Chapter 7
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Tablet maker Pandigital no longer offering warranty replacements, reminds us it's now out of business
To be completely fair, Pandigital officially called it quits back in July of this year, when it handed the remaining of its assets to a liquidator in order to comply with the don't-call-it-a-bankruptcy process. Now, however, the creator of that 7-inch Novel slate has been contacting former customers -- that are experiencing tablet woes -- to let them know it will no longer be able to offer such customer service, noting that "due to this liquidation process any further requests for warranty replacements cannot be honored." Given its earlier filing with the Credit Management Association, the notice doesn't exactly strike us a surprise, but it does tell us not to expect the Supernova maker to splash a comeback any time soon. You'll find the original email sent to troubled customers right after the break. Due to this liquidation process any further requests for warranty replacements cannot be honored. Please be advised that Pandigital, Inc (the 'Company'), executed a General Assignment for the benefit of its creditors in favor of Credit Management Association on July 13, 2012 (the 'General Assignment'). A general assignment is a common law means of concluding the affairs of an insolvent debtor as an alternative to the Chapter 7 bankruptcy process. Pandigital is currently in the process of liquidation by the Assignee. You are receiving this email as you have recently been shipped a warranty replacement for a Pandigital product.
Fallen kingdom: 38 Studios' collapse and the pitfalls of using public money to support tech companies
In a career filled with many clutch throws from the baseball mound, former Boston Red Sox ace Curt Schilling's main calling card was a gutsy post-season performance made even more memorable by a blood-soaked sock. It was a pitch made by Schilling outside of Major League Baseball, however, that would prove to be his most daring one yet. In 2010, Schilling convinced Rhode Island officials to give his video game company, 38 Studios, a $75 million loan guarantee. A self-professed fan of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG), Schilling's dream was to create a worthy competitor to Blizzard's MMORPG juggernaut, World of Warcraft. In 2006, Schilling started Green Monster Games, which was later renamed 38 Studios. Luring the company away from Massachusetts was supposed to bring in more than 400 jobs and serve as the linchpin for launching a new tech-based industry in Rhode Island. Instead, the state's taxpayers found themselves left at the table with a multimillion-dollar tab.
Lunia releases Chapter 7 and doubles their affection
It's always a little frustrating to have to wait for installments of a story you're enjoying, but at the same time it makes it that much more satisfying when each part comes out. Fans of Lunia have plenty of reason to be satisfied, as Chapter 7 of the heavily anime-influenced and cel-shaded title has just been released. And if that weren't enough reason to be happy, players are being given the opportunity for increased experience via the new Double the Love event running through June 23rd. The chapter update adds ten new stages to the game, as well as a new level for raid stages and a new set of equipment for players. It also continues the game's central plotline, with level 60 and up players continuing to search for a way of reviving the princess Eir. Players can experience both the Double the Love event and the full update on Lunia right now, so if you're a current or former player, take a look at the patch notes to see what's changed.
WSJ: GameCrazy officially shuttered in US alongside Hollywood Video
GameCrazy's parent company Movie Gallery Inc. is said to be shuttering the approximately 250 remaining GC stores across the United States, alongside 2,165 Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video outlets. Roughly 19,000 people are estimated to be out of work due to the closures, according to a Wall Street Journal report, and the company is said to be filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. People "familiar with the matter" told the WSJ that the chain considered "reorganizing around smaller core stores" before filing for bankruptcy, but the idea "never got any traction." It also appears that the 184 or so Canadian outlets will remain unaffected, but we've heard nothing official yet. Reportedly, the US stores will begin liquidation "over the next couple of months" until inventories run dry, mirroring the murmurs we heard this past weekend. While the reality that GameCrazy is suffering this fate certainly appears likely (our tips box seems to corroborate the information), we should note that Movie Gallery Inc. has yet to issue any formal statement regarding the allegations. Our calls to GameCrazy corporate have similarly gone unanswered. If you are a GameCrazy, Hollywood Video, or Movie Gallery employee with any form of official documentation on this subject, we'd love to hear from you. [Via GameSpot]
The Star Wars Galaxies team plans for 2008
Just as they did after Chapter 7, the folks behind the scenes making Star Wars Galaxies have offered up a look at how they think the game is going. Lorin 'Deadmeat' Jameson, the game's producer, reflects on their successes with Chapter 8. The title's space content has been significantly expanded, and he implores ground-based gamers to look to the skies in the wake of the most recent update.He also looks forward, to the coming year of Galaxies updates. The team has wanted for some time to be more responsive to player interests. The long wait between Chapter publishes means that pressing issues fester on the forums before being addressed by new code. Jameson outlines their response to this problem: splitting the development cycle in two. Going forward, there will be two tracks on which updates will be pushed out. One, called simply 'Updates', will address game balance issues recognized by players and QA as needing some attention. He singles out the Smuggler and Spy classes as being the first to receive this track's attention.The other track is going to be called 'Content'. This is the track that 'new stuff' will appear in, and we should expect to see something out of this group roughly every eight weeks. The first of these content updates will be a heroic encounter with the deadly, legendary Sith known as Exar Kun. Further content work will focus on more collections, storyteller additions, quests, and new gameplay features.I continue to be impressed with the work the SWG team is putting out. Am I the only one? I know that some folks are still bitter about the whole NGE thing but c'mon: an instanced Star Destroyer mission? That's just cool.
Star Wars Galaxies patched to 7.2, 54 month vet awards added
The Chapter 7 update to Star Wars Galaxies went live at the beginning of the month, and has already been patched once. Now the second iteration of the Chapter content is going out to live servers - with presents! Patch 7.2 is aimed primarily at further tweaking the content recently added to the game. Fix highlights include: Correcting problems with the Tusken Raiders Heroic encounter. Adding/improving functionality on Storyteller jukeboxes. Fixes allowing some previously un-completable quests to be finished (including expanding the definition of 'Veermok' for the 'Veermok Killer' quest, thankfully). And I quote, "Removed the Emperor's underpants." Anyone want to explain that, or is this some sort of practical joke? I wouldn't want to tick off a Sith Lord, but that's just me. They've also added 54 month veteran rewards to the game. Yes, the game's been out that long. Yes, that makes you old. Players who have accounts that 'venerable' now have some attractive new options to choose between: A city-placeable flag, which can be changed between one of a dozen different designs. A podracer statue, appropriate for all your housing decoration needs. A permanent storyteller token, which will allow to spawn a boss level Super Battle Droid, Rebel Commando Vindicator, or Stormtrooper - perfect for those epic events.
Star Wars Galaxies post-chapter state of the game
With Chapter 7 just released, and already patched, the developers and producers of Star Wars Galaxies are looking forward to Chapter 8 and beyond. To give us a sort of snapshot of what the game looks like right now, Producer Jake Neri and Lead Designer Thomas Blair passed along a State of the Game letter to the folks at WarCry. They recap the last half-year or so of content updates (like the Chapter 6 Beast Mastery system and the big bug fix that followed), and go into a good bit of detail on what was just released in Chapter 7. We just released our latest piece of content, Chapter 7: A Collection of Heroes and we're feeling very good about the release. We haven't delivered a piece of content this big since the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion pack, and it was no simple task pulling the Chapter together. The Chapter is focused around two new major systems, the Collections System and the Heroic Encounter System, which presented a great challenge, but the team definitely succeeded in pulling it off. Now that the players are engaged in the content we're hearing good things about the release and it's always nice to get that positive feedback.At the letter's conclusion the two men tease the core concept behind Chapter 8: space.Early in the year we polled players to see what they wanted in the game, and space-based content came in very high. Without giving too much detail right now, our broad goal is to provide content to SWG's space game, which really hasn't been touched much over the past two years. The Chapter gives us an opportunity to link the Collections and Heroic Systems to space content. We are already working on a new heroic encounter for Chapter 8, as well as additions to Aurilia to reflect the new heroic story.
Star Wars Galaxies Patch 7.1, new site features
Chapter Update #7 just hit the live servers at the beginning of the month, but already the Star Wars Galaxies live team is working to improve the just-released content. Patch 7.1 highlights include: Adjusted the creature difficulty class weighting for hydrolyses extraction. Players should see consistently higher results from Boss and Elite level creatures over normal. Added "Start Listening to Jukebox" and "Stop Listening to Jukebox" as radial options on a jukebox. This will allow players to listen to the jukebox music if they missed the automated start. This usually happens in cases when they are not part of the jukebox owner's story at the time it started. Storyteller Imperial officers and stormtrooper squad leaders should now use their ranged attack. Heroic Tuskens will now update the Tusken Terrorizer collection. Fixed a case that would cause the second player in a group to launch their own instance rather than join the first player. Lord Vartonis's health has been reduced to the intended level. The official site is also featuring a pair of informational pages this week. One is a new comprehensive list of the Player Cities across the galaxies. It lists their planets and locations, as well as their size for players who want to explore. They also have up a preview of Chapter 8: three brand new ships slated for inclusion in the space-focused game update.
Witness the power of this fully armed and operational SWG update
Despite its rocky past, Star Wars Galaxies still has a solid base of players who crave new content. To meet the demand, SOE has been releasing major updates every couple of months. It's been a longer wait than usual since the last Chapter, which went live way back in May.Now Chapter 7 has finally hit the streets. Is it worth the delay? Read the release notes and come to your own conclusions. The quick of it is: new epic encounter instances, a new town where high-level players can congregate in preparation for said encounters, and over 90 "collections" for the patient, OCD gamer.Oh, and RPG Vault's Jonric interviewed LucasArts Associate Producer Tim Temmerman about the update yesterday; be sure and glance over that for some more insight. Of course, if you're a Star Wars Galaxies player you can just log in and play the thing yourself.
