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Gran Turismo 5 patch v1.03 adds tiered damage to online races
Those of you taking Gran Turismo 5's detailed vehicles onto the information superhighway will be glad to hear that the latest patch for the game adds selectable car damage. After downloading the patch, GT5's "My Lounge" section allows you to choose how much mechanical damage you're willing to suffer during online play, from "None" to "Heavy" ("Mechanical damage will be more severe, and can only be repaired by making a pit stop ... damaged parts will be indicated with on-screen icons"). The "Light" damage option means parts of your car can be damaged, but its health regenerates (no, we're not joking). It's not clear whether the update also adds cover for your cars to hide behind while said health regenerates. The patch is available as of right now and it takes up approximately 150MB of HDD space -- Polyphony Digital has yet to detail any other fixes/additions the patch brings with it. If you spot anything else, feel free to drop us a line! [Thanks Russ!]
Final Fantasy XIV expands details on the battle system
While Final Fantasy XIV doesn't go out of its way to be massively accessible, Square-Enix is clearly making a conscious effort to avoid confusion wherever possible. The official player site has been steadily receiving updates about how game systems work and what's going on behind the scenes, with the newest update discussing Battle Regimens and incapacitating body parts in combat. The systems had never been discussed in-depth before, but they now offer players a chance to understand exactly what each system entails. Battle Regimens are distantly similar in theory to the skillchains that ruled Final Fantasy XI's combat, but they have many differences in practice. Rather than being a chained deployment of specific skills, chains of general ability types will both buff the party and debuff the enemy party. Body parts, meanwhile, are targeted and damaged by certain weaponskills, with a helpful chart explaining what skills target what and which types of monsters can be affected. While it doesn't reveal the full details of Final Fantasy XIV's combat, it should provide players with an excellent place to start understanding the system.
Warhammer Online details plans for buffing turrets and daemons
Pets of any kind can pose some issues in games. On the one hand, you want both temporary and permanent pets to provide a utility; on the other hand, you don't want someone crippled without the pet. Warhammer Online has a number of classes that use both permanent and temporary companions, and as part of the next update for the game, the team is working on making the engineer's turrets and the magus's daemons more useful for players in combat. Both daemons and turrets will now scale with the owner's stats, allowing their growth to keep better pace with more powerful characters. Equally important, however, is the new stacking buff that both types will receive when the engineer or magus remains near their pet. The buff will increase damage gradually while the player remains nearby, up to a 20% buff to damage output. Take a look at the full details from the development team in this small preview, a welcome promised bone for Warhammer Online players.
Totem Talk: Enhance DPS on the move
Rich Maloy, master of the turn-around-Frost-Shock, nerd-rager of the Big Crits (week 7 coming next week), and blogger of the enhancement variety prides himself on keeping the pressure on the boss at all times. He encourages you to work on your turn-around jump shot this week. I love being melee. I love being up in the middle of the fray right on the boss' heel, breathing in the fumes of battle and mashing my abilities as fast as global cooldowns will allow. But the cost of being in the heart of the action are cleaves. And whirlwinds. And tail swipes, dragon breaths, shock vortexes, running around the room chasing ads, and oh yeah, dodging cleaves. Did I mention whirlwinds yet? Granted, there's not as much hate on melee in Wrath as there was in The Burning Crusade, but our DPS is still limited by time on target. We are after all, melee. Yet the great thing about enhance is when we're not in melee range, we can still lob some spells and drop some fire bombs all while running around dodging those whirlwinds. It was Sindragosa's Permeating Chill that first got me thinking about maximizing my damage output while I'm not doing melee attacks. Also, her Blistering Cold got me wondering about ways to keep damage on boss even while running in the complete opposite direction. What follows are some of my simple strategies for maximizing time on target and keeping the damage pumping even while running around.
TERA berserker interview, part two
TERA, the upcoming action fantasy MMORPG from En Masse Entertainment and Bluehole Studio, is looking to put a fresh spin on both genre combat and the traditional healer/tank/damage dynamic. One way the designers are attempting to do this is through individual classes that play a bit differently from what you might expect. Take the berserker for instance. Rather than opting for your standard meat shield, Bluehole has given the class significant DPS capabilities as well. En Masse's Brian Knox and and Scott James Magner recently chatted about the berserker's unique features in part two of a lengthy interview with ZAM.com. "You want to be a target as a Berserker, but you also want to be targeting. And that's not a word we use a lot for this game. We talk about action and the way we play, but you are a destination for damage, just as you are an output of damage going the other direction," Magner says. Check out the new interview segment, as well as the previous installment, at ZAM.com.
Icecrown Citadel raid buff has been buffed to 10%
Raiders rejoice (or despair depending on how you feel about it)! The Icecrown raid wide buff has been increased by an additional 5% to 10%. Anyway, if your raid has been on the brink of taking down some bosses but could not muster enough firepower, then the improved Strength of Wrynn or Hellscream's Warsong could be that extra push you need! For more information and resources, check out WoW.com's Icecrown Citadel raid strategy and information page!
Totem Talk: Glyphing for Fire Elemental
Axes, maces, lightning, fire, frost, and wolves, and best of all, Windfury. It can mean only one thing: enhancement. Rich Maloy lives it and loves it. His main spec is enhance. His off-spec is enhance. He blogs about the life and times of enhance at Big Hit Box, pens the enhance side of Totem Talk, and leads the guild Big Crits as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. After writing last week's article and then this week diving headfirst into some 10s and 25s I felt like the Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem needed some love. I felt even more so after looking at my combat parses for Lich King fights and noticing Fire Nova was my second highest damage ability. The fight is a long one -- a very long one -- and it got me wondering if I could step up my output by glyphing into fire ele. After all, who doesn't want more minions running around doing damage for them? Fire ele has the potential to be a great glyph: the elemental is another pet doing good damage and we can still cast Fire Nova off the totem. Of course the downsides are deal breakers for the glyph in most cases: The pet is leashed to the totem Fire Nova's damage is lost if the boss or mobs move away from the totem The 5 minute cooldown is still longer than most boss fights Read more to see when and where it's appropriate to glyph into this.
Icecrown Citadel raid buffs live
If your guild has been struggling throughout the various bosses in Icecrown Citadel, then struggle no more! Icecrown Citadel raid buffs are now live. For the Alliance, it is called Strength of Wrynn and the Horde version of the buff is Hellscream's Warsong. For now, your health, healing done, and damage done are increased by 5%. It looks like it'll eventually cap out and end at 30% but who knows when that will be. All in all, the buffs will definitely help progression raids out. If your raid doesn't need the buffs, you can simply talk to your faction guy and tell him to go away. He'll ask you once just to confirm, but if you are sure, he'll disappear. We've known that the raid wide buffs would appear at some point but not exactly when. Be sure to check out WoW.com's Icecrown Citadel raid strategy and information page!
The Daily Grind: How realistic do you like your games?
In real life, if you've not noticed, we don't have hit points. Getting stabbed by a sword once is pretty much crippling if not outright fatal. Fall too far and you don't suffer some uniform amount of damage across your whole body -- you frequently wind up breaking your legs or your spine, and it can be a slow and painful recovery process if you ever recover. We can't wander through the world without ever bothering to eat, drink, or sleep, and when you get shot to death, there will not be a fresh clone waiting to get you back into the action. In the interests of being polite, we'll not even mention the usual lack of other important facilities. We accept that there's going to be some degree of unreal mechanics in a video game, of course, but that doesn't mean that some of us don't want the game to stick fairly close to the real world. By the same token, though, some of us take the Mystery Science Theater 3000 mantra to heart -- it's just a game, and it's not all that important if it makes real-world sense in sticky parts. Where do you fall on the scale? Do you like your games fairly realistic, fairly unrealistic, or do you not care so long as the game itself is still fun?
MacBook Air meets bus, bus wins
Struggling to find a little something to be grateful for on this day of Thanksgiving? How about the fact that this isn't your laptop? While details are a tad sketchy, it seems that the owner of this MacBook Air somehow let his prized possession slip under a bus, which promptly drove right over it. Amazingly, the Air does apparently still work (apart from a little issue with the screen), although it's pretty clear that the bus came out ahead in this match-up. Hit up the link below for a few more pics. [Thanks, Akouris]
A macro for stacking parry or dodge
I haven't played a tank in a while, so I haven't had to mess with stats at endgame for a long time. Though my paladin is slowly getting there, so this little macro over at Honor's Code might come in handy. Parry and dodge are very similar abilities -- both of them help you to completely avoid damage from bosses as a tank. But they do have a very few important differences (Parry speeds up your next attack swing, and is affected by diminishing returns at higher levels of the stat), so when you're gearing up at endgame, you want to make sure to balance them out in the right way.
MacBook Car-nage: Surviving a drive-over
Yesterday, I had a distraught customer come into the store and lay the remains of a black MacBook (13-inch Early 2008) on the front counter. My immediate thought was that the machine had been trashed and was just at the shop to be recycled. I asked the customer what happened and he explained that it had been run over by a car. At this point I thought to myself, "Yikes, there's gotta be a story behind this one." As it turns out, it was just an unfortunate accident of forgetfulness. He just returned home from a road trip and set the machine down to bring in a load from the car. After being inside for a bit, he came out and decided to check his mailbox, which was just down the road. He stepped into the car, backed up and... CAR-NAGE! What's most amazing here isn't the accident, but what he discovered when he tried to power up the MacBook. Even after having a car completely crush it, it still worked. When the customer told me this, I couldn't believe it. I opened the display -- which you can see is absolutely smashed in the picture -- and pressed the power button. To my excited surprise, the machine turned on and booted into Leopard. After running a full suite of diagnostics on the machine, I found it needed a display assembly, optical drive, and optical drive bezel (the part of the inner frame that the discs go through). All of that was cheaper than getting a new machine, so I went to work. It took me a couple hours and some frame bending here and there, but after all was said and done, I gave the customer back a machine that would pass any warranty inspection at the Genius Bar. See the gallery for more pictures! Disclaimer: The Unofficial Apple Weblog cannot and will not be held responsible for any damage done to your computer by cars. Just because we think it's cool that it may survive doesn't mean you should go out and crush your MacBook. %Gallery-72641%
Apple: "Exploding" iPhones succumbed to external pressure
There's been much news of "exploding" iPhones lately. If you're unfamiliar with the story, the European Commission formally asked Apple to investigate a series of reports that users' iPhones were abruptly cracking and/or catching fire. According to the French periodical Les Echos, an iPhone in Aix-en-Provence, France, started to "crackle and pop like a deep-frier" before breaking violently apart. This past Friday, Apple said that, in all cases, the iPhones in question were damaged by an "external force," not a faulty battery or glass screen: "To date, there are no confirmed battery overheating incidents for iPhone 3GS and the number of reports we are investigating is in the single digits. The iPhones with broken glass that we have analyzed to date show that in all cases the glass cracked due to an external force that was applied to the iPhone."It does seem odd that at least four cases have been reported in France in short order. Still, it's even stranger that iPhones would suddenly turn into Molotov cocktails. We'll keep you updated on this story.
Phat Loot Phursday: Onyxia Scale Cloak
Special edition of Phat Loot Phriday this week, on a Phursday! Why? Because tomorrow is gonna be full of fun in the California sun.We did Quel'serrar a while back, so with Onyxia headed back to the game, we'll look at the other piece of gear that involved the black dragon we love to hate.Name: Onxyia Scale Cloak (Wowhead, Thottbot, WoWDB)Type: CloakArmor: 43Abilties: +7 Stamina, +16 Fire resistance. Ah, the days of level 60, they seem so far gone now. Compare this to a prime tanking cloak nowadays, and take a look at just how far we've come. On equip, protects the wearer from being fully engulfed by something called Shadow Flame. What is Shadow Flame, you ask? Here's where this item really gets interesting: sit back and enjoy a tale of old level 60 raiding. Shadow Flame is actually an ability used by Nefarian, Onyxia's brother, and a few other bosses in Blackwing Lair. He casts a huge unblockable AoE during his fight -- unblockable, that is, unless you're wearing one of these cloaks (although since then, Ice Block and Divine Shield will both stop it). %Gallery-33600%
Phat Loot Phriday: Petrified Ivy Sprig
Let's do a wand! A really, really hot wand, too -- best in slot for most casters in the game right now.Name: Petrified Ivy Sprig (Wowhead, Thottbot, WoWDB)Type: Epic WandDamage/Speed: 414-719 Nature / 1.80 (328.6 DPS)Attributes: +19 Intellect, +22 Spirit, +26 Stamina. Which is actually less than that other big endgame wand, but wait, there's more: %Gallery-33600%
Solving the mathmatical tangles of ArPen
Armor penetration is probably one of the most misunderstood stats in the game, for a number of reasons. First of all, it's only become popular lately -- while it's been in the game since 1.10, it's only started showing up regularly on items in Wrath. And even then it's really only a meta-meta stat: the core abilities like Strength and Agility are easy to understand, the next level of abilities are things like hit rating and crit rating, and then armor penetration, you could argue, goes another level after that: it's a stat that affects a stat affected by a stat. It's for that reason, then, that Xanthan argues we need a more elegant solution.Armor penetration basically allows you to hit an opponent as if they're wearing less armor than they really are. That's not to hard to understand -- if you have a certain amount of armor penetration, then the opponent armor number in the equation that determines damage done is lower (edit: by a percentage, not a number) than it would usually be. But the confusion comes in when you see how armor penetration scales. It actually scales exponentially, not linearly -- if you have no ArP and you increase it by a little bit, you only get a little extra damage increase. But if you have a lot, and you add a little more onto that, then you'll get a bigger damage increase, due to the way the math works (I'm bad at math, but Xanthan has an excellent, clear description of the calculations in the forum thread, and we've posted some explanations before as well). Blizzard recently capped ArP at 100% (so you could never get into a place where you're reducing armor below the amount of armor that's there), but it's still possible to have the amount of armor reduced equal the amount of armor on a target, causing the equation of armor vs. armor penetration to divide by 0, and at that point, things get wacky, and terms like "infinite damage" come into play.
Don't panic: Liquid damage, and what to do about it
We've all had an "oh poopie" moment involving liquids: Time slows down, you watch as the glass tips over, its contents cascading (beautifully, in another context perhaps) over the rim and onto the table. The rivulets of beverage roll in a miniscule tidal wave across the surface, over the edge, and drip to the floor. All in the span of a few seconds. The worst part is when there's a computer between the cup and the table. That's when an oops becomes a crisis. What's the best thing to do when there's a spill on your laptop? Keep calm and carry on: 1. Don't panic. First, know that your data is safe. Hard drives -- while not hermetically sealed -- are tightly put together. If you act quickly, you can prevent the liquid from getting to your hard disk, and damaging your valuable data. (I'll save the bad news for later.) 2. Turn off the computer. Even before you run to get a towel, turn the computer off. If you can't shut it down normally (the keyboard won't respond for example), try pressing the power button for several seconds to force the computer to shut down. Unplug the laptop, and disconnect any cables and USB devices. 3. With the lid open, turn the computer upside down. This prevents the liquid from getting too far into the computer. While the computer is upside down, remove the battery and set it aside. 4. Wipe up the liquid. All joking aside: use toilet paper. Ounce for ounce, it's the most absorbent material you're likely to have handy. It's also thin, so it can reach down into crevices in and around your keyboard to soak up the liquid. This is especially important for sugary drinks like colas and juice: Sugars are sticky, and if they dry, you'll have a bigger problem. Next: If you're prepared, you can take your computer apart to clean up any liquid inside.
Netflix Blu-ray movies showing up cracked and unplayable?
That's the word, with a small but vocal group of subscribers claiming their discs are repeatedly arriving with small cracks on their outer edges. It's unclear what might be to blame, even with the extra coating to prevent scratches on Blu-ray, they could still be susceptible to automated mail processing machines, manufacturing defects or perhaps a spontaneous game of mail Frisbee. The Mars Box blog experienced this issue back in '07 with the disc pictured above, but in the last few months reports seem to be picking up again. It's really too bad those extra costs can't buy tougher packaging like the cardboard slips GameFly uses, but Netflix told Wired the problem is "infinitesimally small" and changing shipping wouldn't be cost effective. We know plenty of you rent your discs, let us know, have you been afflicted?[Via Hacking Netflix]Read - The Mars BoxRead - WiredRead - AVS Forum
LG Arena destroyed, just because it was fun
It doesn't matter how many times we force ourselves to sit down and watch them -- torture tests of the newest, hottest phones always make us flinch (and ultimately vomit, if we endure them for long enough). As tough as it is on us, though, it's ten times tougher on these poor miracles of modern mobility, getting run over, left in puddles of rainwater, frozen, stepped on repeatedly, dropped, submersed in wine (for some reason we don't fully understand), blasted with dust, and tumbled in dryers. mail.ru hasn't published its full report on the Arena's ability to survive the insane battery of worst-case scenarios, but they've published a preview video -- and it doesn't look pretty for our S-Class friend. [Via Mobile Phone Helpdesk]
Crygil wants to know what you think of class roles
CM Crygil has posted a very general thread over on the forums asking players what they think of the various class roles out there: "Ranged/Melee/DPS, Tanking and Healing." As you probably have noticed, those three roles make up what are often called the Holy Trinity in role-playing games and MMOs: either you do damage, prevent damage, or recover from damage, and those three roles make up the basics of most roleplaying combat systems, including the battles in World of Warcraft.But as quite a few people in the thread say, they're not quite sure just why Crygil is asking for this information. Sure, there are lots of good and informative answers in here (most people actually spread out "the trinity" to four roles, splitting melee/close combat and ranged/magic combat into two parts), but as there has always been, there's really nothing outside of the kind of thinking that's been done before on the subject -- anytime developers try to break out a new part of the trinity of roles, they either fall right back into the stereotypes (a bard that casts magic damage "songs" is really just a dressed up Mage), or they end up breaking the game (mind control/crowd controller is a new class idea that's been played around with before, but as Blizzard has discovered, it's extremely hard to balance that exactly right).As Crygil later says, these questions are his, not Blizzard's -- he just wants to get some perspective on what the forums dwellers think of how the current roles work. And he promises that CC is "on its way back," so maybe Blizzard will try to do some more experimenting with the different types of roles classes can play.
