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The Daily Grind: What are you going to do in Land of the Dead?
We have a bunch of Warhammer Online coverage lined up for you this week, with everything from exclusive interviews with some of the staff of Mythic Entertainment to a complete overview of the new Land of the Dead zone that will be heading to WAR subscribers everywhere thanks to a free game update. With all of this new information comes more hype, so we want to know exactly what you're feeling about the new dungeon coming out.Are you excited about the release of the spiritual successor dungeon to Dark Age of Camelot's Darkness Falls? Are you going to be jumping in to the new RvR zone with glee? Are you interested in the slew of new PQs that will be in the Necropolis, or are you looking forward to that new instanced dungeon? Or, maybe it's the tweaks to tier 4 that's getting you all excited?Whatever it is, we want to know about it. Throw your comments in here and let us know!
Reminder: Declare your loyalty to enter to win a T-shirt from SwagDog!
Have you declared your faction yet? SwagDog.com and WoW Insider are teaming up to give away a trio of their custom t-shirts -- to enter, you've just got to leave a comment on our post from earlier this week (not this post -- leaving a comment on this post gets you nothing but a grimy sense of self-satisfaction), and make sure you declare your loyalty to the Alliance or Horde.Why? Because we're giving away three custom-designed t-shirts in total -- one to a random Ally, one to a random Hordie, and a third to a random commenter of the faction with the most supporters. If more Alliance comment, they'll get the third t-shirt, or if more people shout that they're "For the Horde," then an Orc, Troll, Forsaken, Tauren, or Blood Elf will get the extra freebie. We haven't tallied all of the comments yet, but I believe (this is an unofficial estimate) that the Horde currently have a slight advantage. So if you're Alliance, or you have some Alliance guildies who haven't commented yet, tell them to "grab your sword and fight the Horde!" and send them over to the post. Or if you're Horde, you might want to try and solidify your lead.The contest ends tomorrow night, Friday the 3rd, at midnight, so while you can only comment once (remember, on that post, not this one), you've only got a day left if you want to get your comment in. Good luck!
Reminder: Enter to win a BlizzCon Badge from Shyka and WoW Insider
Have you entered our BlizzCon badge contest yet? There's just about two days left to enter your comment on our contest post (leave a comment on that post, not this post, as entering your comment on this post earns you nothing but some snarky comments from readers making fun of you for posting on the wrong post), so if you haven't yet, head over there and do so right now.Remember, we're not giving away an official BlizzCon ticket (yet), but we are giving away some custom-made art of the character of your choice, conveniently laminated in badge form for wearing around BlizzCon. The art is made just for you by Shyka, who is a great artist and who kindly offered us a badge to give away. Tomorrow night at midnight we'll choose one lucky commenter to win the badge, and if you do win it, make sure to come see us at BlizzCon so we can check out how awesome it is.Official rules and other information are over on the contest post -- leave a comment over there to make sure you're entered for the random drawing tomorrow night. Good luck!
Reminder: Two chances left to win a Tabard of Flame from WoW Insider
Pssst. Hey evening readers. We know you guys usually can't visit us at work or school -- you have to wait until you get home to check the site every day. Maybe you're eating dinner right now, chowing down on leftover takeout and catching up on all the WoW news of the day while flying around to do your daily quests. We appreciate you tuning in, and that's why we've waited until your time of the day to remind you that you've got two chances left to enter to win a Tabard of Flame from WoW Insider and WoW TCG Loot.We started this contest on Tuesday (in the morning, which is why we were worried you guys might not see it), and since you can put a comment on the contest post every day (until tomorrow night at midnight), that means that you all have two days left to enter a comment. So even if you missed the contest before, you can still get in on the action. Please note that to enter, you must leave a comment on the contest post, not this post. Leaving a comment on this post gets you nothing but our satisfaction, and while that's worth a lot, you probably want a Tabard of Flame even more. And make sure to use a real email that you check often, so we can get in touch with you if you win.So thanks, evening readers, for tuning in every night here after a long day's work. We appreciate it, and we really hope you win the tabard. Because as much as we love our early morning and late night readers, they don't read the site at quite the same time as you do, if you know what we mean.
Reminder: Win Manaprincess gift pack from WoW Insider
What's going on WoW Insider reader night crew? Don't tell the morning crew we told you this, but we know you're good people (some might say even better than the early risers are). You're willing to come and read the site late into the night, and for that, we'd like to make sure you don't miss our Manaprincess contest, going on right now. You could win a Manaprincess gift pack, complete with these Hearthstone charms as well as a set of Health and Mana potion pendants, from Manaprincess and WoW Insider.To enter, you've got leave a comment on our contest post (not this post, that post), and that's it. Please only comment once, and do it before Friday night at midnight, when we'll randomly pick a winner to give the gift pack to. Once more, to enter you must comment on the contest post (commenting on this post will give you nothing at all but the satisfaction of having left your mark on this page).You're some of our favorite readers, late night crew, so we wanted to make sure you got a chance to enter, too. Just don't tell the morning crew we did -- oh, hi there, morning crew! Didn't realize you all were coming in so early this morning!
Profile problems?
We've gotten a lot of e-mails lately from people who are having trouble getting into their user profiles -- apparently, passwords aren't working. Never fear! We're aware of the problem and we've asked that it be looked into. We hope to be able to report a fix soon. For now, the only known solution, if you must change your profile details, is to use a new login name. Which is to say there's no solution for the moment, but bide a while and we'll get you fixed up.While we have your attention, we've also got a little announcement about our recent casting call. Did you apply? If so, please be patient; the process of winnowing through applications takes a while. We've received a lot of e-mails asking when we might make our decision, but please keep in mind that it hasn't even been two weeks since we stopped taking submissions, and we have a vast and incredible pile of applicants to sift through. We'll get through 'em, don't worry. It just won't be today. We're picky.
Today's most commented video: Message board sketch
In this NSFW (for language) video short, CollegeHumor applies the message-board mechanics to a business setting for amusing results. Quality writing offsets the week-and-a-half age. (And we're sure you'll be inspired to tell us off in the comments after viewing.)Watch the video after the break, and leave your own hilarious message.[Image credit]
DS Fanswag: Win a copy of Etrian Odyssey
Wouldn't it be awesome if your mailbox randomly generated spankin' new DS games? While we may not have mastered nanotech, we can offer you the next best thing, which is a chance for a free copy of Etrian Odyssey. All you have to do is leave a comment below. Convince us that you burn with the desire for Etrian Odyssey, and we just may draw your name. It helps if mathematics happen to be on your side. Entries will be accepted through June 21 -- as soon as the clock ticks over to midnight on the 22nd, your chance to enter will disappear, so get commenting! We'll notify the winner on Friday, June 22.The rules are simple, but all fine print aside, all you have to do is leave a comment on this very entry. Make sure you enter a valid e-mail address in the applicable field, because if you don't, it won't matter if we draw your name -- if we can't get in touch with you, we'll have to give your game to someone else.The official rules for the DS Fanswag giveaway
To comment or not to comment...
I certainly hope that you'll decide to comment -- especially since we've got a swanky new comment system running now. One of my own pet peeves about commenting here in the past was the need for e-mail confirmation, which was handy for keeping spam out, but was slow and potentially annoying when you wanted to leave comments. With this new system, you can set a password linked to your e-mail address and use it to make comments -- sans confirmation e-mails -- on sites throughout the Weblogs, Inc network. So set yourself up in the system and feel free to speak your peace -- sans e-mail confirmation.Update: To answer a few frequent questions:Yes, you will be able to change your password; our developers are working on the tool that will allow you to do so. In the meantime, we are hard-pressed to think of any modern browser that will not automagically remember your password for you -- please use this as a temporary solution!Extraneous http:// links inserted in some name links will be fixed very shortly.The "E-mail me when someone replies" function is only going to email you when someone replies to your specific comment -- not to the post in general. Let this be a hint to you that we will be rolling out Engadget-style comment threading in the future , and this is where that feature will come into play. However, currently our comments are not yet threaded, so you shouldn't actually get any email reply notifications -- yet! Stay tuned... Rome.com wasn't built in a day.
Reminder: send us your tips!
We TUAW bloggers use a variety of methods and resources to track down the news, tips, tricks and other forms of Mac interestingness we post, and among the most important of them are the tips from readers like you. However, we've noticed an increase in questions in post comments on how to send us tips, so we thought it might be a good time to post a reminder.Our tips form is linked at the bottom of our category list (pictured here, though yes: it's tiny and hard to find. Rest assured, we're working on it), and its URL is located in the same place as virtually any other blog in the Weblogs, Inc. network: tuaw.com/tips gets you to our tips form, while DVguru.com/tips will let you drop our sister blog on all things digital video a line as well.So if you've found a hot piece of news, a killer tip or someone who turned their PowerMac into a mailbox, be sure to send it our way, and your name just might get emblazoned in the TUAW archives with our post.
How do we level? Let us count the ways
From reader Luclan comes a very important question: what, in our experience, is the best or fastest way of levelling up quickly?First off, I believe levelling quickly in the "power-levelling" sense, and levelling well, are two different things. Getting a level 60 friend to run you through all the lower dungeons for loot won't help you learn how to play your class in groups; spending five levels grinding in one spot doesn't equip you to deal with a wide variety of situations. The journey through each level should, in my opinion, be savoured and learnt from -- after all, when you end up at level 60, knowing as much as possible about your class is a great start.
The 'death of childhood'? Blame games, say UK childcare experts
An open letter in the UK's Daily Telegraph newspaper condemns "junk culture" -- junk food, junk entertainment and a fast-moving culture -- for its effect on children, with sombre phrases like "ruining our children" and "the death of childhood" weighing down its paragraphs. From the letter:[Children] still need what developing human beings have always needed, including real food (as opposed to processed "junk"), real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen-based entertainment), first-hand experience of the world they live in and regular interaction with the real-life significant adults in their lives.A scathing commentary on the evils of modern life -- and what's more, plenty of readers agree that the hands-off parenting enabled by video games is a big problem for today's youth. Perhaps the high profile given to this complaint (a national broadsheet) will open up some serious debate on the matter, rather than give a platform for rabid anti-gaming propaganda to spread to the UK as well.
Sunday survey results: FM Transmitters - yea...not really
This past Sunday I ran a survey to see what y'all thought of iPod FM transmitters - the good, the bad and the ugly. I figured that since I weeded through all the comments, I should let you guys know whether you gave this particular category of iPod accessories a thumbs up or down.The greater majority of you really weren't that fond of FM transmitters, the two largest reasons being signal unreliability and overall audio quality. Many of the FM transmitter haters recommended going with solutions like cassette adapters, FM modulators or a full-on dedicated stereo with iPod-friendly inputs.Among the still-healthy pro-FM transmitter crowd however, there were three clear favorites: Kensington, Griffin and Monster. This was really helpful in narrowing down my options, and I think I'm going to do some more digging on those and what all this FM stuff is about before dropping another ~ $70-80 or more on something like this.Ultimately, since my wife always beats me to the Matrix anyway (and she already made me sleep on the couch for dropping $80 on an iPod accessory), I opted to go with a $15 cassette adapter for now (on a side note: it's hilarious what accessory makers can get away with by slapping iPod branding on cassette tape adapters these days). I know, I know: a cheap and simple solution for all the awesome feedback you readers offered, but until AOL (remember: they bought Weblogs, Inc. last year. You're reading an AOL blog! Mwahaha!) sends the 6-figure job offer my way, I'll have to wait on the pimped out touch-screen iPod + Car Borg™ adapter (heck AOL, I'll even take a 5-figure job!). When I do get around to finding that perfect iPod/Borg/accessory thingy, trust me: you'll be the first to know. Resistance, after all, is futile.
Joystiq: How the star system works
Have you been a long-time poster at Joystiq or one of its awesome network-affiliated sites, only to see others have stars placed next to their name (or negatives) and wonder what exactly dictates that rewarding or stripping of star(s)? Well, Joystiq's Vlad Cole has broken down the star system to show you exactly how it works. These guidelines apply to all the Joystiq network sites: Value: Does the comment enhance the topic at hand and add new perspective to the discussion? Is it a good question or interesting insight? Impartiality: This is hard, especially for Fanboy sites such as this, but as much as we loudly proclaim this system to be the superior, it detracts from the discussion at hand. It's OK to be touched with Fanboyitis, however try to curb it as best as you can as to not damage the topic at hand whilst commenting. Civility: This is just common sense. We all have opinions and want to share them, however as human beings we have the ability to exercise civility, even during the most heated debate. Other: Humor, wit, and bribes of cold, fresh chocolate milk. We like chocolate milk. As such, these are the guidelines followed when hiring Bloggers for the network (you have no idea how much chocolate milk it took for me to get the job), so keep that in mind should you one day wish to kill me and take my place. Vlad is answering as many questions as he can over at Joystiq, but if you post any questions here, we'll try the best we can to answer.
Review: iWeb's enhancements are exactly what it needed
In the most recent iLife '06 software update that Damien mentioned, iWeb understandably received the largest bump of new features and bug fixes; after all, it is the latest to arrive at the iLife party. Considering that I've been pretty vocal about my gripes with this otherwise fantastic addition to both iLife and .Mac, you can imagine my enthusiasm for Software Update to work its magic asap.After tinkering with the new features in iWeb 1.1 like blog comments and drop-dead simple photo album page creation, I thought I'd post a quick review of what's new, as I think iWeb is finally starting to fit into its role of a strong, WYSIWYG 1.0 application from Apple.
Rumor: 360 wireless gaming receiver $20; wheel $130; headset $60; camera $40; Halo and Forza faceplates $20 [update 1]
Thanks to a reliable source from Microsoft, we've learned some important details about the new peripherals announced for the Xbox 360, including pricing and a few Halo faceplate (non)specifics. Check out the leaked info and prices below: 360 wireless gaming receiver (which enables wireless 360 controllers, headsets, and wheels on your PC): $20 Wireless racing wheel: $130 Wireless headset: $60 Xbox Live Vision Camera (with headset, one month of Live Gold, and one arcade -- presumably Xbox Live Arcade -- game): $40 New faceplates for Halo (with the Master Chief on 'em, but not Halo 3 specific) and Forza (no word on connections to the sequel): $20 each 256 MB portable memory unit (MU): no official price yet, but definitely not four times the cost of the older 64MB MU Besides acknowledging that the PC is "the biggest gaming device of all," MS appears to be setting an agressive price for its most relevant new PC accessory, the wireless gaming receiver (at least in comparison to the outrageously priced 360 wireless networking adapter). Unfortunately, no price was revealed as of yet for the USB-based HD-DVD add-on.We've speculated in our recent podcasts as to what would happen to the various 360 SKUs when price drops inevitably occur. An interesting theory bandied about by prolific Joystiq Contributor epobirs (on our earlier bump-to-256MB-MU post) was that a $20 price drop for the Core system, coupled with a $20 price drop on the 64MB MU, would finally allow folks to pick up a capable non-Premium bundle for the original $300 Core price point. (Not a bad way to undercut PS2 memory card prices, too.) We hope to get official confirmation on this info in the not-too-distant future.[Update: Sorry, had the camera price wrong in the headline; it now matches the price of the bundle listed in the body of the text below.]See also: 360's Mem Unit getting a bump to 256MB? (Comment from epobirs) Use 360 wireless peripherals with a PC Engadget & Joystiq's live coverage of Microsoft's Xbox 360 E3 event Joystiq / Engadget podcasts from Day One and Day Two of E3 2006
