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Blog Blizzard will wrap up StarCraft II Beta this upcoming Monday, July 19th and shutting down the beta forum login in preparation for the midnight launch on July 27th.
Make sure to spend all this weekend having fun in Battle.net, because the crave you will acquire from withdrawal will last you eight days.
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We would like to thank everyone who has participated in the StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty beta test. You've done an admirable job of testing, and we greatly appreciate all of the feedback you provided during this critical phase of development. It's been a lot of fun; however, all good things must come to an end.
In preparation for the launch of the game on Tuesday, July 27, the beta servers will be brought offline by Monday, July 19. At that time, all beta accounts and character information will be reset and the ability to create forum posts and comments on the StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty website (http://beta-us.battle.net/sc2/en/) will be unavailable until launch. In the meantime, we still encourage everyone to stay tuned to the website for exciting news and updates regarding the upcoming release.
Thank you again for your participation, and we'll see you soon on Battle.net! |
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 More than 10 years have passed since the classic StarCraft came out… Over a decade of anticipating a sequel for the perfect competitive real-time strategy game of all times. After the headline associated with StarCraft II, enthusiasts everywhere had been allowed to get involved in the development of the video game with suggestions as well as questions on fan web pages and message boards.
Every so often, Blizzard provides Q&A (Questions & Answers) batches, specifics regarding the up to date units, structures, not to mention lore, podcasts (Blizzcasts), videocasts (Battle Reports) in addition to posts by Karune (Kevin Yu) at the BattleNet Discussion message boards. Blizzard listened to the online community of avid gamers which made StarCraft what it is in the present day.
On the Summer 2008 Blizzard Worldwide Invitational, people found out that StarCraft II is intended to be released as a trilogy, beginning with “Wings of Liberty” (Terran campaign), followed by “Heart of the Swarm” (emphasizing on the Queen of Blades), and finally “Legacy of the Void”, dedicated to the awesome Protoss. On February 2010, StarCraft II initiated closed beta testing, along with beta keys selling on eBay for rates up to 0.
We are now days apart from the midnight release event for Starcraft II across Europe, in London, United kingdom, on July twenty six. “Reports of Zerg activity have been coming in from around the globe, and we need you to fend off the Swarm that’s set to arrive this summer with the launch of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty,” stated Blizzard.
Let’s have a look at Top 10 StarCraft 2 Changes, in comparison to the first StarCraft:
10) Individual units are difficult to identify as well as micro accurately, while in StarCraft units were easily identifiable.
9) StarCraft II has lots of units on-screen, with Colossus lighting getting in the path of units and surprising gamers.
8) The Twilight Archon is visually worthy of the Protoss, when compared to its predecessor.
7) The Protoss Phoenix really good alternative to the Scout; I certainly cherished its Overload ability.
6) The new siege tank may resemble a toy, dispersing its legs. Was it too inexact?
5) In StarCraft II, teleportation is not really gamer talent, it’s cheap unit skill (see Stalker).
4) Certain units in StarCraft II mimic ninjas and WarCraft rip-offs, especially the Marines and the “Crypt Fiends”.
3) LAN support will not be installed into StarCraft II; players need to authenticate with Battle.net so they can play.
2) StarCraft II buildings are blocky; in the initial StarCraft buildings are actually metallic and shiny.
1) StarCraft II really ought to reward those who exercise more to be a deserving successor of StarCraft. There’s too much automatization in the sequel, which could minimize the returns of extreme training. A handful of Koreans players will be very upset with this one, which happens to be first on our list.
In spite of so many modifications, in the end, you will glimpse at Starcraft 2 without having to feel unfulfilled, mainly because Blizzard never didn’t climb to fans’ expectations. Regardless, we are at this point very close to view the finished version of this long awaited video game. For Aiur!
StarCraft 2 Academy | The Latest StarCraft 2 News | StarCraft II
With only two weeks left before StarCraft 2′s scheduled release, casual gamers around the world – especially RTS players – better make sure their system specs are up to par. The game costs a whooping , or a lesser price if you’re willing to pay a monthly fee, depending on your region and version of preference. Without the hardware to fit the game’s requirements, one may find that his investment doesn’t yield the best gaming experience.
Throughout the beta and especially since the introduction of 3v3 and 4v4 matches, the loading screen has often been a vague indicator as to who might be the weakest hardware link and most likely lag behind during the game.
Are you the one who always loads last? See if your system specs meet the official hardware requirements! Current PC hardware requirements and recommendations are as follows:
PC Minimum System Requirements:
- Windows® XP/Windows Vista®/Windows® 7 (Updated with the latest Service Packs) with DirectX® 9.0c
- 2.6 GHz Pentium® IV or equivalent AMD Athlon® processor
- 128 MB PCIe NVIDIA® GeForce® 6600 GT or ATI Radeon® 9800 PRO video card or better
- 12 GB available HD space
- 1 GB RAM (1.5 GB required for Windows Vista®/Windows® 7 users)
- DVD-ROM drive
- Broadband Internet connection
- 1024X720 minimum display resolution
PC Recommended System Requirements:
- Windows Vista®/Windows® 7
- Dual Core 2.4Ghz Processor
- 2 GB RAM
- 512 MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GTX or ATI Radeon® HD 3870 or better
And for our Mac-using readers:
Mac Minimum System Requirements:
Mac® OS X 10.5.8, 10.6.2 or newer
Intel® Processor
NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT or ATI Radeon® X1600 or better
12 GB available HD space
2 GB Ram
DVD-ROM drive
Broadband Internet connection
1024X720 minimum display resolution
Mac Recommended System Requirements:
Intel® Core 2 Duo processor
4 GB system RAM
NVIDIA® GeForce® 9600M GT or ATI Radeon® HD 4670 or better
SC2 Blog
 With the announcement of Starcraft 2 being available for download comes the announcement of the new Battle.net forums, gamer profiles, and more! Here’s a look at Buckwald’s profile as a prime example. You can see his achievements, league history, what he’s been playing recently. In fact, there’s little you can’t see!
The new forums are out as well. These forums feature the ability to rate posts positive or negative. The site has all new media galleries, battle.net account management, and a lot more. Be sure to check out all the new stuff and report any bugs you find in their forums.
Starcraft 2 News
Whether you are a new player to Starcraft 2 or you have been playing for awhile you are going to want to know about all the different StarCraft 2 ways of rushing an opponent. Here we will give you a few of the major guides and tricks to helping you win asap.
The first race is going to be the protoss. The protoss for awhile where way over balanced when it came to rushing because you could build zealots faster than any other race with the ability your nexus has to speed up unit building for a brief period of time. What you will want to do is of course start by maximizing your mineral to base ratio. Normally you are going to want to skip using vespian gas totally and stick to just your zealots at first. Basically work on finding the perfect balance that you enjoy for zealot buildings and probes. Its always a little different for each player so play around to find the perfect balance. Once you get your zealots out there normally you want to try and attack with 4-8. If you are doing a 2v2 just go for one base with 8 guys and you can almost always win. If the fight is still going awhile be sure to research charge for your zealots and its an easy win.
The second race is going to be terran. This rush is going to be big for using your command centers special ability to bring out an upgrade SVC that can harvest faster than other units. Also when you start as terran you can build supply depots in the front of your base to help block incoming rushes. Whats the best part is you can just drop your supply depots down for a second and have your units go past them. When it comes to marines most people recommend just building 2-6 baracks and then researching the ability to use stim packs. Marines have a nice advantage of being able to attack air units too which can help most of the time against a zerg flying rush.
The last race is zerg. They are considered to be the best rushing for the earliest part of the game because unlike other units you get multiple zerlings for each spawn. Basically the same rules apply for them as with other races. But when you get your first spawn seek out your opponent because if you time it right you can get to their svcs before they can stop you and do some serious damage to help slow them down and in the long run giving you the win.
Well there is just a nice recap for all the races and their starting attacks.
When it comes to botting in starcraft 2 most people don’t even think that is going to be useful, but they are far from wrong. Botting in sc2 comes under mainly 2 different categories.
The first type of major starcraft 2 bot is going to be one that does the entire game for you. The bot will start out and get you the perfect amount of drones, SVCs, or probes. Then it will start to do the desired type of attack you set it to. From doing a rush, to a end game attack, to a hydra mid game rush. You just have to set the bot type. Keep in mind most starcraft 2 bots are just going to do the beginning game rush to the best of their abilities. The bots most of the time have fog of war removed so it can easily find out where your opponent is and then it just runs to their bases starting area and attempts to kill of all the harvesters your opponent has to start. The bot will also auto think itself to attack selective units based on where they are located. So for example if your opponent is Terran and they are going to do the barracks supply depot anti rush move then your bot will attack the supple depots to get past them and finish them off. This is probably going to be the second most famous bot there is in SC2.
The most famous is going to be a helper bot. What this bot does is it manages a certain part of your attack. So for example you can set it to take care of just your harvesting. So while you are attacking an opponent the bot will take care of selecting how many units you need to build for harvesting minerals. Setting up the vespene gas buildings, and setting units to harvest them as well. What makes this so useful is it allows you to do other things in the game. So while the bot is taking care of you getting more resources you can spend your time actually working on building your defenses or offenses to win the match. Also since most people hate wasting time on resource gathering this bot will help tell you when its time to spread out to a new base and when its time to move your svcs to a new area for harvesting.
Remember these are only a few of the major bots in starcraft 2. You can find many more starcraft 2 bots over at our main site part of taultunleashed. We have there all the different types of in game botting utilities you could need ever in the game to dominate. Because when it comes down to it would you rather win or loose?
Now with final fantasy XIV right around the corner players are going to want to know how to level their toons the best way possible. Well dont worry we have your leveling guides right here
FF14 does things a tad different from most MMOs some people say you can compare the leveling system in final fantasy 14 to that of fable for the xbox360. When you play the game they have done away with experience points. No longer will you be forced to kill pointless mobs to level your character up with enough experience. This time around they have made a system that relies more on players actually using their own skills and doing quests to level up. So this system is more than likely going to be if you use a sword skill long enough it will level in abilities. Or if you use healing magic enough it will level. Its not sure if you will have multiple levels for a bunch of different stats or nothing at all.
For example if you are leveling your sword will your sword skill hit level 2? Or will it just naturally progress to a stronger limit. There is some sort of added leveling in the game just how they will do the final tweak for the release is not 100% known to players as it stands, but do not worry.
We here at taultunleashed will have the perfect ff14 leveling guides for you. First of all we will have all our guides show you how to level the most proficient ways in the game. From helping you decide what skills are best to start with, to when you should switch to another skill to help make your character more balanced overall. Because with ff14 leveling guides you are going to need to know what skills to take and when since you can easily switch between all the games many skills.
Also we will show you what quests to take and when to take them in the game. Since they did say questing will still have a large impact on the game you can be assured that if you dont pick the right one you will suffer in the long run. For example knowing what quests are a waste of your time to do and which ones will help you get the best items, and help you progress your character the fastest is going to be a big thing when the game is released.
Well be excited for when you join taultunleashed not only are you going to get ff14 leveling guides from our staff, but you will get leveling guides from over one million players.
If you are like many players that enjoyed sc1 then you know all too well about all the major hacks that they had in the game. The major ones where basically how to remove the fog of war, how to set up bots to help you build faster, and how to slow down other players so you can easily win. Well now is your time for revenge because with SC2 all those hacks are back with even more danger to follow them. Here we will tell you a little bit about them and how you can use them to help your game play.
While you may or may not enjoy using starcraft 2 hacks you will have other players that will use them against you. So its more of a personal quandary that you will be dealing with. Keep in mind we are not saying you should be using starcraft 2 hacks all the time. Or are we saying that you should ever use them. We just want to enlighten players as to some of the major sc2 hacks that are out there and you can choose if you want to use them or not. Remember as always if you use a hack you can get your account banned so be careful because battle.net links all your accounts together so if you loose one game you loose them all.
So the first major exploit out there in starcraft is going to be the fog of war exploit. This exploit is going to allow players to see all other players in the game. What this does is basically remove the little shroud in the game that hides others from you. So instead of wondering if your opponent is going to rush or if they have no air defense you now know. Its evil, its useful, and people are using it all the time.
The second major exploit is going to be the one that allows you to micromanage units faster. For example instead of being forced to hit your keyboard shortcuts you can set the game to automatically take care of setting up your units perfectly in the beginning of the game. You can ever set up certain rush cycles. Like do a zealot rush and the game will start setting you up perfectly to win with a zealot rush.
The last major hack in the game is slowing down your opponent. What you do is basically set your comp up to make it seem like you are disconnecting from the game so they have the wait screen. However you actually are not stuck in that screen and you can continue playing the game while your opponents cant do anything for a minute or 2. That basically gives you the game if you can play right.
Keep in mind those are only 3 major hacks that are in both starcraft 1 and starcraft 2. There are many other hacks in the game currently and we just wanted to give you an example of some of the major things we have in our forums at taultunleashed.com
Now this is the true meat all starcraft 2 players will be after. Here we will talk about some of the major starcraft 2 exploits out there. How you can get a hold of them, and how they can help increase your gaming skills in the game.
First of all the major stracraft 2 exploits that players might use. First of all all players will find ways to get extra minerals from harvesting. In the first starcraft they had ways you could actually bug the mineral deposits so that they would never actually expire and being able to harvest a drop for ever is something that everyone enjoys.
Another major exploit that was back in the day for starcraft 1 that has a very big potential to be released for starcraft 2 is the ability to actually bug certain units to do more damage. A good example is a personal favorite unit the reavers. With these you basically fire out a scarab that does a large amount of splash damage. The problem with these units was you can only build x amount of them for each reaver and they had a tendency to run out pretty quick in a big battle. Well with a certain exploit you could bug the items so you could have unlimited amounts of scarabs for you to drop over and over again. Just image an armada of reavers where you could fire over and over again scarabs maxed out for damage. It was pretty much unstopable in the game. While yes i know you cant play as the reavers you have plenty of other units that have items that they can only have x amounts of and take awhile to rebuild.
Those 2 are just a small example of how many giant starcraft 2 major game changing exploits there are in the game. Did you even know about those old ones in stracraft 1? There is a good chance you didnt and now just imagine how many more they will have released for starcraft 2. All of these will be instant game enders and give you the ability to pretty much decimate your opponents with little to no effort on your part. So be sure to go and check out the forums over at our main site so you can go and enjoy some of the major game changing SC2 exploits in the game.
This page is going to teach you about all the new cheats that you can do in starcraft 2. When you are looking for starcraft 2 cheats you are mainly going to be finding things for the single player game. These cheats will allow a player to do a variety of things in the game. Most of these things are going to be simple things that allow you to skip levels, get extra minerals and other things. Here is the list of all of the major SC2 cheats in the game.
Medieval man – Instantly upgrade all your technology
something for nothing – instantly upgrade all your units for free.
the gathering – gain infinite amount of energy
game over man – instantly lose the match you are playing.
there is no cow level – instantly win the match.
power overwhelming – have all your units become invincible
war aint what it used to be – remove all of the games fog of war
breathe deep – Gain a quick 500 vespene gas.
food for thought – Remove all food and PSI requirements for you.
ophelia – select any games level (note after enterin the text you need to hit enter and select your level again)
staying alive – play past the screen of victory and just keep on playing the game.
what mine is mine – gain an extra 500 in game minerals.
radio free zerg – start playing zerg music.
These are going to only help you remember in the single portion of the game. If you are after lets say cheats that affect the online gaming enviornment then you are going to want some of the more elusive exploits. Most of the time when a player is after cheats for an online game they are the same as exploits, but since sc2 has a single player game you are going to get a flood of just things for the single player aspect of the game and not the multiple player aspect. But dont worry we also have an area talking about all about starcraft 2 exploits. Now anyways if you are after the latest exploits for starcraft 2 well you don’t have to look anything farther then us at taultunleashed. Check out the site as we have most everything you could need and more. From simple things that will show you easy bugs, to ways to actually manipulate the game in your favor. We have them and more.
Filed under: Fantasy, Lineage 2, Events, in-game
Released in South Korea in 2003 and North America a year later, Lineage II came out as an old-school hardcore grind just as MMOs like City of Heroes, World of Warcraft and Guild Wars arrived on the scene and signaled a decisive shift toward more user-friendly, casual-accessible gameplay. Even so, Lineage II charged ahead to capture an impressive amount of players — a reported 610,000 gamers were playing the title three years after launch — and the game both endured and grew as time progressed.
A six-year anniversary doesn’t have quite the gravitas as a five- or ten-year one, yet it’s still an accomplishment that many of Lineage II’s contemporaries failed to achieve before closing their doors. Travel with us then as we step back in time to an era when MMOs were the equivalent of a dangerous playground, with players leaping about despite rusty swings, harsh death penalties and a never-ending monkey bar grind. Join us as we examine Lineage II’s history and seek to understand the secrets of this game’s popularity, and what it still has to offer for the contemporary gamer.
Continue reading Looking back at six years of Lineage II
 Looking back at six years of Lineage II originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 27 Jun 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Fantasy, Lineage 2, Classes, Leveling, News items
Lineage II is getting a bit long in the tooth these days, but the game still has a dedicated playerbase and still looks excellent. It’s also feature-heavy in the way that only long-running games can be, complete with the fan-loved feature of sub-classes. Having an “extra” class on top of a character’s main class is almost universally liked in every game that features it. Of course, it can feel a bit odd when you realize that the secondary class is more fun than the main class, leaving players with the question of what to do. Thanks to the newly-introduced Subclass Separation Service, the answer is now “play that class.”
Not only does the new service free the subclass from you old character, allowing you to potentially choose a different one, it creates a new character of that class at the same level the subclass had reached. That means that it’s ready to go as a main class right away, and without the burden of low-level questing. While not for everyone, there are no doubt several Lineage II players who can find quite good use for this new feature. (Or this feature helpfully adapted from Tabula Rasa, whichever you prefer.)
Lineage II’s Subclass Separation Account Service has arrived originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Fantasy, Aion, Lineage, Lineage 2, News items
 NCsoft has released information on the latest fiscal quarter, and the numbers presumably made some happy faces at NCsoft according to a report at Gamasutra.
Just a few short months after the September launch of Aion for North America and Europe, NCsoft reports record profits in its fiscal fourth quarter. Sales were up 99% year-on-year, thanks in large part to the hugely hyped Aion, which sold over 300,000 copies through pre-order alone.
While Aion is responsible for 48% of the sales numbers, the Lineage IP held its own easily, with Lineage accounting for 27% of sales and Lineage 2 holding 20%. Lineage has been around and performing steadily since 1998, but the recently revitalized franchise was a big factor in NCsoft’s success over the past year.
The full report can be viewed here.
NCsoft shows record profits in latest quarterly report originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Fantasy, Lineage 2, MMO industry, News items
Has it been a while since you stepped into Aden? Or perhaps you were never formally introduced to the world of Lineage II but always wanted to give it a shot? Well thanks to NCsoft‘s newest trial program, you now have a chance.
Lineage II‘s new 14-day free trial program is welcoming both new users and returning players back to experience the newest free expansion to the game, Gracia Epilogue. While returning players won’t be able to use their old accounts, they can use the trial keys to create a brand new account that will let them play up to level 40 with three characters for the 14 days.
So if you’ve been looking for a game to fill your need to spill blood and siege castles, this might be a good time to try out Lineage II to see if it’s for you.
Free trials ahoy for Lineage II originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Lineage 2, Making money, News items, Legal, Virtual worlds
The odd thing about us gamers is that we seem to think of the various doodads in our games as being real — even more to the point, as being ours. We think and act as if we’re owed some compensation if we’re deprived of them. Which is silly, really — after all, that Monster Signa isn’t a real staff, that Deputy Chain Coat isn’t a real coat, and all that gold isn’t real money.
Except that now, in South Korea, it is. A ruling by the nation’s supreme court has stated that virtual currency is the equivalent of real-world money. Even more sweeping are the details of the case that led to the ruling, in which two men were on trial for exchanging a large amount of Lineage II Adeena for cold, hard currency.
For those of you who might not be drawing the link, the core there is that selling in-game currency for real money is essentially just an exchange of currency and perfectly legal in South Korea. This could have sweeping implications for RMT operations the world over, not to mention free-to-play games and… well, online games in general. The official story is available online from both the Korea Times and JoongAng Daily.
Korea rules that virtual currencies can be exchanged for real money originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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