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Ultima Online begins testing Publish 71.0
You'd think that an MMO well into its golden years like Ultima Online would slow down to take advantage of senior citizen menu options, bingo night, and yelling at youngsters to get off the lawn. But, no, the dev team is instead running like they've never run before, as a new update on the test shard Origin can attest. Yesterday, the highly anticipated Publish 71.0 was pushed to the test server for players to tinker around and explore. The patch notes tell a tale of many, many balance changes and tweaks, along with plenty of brand-new buff icons. Fishing's also been treated to somewhat of an overhaul with the patch, as additional trophies are being installed and schools of magical fish will begin to move around in order to keep you guessing. There's even a special sea encounter with Charybdis that is only available to dedicated fishermen. To check out all of the nitty-gritty details and bug fixes that are coming with 71.0, head on over to Ultima Online to read the notes!
Perpetuum dev blog talks player influx, bug fixing, and new features
Avatar Creations has come up with a new Perpetuum dev blog, and it looks like the little sandbox that could has turned a bit of a corner when it comes to server stability and accommodating its expanding community. Avatar's Dev Calvin explains how the team had to allocate most of its resources to dealing with an influx of EVE Online refugees. The scramble was a successful one, but "the development plan for the first two weeks [of July] was ruined," he writes. Going forward, Perpetuum players will be seeing the long-awaited storyline PvE missions in short order, as well as tweaks to beta outposts and a large helping of what Avatar calls "industrialist love." Calvin does point out that new features will be taking something of a backseat to bug fixes, though, so a little patience is in order. "The influx of players brought light to a lot of glitches, imbalances and dysfunctional mechanisms in the game, so instead of rushing forward and pushing out new features in the next few weeks, we are taking a step back and making everything that is available in the game better," he said.
"Fast patch" 4.1.0a patch notes
Just when you think you're used to the way things are going, Blizzard releases something new. Today's notes aren't a list of hotfixes; they're a "fast patch." This means when you log into World of Warcraft, you're going to have a mini-patch to download -- and it also means that some major issues are being addressed, including one that's been bugging raiders and anyone trying to use AoE spells since 4.1: The targeting reticule for AoE spells and abilities like Magmaw's chains should no longer disappear when players cast spells. Animations while mounted should work normally again. Say hello to your ponies, they're now moving correctly! Character legs should move properly when the character is moving. See the rest of the notes for 4.1.0a after the break.
Black Prophecy patch brings new missions, fixes
Black Prophecy's first monthly patch is here, and today's update brings a bit of new content to the free-to-play sci-fi title -- as well as a number of smaller improvements. The content additions take the form of 10 new missions now available in the game's open sectors, and there are a variety of mission levels ranging from four to 35 according to the patch notes. Aside from that, Reakktor has made a number of performance tweaks, HUD and graphical fixes, and adjustments to everything from damage distribution across ship components to repair kit durability. You can learn more, as well as download the game, at the official website.
Microsoft releases Office 2011 Service Pack 1
Office 2011 version 14.1 (Service Pack 1) is now available from Microsoft's website. As announced on April 6, the update includes a variety of improvements to the new Outlook for Mac, including built-in support for Apple's Sync Services which allows users to more easily synchronize Outlook data with other Mac OS X software (like iCal and BusyCal) and devices (like the iPhone and iPad) through iTunes. The update also includes the usual fixes for "critical issues" and patches a security vulnerability that could allow an attacker "to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code." Microsoft offers more details about the software update on its official Office for Mac blog. Even if the update isn't showing in Office's AutoUpdate utility yet, you can download the 246 MB package here. [via MacUpdate]
Office 2011 Service Pack 1 due next week, improves Outlook compatibility
The upgrade from Microsoft Office 2008 to 2011 has not been without its drawbacks; for users of Entourage who moved to the all-new Outlook for Mac, in particular, there have been a few holes in the feature lineup. None of them are necessarily showstoppers, but the collection of odd omissions has given the flagship mail/calendar/contact management platform an air of unfinished business over the past few months. Good news, though: Microsoft's Office for Mac blog reports that we will be seeing Service Pack 1 for Office 2011 next week. The big-ticket returning feature for Outlook is calendar support in Sync Services, meaning that Outlook calendars may once again synchronize locally with iCal, BusyCal or tethered iPhones, iPod touch or iPad units through iTunes. Outlook's punch list also includes editing support for Exchange's server-side rules (which last appeared on the Mac in Outlook 2001 for Mac OS 9!), the return of the Redirect and Resend options in addition to simple message forwarding, and editing of messages in the Inbox. Excel is also getting better Solver integration, and there are sure to be hundreds of other bug fixes and minor improvements. While the Sync Services calendar support is welcome, it's slightly ironic that it's coming back to Microsoft's PIM at the same time that Apple's MobileMe calendars are transitioning to CalDAV -- which in turn is breaking Sync Services support for those hosted calendars via iCal and BusyCal. That means there still won't be a supported way to get MobileMe calendars to synchronize with Outlook for Mac (or Entourage 2008, for that matter), at least in the short term. There are some Outlook users who will be able to synchronize to MobileMe's CalDAV servers... but they aren't using Mac OS X. 32-bit versions of Outlook 2007 or 2010 on Windows can indeed sync up to MobileMe, with the help of Apple's MobileMe control panel on Windows XP, Vista or 7. The Office 2011 SP1 download will be available sometime the week of April 11; we'll let you know when it drops. Hat tip to The Loop.
The Soapbox: Somebody should do something about all the problems!
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. Bugs. They are the scourge of gaming, crawling and chittering their way through lines of code, turning what would have been a sure win into failure, making otherwise useful abilities worthless, crippling quests and destroying playtime. And so the clarion call goes out every time a new bug emerges that the developers should fix it -- a reasonable request, given that we are paying these people every month. (Or, on several occasions, we would be paying if the game weren't such a mess of bugs that they should be paying us.) Yet months roll by, and despite countless lovingly assembled bug reports, these issues do not get fixed. And it's not just bugs, either -- balance issues go untweaked, content goes unfinished, features get rolled back or sometimes removed altogether. What the heck are we paying for? Why in the world doesn't the development team just fix these problems?
DC Universe Online Update 2 is on its way!
We know you've been anxiously awaiting new content from DC Universe Online -- so have we. A couple of weeks ago, Creative Director Chris Cao talked with us about the "chance" content of the latest update. The Penguin and Two-Face are the villains of choice this time around, and we'll even see a special appearance from Mister Mxyzptlk. Naturally, we're are all excited about the new update -- now when is it coming out? We finally have the answer. On the official forums, Community Manager Tony "RadarX" Jones told DCUO fans that the update will be coming next week! He also took some time to explain that multiple exploits have been fixed, many mission bugs have been squashed, and the social UI has been overhauled. For more information about the update, don your cape and cowl, then head over to Krystalle's interview with Chris Cao. If SOE keeps to its normal update schedule, we will see the new content on Tuesday (if not Thursday). To the Batcave!
Chris Cao: DCUO's Update 2 is all about "chance"
We heard some tantalizing details of what Sony Online Entertainment has planned for DC Universe Online's March patch a few weeks ago when Game Director Chris Cao and Art Director and Mark Anderson sat down on the Stickam chat to offer a teaser of what players could expect. Following up, we had a chat with Cao to find out some more specific details on what exactly our superheroes can expect coming in March. According to Cao, the primary theme for this update is "chance," which is reflected both in our chance to face off against The Penguin as boss and in the addition of Two-Face/Harvey Dent in Legends PvP play and as an instance character. That fifth-dimensional trickster Mister Mxyzptlk is likewise being introduced to the game as part of a holiday event themed around St. Patrick's Day. We knew most of this from the Stickam chat; that's why we went digging deeper for the scoop on DC Universe Online's development. Check it out behind the break! %Gallery-50201%
Final Fantasy XI's February mini-patch dated
Fans waiting expectantly for the Final Fantasy XI February update are going to have to wait a little while longer. But not too much longer... just until the 14th, at which point it will go live and bring accelerated experience and improved storage functionality for all. That's one of the major takeaways in the newest set of questions and answers from the development team, a steady feature since December that's helping to give players a clearer voice in the game's progress than ever before. While the date of the patch is good to know, there are a lot of other interesting tidbits in the rundown, including a chance for players to suggest new prizes for future Mog Bonanza events. The team is also looking into addressing the issue of the most popular Notorious Monsters, storage for less-armor-related items that players tend to acquire in large quantities, and of course the squashing of troublesome bugs. Final Fantasy XI players should look at the full rundown and get ready for a number of improvements going live in just a few short days.
Vudu arrives on the Boxee Box, along with a host of big fixes (update)
Ah, there we go. After a bit of a false start, Boxee's rolling out Vudu to the Boxee Box today -- you can either hold tight for the auto update in the next 24 hours, or trigger the manual update in Settings. Vudu's offering new users who sign up on the Boxee Box a $5.99 credit, which is the price of a single HDX rentals, so that's clever. Vudu remains Vudu -- 1080p/24 video, 5.1 audio -- but we'll obviously give it a look on the Box to check it out. As for other improvements, there are quite a few; highlights include better browser performance with HTTPS support, a sorting option to ignore "the" or "a" in titles, more deinterlacing controls, a whole host of bug fixes, and quite a bit more. Not bad -- we'll let you know if we discover anything crazy. PR and the full changelog after the break. Update: Vudu's $2 for two nights deal applies to SD rentals, but you can get a single HDX rental for $5.99.
Cataclysm hotfixes for Dec. 21
Continuing the steady stream of Cataclysm tinkering we've seen this week, Blizzard has posted yet another set of hotfixes. And this is a pretty good set! Some notable changes: The duration of the Superheated Quicksilver Armor debuff on Karsh Steelbender is now 17 seconds, up from 12 seconds. The encounter was too hard to tank and went against our intended fight mechanics. The display for this buff may not properly update until a client-side patch is applied. Rare archaeology finds should now grant triple skill gains. Mekgineer Thermaplugg is no longer using outdated abilities and has a shiny new list of abilities to use. He is also no longer immune to taunts. Elemental Goos now drop 100% of the time off of Cataclysm elementals for the jewelcrafting daily quest. Chaos Orbs can now only been seen and rolled on by characters with a minimum skill level of 425 in tailoring, blacksmithing, leatherworking, or engineering. For the full list of hotfixes, follow us behind the break below.
Xsyon beta update adds architecture skills, revamps terrain
Yep, Xsyon's still around, and the post-apocalyptic sandbox MMORPG from Notorious Games continues its beta testing phase with a full client and server update this week. The patch has also wiped all your beta characters as well as the world terrain, making way for smoother texture revisions that should be visible as you read this. Other significant patch details include the architecture skill (which allows players to create walls and buildings), the masonry skill (designed to complement architecture), and various tweaks to combat and characters. Among these is a revision to the alignment system that flags both defenders and attackers. Finally, the new client boasts several bug fixes related to collision detection, memory leaks, and animation fixes. Check out the full list of improvements on the official Xsyon forums.
iPhoto '11 updated, still not up to par
It's a shame -- iPhoto is likely the most heavily used of all the iLife applications. There are simply more people taking digital pictures than there are using GarageBand or iMovie. iWeb, left languishing by Apple with few updates and no new features, has probably forced people to look elsewhere for quick and easy web publishing. iDVD appears to be on life support too, which brings iPhoto to the fore of media sharing on the Mac. When iPhoto '11 was released last month, it immediately caused problems for a large number of users. Photo libraries were corrupted, and there was even data loss for a significant group. Apple responded with iPhoto 9.0.1. That update appeared to stop the library corruption, but didn't fix a lot of the other complaints aggravated iPhoto users had, such as a loss of photo calendars, a change in how photos are emailed, and general instability and slowness. Yesterday, iPhoto users received an update to version 9.1. Apple said it "improves overall stability and addresses a few minor issues." This is the way Apple details bug fixes, and sadly, you often don't know what is fixed, and are left experimenting to see if the software works again. It's a maddening way to deal with people who purchased the software, but there it is. Apple 'thinks different'. iPhoto calendars are back, but a subset of users is still struggling with iPhoto even after this latest update. It's clear that the original release simply wasn't tested very well since there have been two bug fix updates in a very short period. How is iPhoto going for you? We know it is working well for a number of users, but scanning the support boards reveals all is not completely well. Please share your experiences and recommendations to Apple in our comments.
Love's developer requesting player input for bug fixes
Eskil Steenberg is a busy man, but that's not stopping him from retaining his title as the world's only One Man Traveling MMO Development Studio. Hey, he should get that trademarked! For those following the progress of Steenberg's Love MMO, you are fully aware that the man stays on top of constant improvements to the game. His Twitter followers are fed a regular dose of update notes and he's not shy about appearances in his own Teamspeak channel. This week, as he returns to the states for Siggraph 2010, he asks his loyal fans for their input on bugs that need squashing. The compiled list will be addressed this weekend, with another aim at a Teamspeak visit as well. Check out his most recent forum post for all the details.
Apple updates the iWork suite for iPad
iWork users rejoice! Apple is updating Pages, Numbers and Keynote for the iPad. A quick check at the app store or through iTunes should get you all sparkly and new. In Pages, one of the big fixes is that the tool and ruler and now available in Landscape view. That's a biggy because you had to be in portrait view to see any of those tools in version 1.0. Apple has also added some additional language support in the apps, and done some work to get better compatibility with Microsoft Word documents. Here's the details for all the updated apps, which appear to have fixed some of the worst complaints people had.
Star Trek Online's Season One gets a booster shot
It's been three months since the launch of Star Trek Online, and the developers haven't been sitting on their hands in the interim. With the large Season 1 patch still fresh in player's minds, the team has made a quick turnaround on the followup Season 1.1 patch. While not boasting the wide-reaching expansions that the prior patch did, this patch addresses several quality of life issues, including death penalties, mission difficulty, and the dreaded "commodity missions" receiving an overhaul. Players will have three difficulty options for battles -- Normal, Advanced, and Elite. Normal is unchanged from the present, while Advanced and Elite get progressively harder, incorporating the game's death penalties and strengthening enemies in exchange for more drops of higher quality. As a boon to players who prefer the current difficulty, Normal challenges are still free of any penalties for death. There are also improved spoils from badge vendors, and a buff to the reward and procedures of missions asking you to ferry supplies. With an extensive list of bug fixes, balance tweaks, and small improvements, any Star Trek Online player is sure to get some benefits out of the latest patch.
Allods releases Patch 06: Edge of the Astral
When it comes to free-to-play games, one of the ones that draws a ton of attention is Allods Online. Today, gPotato has released the newest patch -- Patch 06: Edge of the Astral -- to the servers. As such, players will have a chance to get their hands on all that new content and find out how the tweaks and modifications will affect them. If you haven't checked Allods Online out recently, this patch brings in new raid content where players will face off against War'kaz the Mindreaver, a massive Astral demon who now lurks in Gorluxor's Tower. Of course, if the idea of raiding isn't really your thing, there is also The Arena of Death in Yazes Shard -- a PvP arena that will allow players to pit their skills against each other for bonus Combat Glory. There are also adorably evil customizable goblin pets like the two seen above if neither of those areas appeal. As to the bug fixes, tweaks, and other game improvements -- there's an enormous list. Some of the ones that immediately caught our eyes were splitting items in stacks, a hotkey for whispers, and more. This patch also holds more changes to the Fear of Death mechanic -- namely the removal of priest rez avoiding FoD -- but we suspect that change is not among the ones welcomed by players. Be sure to pop over to the Allods Online forums on gPotato's site for the full patch notes.
Allods Online introduces developer diary
It's been about a month since we heard anything from Allods Online, and even longer since we heard anything that didn't include the words "cash" and "shop."That's been remedied thanks to the addition of a brand new developer diary, and the first entry was posted late last night. Associate Producer Darren "CHOMP" Allarde kicked off the diary with "What does the Allods Team do," a look at the day-to-day routine of the team and their communication with players. Additionally, there's a clear explanation of exactly who Gala-Net is and what they do, versus who Astrum Nival is and what they do: "We don't fix bugs, we report them. We don't program and work on new in-game features, we hear what you have to say, tally it up, and communicate to Astrum Nival the feedback that makes sense for the game in our region." The developer diary is off to a good start, giving some important background information about who does what. For the full entry, take a look at the official site.
Aperture 3 gets a bushel of fixes with update 3.0.2
Apple has pushed out an update to Aperture 3 that appears to fix a slew of little irritants users had been reporting, including upgrading from previous Aperture library versions, adding names and matches in Faces, adjustments using the Curve, Straighten and Retouching tools, and a number of other bug and stability fixes. iMovie has also been bumped up to 8.0.6, primarily to give it better compatibility with Aperture. You should check your Software Update under your Apple menu, or go here to grab the fixes. Detailed information on the changes is available at this Apple support page. [Thanks Eric!]
