aspect
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Mysterious, ZTE-made T-Mobile Aspect swings by the FCC
Sometimes FCC filings are rife with details. T-Mobile and ZTE aren't playing that game right now: a device has shown up at the US agency bearing only the T-Mobile Aspect name and a ZTE F555 model number. That already tells us that it's likely to have 1,700MHz 3G inside, but the rest is left to our imaginings. It could be anything from a humdrum basic feature phone to a hotspot or future smartphone. We're hoping it's something as sleek as the upcoming Athena, but it could be an adaptation of mid-tier devices like the Mimosa X or a Windows Phone like the Orbit. With most details under wraps, we'll have to sit tight until either an official launch or until more details slip. The only certainty is that ZTE isn't finished with the US just yet.
Bug fixes for Hunters, Locks, and Death Knights tomorrow
Ghostcrawler has updated us on the status of three major bugs that have been present since patch 3.0.8 went live last Tuesday. The Hunter Aspect bug, in which aspects are on a global cooldown like mechanism. The Warlock Ritual of Summoning, which had a two minute cooldown implemented to prevent some sort of undisclosed exploit. Howling Blast, which showed to not have a cooldown, but in reality had a five second one. "Assuming nothing comes up at the last minute", Ghostcrawler says, "[these] will be fixed tomorrow."There is no word if these fixes will come in the form of a small patch to the client, or if they are going to be done server side. Since the Howling Blast is a bug that is linked to client data files, I would assume that fixing it necessitates rolling out a minor patch. However that's just an assumption based on the way things were done in the past, and Blizzard could have other technology present to circumvent the need for a full patch.Nonetheless, a couple more bugs will get fixed tomorrow. This is a good thing.
Hunter aspects bugged in 3.0.8
We covered a couple of known bugs in 3.0.8 yesterday, namely some animation errors (which we're anxiously awaiting being able to log into the game and grab some video of), and some problems with casting of the Warlock spell Ritual of Summoning.And now Hunters have a bug:Some Hunter aspects "behave" as if they have a global cooldown.This should not be, and will be fixed soon (we assume). Patch 3.0.8 was going to remove them, but alas we'll have to wait to have this function properly.As far as what aspects are bugged, and under what conditions, we don't know yet. Keep an eye out later when the realms are up for more information.
Know Your Lore: Alexstrasza the Lifebinder
Welcome to Know Your Lore, where each week Alex Ziebart brings you a tasty little morsel of lore to wrap your mind around. Sweet, sweet lore. Mmmm. Have suggestions for future KYL topics? E-mail us!Know Your Lore has covered the benevolent dragons in Warcraft before, but I've decided to highlight a few of them in preparation for Wrath of the Lich King. I feel that saving the best for last is a bunch of crap, so I'm going to start with my personal favorite: Alexstrasza. Admittedly, it isn't terribly hard for her to seal that favorite slot right now. Deathwing and Alexstrasza are the only two Aspects we've been exposed to in a very direct way for a substantial amount of time. To make things even better, she's a headlining character in Wrath.Alexstrasza is one of five Dragon Aspects chosen and empowered by the Titans prior to their departure from Azeroth. Each of the Aspects was given a domain that they would protect, and have the power to control. Alexstrasza's domain is perhaps the most broad: Life. While all of the Aspects are interconnected and have some sway over one another, Alexstrasza is perhaps the most connected to the others because of her connection to life. Many use this to say she is the 'leader' of the Aspects, but as far as we know, they don't really have one. At least, not until Wrath. Maybe.
Let Malygos go to it, we didn't want magic anyway
We've already heard, as you may know by now, that Malygos, the blue dragon aspect, will return in Wrath of the Lich King, and, as the Guardian of Magic, is supposed to be a little unhappy at all the Mages running around. Malygos' big thing is that he wants to keep magic from the mortal races-- he doesn't trust them to use it without destroying the world. The only thing that's kept him from doing something crazy is the fact that he hasn't had a dragonflight for a while-- Deathwing wiped them out, more or less.But in Wrath, Malygos is back, and so is his mind, and so is his dragonflight. The Blue Dragonflight is returning (thanks to Alexstrazsa's help), and as Metzen told us at BlizzCon, Malygos is waking up, looking around, and seeing all these little mortal players wielding magic like it was a game (a massively multiplayer game, more appropriately). And so he's not likely going to be happy with Mages when we arrive in Northrend.To which Takeru says: maybe Malygos is right. Maybe we shouldn't be using magic for our own purposes-- look what it did to the elves. Non-mage players are even saying we should give up the Mages to Malygos anyway-- what did they ever do for us, right? (err, besides make water and food and port us around and polymorph our enemies...)At any rate, it probably won't matter-- Malygos will probably bring the war to us, and if he doesn't, then the Kirin Tor (also in Northrend) will probably bring the fight to him by recruiting us to do it. Either way, we'll likely find the Aspect of the Blue Dragonflight on the wrong end of our pointy sticks.
Meteos Disney Magic outsourced
If you were concerned about having to love the new Disney version of Meteos because you're a huge Q Entertainment/Tetsuya Mizuguchi fanboy, well, now you can take a second, more critical look at it. As it turns out, Q outsourced their game to two companies: Platinum Egg, who did a Harvest Moon puzzle game, and Aspect Digital Entertainment, who are professional game ghostwriters, like Tose. This fact may be obvious from the title screen, but we hadn't seen any investigation about it until today.This is news only because it's about Q-- this kind of thing happens all the time, but we thought that Mizuguchi's studio was kind of a "boutique" operation that only worked on games they wanted to. Why, then, would they take on a project that interested them little enough to outsource it? Oh, right.
2.35:1 and filling the 16:9 screen
This has to be one of the most two sided issue in the high-def world; well, besides the whole HD DVD Blu-ray thing. HBO is notorious for this. They will take a wide 2.35:1 movie and crop the heck out of it to fit the 16:9 screen. What happens is you lose some of what was meant to be displayed. But some people don't care. Some people hate detest any black bars at all. They will zoom and zoom till the picture is grotesquely distorted but they feel satisfied that they beat the black bar monster. Why we ask...why would you do that? Anyways, back to the whole 2.35:1 thing. HomeTheaterBlog has taken an in depth look at what happens to a 2.35:1 movie when it is converted to 16:9. (including pictures) Sure enough, you loss some of the picture on the sides. Shocking! Take a look at this and maybe next time you will leave those bars in place on your own DVDs.
