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Riptide's latest electric skateboard carves like a surfboard
Electric skateboards are frequently fast, but nimble? Not so much -- even Boosted's Mini boards are meant more for cruising that bobbing and weaving. Riptide might have a solution. It just launched the R1 Black, a variant on the R1 meant to deliver surfboard-like carving. A Surf Adapter from Waterborne Skateboards gives it turning performance about three times better than standard R1 models, and shouldn't sacrifice stability in the process -- you shouldn't have trouble making an evasive maneuver at high speed.
After Math: How we survived CES 2019
As cleanup crews descend on the Las Vegas Convention Center and the events attendees reluctantly make their ways home, it's hard to believe that the weeklong technology expo is already over. We saw autonomous bread machines, self-driving semis, and even self-heating razors amidst the gaggle of cutting edge gadgets. Here are some of the coolest tech toys that we got to play with at CES 2019.
Cruising around on Riptide's $999 R1X electric skateboard
I've wanted a classic-sized electric skateboard for a while. A longboard, of course, is more stable and comfortable over long distances. But I'm interested in something that I can easily travel with and charge in a coffee shop without drawing too much attention. Boosted's Mini X is the obvious 'premium' choice, but I wanted to do some market research before dropping close to a grand online. Enter, then, the Riptide R1X -- a stylish shortboard with buckets of power and range. At CES 2019, I spent a good 30 minutes carving around the Engadget trailer on the rideable. My time with the board was short, but I came away thoroughly impressed.
Riptide's electric skateboard balances power and portability
Electric skateboards have been coming out of the woodwork lately, popping up in all shapes and sizes, with each new company trying to find a niche in the market. There have been examples of extremely tiny models accentuating portability and longboards with hyperextended ranges. It depends on what fits your use case, but I've been eyeing boards that match normal decks for scale, along with a belt-driven motor and a relatively affordable price. The newest entry to hit the crowdfunding scene is the Riptide R1, which dropped on Indiegogo today. So far, it's come closest to what I've been looking for on all fronts: size, price and power.
Riptide Games acquired by Mercury Active, developer Brian Robbins leaves
We've posted a few times before about Brian Robbins' Riptide Games. In addition to being a vocal member of the dev community, Robbins has worked with his team to make popular apps like My Pet Zombie and the iLook series. Now, Riptide has announced that it's getting acquired by a company called Mercury Active, which is part of a company called Mercury Filmworks based up in Canada that works on major television and film properties. The acquisition will earn Mercury Riptide's entire library, and presumably the company will end up helping Mercury make and work on other interactive titles in the future. As for Robbins, he's sticking with the team short term, but he's announced that he'll be leaving the venture soon. There's no news on what he plans to do just yet, but he says he's still interested in mobile, and would like to work on the technology of mobile games, as well as doing various consulting and advising for other projects. Riptide is a solid mid-level company on the App Store, and it should give Mercury Active a nice foothold on the iOS platform. As for Robbins, we wish him the best, and we'll look forward to seeing where he's headed next.
WoW Patch 3.1 PTR: Shaman glyph and undocumented changes
So in the cold light of day we have yet more changes than the PTR notes indicated for our beloved shamans. Both glyphs and general changes need to be discussed, and so I drag my exhausted hinder forth to dig through the vast and sprawling PTR hoopla to determine what is up for the totem dropping set. What's good, what's bad, what's head scratchingly confusing? We talked about shaman class changes in the PTR notes early this morning, so we'll start there, because it's short. Fire Nova Totem's mana cost has been reduced. Everything else was covered in the original patch notes, so... yeah. Fire Noval Totem costs less. It's still a fire totem, so elemental shamans will have to decide between it and Totem of Wrath. But at least the decision to drop one and lose the benefits of Totem of Wrath will cost you less mana.Luckily, we have quite a few glyphs to discuss as well. Let's talk about those.
The Queue: Cooking, gardening, and Riptides
Welcome to the second edition of The Queue, our new daily Q&A column where we, the WoW Insider team, try to answer your questions about the World of Warcraft. We won't delay getting into things much today, but please note that I'm saving the lore-related questions you've all asked for Ask a Lore Nerd, which will be coming just later today (every Sunday). With that said, let's start with Gristor's question...One comment about the size of Northrend... Finally, please, an answer: Is Northrend bigger than Outland? How much bigger/smaller?It's definitely bigger, but I can't say for sure just how much bigger. The starter zones almost feel twice as large as Hellfire Peninsula was, but I can't say 100% confidently that Howling Fjord is twice as large as Hellfire Peninsula. It's just bigger, and it feels much, much bigger. Northrend feels absolutely massive.
Shaman changes in patch 3.0.3
The elders spoke of a day when great, sweeping changes would come to us Shamans. A day when our command of the elements would become unsurpassed and we would harness power like never seen on Azeroth (kind of like Retadins). Today, my friends, is not that day. In fact, today may well be any other day for Shamans because Patch 3.0.3 is about as underwhelming as it gets with regards to changes to the class.Let's see... we have a Lava Burst damage increase, which means jack to us because we only train for the spell at Level 75. Speaking of which, Storm Reach was renamed to Elemental Reach because it now affects... Lava Burst. Also in the Elemental tree, Improved Fire Nova totem was reworked to increase the damage done by Fire Nova Totem by 20% instead of a quicker detonation and now stuns opponents caught in the blast for 2 seconds instead of ensnaring them.
"Tigole Deep-Breaths more"
Interesting note from the forums, although apparently quite a few threads are being deleted or locked even as I write this; Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan appeared momentarily in this thread written by a player complaining about the 51-point Restoration Shaman talent, Riptide. The original poster notes Blizzard's guiding philosophy of never shipping a game before they're truly done with it, and contrasts that with the fact that some of Riptide's visual and audio effects are unlikely to be finished in time for Wrath (the spell itself is apparently 100% functional, just not the bells and whistles Blizzard usually programs to accompany player spells and abilities). Another player down the thread characterizes this as Blizzard caving to demands made by Activision. Tigole appears a few comments down to ban the first commenter for "trolling," adding that the game is still being worked on. The second of the two commenters mentioned is then handed a ban by Tigole as well. One of the response threads that appears to have survived is here, with a set of reactions ranging from sympathy to Tigole to a recountment of EverQuest history to concern over how the two players were banned.I'm somewhat torn, and had wondered whether the whole thing was a joke; I've not seen Tigole appear on the forums to ban people before (although it's entirely possible he has and I've just missed it). I've seen worse behavior on the forums escape official comment, but it does seem as if the number of complaints (rational or not) has hit fever pitch on the discussion boards. And -- let's be frank -- a lot of it does seem like pretty pointless carping. I've had a chance to see the beta myself now, and I don't think anyone could realistically accuse Blizzard of skipping its usual attention to detail (indeed, the only running complaint I've seen on the beta servers is that they're too popular). Still, these particular bans seem a little out of the ordinary, unless there's something going on I haven't seen.**EDIT: as of 4:12 pm EST, it looks like the above referenced response post has also been deleted, but the original source thread is still intact.**
