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NHL lockout prompts Montreal sports writer to chronicle virtual hockey season
The NHL lockout has forced most hockey writers to cover boardroom negotiations and players' prospects overseas instead of actual games, but Pat Hickey of The Montreal Gazette has found something a little different to write about. As noted by Bloomberg Businessweek, Hickey has been covering a virtual season for the Montreal Canadiens just as he would the real one, with EA's NHL 13 providing simulated games in the absence of any actual action on the ice. Coincidentally, the Habs are currently tied for first in the league. As Hickey tells Bloomberg, covering a virtual season comes with some benefits -- the games only take about an hour each and he's able to make up quotes -- and it's also proven to be surprisingly popular. Last week, one of his write-ups was reportedly the most-read sports story on the paper's website. You can catch up with the season to date, and for at least a few weeks to come, at the source link.
Microsoft's Windows 8 hardware requirements: some good, some not-so-good
First, an apology: Microsoft released details of Windows 8's tablet hardware requirements back in December, but we were too preoccupied with Christmas and CES to notice. Now that the only thing we're suffering from is jet-lag, let's take a quick tour of some notable extracts from the documentation and what it'll mean for users when the operating system arrives towards the back end of the year.
How to sell Hagara Pick Pockets to rogues
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! There's a fairly simple way to make gold without professions: Sell summons to a pick-pocketable Hagara to rogues looking to get their legendary quest starter daggers, Vengeance and Fear. These are the most accessible rogue weapons, because aside from picking the pocket of the fourth boss in a raid instance, the quest can be easily completed with a 10k gold and a minimum amount of help. These daggers are the best entry-level options for rogues who PvP or PvE, available as soon as they hit 85 and are capable of completing the quest. If players are raiders, they'll probably get it for free just by being in a raid that gets to Hagara; however, if all they do is PvP or casual PvE through the Raid and Dungeon Finders, they won't be able to get the first leg of the quest finished. Within a few weeks, most rogues who want to start the quest will have started it. Until then, I've heard of non-raiding rogues paying as much as 25k for the opportunity to pick Hagara's pockets.
Sprint, NBA strike multi-year partnership, celebrate with a new Android app
NBA Commissioner David Stern is all smiles these days. Why? Because the most pointless labor dispute in human history has finally drawn to a close, and Chris Paul isn't a Laker. He must also be elated over a new deal the NBA has just signed with Sprint, which replaces T-Mobile as the Official Wireless Service Partner of the NBA -- a phrase that will likely be repeated ad nauseam during every single halftime report this season. Under the marketing partnership, announced on Wednesday, Sprint will launch its own "Sprint NBA Mobile" Android app, giving subscribers access to highlights, stats and the latest news on why Chris Paul isn't a Laker. According to All Things D, an iOS version is still in the works, though it remains unclear whether it will sport the same features as its Android counterpart. Sprint says the app should be available in time for the NBA's December 25th season opener, which won't feature Chris Paul, because Chris Paul isn't a Laker. The terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but All Things D reports that it's valued somewhere "in the millions" -- which should help shore up some of the revenue the NBA will lose in potential Chris Paul jersey sales, because Chris Paul isn't a Laker.
Twice-weekly raid resets being tested in Taiwan and Korea starting this week
Here's some relatively crazy news that's just been posted on the Taiwanese Battle.net site: All patch 4.0 and 4.2 raid dungeons -- that is, every Cataclysm raid up to Firelands -- will reset twice a week, once on Thursday and once on Sunday. This change will not apply to the Deathwing raid, which will reset once a week as usual, nor will the weekly valor point cap be changing. The change is, according to the post, meant to allow people to gear up faster by killing bosses twice as often. There is currently no word on whether this will play solely to Taiwanese servers, or to all regions. If it does come to U.S. servers, it is likely our reset will revolve around Tuesday downtime, making the ideal second-reset day Friday. Check after the break for a quick and dirty Google translation of the post. UPDATE: Community Manager Zarhym has posted the following: 4.0 and 4.2 Raids to reset twice a week? The new raid lockout changes for Taiwan and Korea adjust the lockout timers for the patch 4.0 and 4.2 raids. The lockout timers for these raids will now reset twice weekly instead of once. These raid lockout changes are being made to allow players to raid more often and get more chances at epic loot drops. Players will be able to down current Cataclysm raid bosses twice a week, accelerating players' progression. We are testing these new raid lockout changes in Taiwan and Korea first. Our goal is to expand this change to other regions in the future, but we don't have anything further to announce at this time with regard to North American implementation. source
The pros and cons of extending raid lockouts
All through Wrath of the Lich King, I raided in a hardcore progression guild for 16 hours a week. We ran 12 hours in 25-mans and another three or four a week working on hard mode 10-mans. A lot of it ended up feeling like clearing content to get geared up to clear the exact same content but with more bells and whistles (especially Trial of the Crusader, where we often ended up doing the same raid four times a week). So when Cataclysm came out, I shifted to a more casual, purely 10-man, six-hours-a-week raiding schedule with a new guild. For the most part, it's been pretty great, but one aspect of it is that with two hours a night, three nights a week, it can be a challenge to get through the farm content fast enough to get to the new bosses, especially once most of an instance is farm content. Even when you know all the fights and can burn through them, five bosses can take a lot of time to get knocked out in order to get face time on a new boss. One of the innovations of Wrath of the Lich King was extending raid lockouts. What this allows you to do is to skip the bosses you already have on farm by, in effect, picking up where your last raid left off. Cleared everything but Nef last week and needing to work on the new encounter? Now you can just start up with everything you killed last week still dead. What could be the problem, you ask?
Poll: What will you watch if there's no NFL this season?
Now that negotiations between the player's union and owners have reached the decertification/lockout stage, it's time to consider an ugly possibility. What do we do if professional football isn't ready to go on time this fall? The NFL has been noted as our favorite sports league to keep pumping on our HDTVs, so as terrible as the thought is, let's go through a few possible replacements: %Poll-61650%
Cataclysm raid progression refinements
Today Blizzard released some stunning new standards for raids in the upcoming Cataclysm expansion. Chief amongst these changes, which every WoW player should be aware of, is the combining of 10- and 25-man loot tables, 10- and 25-man raid lockouts, and the continuation of gated content. No longer will 25-man raids provide better gear than 10-man raids (although they will drop more of the gear), and no longer will players be able to farm both the 10-man and 25-man version of a raid dungeon each week. The following are the bullet points of this announcement: 10- and 25- man raids in Cataclysm will share the same lockout Normal versus Heroic mode will be chosen on a per-boss basis in Cataclysm raids, the same way it works in Icecrown Citadel 10- and 25- man bosses will be close in difficulty 10- and 25- man bosses will drop the exact same items 25-man bosses will drop a higher quantity of loot, but not quality For the first few raid tiers, our plan is to provide multiple smaller raids. Instead of one raid with eleven bosses, you might have a five-boss raid as well as a six-boss raid. Content will continue to be gated First Cataclysm raids will be tuned for players in dungeons blues and crafted items The full statement after the break.
Blizzard: Run Oculus, win fabulous prizes
Despite the nerfs in Patch 3.3, it's pretty obvious that whole lot of people still hate Oculus, enough so that they immediately bail when it comes up as a random dungeon. Apparently, it's a substantial number of people doing this, enough that Blizzard's taken notice and taken action. But they're not removing it from the system. Instead, they're incentivizing it -- or, if you prefer to be a bit more pessimistic, turning final boss Eregos into a loot pinata in the most direct way possible. Zarhym's announced that those who happen to get Heroic Oculus with the random dungeon finder and stick it out to the end will find their own personal loot bag in Eregos' cache. The bags will contain two extra Emblems of Triumph, rare gems, and a chance at the Reins of the Blue Drake, formerly the rare mount drop from 10-man Malygos. To make up for the switch, the Reins of the Azure Drake will have a chance to drop from both 10-man and 25-man Malygos. Will this staunch the exodus from Oculus? Will the lust for yet another pretty dragon mount inspire people to tough out the dreaded vehicle mechanics? Or will people just tough it out until they get their drake and start group dropping again? It should be fun to see what happens.
Patch 3.2's raid extension feature clarified
About a week and a half ago, we spotted the new raid lockout extension feature on the patch 3.2 PTR. It's not until this morning that Blizzard (specifically Eyonix and Vaneras) officially announced that the feature was coming, along with some clarified details.The details are mostly what we expected: Extending your lockout will let it roll over into the next lockout period, consuming your instance ID for that day (in the case of heroics) or week (in the case of raids). You can extend your lockout more than once, probably indefinitely, but Eyonix wasn't specific on how many times you can do it in a row. I assume indefinitely. The extension is also on a per-person basis, meaning if you PUG someone into your 25man run, they can't screw you by extending their lockout. That also means it's not a raid leader decision. At least, not mechanically. It's up to the individual to click that extension button.
Officers' Quarters: Managing your lockouts
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.Last week, our very own Michael Sacco broke the news that raid lockouts will be extendable after Patch 3.2. Reading through forum comments about this exciting new feature, I found the varied reactions quite amusing. Hardcore raiders seem to think that Blizzard is catering to casuals with this change. They think you should have to earn your kills by reclearing bosses if you can't make it all the way through a raid zone in one week. On the other hand, casual players seem to think that Blizzard is catering to the hardcore, since it's so much easier now to work on hard modes and other achievements without the threat of a looming reset. Casuals need as much loot as possible, they say, so why would they ever want to extend a lockout?Despite the hardcore/casual debate reaching a new all-time low, the good news is that, in a sense, they're both right. Blizzard is catering to all of us. Regardless of playstyle or progression, all guilds will benefit from having this option. However, there are decisions and tradeoffs to be made. Let's examine this new feature in more detail.
Patch 3.2: Raid lockouts extendable
Man, what a crazy news day this has been, and the day's not even over yet. Blizzard just rolled out a new PTR build, so we took a quick trip to the Patch 3.2 PTR and discovered a whole new mechanic that Blizzard hasn't mentioned yet. It's yet another change to how raiding works, and it's pretty cool. We killed Venoxis in Zul'Gurub and, upon being saved to the instance, noticed that we now had the option to extend our raid lockout -- that is, to make it last twice as long or until the next week's lockout would end. This means that, if your casual guild is a scrappy bunch working on Ulduar, but you can only get to Mimiron each week before the lockout expires, you can extend your current lockout into the following week to get more practice on the bosses you don't get to see as often.Now -- ostensibly -- once you've done what you need to do with your lockout, you can actually remove the raid lockout extension and use your current week's lockout too. We haven't gotten to try it yet, but it looks like the functionality is there. Pretty cool!We'll wait to see what Blizzard has to say about it, but this is great news for smaller or more casual guilds who really want to clear instances and don't mind less loot per week.More shots of the functionality after the jump.
In the category of "finally": Raid ID confirmation windows in 3.1
The 3.1 PTR has brought a lot of wonderful quality of life improvements, but here's one that players and GMs alike will undoubtedly appreciate more than a lot of them: you finally, finally get a confirmation window when you enter an instance that would lock you to it. You get the option to accept the lockout and stay in the instance or leave the instance and save your ID for later. You have 15 seconds to make said choice. This means no more getting screwed out of heroics by some idiot who forgot he already ran Violet Hold today or any other of the myriad ways you can lose your ID for the day (or week). It's about time. Our good friend BRK found this feature without even realizing it, as WI reader Brandon Tilley discovered it in BRK's screenshots of a PTR raid last night. Thanks for the heads-up on this exciting change, Brandon, and way to miss the boat, BRK! Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.
Forum post of the day: Raid timers (poll)
Today's forum post of the day serves a dual purpose: it brings up issues with raid timers and it demonstrates how not to make friends and influence people on the forums. Our hot-headed friend Phearing of Silver Hand is a mighty bit miffed that he zoned into a 10-man Vault run only to find that there were no mobs there. He was saved to the instance, and thus does not get another shot at it until the raid timer resets.Nubbyzor of Whisperwind quickly pointed out that if the raid leader is saved to the instance you join their raid ID. This has happened since the dawn of raid timers. People have been mislead into joining raids in progress and cannot get a second shot at a heroic if their group is under par. Heroics aren't really a big deal, if your group fails, you can try again tomorrow. It's lame, but it's only one day. The week-long timer on raids makes this a little bit harder to swallow.
The Queue: Who cares about 3.0.8, where's 3.1?
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.The title above is only half-joking. Patch 3.0.8 didn't supply any real content which is what we're all waiting for, but at this point rolling out patch 3.1 too quickly would be a disaster. I think game quality is worse now than it was before 3.0.8, so I'd much rather see things working smoothly again before they throw patch 3.1 at us. Of course, I'm also pretty bored with Wrath already, so...Zoidberg asked...So, what do we know about 3.1? What do we know about dual spec? Anything about Ulduar? Anything about DK nerfs? Warlock buffs? Will I get any Silver Covenant rep?
Fix for unintentional instance lockouts in the works
One of the more annoying things that has come about in Wrath of the Lich King is the ease at which you can be saved to an instance. It used to be that you were saved to a heroic or raid instance whenever you killed a boss or got loot. Now if you more or less step in the place, you end up being saved to it.This can cause a problem if someone in your group forgot that they already ran the instance or raid during the lockout period (a day for heroic instances, a week for all current raids). That person loads an already completed version of the instance. The place has all the trash, all the quirks, except for the bosses. You'll spend a half hour clearing to the first boss, only to discover that he's not there – he's already been killed. And oops, you're saved to the instance too."Epic fail," as has been yelled out on my vent when this happens.
The Wii isn't region-free, after all
We've never really had a reason to dislike Perrin Kaplan, Nintendo of America's vice president of marketing and corporate affairs. Sure, she got a little drunk at E3 (seriously, watch that video, it's awesome), but who wasn't? But now...she's crossed the line. We reported yesterday that the Wii would be region-free for first-party titles, and left up to the publisher for third-party ventures. However, a UK Nintendo rep flatly denied her claims, and the official line from a U.S. rep was this:"We've heard conflicting reports from lots of folks out there, but can tell you that Wii will be region encoded, as will first-party software."How dare you, Kaplan? We trusted you; put our ability to play quirky Japanese Wii games in your hands! You failed us, you fibbing...fibber! A curse upon your soul!
The Wii is region-free! [update 1]
According to this article at IGN, Nintendo of America VP confirmed that all first-party games for the Wii will be region-free. This feature is traditionally reserved for Nintendo's handheld systems, while owners of their consoles had to illegally modify their hardware or use a special booting solution for import games. Third-parties have the option to make their titles region-free or not, but this is certainly excellent news for import fans.Also revealed by Kaplan was that one's Virtual Console games are tied to one's account, not allowing transfer. There is, however, a system in place to recover your account if your Wii is suddenly eaten, destroyed, or stolen by PS3 fanboys.Stay tuned with Wii Fanboy as we deliver more news than you can shake a stick at! No, more news at which...you could shake...no, that's not right either...whatever.[Update 1: Just kidding. (sigh)]
