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LotRO: Riders of Rohan beta invites ride forth from Turbine [Updated]
According to reports from our readers, beta invites for Lord of the Rings Online's upcoming expansion are zipping across the electronic highways and into players' inboxes. The test will run on July 18th and July 20th: From 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, July 18, 2012, help us push the limits of LotRO! Get your first look at Rohan! Cross the Great River from Parth Celebrant and follow the road south through the Wold to the city of Langhold. Your first quest will be available in this city. Spend a couple hours exploring LotRO's newest regions, check out the new quests, admire the great scenery and battle your way through its newest creatures! From 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Friday, July 20, 2012, help us push the limits of LotRO! Get your first look at Mounted Combat! Go to Elthengels in the Norcrofts and prepare to fight from horseback in the open plains of Eastern Rohan! Riders of Rohan is releasing on September 5th. Massively recently got hands-on time with mounted combat in the expansion and was quite impressed! [Update: As A Casual Stroll to Mordor and Sapience on the forums rightly clarify, this beta is under a strict NDA. Please obey it, here and elsewhere!] [Thanks to Ron for the tip!]
Blizzard opens the Mists of Pandaria floodgates for 100,000 annual passholders
As everyone who isn't willfully ignoring recent news is aware, World of Warcraft's Mists of Pandaria expansion is currently undergoing beta testing, and we know that many of you can't wait to get your hands on all the new content for yourselves. Well, if you're a World of Warcraft annual passholder, today might just be your lucky day. Bashiok stopped by the official forums to let players know that Blizzard is in the process of sending out a whopping 100,000 MoP beta invites to annual passholders. Bashiok closes the announcement by reminding players that all annual passholders will be invited to the beta before any opt-ins, though there's no telling how many of them are still awaiting invites or how long it will take before the poor/cheap among us get a crack at Pandaria, but hopefully it will be soon rather than soon™.
ArenaNet confirms Guild Wars 2 beta invites are in progress
Brooding over your lack of a beta invite for Guild Wars 2? Are you anxiously refreshing your inbox every three seconds on the off-chance that ArenaNet finally came to its senses and opened the door to the best tester in the world (that's you, of course)? It might help you to know that ArenaNet has indeed begun sending out beta invites for the lucky few who were accepted after the recent 48-hour call to arms. Rubi Bayer confirmed this on Guild Wars 2's Facebook page: "Yes, beta invitations have begun going out. They'll be sent out over the next few days. Please remember that discussing the beta in any way, shape, or form -- including your status in it -- is a breach of NDA. Don't risk your beta access!" Keep in mind that whether or not you're admitted to this round of beta testing, you can ensure your place in future beta weekends by pre-purchasing the game.
PSA: 100,000 more Diablo 3 beta invites sent out
Blizzard has announced that 100,000 more Diablo 3 beta invites have been sent out in North America, so if you opted in to beta access with your Battle.net account, you should log in and see if you've gotten a notification. Blizzard warns that phishing activity may increase with this new wave of invites, so take care.If you weren't one of the lucky one hundred thousand, don't fret: Blizzard promises to send out more invites eventually. You can go back to rolling classes now!
Is Microsoft quietly opening up a Kinect beta program?
Well what do we have here? It appears our friends over at Joystiq have received word from diligent tipsters that Microsoft's Connect customer feedback service is sending out Kinect beta program invites. Details are predictably sparse, but naming ironies aside, the note does specify that chat will be limited only to those involved in the preview program. While this isn't really surprising given the context, Joystiq surmises that this choice clarification could hint invitees will have the chance to sample the video chat app available through the Kinect's new dashboard, which was shown off at E3. Unfortunately, Ballmer and crew have yet to lend any official credence to these murmurs, though apparently the email address behind these notes is valid. It's also not that outrageous to imagine Microsoft wanting to spin Kinect's wheels in the wild before releasing it to the unwashed gaming masses on its official November 4th launch date. Considering the program would have to put hardware in the hands of testers though to pull something like this off, we're counting on more than a few overly excited gamers shining additional light on the situation should things get serious.
Sony accepting applications for European MAG Beta
PlayStation.Blog recently dropped an announcement that will send European fans of acronyms and large-scale combat through the roof. Zipper Interactive is going to be handing out 16,000 beta codes for MAG to those living in Europe over the course of the next few weeks. To apply, go to the blog's "Competition" page and fill out the appropriate info. It's first come, first serve, so ... come! Be served! If you're not fortunate enough to live on the West-Eurasian Peninsula, take solace in the fact that Zipper's going to eventually need to enlist everyone on the planet to test out the game's enormous server load. Also, remember that we've got freedom and liberty and stuff.
Draw Frostmourne, win fabulous prizes
You know, I've always wanted a bit more drawing talent, but never more so than right now, as Blizzard has just announced a new fanart contest. They're looking for the best European fanart of Arthas wielding Frostmourne. The entries will be judged by a panel of developers, and if you win, you'll not only receive one of Epic Weapons' Frostmourne Replicas, but a guaranteed slot in the upcoming beta for WoTLK. 2nd and 3rd place runners up will also receive a slot in the beta. It should be noted that the contest is currently being announced on the European site, and the rules state that the contest is open only to residents of France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Luxemburg, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Spain, or Ireland. There doesn't appear to be any word yet on whether we'll get an American version of the contest, but here's hoping we see that soon. It seems likely that Blizzard had to create two seperate contests because of legal requirements, and is still working on getting the US version up. Check out Blizzard's official announcement here and the official rules here. EDIT: The American version of this contest can be found here. [Thanks to all our tipsters for sending this in!]
Warhammer's Josh Drescher clears up details on this round of beta invites
We previously reported on the erroneous emails from Warhammer Online's Beta Center, asking people who hadn't yet been invited to the beta to update their DxDiag file and consequently getting their hopes up. EA Mythic had already confirmed for these poor sods that they would need to wait for a real beta invite, but associate producer Josh Drescher has offered up a few more details about the situation on his personal site.Drescher states that the receipt of the emails by those not already invited does not mean you have a greater or lesser chance from anyone else of getting in, does not mean that something is good or bad about your computer that will lead to you getting picked or avoided, and it doesn't mean that you've already been picked (although you could be, unrelated to the email).
Crackdown disc required to play Halo 3 Beta
On Monday, we showed you a screenshot of the Halo 3 Beta download screen in retail copies of Crackdown. Today, we have a picture of the invite card, which confirms how the process works. In short, you need to have the Crackdown game in your Xbox 360 to play the Halo 3 Beta. It does NOT show up in your "Demos and More" tab on the dashboard after downloading it through Crackdown. This coincides with the original press release, which stated you had to load the game to download the beta. Check out the invite card after the break.
How Crackdown's Halo 3 Beta Works [update 1]
That screen pretty much sums it up for how the "specially marked boxes" of Crackdown are going to allow downloading the Halo 3 Beta. Simply navigate to the "Downloads" section in the menu, and there's an option to get the Halo 3 Beta. We presume that an Auto Update will take place on the beta's launch and then the message at the bottom of the screen will change appropriately. So, while a bunch of fanboys eagerly await halo3.com to allow them to register, at least they can get a glimpse of their next and final option available in just of 2 weeks.Update: The hosehead blogger responsible for crediting the wrong source has been reprimanded accordingly. Not only was he subjected to 360 lashes by strips of Canadian Bacon, but his following paycheck will be using an embarrassing 1:1 USD/CDN exchange rate.
Beta invites for raiding guilds?
Multiple threads on the forums have popped up today asking about mails claiming to come from Blizzard (that is to say, an e-mail address ending in @blizzard.com) requesting the names and e-mail addresses of 25 players for beta invites. Is this real? A hoax? A scam? Responses in the forums have ranged from calling it out as an obvious scam, to saying that it's a known fact that Blizzard has been looking for raiders to test the newest raid content. Well, Tseric has replied to one such thread dodging the scam issue entirely, telling us the following: "The players invited to the beta have a rather broad demographic, so looking at it as only raiding guilds being invited into the beta is simply inaccurate." This seems to kill the scam angle and open up another question -- if Blizzard isn't simply picking out raiding guilds for these out-of-the-blue beta invites, who are they picking? (And what do I have to do to get one? Huh, Tseric?)
