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Greetings all~
Community address.
July Community Address: Open Letter from Lance Stites
Hello to all,
It’s been a while since I’ve addressed the community, and with all that’s happening, it’s probably a good time to provide an update. Since Aion Producer Chris “Kinslon” Hager is out due to an unpreventable leave of absence, I’ll be providing information to you. While we expect him back in the office within a couple of weeks, we didn’t want to wait to provide you with information on our status.
We’ve had a busy summer already and have accomplished some positive things. Our release of 1.9 brought some nice improvements to the game. We were especially glad to release this update as it introduced many changes based on the feedback we collected from players in North America and Europe. We’ve also merged some of the servers to revitalize the server population. While no one looks forward to conducting a merge, we felt it was important to provide a vibrant social experience for the community. We had seen player concurrency dropping off some and had been diligent in removing RMT or bot accounts, so a server merge was a good way to bring the community back together.
Since then, we’ve been allowing free character transfers so as to resolve any character faction conflicts. However, we soon noticed a disturbing trend. Players were migrating in such a way that caused an unbalanced faction ratio in the servers, negating a primary reason for the recent merge. We had to make the hard decision to disable transfers and revisit our plan.
In plain terms, it is our duty and obligation to provide a fun and fair environment for players. I know this wasn’t a popular decision, but the alternative would be servers with one faction totally dominating the other and a self-perpetuating situation of player discouragement and abandonment for the minority faction or no challenge at all for the dominating faction. Right now, all the associated Aion teams are working on a solution to allow character transfers to resume with appropriate limits in place to prevent radically unbalanced servers. In the interim, we will be selectively disabling new character creation for specific races on specific servers temporarily as another tool to help balance the factions in each server. For instance, if you’re playing on a predominantly Elyos server, Asmodian creation will be the only race available for new characters. While we intend to enact this change only temporary, we hope that this limited selection process will have positive server balance effects in the long term.
We’re particularly anxious to reach a resolution on this as we do have some great things we’re working on. We’ve got a reactivation campaign rolling to invite players back to see the changes we’ve introduced with 1.9. On top of that, we’ve got the next major expansion, Aion®: Assault on Balaurea™, in the final stages of testing. We’re showing our serious commitment to
you, our players, by providing this as a free downloadable expansion for our current users, as well as offering an upgraded client at retail outlets.
I’m personally excited to see not only the new Aion: Assault on Balaurea instances and play mechanics coming, but also
that the Aion development team has shown very creative thinking with the new pet system. It’s pretty cool to see the usefulness of these creatures, which can carry items for you to effectively increase your inventory space, alert you
when enemies are nearby, and even create items out of your otherwise unwanted drops. I’m also encouraged by the astute observations of our Game Analysis Team, which tracks potential issues received from the community or staff. This team tracks the data behind subjective feedback and provides metrics that indicate potential problem areas. Finally, we continue to strengthen our already strong relationship with the game development team, and I’ve seen some recent demonstrations of its
members’ support that are inspiring. I’m excitedly looking forward to what we have to offer even beyond our next update.
I’d like to thank all of you who are so committed to Aion and to let you know that I appreciate the fact that you’re a critical
component of the game. I’m honored to be working on a game with so many passionate fans, and I hope we can continue to provide you hours of fun and enjoyment.
Faith and Arms,
Lance Stites
Executive Vice President, Game Operations and Production
NCsoft West
Nothing new here really. I have to say, if they spend as much time actually trying to solve the problem as they do telling us they’re trying to solve the problem, we’ve got nothing to worry about.
Enjoy! 
AionSource Community News
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, who hurl themselves into the fray, into the very teeth of danger, armed with nothing more than the biggest weapons and armored with the absolutely heaviest armor we can find. Hey, we’re not stupid, we’re just crazy.
Good morning and welcome to this week’s column, an overview of how the talent specialization changes affect leveling a warrior in the Cataclysm beta. Before I started this project, I made sure to keep to the following self-imposed rules.
- No heirlooms. This is 100 percent quest rewards and random drops. (Yes, the Wyrmslayer Spaulders dropped randomly for me while questing in Felwood.) I didn’t run any instances because after level 30 or so it got really hard to find an instance group at the levels I was at, but that wasn’t a hard-and-fast rule.
- Try and exhaust a zone before moving on. This means doing as many quests as I can, no skipping around, and experiencing as much of the new versions of old zones as possible. Turns out you can actually do fairly well that way. There are a lot of quests out there now.
- Switch talent specialization every four or five levels. There was no real rhyme or reason to this, I just wanted to see how talent specs felt at different levels. Blood Craze is very strong now. Combined with Bloodthirst and the heal from Victory Rush, a fury warrior can easily take on groups without falling over dead or running away. The old warrior strategy of “kill them before they kill you” is actually somewhat viable now.
So let’s discuss the experiment. What did I find were the pros and cons of the new system? What’s good for warriors and what’s bad?
Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: 1 to 60 the Cataclysm way
Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Cataclysm
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: 1 to 60 the Cataclysm way originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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WoW.com
Eatlier today we mentioned that there was no anti-aliasing support if you were using an ATI card and that ATI were working on it. The good news is that a new set of Beta drivers have already been released which include the following updates:
Starcraft II: Support for Anti-Aliasing through the ATI Catalyst Control Center when using a Windows® 7, Windows Vista® or Windows XP based system with an:
ATI Radeon™ HD 5xxx series graphics card or ATI Radeon Mobility equivalent series of products
ATI Radeon HD 4xxx series graphics card or ATI Radeon Mobility equivalent series of products
ATI Radeon HD 3xxx series graphics card or ATI Radeon Mobility equivalent series of products
ATI Radeon HD 2xxx series graphics card or ATI Radeon Mobility equivalent series of products
Improved performance for Quad ATI CrossFireX™ for Eyefinity™ supported configurations
Grab the 10.7 ATI Catalyst Beta drivers here.
Blog
Cataclysm Class Masteries
The latest beta build reintroduced class masteries in-game! Masteries are affected by the Mastery Rating on your gear.
For example, a level 82 player will get 1 Mastery point for each 93 Mastery Rating he has. This mastery point will increase the mastery bonus differently depending on the class, +1 Mastery Point doesn’t necessarily means a +1% increase to the bonus. (e.g. A Beast Mastery hunter with +2 Mastery gets +4% increased pet damage)
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
 Death Knight ( Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
- Blood – Each time you heal yourself via Death Strike, you gain 50% of the amount healed as a damage absorption shield. Absorb increased further by mastery rating.
- Frost – Increases all frost damage done by 20%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.
- Unholy – Increases the damage done by your diseases by 20%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.
 Druid (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
- Restoration – Increases the potency of your heal over time spells by up to 20% based on the current health level of your target (lower health targets are healed for more). Healing increased further by mastery rating.
- Feral – Increases the damage absorbed by your Savage Defense ability by 32% and increases the damage done by your Cat Form bleed abilities by 20%. Absorb and damage increased further by mastery rating.
- Balance – Increases the bonus damage from Eclipse by 12%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.
 Hunter (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
- Beast Mastery – Increases the damage done by your pets by 20%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.
- Marksmanship – Grants a 16% chance for your ranged attacks to also instantly fire an additional ranged shot for 80% normal damage. Chance increased further by mastery rating.
- Survival – Increases all elemental damage you deal by 20%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.
 Mage (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
- Arcane – Increases all spell damage done by up to 12% based on the amount of mana the Mage has unspent. Damage increased further with mastery rating.
- Fire – Causes your non-periodic fire spells to deal 10% additional damage over 4 sec. Damage increased further by mastery rating.
- Frost – Your Frostbolt spell causes its victim to take a 12% increased damage from all other spells you attack the victim with. Damage increased further with mastery rating.
 Paladin (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
- Protection – Increases your chance to block melee attacks by 16%. Block chance increased further by mastery rating.
- Retribution – Increases all holy damage done by 20%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.
- Holy – Your healing spells also place an absorb shield on your target for 8% of the amount healed lasting 6 sec. Absorb increased further by mastery rating.
 Priest (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
- Shadow – You have a 10% chance for your Shadow Word: Pain and Mind Flay spells to gran you a Shadow Orb each time they deal damage. The Shadow Orb Increases the damage done by your Mind Blast and Mind Spike spells by 20%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.
- Holy – Your direct healing spells heal for an additional 10% over 6 sec. Healing increased further by mastery rating.
- Discipline – Increases the potency of all your damage absorption spells by 20%. Absorption increased further by mastery rating.
 Rogue (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
- Assassination – Increases the damage done by your poisons by 20%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.
- Combat – Your main hand attacks have a 10% chance to grant you an extra off hand attack. Chance increased further by mastery rating.
- Subtlety – Increases the damage done by all your finishing moves by 20%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.
 Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
- Elemental – Grants a 20% chance for Elemental Overload to occur. Elemental Overload causes a Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, or Lava Burst spell you cast to trigger a second, similar spell on the same target at no additional cost that causes 60% of normal damage and no threat. Chance to trigger increased further by mastery rating.
- Enhancement – Increases all elemental damage done by 20%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.
- Restoration – Increases the potency of your direct healing spells by up to 20%, based on the current health level of your target (lower health targets are healed for more). Healing increased further by mastery rating.
 Warlock (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
- Demonology – Increases the damage done by your demon servants and damage you deal while transformed into a demon by 12%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.
- Destruction – Increases all fire damage you deal by 10%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.
- Affliction – Increases all periodic shadow damage you deal by 13%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.
 Warrior (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
- Fury – Increases the benefit of abilities that cause you to be enraged or consume an enrage effect by 80%. Enrage abilities improved further by mastery rating.
- Protection – Increases your chance to block by 10% and your chance to critically block by 10%. Chances increased further by mastery rating.
- Arms – Grants a 16% chance for your melee attack to instantly trigger an additional melee attack for 50% normal damage. Chance increased further by mastery rating.
Cataclysm Screenshot of the Day – The Tol’vir
The Screenshot of the Day Gallery has been updated with a new screenshot of Uldum featuring the Tol’vir race. This is the first time we see them without their armor!
Undead on a Raptor on a Shark with frickin’ laser beams!
I know I already posted it on Facebook and Twitter but … damn, it’s a Undead on a Raptor on a Shark with frickin’ laser beams!
Originally Posted by Valnoth
( Source)
Maybe I missed the memo on levels of "epicosity" or something, but I’m pretty sure the Maelstrom is a CLASS 10 epic zone. Though I guess it is missing sharks with laser beams patrolling the waters and Arthur Fonzarelli jumping across it with water skis. And dinosaurs.
[…] After reading this post I called for a meeting with TOP TOP MEN (that’s two tops) in order to figure out a solution to the problem at hand. Frankly, I think we hit a home run. The next 4.0 build (or the one after) should have a Maelstrom that’s between 10 – 50x more epic than what currently exists.
Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler
( Source)
I’m on a shark.
 Fire Mage Talent Preview
Originally Posted by Kalgan
( Source)
Quick preview of upcoming fire changes (talents are from left to right, *denotes a change to the talent):
Tier 1:
- Master of Elements: now 2 ranks at 15/30%
- Burning Soul
- Incineration: removed
- Improved Fire Blast: moved from tier 2
Tier 2:
- Ignite
- Fire Power: Increases the damage of your Fire spells by 1/2/3% and gives your Flame Orb a 33/66/100% chance to explode at the end of its duration.
- Blazing Speed
- Impact (no useful raid utility yet… awesome ideas welcome)
Tier 3:
- Cauterize (new, 2 ranks): You have a 50/100%% chance that an attack which would otherwise kill you will instead bring you to 40% of your maximum health. However, you will burn for 12% of your maximum health every second for the next 4 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once per minute.
- Blast Wave: A wave of flame radiates outward from the target location, damaging all enemies caught within the blast for X Fire damage and are slowed by 75% for 3 sec.
- Molten Shields (new 1 rank, Blazing Speed is a prereq): Reduces the global cooldown of your Mage Ward spell by 1.5 sec and your Mage Ward triggers the Blazing Speed effect when it dissipates from absorbing damage.
- Improved Scorch: Reduces the mana cost of your Scorch spell by 50/100%
Tier 4:
- Pyromaniac
- Combustion
- Hot Streak (the instant Pyroblast no longer costs mana)
- Firestarter (new, 1 rank): Your Molten Armor allows you to cast the Scorch spell while moving instead of reducing the chance you are critically hit.
Tier 5:
- Improved Flamestrike
- Dragon’s Breath
- Molten Fury
Tier 6:
- Critical Mass: Your Pyroblast and Scorch spells have a 33/66/100% chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to spell damage, increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 5% and lasts 30 sec.
Tier 7:
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
End of Arena Season
The only information that we have to share with you right now is that we will announce the end of the arena season when it is almost over, just like in every previous season. We don’t provide date estimates on anything and this is no exception. Several other people understood what I was saying and the end result is that you will have to wait. ( Source)
Hunter (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Survival "Melee Attack Speed" buff in Raid Buffs List
The "20% melee attack speed" is in fact melee and ranged attack speed. That was just developer shorthand on my part.
The effect for Survival will probably get tied into Hunting Party since Replenishment alone doesn’t do anything for hunters and longer. (Source)
Mage (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Water Elemental Cooldown
The post-death cooldown will definitely be lowered to around 2 min, the intent is definitely that after it dies you’re waiting a somewhat similar amount of time before it’s up again as you would have under the old scheme. (Source)
Shattered Barrier proc while silenced, stunned, etc
…worth noting that the same is true of Reactive Barrier. (Source)
Reactive Barrier
There’s a reasonable chance a talent like this ends up being better in practical use than in theorycraft. It could end up needing a little something extra, or a redesign, but I’m willing to let it ride for a while to see how it actually plays out. (Source)
Paladin (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Spell hit
We’d like to give Prot paladins (Ret too) passive spell hit somewhere. (Source)
Protection
We’d also like to find a way to bring Shield of Righteousness back, but only if we can find an actual niche for it — not just "here’s another attack." Something like it consuming Holy Power but refreshing Holy Shield. (Source)
Priest (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Shadow
We haven’t worked on the Shadow tree much after out initial pass (that brought Shadowy Apparition et al.). We’re working on it now. Please don’t expect a total overhaul where every talent is redesigned, but we are taking a hard look at all of the damage talents and trying to make the talent choices more compelling (which often means harder). (Source)
Rogue (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Elusiveness / Dirty Tricks
Elusiveness being too deep was considered a grave injustice. So we moved it up and switched it with Dirty Tricks, causing a new injustice. We’ll try and find room in tier 2 for both. (Source)
Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Totems
We’re fine with totem health given how easy totems are to replace. We also think it’s fine to have to (sometimes) choose between a buff totem and a non-buff totem given how many different things a shaman can do.
However, we are going to increase buff totem range (and possibly other totem range) and we have figured out a way to make Searing Totem attack your target, instead of a random and probably inappropriate target. (Source)
Warrior (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Slam usable while moving
It is. (Source)
Protection changes in Build 12664
We buffed Thunder Clap to make up for the loss of the Imp TClap talent. We buffed Shockwave just because it got caught up in the big AE nerf, but it’s really not an AE on the level of Hurricane / Blizzard. We buffed Devastate because we realized we had forgotten to compensate it for reducing the number of Sunder stacks.
All of those changes should bring Prot warrior abilities back to something that feels more normal to a current warrior.
Currently we are looking really hard at AE damage abilities by all tanks. We tried Thunder Clap with no cooldown and didn’t like it. We also tried Thunder Clap with a Consecrate-like talent, but I’m not sure we like that either. At the moment we are thinking of nerfing any of the really passive AEs, including Swipe, Death and Decay, Damage Shield and Consecrate. All of those abilities (well, maybe not Damage Shield) would still be usable, but they would be more situational.
The bottom line is that we think all tanks need to be able to trivially handle the massive adds or straggling adds situations easily, or none of them should be able to. (Source)
Starcraft 2 Added to 2010 MLG Pro Circuit Starting in Raleigh
MLG just added Starcraft 2 to their PC Circuit. That means you’ll have a chance to follow both games during the next tournament in Raleigh on August 27-29.
From MLGPro.com
Major League Gaming is thrilled to announce the addition of Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty to the 2010 MLG Pro Circuit. Starting with our Raleigh Pro Circuit Competition, August 27-29, the highly anticipated sequel to Blizzard Entertainment’s real-time strategy game will join the MLG Pro Circuit as an open registration title. Blizzard has selected MLG as its Official North American Partner for Starcraft 2, and we’re tremendously excited to extend our relationship with them and foster a competitive tournament experience in this game as well as in World of Warcraft.
The First Live North American Starcraft 2 Event Kicks Off at MLG Raleigh:
- 1v1 format
- 32 players, open registration
- Double-elimination format
- Over ,000 in cash prizes
- Passes are per player
- Registration opens Tuesday, August 3rd, at 7pm ET on MLGPro.com
- Culminates in National Championship in Dallas, November 5-7
Join us in Raleigh and Be a Part of Starcraft 2’s First Live Tournament!
- August 27-29
- Raleigh Marriott City Center (more info)
- Open Competitions in Halo 3, Tekken 6, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, World of Warcraft, and Starcraft 2 (more info)
- Spectator passes are for the weekend
- Get a free spectator pass by wearing an MLG UMAD? Hot Topic t-shirt (more info)
The inaugural Starcraft 2 Pro Circuit Season will surely boast an unbelievable array of epic matches and historic events. More information regarding Starcraft 2 will be released in the coming weeks. Get your build orders ready and your hotkeys set, and we’ll see you in Raleigh.
MMO-Champion – News
Starcraft II patch 1.0.1 for US server is online. It fixed the 7.1 sound system problem and optimized the campaign saving issue. We are not certain how Blizzard optimized the problem, but I sure hope players won’t lose their hours of playing progress again due to lost of internet connection.
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StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty - Patch 1.0.1
To get the latest news and interact with the community, visit our brand new StarCraft II website. Be sure to check out our Game Guide for an in-depth look at StarCraft II gameplay. We wish you all the best on your journeys through the embattled Koprulu Sector!
Bug Fixes
Campaign saves have been optimized.
Fixed an issue with sound not playing on some 7.1 systems. |
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Blog
 Zach sees everything through the PvP perspective of The Art of War(craft), including homemade cookies baked by his supremely awesome and sexy baker wife. He sees the brownies as opponents that need to be devoured in a methodical, strategic and soul-crushing manner. He advises everyone to look at all things (especially food) as adversaries that must be defeated and guarantees that success in life will follow. Probably.
Let’s face it. Right now, if you’re a regular reader of WoW.com, we’re in some sort of holding pattern and the biggest thing that interests us about the game is what’s going on in the Cataclysm beta. It’s still far too early to settle on any talent builds, but who can resist playing with those talent calculators, right? Certainly not me. The beta changes so rapidly, though, that it would be foolish to write anything without the proper caveat that the final product is likely going to be much different.
One thing that’s likely to stay the same throughout beta, however, is the ravaged landscape of Azeroth. This should create some interesting possibilities for world PvP. The biggest change is that the continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms will become flyable. It will become harder and far more dangerous to level as players must now not only watch their literal backs but also look skyward for potential griefers. On PvP servers, this makes it a far more dangerous and exciting world.
Continue reading The Art of War(craft): World PvP in the new Azeroth
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, The Art of War(craft) (PvP)
The Art of War(craft): World PvP in the new Azeroth originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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WoW.com
Hey everyone! Today we have another EotC for you lovely folks from NCSoft.
Eye on the Community – 07/30/10 Greetings Daevas,
We’re putting an intense week behind us, but are also getting ready for an exciting weekend. A large part of the rewards for the “Dash of the Daevas” event have now been sent out to all the winners. The only ones remaining are faction-wide rewards that are set to reach you next week. We’re also working to get your characters pampered with the sweet free loot from our “Fight on the Right Side” incentive.
Looking forward, there’s a weekend full of awesome. Double experience rates and inactive accounts rising from the dead are bound to keep things lively! Don’t miss this opportunity to invite past Legion mates and friends to experience everything Aion has to offer, even if they’re no longer playing.
If you have a few minutes to spare, make sure to stop by the PowerWiki to catch our new articles on 1.9 Instanced Dungeon Changes, 1.9 Dredgion Changes and the Limited Sales System!
This week’s Question of the Week was answered by one of our content writers, Conor Sheehy, who has been involved in bringing the many stories of Aion to the West in full flavor. Enjoy!
Question of the Week
Setsuna from Vaizel asks:
“Will we ever be able to enter the remains of the Tower of Eternity and will the Seraphim/Shedim Lords ever be fully introduced into the game? (ex. quests/ fighting alongside them / campaigns) The NPC’s always talk about them on their duties but they just seem flat out absent all together.”
In the heat of battle, have you already caught a glimpse of a fighter who may or may not be an Empyrean Lord?
A number of the Empyreans are working on strategy right now. For instance, Lord Kaisinel (Elyos) and Lord Marchutan (Asmodian) have their brains full of plans to defeat each other…and the Balaur Lord Tiamat. These two lords are in Balaurea, doing everything they can to help Daevas hold their territories. Are they working on the Tower of Eternity at the moment? No, but maybe when they’re not so busy.
In the upcoming Aion: Assault on Balaurea, you’ll get closer to the Empyrean Lords by working with their seconds-in-command. You’ve gone from hearing the Lords names to talking directly with their seconds. Perhaps you’ll meet one someday!
In Other News
Let’s have a look at what’s been going on in the Aion community.
Blood for Blood
Have you been looking for ways to increase recruitment for your legion? Video can be a useful tool in attracting players and inspiring players of your faction. Morriganeth from Spatolos has created an example to spark your ideas in furthering interest for your Legions and faction.
Special Effects
In the same vein regarding Legion recruitment, Blowfish has produced a spectacular introduction for an Asmodian S-Grade DP Group. Production tools can be used to highlight your group, legion and faction when trying to recruit players.
A Face Only A Mother Could Love
Azeth of Zikel has created a fun thread on creating the Ugliest Character possible. Have a character you think scares Shugo Children?
Adventures of Gertrude
Gertrude of Perento has taken an interesting twist of creating a storyline paralleling her character’s journey in Aion. Enjoy!
Knowledge Is Power
Remember to follow the Community Team on Twitter and Facebook to stay on top of the Aion news!
Aion Facebook Page—Become a fan today!
Aion Steam Gaming Group—Join our Steam community!
Tamat (NA Community Manager)
Ayase (UK Community Manager)
Arathaur (FR Community Manager)
Imhotep (DE Community Manager)
The Eye on Community article series is a way for us to highlight current, interesting, wacky, passionate, intriguing, dramatic, or just plain awesome things going on in the community. Please send your submissions to community_aion_en@ncsoft.com.
—The Aion Community Team
There you go! Enjoy. ~<3
AionSource Community News
Last weekend I spent a lot of time gett9ing the PC ready for StarCraft 2 and after getting the machine rigge dup with an SLi configuration I tested it over the weekend on Battlefield bad Company 2 to push the hardware. After some tweaking it was all working great.
Tuesaday arrived and StarCraft 2 was fired up. After a short period of time the PC started producing a nasty fizzing noise and would then shut down. After further inspection of the graphics cards, the top card was scorching hot, even with a direct fan in place and four fans in the PC.
During the Beta there was problem with video cards overheating which Blizzard say was caused by the screen being refreshed too often causing the card to overheat. Blizzard released a solution:
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Blizzard Quote: |
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A temporary workaround is to go to your DocumentsStarCraft II Betavariables.txt file and add these lines:
frameratecapglue=30
frameratecap=60
You may replace these numbers if you want to. |
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I have not yet tried and tested this solution with the retail version of the game but once removing the SLi configuration the game would start to run fine with the one card. A similar overheating problem has been experienced by the guys at Gameinformer who have been busy frying video cards.
Had this problem? Let us know.
Blog
Choose the adventures of the WoW.com staff as we level our characters in <It came from the Blog> on Zangarmarsh (US-PvE-H).
Are there goblin hunters who didn’t name their crab pets Ghostcrawler? It seems to me that it should be the default name. It would save time. First schedule, then polls:
- Fox Van Allen as Foxlight, the level 22 blood elf paladin: Friday, 8 p.m. EDT
- Michael Sacco as Sahko, the orc warlock; Christian Belt, as Selfloathius, the level 16 blood elf warlock; Elizabeth Harper as Faience, the level 24 troll shaman; Matthew Rossi as Andrenorton, the level 17 troll mage; Michael Gray as Grayfields, the level 17 tauren hunter; and Gregg Reece as Sandwichdoc, the level 16 troll shaman, will be making appearances as they can.
Some of us will be playing our Zangarmarsh (US-PvE-H) characters, but some of us will be letting you choose what we do in the Cataclysm beta. The polls are after the break.
Continue reading Choose My Adventure: To beta or not to beta
Filed under: It Came from the Blog, Choose My Adventure
Choose My Adventure: To beta or not to beta originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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WoW.com
 Just so everyone knows a user has posted the first official starcraft 2 maphack in our forums right now. If you are interested in using it be sure to check out the starcraft 2 forums. Also it comes with some information how you can protect yourself from the warden client noticing you.
 Last night we had a major site outage. The cause was our provider had a hardware issue that not only affected them but hundreds of other service providers out there. We are sorry for the downtime and the site is back up and running with great speeds again. Enjoy.
Filed under: Contests, RTS, Starcraft II
All good things come to an end and so it does for our StarCraft II giveaway contests. But today we end our contest week with a bang as we have one more prize to give to a very lucky reader. We have one copy of the Collector’s Edition of Blizzard‘s RTS sequel to give away today. This puppy normally sells for 0 but one lucky Big Download reader will be chosen to get her or her hands on it.
It contains the game of course, a behind-the-scenes DVD, a hardcover art book, a “0” issue of Wildstorm’s StarCraft comic book, some exclusive in-game content for the game, a in-game StarCraft related pet for World of Warcraft and a USB drive in the form of dog tags that contain the original StarCraft game from 1998 and its Brood War expansion. The Collector’s Edition is provided to us by GameStop which of course is selling StarCraft II right now in its stores and on its web site.
How do you win this very cool Collector’s Edition? It’s very simple
- To enter, post a comment on this contest page.
- The comment must be left before 11:59 pm Eastern Time on Monday, August 2
- You may enter only once.
- One winner will be selected in a random drawing.
- The winner will be sent a Collector’s Edition of StarCraft II (valued at approximately 0)
- Click Here for complete Official Rules. You must be a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec) who is 18 years or older to enter this contest
Our thanks once again to GameStop for sponsoring this contest. Good luck.
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StarCraft II Contest IV – Win StarCraft II Collector’s Edition originally appeared on Big Download Blog on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com’s daily Q&A column in which the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.
Honestly, Blizzard. Honestly.
Threesixteen asked:
“In Org the other day I saw a player who had a strange buff (can’t recall exactly what it was called), and the animation was him standing on a pedestal and saluting. It was really cool. It didn’t come from any gear he had on (I inspected him) … Do you know what this buff is and where it comes from?”
This is the Instant Statue Pedestal item, which you get from the Statue Generator card in the WoW TCG’s Wrathgate expansion. Incidentally, we’re giving a bunch of them away.
Continue reading The Queue: Dendrophilia
The Queue: Dendrophilia originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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I just finished my Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty normal-mode marathon, defeating the final map with Kerrigan's showdown.
I really hope to play through the campaign again without the rush factor to re-experience it. I can say Blizzard Entertainment did a great job with this first episode of the game. It's been 11 years for many of you waiting for the sequel. Nine for me. I gotta say the wait was worth it. All the developers involved simply excelled, they overdid themselves.
The game design overhaul from the original game's briefing room to what we get in Starcraft II is just short of awesome. After you finish a mission, you go to each room of the Hyperion and you will find updated info on what happened after the mission. Most of the time you get new dialogues. There's the sense that it is a progressive story. You learn new things about the characters, and about Jim Raynor's past.
There's a video game arcade machine in the Cantina room of the Hyperion battlecruiser. When you click it, you enable a Galaga-like game with Starcraft units. It's fun, and it's incredible to play a video game within a video game. A nice tease for the map campaign modders.
There are at least three missions, out of 26, where you must take a decision of which path to take using the in-game cutscene engine. For example, Tychus Findlay suggests Raynor to take out the Nydus tunnels beneath Char's surface, and a General suggests you take out the zerg air units. If you choose the Nydus option, the final showdown against Kerrigan will have Air units. If you choose to take down the Air units, the final showdown against Kerrigan will have Nydus worms popping near your base and no air units. It's fun how Tychus and the General stand next to each other in front of you, and two separate windows pop laying down the mission objectives of both characters, right there onscreen -- and that happens during an in-game cinematic no less.
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As of the latest patch to the Cataclysm beta servers some models are seeing more updates, including Malfurion Stormrage, pictured above. Either spending too much time in the Emerald Dream has some seriously adverse effects or ingesting too much morrowgrain causes some really weird biological errors, but Stormrage is now sporting a brand new pair of wings, some serious tattoos or tribal markings, and is now pittypatting around on little bear feet. Check out MMO-Champion for the other new models, including a revamped Twilight Ascendant and what is possibly the new goblin mount, as well as preview shots of the new dungeon sets for casters.
As for Malfurion Storkmrage and his new model, all I can say is that I am sincerely hoping we see him get into a fistfight with Varian Wrynn.
 World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com’s Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW’s third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it’s all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.
Filed under: Cataclysm
Updates to Cataclysm models, Malfurion Stormrage originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 02:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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