Red Dead Redemption 100% Completion

Now, I can still complete the “Undead Nightmare” DLC addon (which seems rather hilarious and like a lot of fun). I still have “Brütal Legend” and “Uncharted 2″ to complete, too.

What should I play first…?

This — if optimized and built upon by other developers — might change the state of Starcraft league play a lot. After all, this game (and its predecessor) is one of the most-played competition games worldwide, with five-figure prize money for good players.

I foresee this being the new chess, with fixed openings (i.e. build orders) that are put up against each other. The only difference to chess: You can’t see the opening that your opponent will use and thus can’t react until you make first contact.

There’s also an iPhone app doing something like that: $2.99 in the Appstore.

• There will be an SD and a HD version of the game
• The SD version will be a 700MB download, the HD version will be around 1.5 gig
• The SD version will be priced at $0.99, while the HD version will be double the price, $1.99

Carmack states that id took a “little slice of RAGE” and focused on the quintessential “shooter values” of shooting, hitting and surviving.

The name of the game: “Mutant Bash TV”. Oh, I’m so looking forward to that game. I so hope it will be in the german AppStore.

The article is full of technical details that show how awkward some of Apple’s OS design decisions seem to be, while others are just great for game development. If you are a game and/or programming geek, go read it here!

Usually after a such leak, warnings ensue that the downloads will be trojaned, you shouldn’t install untrusted (i.e. pirated) software, that your WoW account might be phished, etc.

In this case, however, it’s quite easy to see if the Alpha is authentic. And from all I can see, it is. The installer is digitally signed by a Thawte Code Signing certificate issued on April 30th, 2010 to… Blizzard.

The installer (which merges new content with a copy of your “normal” WoW installation) downloads files from a CDN that is also used for the official WoW downloads. The included realm list has the “official” testing realms in it. The WoW.exe is probably signed, too (didn’t actually check yet).

So, it’s authentic. But what good is it?

You need a sandbox (a minimalized realm server software) to run it and as of now, I don’t think there is anything resembling gameplay. You can run through empty landscapes and check out the new Barrens etc., but no NPCs are where they should be. You can spawn them or morph yourself into them (which is neat – I was Onyxia for a couple minutes) and supposedly you can also play the two new races already. I’d guess the first cease&desist letters are already on their way to whoever is offering sandbox and alpha downloads – so get them while they last (or wait for the final release).

With regards to a release date – my guess would be it will be the usual November release. The Wrath of the Lich King “Friends & Family” alpha version was released on May 20th, 2008 and the game was released on November 13, 2008. Seeing that Cataclysm will have a whole bunch of testing-heavy features (flying in Kalimdor will require very thorough testing due to the geometry changes), I’d presume that pushing the alpha out 3 weeks earlier won’t influence the release of the final game a lot.

Basically, the problems with the current rage system are

a) Rage starvation – you have used up all your rage and have to wait for damage to be done by or to you in order to regain rage. This is especially hard if you’re an off tank who has to maintain a constant high threat level in order to be able to pick off a non-tauntable boss or soak up occasional threat-based damage from a special ability (think Patchwerk in Naxxramas).

b) Next-swing attacks that fail to coherently soak up rage when it is there – if you have Heroic Strike off cooldown and hit it for next swing, you might be out of rage by the time that next swing comes. In my DPS spec, I have this problem with my Fury rotation (Whirlwind, Bloodthirst, Slam if free CD, rinse&repeat) whenever I try to squeeze in an extra Heroic Strike or Cleave.

c) Infinite rage: Warriors, especially tanks, don’t need to manage rage in a boss fight, period. There is not a lot of possibilities to run out of rage if you are tanking a current-level Raid boss. I don’t think this is a problem per se, but I acknowlege the fact that this somehow trivializes gameplay and might be perceived as unfair by DKs (who run out of rune power) and mana classes.

Blizzard will address these problems with a number of mechanic changes.

• Generally, rage generation will be normalized.
• Rage starvation will be fought by new instant rage generation capabilities.
• Haste will improve rage generation. This will hopefully be reflected in loot itemization.
• Crits will generate twice the rage from a normal white attack, currently the factor is lower.
• The whole formula will be revamped to be easier to handle.  The current formula, if I am not wrong, is “rage = damage / (30 + 7*weapon speed)” for main hand crits, with varying factors for main and offhand crits and non-crit damage.

Full blue post after the page break.

We are going to take the opportunity in Cataclysm to try and fix some of the problems with the Rage mechanic for both warriors and druids. Some of these problems include:

• Warriors/druids in the lowest levels of gear can be Rage-starved.
• Warriors/druids in the highest levels of gear no longer have to manage their Rage when it becomes infinite.
• Warrior/druid tanks lose Rage income as they improve their gear and take less damage.
• The gameplay of warrior and druid tanks loses a lot of depth when massive boss hits means never having to manage Rage.
• Heroic Strike and Maul are effective, but tedious abilities for using up extra Rage.
• In general, warriors and druids don’t have enough control over their Rage.

To resolve these issues, Rage will be normalized in Cataclysm. This will make the Rage gained by characters more consistent and avoid drastic differences between low-end and high-end gear.

The concept of normalized Rage may leave a negative impression on some veteran players, as we tried it once before in The Burning Crusade and it wasn’t successful, resulting in them feeling weakened. However, we think that the concept is still sound — it was just that the previous implementation didn’t balance the values correctly, leading to players being Rage-starved. That is not the goal. As part of the change, we want to give warriors and druids a lot of ways to control their rage, so even in the worst-case scenarios they won’t feel like they lack the resource to do their job.

Here are some of the ways the Rage mechanic will change in Cataclysm:

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  • If the attack is a critical strike, it will generate 200% Rage.
  • Haste will accelerate swing times to generate Rage faster.


1) Rage is no longer generated based on damage done by auto-attacks. Instead, each auto-attack provides a set amount of Rage, and off-hand weapons will generate 50% of the Rage main hands do. This amount is based on a constant formula which factors in the base swing speed of the weapon. This means the Rage gained should be averaged out between fast and slow weapons. The constant formula also gives us the ability to easily increase the rage gained if it feels too low (or reduce it if is too high). We are also implementing the following mechanics, which will still allow rage to improve to some extent as you improve gear:
2) Rage from damage taken will no longer be based on a standard creature of the character’s level, but instead will be based on the health of the warrior or druid. Again, there is a constant that is multiplied by the rage generated in order to allow for fine-tuning. This calculation ignores all damage reduction from armor, absorption, avoidance, block, or similar mechanics, so improving your gear will not reduce Rage gained.

3) We will provide warriors and druids with more instant sources of rage. For example, the warrior shouts are changing to work more like the death knight ability Horn of Winter. Instead of Battle Shout consuming Rage, it will generate Rage but have a short cooldown. Both classes will have additional methods to generate Rage in an emergency or bleed off Rage when they have too much.

4) All “on next swing” attacks in Cataclysm are being removed. Heroic Strike and Maul will be instant swings that cost a variable amount of Rage. For example, imagine Heroic Strike costs between 10 and 30 Rage. You must have at least 10 Rage to use the attack, but it will consume all available Rage up to a maximum of 30. Any Rage consumed above the minimum will cause the ability to hit harder, and in some cases much harder. We will tune the ability so that it’s generally not a good idea to hit it when you have low Rage (unless everything else is somehow on cooldown) but becomes a more attractive button the higher your Rage.

We understand this change may be scary for many players, but keep in mind that the constants in the formulas for gaining Rage will give us the ability to make quick adjustments if we feel Rage generation is too low. Our goal is for each character’s Rage to not be always high or always low, but rather a resource that needs to be managed properly by the player.

Einige Produktinfos gibts auch schon:

• Zwei neue spielbare Völker: Begebt euch als Mitglied eines der zwei neuen Völker ins Abenteuer – als verfluchte Worgen in der Allianz oder als einfallsreiche Goblins in der Horde.
• Maximalstufe auf 85 erhöht: Lernt neue Fähigkeiten, macht euch neue Talente zunutze und schreitet voran durch das Pfadsystem, einem neuen Weg für Spieler, ihre Charaktere an ihre individuellen Wünschen anzupassen.
• Die Gebiete der Classic-Version sind neu gestaltet: Bekannte Gebiete auf den ursprünglichen Kontinenten Kalimdor und die östlichen Königreiche sind für immer verändert und mit neuem Inhalt gefüllt – vom verwüsteten Ödland bis hin zum zerbrochenen Brachland, welches entzweigerissen wurde.
• Neue Bereiche für hohe Stufen: Erforscht neu geöffnete Teile der Welt, inklusive Uldum, Grim Batol und die großartige versunkene Stadt Vashj’ir unter der Meeresoberfläche.
• Mehr Inhalte für Schlachtzüge als jemals zuvor: Genießt mehr Inhalte für hochstufige Schlachtzüge als in vorherigen Erweiterungen, mit optionalen, herausfordernderen Versionen für alle Bosskämpfe.
• Neue Volks- und Klassenkombinationen: Erforscht Azeroth als Gnomenpriester, Blutenelfenkrieger oder als eine der anderen, nun erstmals möglichen Volks- und Klassenkombinationen.
• Gildenentwicklung. Macht als Gilde Fortschritte, um mit der Gilde den Stufenaufstieg zu erreichen und Gildenerfolge zu schaffen.
• Neue PvP-Zone & gewertete Schlachtfelder: Verfolgt PvP-Ziele und nehmt tägliche Quests auf der Insel Tol Barad an, der neuen Tausendwinter-ähnlichen Zone, und schlagt Schlachten auf komplett neuen Schlachtfeldern.
• Archäologie: Meistert eine neue sekundäre Fertigkeit, um wertvolle Artefakte zu bergen und einzigartige Belohungen zu erhalten.
• Fliegende Reittiere in Azeroth: Erforscht Kalimdor und die östlichen Königreiche wie nie zuvor. Und vieles, vieles mehr..

(Quelle: amazon.de)

I really have to say that this game got MUCH more accessible in the level 80 region through the new dungeon finder. It’s dead easy to find a group for anything all the time since the dungeon pick-up groups are shared within the battlegroup (that is the number of realms sharing one PVP system). For doing random dungeons, you get 2 additional badges per go, which is very nice too.

I guess that, after doing my daily quest chores, I will start doing just one ore two random heroics per day (which would amount to about an hour of playtime) to get back into raiding by maybe february.

Installation is not really smooth; at least on my hardware (RAID1, quad core with Vista 64Bit) it took a whole while to install and then to verify the installed version in Steam. The Steam platform seems to be obligatory for this game; there’s no way around it. Since the Steam servers seem to be under heavy load at the moment, this is not really a good thing (but I remember that from earlier releases, e.g. HL2 and Counter-Strike: Source). In addition, there is no dedicated server, but all multiplayer is done from within IWNet, a platform owned and operated by the publisher. This is bad news for my gameserver hosting company, Stormix.

Current Album: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Images:

As soon as you start the game, it goes “woah”. Apart from the usual tutorial level, you’re thrown right into the action and the action is just amazing. In terms of dying all the time or tactical things, it might not be as gritty and realistic as, say, ArmA2 or Operation Flashpoint 2, but it conveys a unique sense of immersion that is so typical for the “Call of Duty” franchise.

I’ll update this post (or post more) as soon as I have advanced through the levels, but one thing’s for certain: If you like scripted shooters that don’t let you breathe, go buy CoD:MW2. Now.

You can find screenshots in my Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Gallery

WoW warrior Tier10 armor

Tier armor is, if you’re not a WoW raider, a set of armor that is obtained by running raid instances and hoping “your” armor drops. Since the armor has shared drop rates between classes, it is a long and tedious process to get a full set, which offers very good stats bonuses and gives you additional bonuses for owning parts of or the full set.

Tier 10, purportedly the most advanced armor set in the game, will be introduced with patch 3.3 and drop from the Icecrown Citadel. It looks kinda cool (this is the warrior armor, click this link for more previews).