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Scientists purportedly improve blue OLED efficiency by 25%
The holy grail of OLED is upon us. With scientists around the world working to improve efficiency of the short-lived blue OLED in order to better align with lifespans of the green and red counterparts, a team from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has reportedly taken a huge leap in solving the whole thing. These gurus have conjured up new host materials for a blue phosphorescent OLED that's at least 25 percent more efficient than existing blue OLEDs, but regrettably, details beyond that are few and far between. Word on the street has it that PNNL scientists are expected to gather and discuss the findings before heading to a meeting of the American Chemical Society later this spring, and we'll be crossing our fingers that whatever they've found is both a) cheap and b) easily implementable.[Via OLED-Display]
IBM ThamesBlue supercomputer uncovers antediluvian English words
Granted, we could personally think of much more amazing ways to put supercomputers to work, but maybe there is some sort of benefit to humanity by knowing precisely what our ancestors' first words were. All that aside, the IBM ThamesBlue supercomputer has been tapped by language masters at the University of Reading in order to find that 'I,' 'we,' 'who' and the numbers '1,' '2' and '3' are amongst the most ancient across all Indo-European languages. Comically enough, it was also found that words like 'squeeze,' 'guts,' 'stick,' 'throw' and 'dirty' were also markedly archaic, which sure says a lot about how men in particular, um, don't evolve. At any rate, these new computational powers have reportedly opened up another 25,000 years or so of language study, so we suspect the folks on this project will be occupied for some time to come.
Anti-Aliased: Sometimes, it's the little things in (virtual) life pt. 2
Oh, and by the way, you can't use blueThe Matrix Online may not have captured everyone equally, but one thing they did do very right was the coloring in the game. The city streets are filled with blowing trash as non-interactive NPCs wander the streets, looking for their destinations. When night falls, the street lights give off uneasy blasts of light down onto the asphalt while alleys look more dangerous than usual.What brings all of this world into the gloom of the Matrix was a very deliberate choice of color. Not only is the entire game given an odd over-tint of pea green that defines the Matrix so well, but the developers made very careful decisions regarding the use of red and blue. Bright red is only used in areas of instability, hence the odd red tints in the decrepit Barrens district versus the strong green and white of Downtown and the fire engine red color of the emergency escape hardlines. "It's another amazing task when the development team is actually able to freak people out with sunny, happy, beautiful days of blue sky in the Matrix." The color blue? Well, there is no blue in the standard palette of the game. Blue only occurs once in the system -- when Sati controls the occasional sundown. Past that, blue is kept far from the confines of the Matrix.It's an incredible task when the art department successfully creates an entire virtual world without using the color blue. It's another amazing task when the development team is actually able to freak people out with sunny, happy, beautiful days of blue sky in the Matrix. To quote my friend Fenshire, "Even if they didn't announce the event next week, you could tell it was coming up. Sky's been beautiful every day of the week. Something is very broken in the system."The final synopsisAs I said in the opening of this column, our virtual worlds can be more than stats, exp, levels, and killing if the developer takes the time to sneak it in and the player takes the time to look. There's a hidden world of lore, emotion, and depth behind most games that some players just never take the time to explore or learn about.It's things like these that make our worlds pop out and become something more than just a playground to kill monsters. It's what makes them functioning worlds rather than a device for performing repetitive behavior. When it's done right, or implemented properly, it turns the game into something extremely enjoyable and persuasive. When you're out doing that repetitive behavior over and over again, you get to look around and notice these neat little things that begin to wash away that repetitiveness and let you come back for more."Epic purplez" may be what everybody wants, but sometimes there's more epic things in the game than just the loot. Colin Brennan is the weekly writer of Anti-Aliased who loves the little things of games. When he's not writing here for Massively, he's rambling on his personal blog, The Experience Curve. If you want to message him, send him an e-mail at colin.brennan AT weblogsinc DOT com. You can also follow him on Twitter through Massively, or through his personal feed.
Nintendo DSi now in 3 more colors you can't buy
Check it: three new colors of the Nintendo DSi just announced in Japan for the usual ¥18,900 starting March 20th. How's it feel to know that Nintendo is already working on secondary DSi colors when they've yet to launch outside of Japan? Not that it matters, Australia will be limited to the black and white DSi models starting April 2nd; Europe's will launch in choice of black or white starting April 3rd; and the US will get its DSi on April 5th in either black or blue injury to accompany the insult of ranking last.
A world without Varimathras
It was probably the least exciting thing to go down during the Wrathgate questline (Wrynn FTW, no?), and I've only played Alliance during Wrath, so I haven't really realized it until now: Varimathras is no longer in the game. He was always my favorite faction leader (even though he wasn't actually the Undead faction leader, so to speak) -- I loved his "You think you can match the might of a dreadlord?" taunt, his story (he always hinted that the Forsaken, a threat within the ranks of the Horde, might have a threat within their own ranks), and his demonic look. And now, after the Battle for the Undercity, he's gone.Fortunately, this is World of Warcraft, and no one in Warcraft really ever stays completely dead -- just ask Kael'thas. But as a more pressing concern, players are currently wondering how they'll be able to do Varimathras' quests (for the Loremaster achievement) with him no longer hanging around the Undercity. New Blue poster Ancilorn says not to worry -- they'll come up with a way for those who can't see Varimathras to do the quests associated with him. Or, and probably more likely, they'll just take them out of the Loremaster requirements.But a moment of silence, please, for one of my favorite lore figures, Varimathras. He was always on the winning side. Except for, you know, that one time right at the end.
Instance throttling explained
If you do a lot of instances, you're probably familiar with the error message "Additional instances could not be launched. Please, try again later," and the accompanying dance of spamming the instance portal until it lets you in. For me it seems to happen most at the Azjol-Nerub portal, but that's probably just coincidence. Anyway, although I've been seeing this error pretty much since WotLK launched, Wryxian just made a post today in the European forums explaining what it's all about. Basically, it's an attempt to fix instance performance; if too many instances are running at the same time on the instance server, lag and possible crashes result (and I'm sure we've all experienced that), so there's a limit imposed on how many instances can be up at any given time.
Upcoming 3.1 class changes: Warlock, Druid, Warrior
This is part two in a promised three-part series from Blizzard going over class changes that are coming in patch 3.1. Part one dropped last night, covering Shamans, Priests, and Rogues. This morning's episode covers some changes that are coming to Warlocks, Druids, and Warriors. And just to be preemptive, don't say "that's it?!". It's not. This is just some of the changes that your class will be seeing, and they're subject to further change as the patch evolves. Warlock Improved Shadow Bolt – this talent now provides a 5% spell critical strike buff (similar to Improved Scorch). Improved Soul Leech – this talent now provides Replenishment (similar to shadow priests) Drain Soul now has a chance to produce Soul Shards even if the target doesn't die. Siphon Life no longer as an active ability but the talent grants the old Siphon Life effect to Corruption. Curse of Recklessness and Curse of Weakness have been combined into one spell Consume Shadows – this Voidwalker ability is no longer channeled but has a cooldown. Several other warlock talents have had their ranks reduced, their effects changed or removed. This list includes but is not limited to Demonic Empathy, Shadow Embrace, Eradication, Suppression, and Pandemic. Additional new talents have been added.
The role of the Priest
Well, this is really a first for Blizzard (ever since the game was initially released and the class descriptions written, anyway). Ghostcrawler has noticed that there are a lot of questions saying people don't understand what the role of the Priest is right now. Accordingly, he has gone and written up "what [Blizzard] think of as the role of the priest class." I think it's interesting enough to reproduce in its entirety; I'll go through it one paragraph at a time. The priest is a caster class that uses Holy and Shadow magic. Priests can only wear cloth armor and have a limited selection of weapons, but do most of their damage and healing from range. They make up for their low armor with spells that offer protection and healing. This is obvious enough to anyone who has been a member of the Priest community long enough ("one tough cookie," anyone?). Still, it's nice to see it spelled out, I guess. And it does emphasize that our defenses are more in terms of "protection and healing," instead of in terms of escape skills like a Rogue (for example) has.
GC answers Hunter questions
Hunters, do you have questions about your class? Well, Ghostcrawler's got some answers. Not all of them, of course, but Big Red Kitty can probably handle the rest. Our favorite crab has been chatting a bit about the Hunter class on the official forums. Let's take a look at what he's been saying. As far as DPS numbers, Blizzard balances in terms of absolutes, not relatives. This means Blizzards wants people with X quality gear to be doing Y DPS on fight Z, so things like "I got 5th on the meters" aren't as relevant - they're looking at specifically how much DPS you do. (source for this and the next three points) Pets are balanced using "a trade-off between damage and utility." Some pets, like wasps, bring bonuses that your 5- or 10-man groups may be missing, and thus it is justified that they do less DPS. That said, "more parity among pets is something [the devs] want to pursue."
Ghostcrawler on the state of the Mage
The tension between PvP balance and PvE balance is once more giving the developers a hard time. Ghostcrawler has made a post on the state of the Mage, and it runs roughly as follows. They're happy that Arcane is "starting to feel like a viable alternative" to Frostfire for raid DPS. However, they're concerned that Arcane does too much burst in PvP, and they need to figure out how to fix that without hurting Arcane too much in PvE. Argh! Can we just introduce different rule sets for PvP and PvE and be done with it? The devs have been saying similar things for Rogues since LK launched: too low in PvE, but we can't make them any higher in PvP or they'll be imbalanced. He also touches on a few more points that don't make me want to hit things. The Improved Scorch debuff is "too much of a unique snowflake" in the new buff system, forcing exactly one mage per raid to spec for it and spend a fair amount of time casting Scorch to apply the debuff (compare Winter's Chill, which is applied passively); presumably, it is going to be addressed by making it easier to apply for Fire and/or castable by Arcane and/or other classes. Making frost-based Frostfire specs competitive is also "definitely a concern, but lower priority than these other issues." Finally (and going back to PvE vs PvP), they would like to find some way to make Frostbolt builds competitive in PvE again (the phrase GC uses is "'Shatter combo' vibe"). However, so far, they haven't thought of a way to achieve this without buffing Cone of Cold Ice Lance [thanks, Bubsa], which they don't want to buff in PvP. Wouldn't it be simple enough to remove PvP from the game just make Lance do less damage or whatever in PvP?
Lichborne: PvE Gems for Death Knights
Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly dose of Death Knight discussion.Now that we've covered most standard pemutations of gear gathering in past Lichborne columns, I figured this week would be a good time to start talking about taking the extra steps to really trick out your gear. This week, will focus on gems. Not only will this help you take your gear to the next level, but it gives me a good excuse to talk about some new discoveries and discussions going on as we try to figure out the best ways to squeeze the most DPS out of a Death Knight. So to start, let's talk about which statistics you'll want to focus on when you gem.
Why you probably will never get a blue response
Here's the tldr version of the article for folks that are so inclined: Question: How can I get blue to respond to my forum post?Answer: You can't.Question: Will I ever get a blue response?Answer: No. One of the most consistent and annoying things about the forums lately are people begging for blue responses. It's reached a near epidemic level with the greater visibility of Ghostcrawler and sites like WoW Insider, MMO-Champion, and World of Raids reporting on everything he says.Most of this blue begging, as I've come to call it, used to occur in the General Forums; bugging for a Neth or Drysc response to everything. The begging then migrated over to the Customer Service Forums, asking for someone like Belfaire to respond (I admit I'm guilty of doing that once or twice, but hey, it worked out in the end). Now the begging is centered around the Role Forums, pleading for a Ghostcrawler response like the world is about to end if the blue beggar doesn't get one.
Many free US character transfers opened
Good evening, US WoW players. I've just received a priority message from Zarhym, your favorite floating skull: many North American PvP, RP, and RP-PvP realms now have transfers available! The following transfers are scheduled to run until Tuesday, February 3, at 5:00 PST: Source A (PvP): Azgalor, Bloodscalp (Horde transfers only), Cho'gall (Horde transfers only), Crushridge, Dark Iron, Darkspear, Deathwing, Drak'Tharon, Dunemaul, Firetree, Gorefiend, Nathrezim, Shadowmoon, Smolderthorn, Spinebreaker, Stormscale, Tortheldrin, WildHammer Destination A (PvP): Malorne, Scilla Source B (RP): Argent Dawn, Cenarion Circle, Earthen Ring, Feathermoon, Moon Guard, Scarlet Crusade, Shadow Council Destination B (RP): Wyrmrest Accord Source C (RP-PvP): Maelstrom, Twisting Nether Destination C: Scilla (PvP), Wyrmrest Accord (RP) Hey, that includes my own native realm, Shadow Council. But I'm never moving; I love that place. In addition, the following PvE transfers will be enabled this Thursday, January 29, at 6 PM PST, and are scheduled to run until Monday, February 2, at 6 PM PST: Source D (PvE): Arygos, Alestrasza, Shadowsong, Eonar, Hyjal Destination D (PvE): Winterhoof As ever, transfers may close early if the desired population levels are reached, so go ahead and transfer early if you intend to do it.
Scattered Shots: A PvE gem and enchant guide for Hunters
Welcome to this week's edition of Scattered Shots, which is dedicated to shiny things and dust.So by now you've seen our normal dungeon gear guide, our heroic dungeon gear guide, our reputation gear guide, and our holiday gift guide. Between all of them, you should be able to put together a nice solid set of gear that should let you tackle 10-man Naxxramas pretty easily. But grabbing the gear is the easy part. To go the extra mile, you need to grab those gems and enchantments. Let's look at some of the best gems and enchantments you can take along to secure your place in the DPS charts in Naxxramas.
Macworld 2009: Blue Microphones
Good audio starts with a good microphone, and plenty of Mac podcasters depend on the effective and economical offerings from Blue. There are devices to fit most needs and most budgets in the Blue Microphones product line, and the company is beginning its string of three consecutive trade show appearances (Macworld, CES and NAMM in three weeks -- that's a lot of microphones) by showing off three new products. The Icicle XLR to USB converter is great for users with investments in legacy XLR gear who want a simple way to direct that audio to their computers; it's shipping now for $60 street price. (Update: we in no way meant to imply XLR is being phased out or is outdated by using the term "legacy" -- of course, it is standard in professional audio gear).The Mikey iPod microphone adds audio capture to most iPod models (not the iPhone or touch, unfortunately) with a swivel head and multiple gain settings to allow for recording over a variety of distances. Mikey retails for $80.Lastly, the EyeBall takes the popular Blue Snowflake mini-microphone and adds in a retractable, "Super HD" webcam that pops out of the side of the microphone when needed. The EyeBall is available for a street price of $100, a $30 premium over the conventional Snowflake model.You can see more details of all three products in the gallery below and the video in the 2nd half of the post.%Gallery-41296%
Sony Asia introduces two new colors
There haven't been many color variations of the PSP-3000 series yet. That is, until now. Sony Asia has just revealed two new colors: Radiant Red and Vibrant Blue. Both models are part of a new series called "Carnival Color." No word on whether if these colors will make it to other territories. These two colorful systems will be available in Taiwan starting January 17th.[Via PSPHyper]
More on Ulduar and hard modes
Daelo, the lead encounter designer, has dropped a few more details about Ulduar, the tier 8 raid that is coming in patch 3.1 (whenever that happens to be). We heard yesterday that there will be more "hard modes" in the raid, analogous to Sartharion. Today we learn that, again like Sartharion, completing the hard modes will give you not only achievements but also additional, better loot. There is also, apparently, going to be an optional encounter in the raid that will be hard-mode-only; I'm picturing something like Nightbane here. Furthermore, Ulduar in general, according to the post, will be harder than Naxxramas is. Naxx was tuned easy on purpose, and the devs have been saying for a while that Ulduar will not be that way, to the same extent. The analogy Daelo makes in his post is that if Naxx is "the introduction to raiding 101 class for players who have never raided before," Ulduar is "the second year class." So we won't be hitting a brick wall, but it probably won't be compared to UBRS either like Naxx often is now. Either way, we won't know much for sure until it's up on the PTR, but I'm certainly looking forward to it.
Researchers achieve new efficiency record of blue OLEDs
Ever since Sony's XEL-1 hit the market, pundits have pointed to the (comparatively) short-lived blue OLED material as its biggest hamstring. Researchers have been toiling around the clock in order to bring the blue lifepsan in line with its green and red siblings, and now it seems like a team of Gators are that much closer to the promise land. Reportedly, a gaggle of whiz-kids from the University of Florida have "achieved a new record in efficiency of blue organic light-emitting diodes, and because blue is essential to white light, the advance helps overcome a hurdle to lighting that is much more efficient than compact fluorescents." Franky So (pictured) and his diligent crew were able to reach a peak blue OLED efficiency of 50 lumens per watt, which is halfway to his goal of at least 100 lumens per watt. Hurry it up, folks -- CES is just around the corner.[Via Physorg]
Dual specs likely to come in next World of Warcraft update
Our sister site WoW Insider has some dirt on the upcoming addition of dual specialization in World of Warcraft. This dirt was supplied by a blue (a Blizzard employee) post on the official game forums. The ability to have one character with two sets of talent builds and hotbars has been a hotly desired feature every since Blizzard brought it up back at the last BlizzCon.It sounds like players can expect flipping between talent builds to be trivial in towns and such, but not nearly so trivial out when out in the wide open world. The blue poster, known as Ghostcrawler, also said that the current goal is to get this new feature in the next big content patch. When will that be? It's anyone's guess, but hopefully it's only a few more months out -- we're starting to get that re-spec itch again. One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!
Blue & red Zune 120s available just in time for the holidays
It looks like Microsoft's trying to reel in shoppers not only through price cuts this holiday season, but by introducing some new colors as well. The folks up in Redmond have just made blue and red versions of the socializing little PMP available on its Zune Originals site. Prices start at $249, and the company suggests placing orders by the 19th to ensure delivery by Christmas Eve. Sure, It may not be a Gears of War 2 special-edition, but it's definitely an alternative to black. So if you've been looking for something to give that special someone -- and nothing on our guide matches your style -- be sure to hit Microsoft's site to check out all your options.[Via zunerama]
