’s most hotly anticipated titles.
“Diablo 3 is still on track to go into external beta testing this quarter, we’re working hard to ship the game by the end of the year,” Blizzard Entertainment CEO Mike Morhaime said on the company’s quarterly earnings call. “But we can’t commit to a release date for the game yet.”
Blizzard Entertainment is letting Battle.net account holders opt in to a limited beta for the game. We earlier reported that a beta was likely near after a number of signs indicated that the company was�just about ready to pull the trigger for a beta program.
The last Diablo game came out in 2000 and still boasts a big player base. It?s nothing compared to Blizzard Entertainment?s most popular online role-playing game, World of Warcraft, which has around 11.4 million subscribers. But the game?s hack-and-slash and loot-seeking formula proved to be incredibly popular and the game has persisted for more than a decade. It even inspired�a number of dungeon crawler copycats like Torchlight.
The Diablo games allow anywhere from two to eight players to jump into discrete games with randomly generated dungeons. The goal is to prevent the forces of Hell from taking over the world by defeating Diablo, the lord of terror, and his cohorts. Players chase after powerful items and weapons to use against other enemies and players or for trade.
The company unveiled a new player class for Diablo 3 at each of its yearly gaming conventions called Blizzcon,�including the final class at last year?s convention. Diablo has taken somewhat of a backseat to Blizzard Entertainment?s larger game, World of Warcraft, and its newest release Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty.
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The number of active subscribers for Blizzard Entertainment’s most popular online game, World of Warcraft, fell in the second quarter of 2011, the second decline�in a row.
World of Warcraft is one of the most dominant online games in the industry. It’s enjoyed that position since it launched in 2004, and the game peaked at 12 million active subscribers. That number has since fallen for two straight quarters, a sign that the game might now be showing its age. It’s given other online games, like Trion Worlds’ Rift, an opportunity to step in and try to steal market share from the massive multiplayer online supergiant.
It’s also been a huge source of revenue for Activision-Blizzard.�World of Warcraft charges players $15 a month to access the game.�The company said digital revenues from properties such as World of Warcraft hit a new record, showing a 27 percent increase from the same quarter a year ago. Digital revenues now account for 37 percent of the company?s total revenues.
“It’s normal to see some declines, the team is currently working on our largest content update since Cataclysm, which will hit later this year,” Blizzard Entertainment chief executive Mike Morhaime said.
The company is working to open the game in new markets and acquire new players, Morhaime said. The game’s latest expansion pack, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, launched in China last month. The company also made World of Warcraft free to play for the first 20 levels of the game in order to attract new subscribers.
“We have seen an increase in new account creations as a result of that,” Morhaime said. “It’s still�too early to tell on conversions to subscribership, but I believe that is an important direction for us.”
Blizzard Entertainment is also working on another massive online game that it has not announced yet. The company is diverting more revenue to development of that title, Morhaime said.
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So I'm thinking about spending a little money on LOTRO to get RoI, but since I've never spent so much as a penny yet I'm not sure how the process even works. I worry that if I buy something once I'll suddenly have a subscription, and then bills will randomly start appearing =P I think I heard something once about paying and VIP and it's festered in my memory... Plus, my VIP friends are all monthly subscribers =/ Can someone just assuage my fears and explain how/if you can buy things without inadvertently buying a VIP subscription?
Also, when will the legendary edition of RoI stop being available for pre-order?
Source: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?411503-From-Free-to-Not-so-Free...&goto=newpost
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Ok, I've been playing LOTRO since April 2011, and have really gotten immersed in the game and its many features. Only just recently I have been on the community site, checking the forums and whatnot, when I realized there was a slight question I need answered.
How do you make friends on the community site?
Its not an immediate problem.....but its bugging me! Thanks!
Source: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?411509-Stupid-yet-puzzling-question&goto=newpost
Free Online board Games Game Designer Video Games Centre iPad 2
“We see this as a fantastic opportunity to create a new and unique franchise,” says Square Enix Studios London's General Manager Lee Singleton, “which gamers will come to know and love for years to come.” He's talking about the company's latest acquisition, a third installment in the True Crime series – recently shelved by Activision, whose CEO told investors: “it just wasn't going to be good enough.” With the title's developers, United Front, being cut loose by Activision, the game's been picked up by the Japanese-owned company, who can do whatever they like with development, release and marketing – anything, that is, except call it True Crime.
Above: “True Crime is goin' to Hong Kong!” (insert loud “gong” effect here)
The rights to the True Crime franchise are retained by Activision, who established the brand at the height of the “like Grand Theft Auto, but...” craze in the early 2000s. The original titles, True Crime: Streets of LA and True Crime: New York City, were styled after Grand Theft Auto, but with painstakingly correct street maps, which it turns out wasn't enough of a defining element: the series lay dormant for several years until this year, when Bobby Kotick announced that the series had failed to “after a sustained period of time get to [the] level of excellence” demanded by Activision, a company that only publishes perfect games.
Above: The next time you see this guy, he won't be called True Crime any more. And he may be a woman
True Crime: Hong Kong having successfully proved the impossibility of this particular impossible thing, United Front is free to make the game it wants to with Square Enix, provided nobody calls it True Crime. That may be less of a sacrifice than it sounds: the game, initially conceived by Treyarch, was originally intended as a standalone title named Black Lotus, a Hong Kong-set gangster thriller with a female lead whose gender-switching was the first big change Activision demanded. Will United Front turn back the clock on all this meddling and rebranding, or will it be a whole other thing altogether? The game's got no set release date – or title, or confirmed story elements to speak of. Is “Hong Kong, guns, and the enthusiasm of professional game-adorers at Square Enix” enough to pique your interest?
Aug 1, 2011
I have been having trouble researching this on my on so I thought I come here for more info. I am looking for a server that has a friendly community with casual RP expectations, but has peak hours for my play time. I work nights and on my days off I there are very few folks on my current server. Im looking for an active Kinship/server for about 7pm to 7am CST.
Any suggestions would help.
Source: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?411505-Best-servers-for-roughly-7pm-to-7am-CST&goto=newpost
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Source: http://www.gamesradar.com/f/talkradar-169-grade-a-bullsmurf/a-20110802155450233081
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Citrix Online?s GoToMeeting web conferencing service�announced today the addition of video conferencing to its line up of popular business services.
The new service is called “HDFaces” and allows up to six people in the same video confrence. The example to the left shows what a three-person conference looks like. Calling the service “HD” is a toying with the term a bit, because each person’s stream displays at 640 x 480 pixels, with a total maximum resolution of 1920 x 960 pixels. Regardless, it’s a useful addition.
“GoToMeeting with HDFaces changes the definition of face-to-face meetings from ‘a place you go’ to ‘a thing you do,’” Brett Caine, General Manager of Citrix Online Services division, said in a statement.
The best part of the introduction of HDFaces is that it is free for existing GoToMeeting customers. GoToMeeting’s standard pricing runs $49 per month or $468 per year. Businesses can take part in a free 30-day online trial.
Citrix has been looking for new ways to expand the widely used GoToMeeting this year. In April it launched web conferencing services for the iPad. GoToMeeting also recently launched an app for the Android platform. Citrix has said it plans to add video conferencing to its apps in the future.
Alternately, major GoToMeeting competitor WebEx (from Cisco) has offered video conferencing inside standard web browsers and its iPad app since last year.
Are you a current user of GoToMeeting? What do you think of the addition of video conferencing?
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One of the most boring conversations in gaming currently pertains to whether or not games are art. We'll finish that tired exchange right now: yes, so shut the hell up about it. What's far more interesting is gaming inspiring art, which has been happening for years with the brilliant art series iam8bit. Now the pop art collective is premiering a whole new exhibition next week with SUPER iam8bit, and we've got an exclusive preview of the amazing art and accompanying book right here.
The show starts August 11 in Los Angeles, CA, and if you're lucky enough to live in the area you should check it out (the details are on the lovely flier below).
For those that don't live in the area or do but are annoyed they can't afford to buy the original art on show, that's where the SUPER iam8bit book comes in. On sale the same night, this spiffy tome collects all the pieces at the show plus other classics from the series, and should you miss the event, the book will get a wide release a little later this year.
Anyway, enough with the words. Why not let the art speak for itself?
Read on to get a sneak peek at the SUPER iam8bit book...
So I recently came back to the game after a break and I am trying to decide which of my ten characters I should play. I spent about a month now getting my start screen in order (aka getting my toons to a multiple of 5 on their level), and now I'm trying to pick my "alt of the month".
I've got a 65 Dwarf Guardian, 60 Dwarf Champ, and a 50 Dwarf Runekeeper that are out of the running for now. Work is never done on a toon, but I'm wanting to focus on one of my lowbies this month.
My other toons are a 35 Hobbit Warden, 30 Dwarf Minstrel, 30 Dwarf Hunter, 25 Human Captain, 20 Human LM, 20 Human Burg, and 10 Elf Guardian. Of those I'm putting the Warden and Minstrel out of the running mainly because I just played my warden a bunch to get her to 35 and I never liked playing a minstrel solo. The Hunter will also be out of the running because I am keeping him on level with my brother-in-law's captain.
That leaves my captain, LM, burg, and other guardian. Captain solo is annoying, but he is an SM cook and farmer so a few levels wouldn't hurt so he could get some better tools. I've never really likened to my LM, but would be willing to give it a shot with some friendly advice perhaps. My burg is fun, but I haven't played him in a long time and might be rusty, and the elf guardian is an elf so I'm not sure overall
So... plead the case for the class of your choice. I'm open to playing the warden and minstrel if the coming levels are worthy of note, but I'd want to group on both which is problematic. My champ and guard might come out if I feel like doing instances and glff pops something interesting so they'll be secondaries. My RK hit 50 and has officially become a nuisance to play because he's got way too many skills to be that boring (Me spam ceaseless argument... blarg!).
What should my flavor be???
Source: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?411502-Flavor-of-the-month&goto=newpost
Pages: 1 2
Google+ looks unlike anything Google has ever produced, and that?s a good thing. Gone are the seemingly endless variations on blue color schemes and vain attempts at absolute minimalist design (see: Gmail, Google Calendar). In their place, Google has created a social network that?s not only attractive, but fun to use.
Yet there’s still plenty of room for improvement in Google+. As is typical for Google, the company is attempting some bold new ideas with the service. But, at least at the moment, not everything is working out well.
If Google can manage to smooth out Plus’s current usability quirks, it has a better chance of stealing away users from Facebook and cementing Plus as the next great social network.
I chatted with Patrick Neeman, director of user experience at Jobvite�and creator of Usability Counts, about his thoughts on what works, and what doesn’t, with Google+’s usability.
Neeman praised the service?s interface, and in particular the Circles feature for grouping friends.
?There’s a few quirks, but what I like about the usability of Google+ is it doesn’t feel like a Google app,? he wrote in an email. ?The Circles interface is phenomenal, and it makes me want to organize my friends. Facebook has a better algorithm for matching friends, but Google has a better look and feel, which is quite the flip.?
Many have noted that the Circles implementation, which is full of slick animations, is unusually elaborate for Google. Compared to the Spartan way you manage contacts in Gmail or add appointments in Google Calendar, Google+ Circles seem downright glitzy.
It appears that Google has realized that good usability isn’t just about making interfaces as simple as possible. By making friend grouping fun and engaging — overall making it more human — Google will likely be able to encourage more users to actually sort their friends. (VentureBeat’s Sean Ludwig recently listed Circles as something Google+ does far better than Facebook and Twitter.) Facebook?s friend lists, on the other hand, are a chore to deal with.
Neeman also thinks Plus?s use of a follower model is particularly ingenious: ?The follower model is the best of Twitter. From a marketing standpoint, this is tremendous, and actually makes Google+ more of a threat to Twitter than Facebook. You still get Friends by matching people who you follow, but they follow you. But you can still build your personal brand by having people follow you.?
He says that he?s been able to drive a decent amount of traffic to one of his side projects, the UX Drinking Game, through Google+ posts alone, even though the service?s audience is still limited.
Just like Twitter, Google+’s follower model means there’s less pressure to follow everyone who follows you. That’s in stark contrast to Facebook, whose friend model assumes reciprocity. For Google+, this means that there’s less stress around dealing with your followers — instead you can just focus on sharing content and actually using the service.
Another Google+ feature Neeman is fond of, and which has earned Google considerable praise, is its emphasis on data portability. In the ?Data Liberation? section of your Google+ settings, you can download all of your data from the service, as well as data from individual sections (like your contacts and Circles). Good luck trying that trick with Facebook.
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Things take a turn for the worse in our thrillingly third episode of our gripping Dead Island Secret Origins saga. It appears alcohol still in fact works on the undead, as do the more regrettable aspects binge drinking and careless promiscuity. Ever woken up in Vegas next to a buddy you’ve accidentally given herpes? Of course you have! It’s kinda like that, but with added biological decay and *gasp* IMMORTALITY?!
Assuming you’ve see the first and second episode, there’s only one more to go! All episodes live and premiere right here, as well as a chance to win a five night, trip for two to the significantly safer Bahamas!
[FULL DISCLOSURE: Deep Silver ponied up the dough for the videos - we wrote, shot and said whatever we wanted. It's not advertorial, it's ADVERTAINMENT!]
Aug 2, 2011
Ok, I've been playing LOTRO since April 2011, and have really gotten immersed in the game and its many features. Only just recently I have been on the community site, checking the forums and whatnot, when I realized there was a slight question I need answered.
How do you make friends on the community site?
Its not an immediate problem.....but its bugging me! Thanks!
Source: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?411509-Stupid-yet-puzzling-question&goto=newpost
Free Online board Games Game Designer Video Games Centre iPad 2
I have been having trouble researching this on my on so I thought I come here for more info. I am looking for a server that has a friendly community with casual RP expectations, but has peak hours for my play time. I work nights and on my days off I there are very few folks on my current server. Im looking for an active Kinship/server for about 7pm to 7am CST.
Any suggestions would help.
Source: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?411505-Best-servers-for-roughly-7pm-to-7am-CST&goto=newpost
Back in the day, you simply didn't play fighting games on the PC. Besides keyboard control being slightly less intuitive than playing on a cellphone keypad wearing mittens while high, the conversions just never managed to retain the best bits (like “playability”). However today's PC gamers are multifaceted gems, and as soon as Capcom gave them the opportunity to play Street Fighter IV, they immediately welcomed the computer port. So why hasn't a PC version of Street Fighter X Tekken been announced yet? Producer Yoshinori Ono “doesn't want to give anything away,” but assures fans the possibility is being taken very seriously.
“[The PC version of SFIV Arcade Edition] was a month late, sorry about that,” says Ono. However, the title quickly made the Steam top 10: “We are really happy with those results... We are certainly considering doing something similar [with Street Fighter X Tekken], but I don’t want to talk too much right now.” Ono also says the company's considering skipping a 3DS version of SFIV AE and going straight to the Tekken crossover... but then, in the same interview he also mentions that he sent a team to Brazil to look for Blanka, so use your own judgment as to how hopeful to get.
Aug 1, 2011
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Thread title says it all.
For me, I don't think they do. Male Hobbits do to an extent, but not females. Only way it'd be logical from my point of view would be if the female Hobbit was a burglar or minstrel. A guardian or warden female Hobbit is simply dumb and impossible, it seems.
Source: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?411443-Are-Female-Hobbits-Lore-Abiding&goto=newpost
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You know that little green phone icon in your Gmail chat column? Ever tried it? You might today, since Google has expanded calling from Gmail to�support 38 languages and four payment currencies.
Last year, Google launched the service making it possible to�call any mobile phone or landline�in the United States directly from Gmail.�Calls to the U.S. or Canada placed within those countries will “continue to be free at least for the rest of 2011.” So you have no excuse not to call your mom often. Calls to the U.S. or Canada placed from outside these countries will be charged “the insanely low rate” (those are Google’s words) of $0.01 per minute (or ?0.01, �0.01, C$0.01 per minute).
The news prompted me to try the service for the first time (why call when you can video chat or IM?). I use it to call my baby’s sitter who isn’t online during the day. The call was refreshingly clear, something folks living in an area with notoriously bad reception (eh-hem, San Francisco) will appreciate.
“With today’s announcement, we also have ensured that the product offers better quality with echo cancellation, better sound quality and noise reduction,” says Vincent Paquet, group product manager, in an emailed interview with VentureBeat. “Call quality is a must-have and people should not have to think about it.”
My second Gmail voice call is with a Google spokesperson, who says she uses this all the time with reporters. She noted the record option (the caller is notified when the call is recorded) and the ability to work within the browser window while talking.�Multitaskers, rejoice!�Hopefully soon I will have the opportunity to call someone in another country… like Andorra.
Google doesn’t see Skype and other calling services as competition. Rather, it says this service is an extension of the existing communication services the company offers.
We’ve reached out to Skype for comment and are waiting to hear back.
Starting today you can also purchase�calling credit in four currencies: Euros, British pounds, Canadian dollars or U.S. dollars. Google doesn’t charge connection fees, and it has reduced calling rates to 150 locations. It�now costs $0.10 (or ?0.08) per minute to call mobile phones in the U.K., France or Germany (landlines are $0.02/min), $0.15/minute to call mobile phones in Mexico and $0.02/min to call any phone number in China and India. The complete list is available�on Google’s rates page.
The feature is rolling out this week. You’ll know it’s available in your country when a little green phone icon shows up at the top of your chat list. �You?ll need to install the�voice and video plug-in�to use it.
Next Story: EA hands out early sports game access to ‘Season Ticket’ buyers
Previous Story: Could Google+ be the first prominent open social network?
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Venturebeat/~3/YW3mONYE9Og/
We're recording TalkRadar UK's 100th episode today, August 2nd 2011 at 11:30am, and you can watch us LIVE via the handy little window into our studio that you can see below. Enjoy!
Streaming by Ustream
Source: http://www.gamesradar.com/f/watch-talkradar-uk-live-today-at-1130am-bst/a-201108029371112096
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Tribes: Ascend, the upcoming relaunch of the high-flying FPS series, will be free-to-play on PC. Slated for an Xbox 360 release, the console version has been delayed while Microsoft sorts out its policy on free-play titles into Live Arcade, as the company’s framework doesn't currently support such models. However Todd Harris, whose Hi-Rez Studios is producing the title, isn't worried by the delay. He says Microsoft is open to adopting a free-to-play framework: “It's inevitable that Microsoft will move towards that because the industry is moving towards that.”
“The ability to patch frequently, the ability to have it be free-to-play so users can get a taste without any fee,” continued Harris, “both Sony and Microsoft are moving there strategically but there are still some things to be worked out on both the business side and the technical side.” He says the games industry is moving away from the traditional model of buying a game upfront and toward models such as free-play, ad-supported and microtransaction-driven titles. Releases such as Valve's now free-play Team Fortress 2, as well as the widely documented success of fragmented, low-price titles such as Angry Birds point toward this trend, which Microsoft acknowledges it will be following.
“We're always looking at different models and different ways we can work with partners to bring content out,” the company's Xbox senior product manager David Dennis told Eurogamer. “Kinect Fun Labs – that's an ad-supported model. Those titles are sponsored. There are different ways you can deploy or distribute games using different types of business models.” Dennis says Microsoft's current strong industry position is an ideal one from which to experiment and “see what consumers like and what they don't like... you'll see us continue in the future to look for a lot of different models for distribution.”
Until Microsoft has sorted out these issues with developers such as Harris, projects like the 360 version of Tribes: Ascend remain on the back-burner. How eager are you to see free-play games make their way onto XBLA?
Aug 1, 2011
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Drastic pay cuts and 3DS apologies weren't the only news to come from Nintendo's recent sitdown with investors. According to Andriasang, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata told shareholders the company has taken a renewed interest in digital sales, and that it plans to develop paid transaction systems for both the 3DS and Wii U.
Iwata revealed Nintendo's DLC direction during a Q&A session following its earnings briefing with investors in Tokyo last Friday. He insisted digital sales would not overshadow packaged software, but instead compliment Nintendo's products and become another pillar of the company's overall strategy over the next three years. That said, Iwata said both he and Shigeru Miyamoto were interested in DLC that could potential extend the shelf life of its games through added levels and features, but that Nintendo would avoid creating cheaper, less meaningful DLC (i.e., character perks) for its first party titles.
Further to rolling out DLC systems, Iwata added Nintendo would be working on turning the eShop into a larger entity, and making full use of the 3DS internet capabilities. What he won't do, however, is pursue free-to-play opportunities with premier content, adding that particular business model would, in his opinion, be toxic to the Nintendo brand.
The ability to release paid digital content for the 3DS will be available to developers by the end of 2011, with similar options for the Wii U to be ready upon its launch.
Aug 1, 2011
Source: Andriasang
Nintendo president claims responsibility for 3DS sales, takes 50% pay cut
Satoru Iwata offers costly apology to investors
How the huge 3DS price drop rounds off Nintendo's worst-run launch since the Virtual Boy
Great machine, terrible launch plan. Here's how Nintendo screwed it up
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“We see this as a fantastic opportunity to create a new and unique franchise,” says Square Enix Studios London's General Manager Lee Singleton, “which gamers will come to know and love for years to come.” He's talking about the company's latest acquisition, a third installment in the True Crime series – recently shelved by Activision, whose CEO told investors: “it just wasn't going to be good enough.” With the title's developers, United Front, being cut loose by Activision, the game's been picked up by the Japanese-owned company, who can do whatever they like with development, release and marketing – anything, that is, except call it True Crime.
Above: “True Crime is goin' to Hong Kong!” (insert loud “gong” effect here)
The rights to the True Crime franchise are retained by Activision, who established the brand at the height of the “like Grand Theft Auto, but...” craze in the early 2000s. The original titles, True Crime: Streets of LA and True Crime: New York City, were styled after Grand Theft Auto, but with painstakingly correct street maps, which it turns out wasn't enough of a defining element: the series lay dormant for several years until this year, when Bobby Kotick announced that the series had failed to “after a sustained period of time get to [the] level of excellence” demanded by Activision, a company that only publishes perfect games.
Above: The next time you see this guy, he won't be called True Crime any more. And he may be a woman
True Crime: Hong Kong having successfully proved the impossibility of this particular impossible thing, United Front is free to make the game it wants to with Square Enix, provided nobody calls it True Crime. That may be less of a sacrifice than it sounds: the game, initially conceived by Treyarch, was originally intended as a standalone title named Black Lotus, a Hong Kong-set gangster thriller with a female lead whose gender-switching was the first big change Activision demanded. Will United Front turn back the clock on all this meddling and rebranding, or will it be a whole other thing altogether? The game's got no set release date – or title, or confirmed story elements to speak of. Is “Hong Kong, guns, and the enthusiasm of professional game-adorers at Square Enix” enough to pique your interest?
Aug 1, 2011
Nintendo has finally dropped the DS Lite price to $99.99, giving the six or seven people who have miraculously refrained from buying one an easy reason to take the plunge. Nintendo has also re-released six classic Mario games in bright red packaging to commemorate the price drop, and this week we're offering all of 'em - plus a DS Lite - as our weekend giveaway!
Above: That's right! Comment below to enter to win this DS Lite and these six Mario games:
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
Bitter enemies come together in one of 2009's wittiest adventures
Mario Kart DS
Arguably the best Mario Kart to date
New Super Mario Bros
A grand return to form for Nintendo's world-famous mascot
Mario vs Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem
Undemanding fun packed with a great classic soundtrack
Super Mario 64 DS
A timeless adventure made portable, plus play as Wario, Yoshi and Luigi
Mario Party DS
Just remember there are five other Mario games in this prize!
To enter, just leave a comment on this article by 9:00AM PST on Monday, August 1. US and Canada residents only, please - we still haven't gotten over that whole Revolutionary War thing. Or was it shipping costs and pages of legalese? One of those, for sure. Full contest rules are here.
A winner will be selected at random and can expect to receive a PM from one of our administrators within a week after the contest ends. Don't forget to check your GR inbox on the site to see if you've won!
Jul 30, 2011
Source: http://www.gamesradar.com/f/grs-weekend-giveaway-ds-lite-and-6-mario-games/a-20110726141152566078
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