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World of Warcraft 2009 Arena Tournament announced [Updated]
Vaneck over the on EU forums just announced the 2009 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament. Last year's arena tournament was a big success, and even had some appearances by some WoW Insider staff and a few GMs.The tournament realm will open up next week on February 17th. The global tournament will have cash prizes over $200,000.The tournament realms will have level 80 characters in the latest epic gear from Wrath of the Lich King. We don't know exactly what the gear is yet, but we'll let you know as soon as we have it figured out.And perhaps the best part? The top teams will contend for the "Vanquisher" title for their live characters. All participants "can earn" an Armored Murloc in-game pet for their live characters. Updated 1:54 p.m. EST: Armored Murloc pet picture is now up.Updated 3:03 p.m. EST: US participation confirmed.
Manda's tales from the TTR: Stress edition
Sunday's Tournament Test Realm stress test was, in my opinion, a huge success. Despite the lag, the occasional crash or kick, and a one-hour maintenance downtime, the server held up quite well considering just how many people were bombing around on it. After maintenance, the lag improved quite a bit, and I'm guessing that Blizzard learned a fair amount that will help them to design the arena tournament realm.Of course, interaction with the GMs, fighting spawned bosses dropping orange epics, being polymorphed into all sorts of things, receiving rare mounts, and reading through /general, /say, and /yell, not to mention tells, were the real highlights from yesterday. While Alex has already given a fairly detailed account of our adventures, I have some stories of my own to tell. %Gallery-18020%
Major Alterac Valley changes coming to Patch 2.3
Blue poster Vaneck announced on the European Forums that Alterac Valley would be undergoing some major gameplay changes in Patch 2.3.In order to emphasize strategy more in AV, they are introducing the concept of "reinforcement count". Both teams will begin with a starting number of reinforcements which can be reduced in various amounts according to what is lost. A team loses when its reinforcement count is reduced to zero. The death of Drek'Thar or Vanndar will still end the game, as all reinforcements will automatically be eliminated. Losing towers and Galvangar or Belinda will cause significant amounts of reinforcements to be lost. And staying alive will now be very important as player deaths will reduce the reinforcement count by one.To quote Vaneck:Defending your own teammates, towers, and key NPCs will be an important aspect of maintaining team resources and achieving victory in Alterac Valley. More on the AV changes after the jump...
Laptops and flat panels also vulnerable to Van Eck eavesdropping
Those who wander into the realms of spying, phreaking, and dubious eavesdropping are likely familiar with Wim Van Eck, but for those new to remote screen-grabbing scene, you should probably take note. Back in the day, Mr. Eck "proved it was possible to tune into the radio emissions produced by electromagnetic coils in a CRT display and then reconstruct the image," effectively rending the images on a distant monitor without the user knowing. Now, however, a modern day guru in his own right has found that the methodology used in 1985 can still be potent today, albeit on laptops and flat panel LCDs. Markus Kuhn has since discovered that by tuning into the radio emissions produced by the cables running into a monitor, hackers can garner the pixels one at a time, and carefully stack them together to form a picture of someone else's screen. Reportedly, Markus was able to "see a PowerPoint presentation from a stand 25 meters away (pictured)," and he also noted that laptops with metal hinges were particularly good targets as they tended to broadcast the necessary signals quite well. Of course, we aren't encouraging the act of on-screen voyeurism without appropriate consent, but if you're interested in seeing what's behind the (faraway) LCD, be sure to hit the read link and push aside those morals for a moment. [Warning: PDF read link][Via Slashdot]
