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Lichborne: The pitfalls of class balance arguments
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. By the time this column is published, it will be official. Greg Tiberus Street, the man formerly known as Ghostcrawler, will no longer be Lead Systems Designer for World of Warcraft. For many years now, even if his job encompassed so much more, he was pretty much the target for class-based arguments. The most passionate, angry arguments for class changes were directed at him. In his final days as Ghostcrawler, I noticed he did a lot of tweeting about some of the aspects of his job and how the dev team saw class feedback from the community. With that in mind, I want to take a look at the forms of class feedback and some terms that come up again and again as discussed by Ghostcrawler, not just as a tribute to Ghostcrawler, but as a way to hone our toolkit for when the Warlords of Draenor beta test drops and it's time for us all to give our feedback on the future of the death knight class.
Hands-on: Savant shows off their iPad interface
Savant AV brought their iPad road tour to a location that happens to be pretty close to me in Irvine, California. So, I headed down there to take a look at their brand new iPad app, an interface for wirelessly controlling their high-end home automation systems. The company helps dealers put together home automation and home theater solutions, and because all of their software is designed around Mac OS X, they've jumped headlong into using the iPhone and iPad as control units for their automation systems. With a full Savant setup installed, you can control your climate systems, audio and multimedia, lighting, and even security cameras all around your home directly from your iPhone or iPad. The systems aren't cheap; even the low-end systems will run you from five to ten thousand dollars, and of course, the sky's the limit on how luxurious you want to get. The good news, though, is that by using the iPad, Savant is actually able to put more value into the systems that they do sell. Before the iPad, a significant chunk of the cost was taken up by "glass," as founder Robert Madonna told us -- huge, expensive touchscreens that relied on custom, often clunky software. However, with the iPad, Savant can just hook into Apple's already available tools and hardware, and create much better looking applications that run on official hardware and lower the end cost. %Gallery-90117%
Watchmen MMO coming out for the iPhone
I love massively multiplayer online games, I love my iPhone, and I love Watchmen, the genre-defining graphic novel series of the late '80s (of which, I'll brag, I have a whole set of first edition copies) that's very soon to be the first movie blockbuster of 2009. That's why the news, over at our sister site Massively, that all of my loves were coming together in what's meant to be a Watchmen-branded MMO game for the iPhone made my day.Watchmen: Justice is Coming will have 3D environments, customizable avatars, and thousands of players interacting in the game at the same time. Massively's got some video from G4 showing off the app, put together by the apparent newcomers Last Legion Games. Unfortunately, while the concept is lofty (they've got a long-term vision for improving the game based on player feedback), the gameplay itself looks like clunky adware -- the kind you might expect from Warner Bros. and the iPhone deals they've come up with so far.So we're reserving judgment on this one until we can give it a try, and fortunately we won't have to wait long -- the devs say they've lined up the game for release later this week, right along with the movie. That timing doesn't impress us either -- usually, when a game and movie release simultaneously, one's been hurried to make the deadline, and trust us, it usually isn't the movie. It's Watchmen on the iPhone, so it's hit two of three bases with us already. But it'll need to bring a good game, too, if Last Legion is hoping for a home run.
