Flex
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Fitbit's activity tracking app comes to Windows Phone
If you've wanted to use activity-tracking wearables that pair with your phone, you've typically had to use Android or iOS. Windows Phone has some third-party apps that can fill in, but they're imperfect at best. As of today, though, an official solution is at hand -- Fitbit has released its own Windows Phone 8.1 app. You can now sync trackers like the Flex, One and Zip to your Microsoft-powered device to get real-time step and sleep monitoring, complete with a step counter on your home screen if you set up the Live Tile. Other Fitbit fundamentals are also here, including food logging, leaderboards and messaging.
Lenovo's banking on motion control and Flex-able laptops with latest releases
Motion control hasn't outmoded the mouse and keyboard yet, but it is finding its way into more and more consumer products. Take Lenovo's upcoming A540 all-in-one desktop, for instance: its one of a handful of the company's products to feature Lenovo Motion Control, a 12-gesture collection of hands-free (well, hand waving) media controls. The $1,279.99 machine is built specifically with families in mind, featuring a 23.8-inch 1,920 x 1,080 touchscreen, NVIDIA GeForce GT 840A graphics, an Intel Core i7 CPU and an aluminum frame that tapers down to 4 millimeters at its thinnest point.
Should there be another kind of five player dungeon?
The first dungeon I ran in World of Warcraft was the Deadmines. Not the Deadmines we have today, of course, although the layout is largely unchanged, but the original, Edwin VanCleef helmed Defias operation. From there, it's been a lot of years and a lot of dungeon crawls (not just in WoW, either - I've been crawling around in dungeons ever since the Caves of Chaos were build adjacent to a Keep on some Borderlands) and so I've come to have some opinions on dungeon design and variety that I think are worth nattering on about. In general, some of the dungeon complexes released with the launch of World of Warcraft took labyrinthine to new extremes. As much as I love it, Blackrock Depths is a positive pain to navigate for a new party - it was terrible before the dungeon finder existed, it's not any better now. Modern dungeons tend to have moved as far away from the 'sprawling mega complex' design as possible. Current dungeons tend to be what I call 'bite sized' in comparison - smaller, self contained wings or experiences that contain between three and four bosses, to be consumed in a 20 to 30 minute chunk of time with four strangers via LFD. It's understandable and even unavoidable that this had happened, but I think there's some wisdom in considering how to have a happy medium between these extremes. Dungeons like Dire Maul, for instance, saw minimal change in Cataclysm because it was already perfect for the new system. Three wings, mostly self contained (one could previously get from north to west via a tunnel into the library, which was removed) with a reasonable assortment of bosses, tied together by theme yet distinct in terms of what you faced in each. Maraudon, on the other hand, is still a sprawling, difficult to navigate dungeon made worse by the addition of incredibly arbitrary starting locations that the dungeon finder only exacerbates.
What will raiding be like in Warlords?
When discussing how the changes coming in Warlords of Draenor will affect raiding, we're of course looking at an incomplete picture. We don't know what new spells and abilities might come, we just know to an extent what won't be there - abilities like Skull Banner will be gone, as well many CC abilities, and healing will be greatly changed - casting on the move will also see a significant decrease. What we therefore need to consider is that raiding itself will have to change to embody these changing philosophies. It would be a disaster to alter class abilities and leave raids designed around the same high damage, high mobility kit we see in modern raiding. But what will raid design entail? Well, I'm not a raid designer. If I was, I'd be super busy designing some raids. What I am is a guy who raids a lot, so I can give you my perspective as a dude who has seen every fight in the game at this point. What are we in for in Warlords, based on what Blizzard has said is changing, and what they intend to try and do?
Why do we still have separate PvP and PvE gear?
While seeking out questions to a Queue I wrote, I was asked by a Twitter follower why we had separate PvE and PvP gear in the first place. A question I love, and that I wouldn't be able to respond to briefly enough for The Queue. I'm not going to go into a complete, exhaustive history of PvP gear. For starters, I didn't play in Classic, so I can't really comment on the gear then, but I gather that there was a lot more overlap between the two. Then, with Burning Crusade, back in 2006, the combat rating system and Resilience were both introduced, along with arenas. PvP gear was born. It's been through many different iterations since then -- too easy to get, too hard to get, too bad for PvE, too good for PvE, different effects, stat budgets, you name it. But history, while it merits repetition, shouldn't have too much bearing on this question in today's game.
EU Heroic raider helps forums through Flex
There have been a good number of threads on the EU forums lately from would-be flex raiders complaining how they can't get into groups because they lack achievements or ilvl. While many would just tell them to learn to play, or turn a blind eye, heroic raider Anabelle of Revolution, EU-Kazzak-H has taken action. Anabelle has put together an "experiment" raid, with low ilvl requirements, and comprising of inexperienced players taken exclusively from the EU forums. The sole purpose of the raid is to get forumers the achievements they need, and to hopefully get them some gear too. Anabelle's rule set prioritizes players who don't have relevant achievements, before taking players who do. Players need an item level of 520, and to bring along flasks and potions, Anabelle's covering the food. The first raid is scheduled at 1500 CET on Saturday. And that's pretty awesome. Anabelle doesn't want to boost people, rather to have them work as a team, and is asking for nothing in return. Just to prove that a group of inexperienced people in 520 item level gear can do Flex, with leadership. It's a great initiative, we'd like to give Anabelle a special nod for being über, and helping out those fellow forumers who are struggling. Hopefully there'll be more of the same to follow!
Fitbit partners with women's fashion designer Tory Burch on Flex accessories
If the wearable trend is ever going to truly take off, companies are going to have to figure out how to make people want to wear them. That means taking it a step beyond simply not being embarrassed to be seen wearing one in public -- these devices are going to have to actually be attractive. Pebble got the memo, now Fitbit is taking steps to turn its Flex fitness tracker into a legit fashion accessory. The company is partnering with Tory Burch, maker of high-end women's fashion pieces, to design a line of bracelets and necklaces that will be able to hold the little Flex bug. While there doesn't appear to be any final designs just yet, the sketches the company shared with us seem to indicate the goal will be to mask its gadget heart as completely as possible, while adding a dash of golden bling. The goods themselves are expected to launch sometime in the Spring. But until then, you'll just have to peruse Tory Burch's current jewelry and let your imagination run wild.
Warlords of Draenor: Flex, Group Finder and Raid Finder's roles
Blizzard Community Manager Lore has been posting about the future roles of Flex, the new Group Finder, and Raid Finder in Warlords of Draenor. You can, as usual, see Lore's full post after the break, but what he's talking about is how, thanks to the success of Flex as a raid system and the resultant awkward position of LFR, a reshuffle needs to happen. LFR has been wearing too many hats. It's been end-game progression for some, a gear grind for others, and a way to see the sights of a raid for even more, as well as everything in between. That's a hard act for one difficulty, that is simultaneously too hard and too easy. But thanks to the runaway success of Flex, due in no small part to group-finding systems like OpenRaid or oQueue, the devs think they can make some changes to the tuning of LFR. The idea, it seems, is that the new Group Finder will make it just as easy to find a Flex group as it currently is to find an LFR one. Then, LFR tuning can be altered, allowing Blizz to "better provide for both the "busy raider" and "sightseer" styles of gameplay as a result." So it seems likely that, if this remains the case (we're not even in beta after all) LFR will become the tourist difficulty. Flex via the Group Finder, and with friends, will become the new way to get meaningful progression encounters. And that makes sense, given how it'll be renamed to "Normal" come WoD. Hit the break for Lore's full post.
Warlords of Draenor: Blizzard's Group Finder will allow leaders to filter applicants
Blizzard Community Manager Lore has been all over the forums talking about how Blizzard will build their cross-realm group finder. The latest update for the would-be cross-realm raider, world boss killer or PvPer is as follows: Lore Quote: But with OQ you can put restrictions, view how well they've done before, and how well they're liked with the public. Openraid had a reputation how well people liked your raids and gave you upvotes. Is there any way they will add something like that to help people avoid groups lead by bad players, mean leaders or elitist jerks? We do want to provide some options for group leaders to put some restrictions for who can and can't request to join their group. We don't want to do it in a way that encourages people to be too heavy-handed, but we also want to make the system easy and intuitive to use, and feel it's better for everyone if the system lets leaders be upfront about who they're willing to bring along. Basically, we want to avoid a situation where you can be invited to a group and then immediately be kicked when the leader inspects your gear and finds you're 10 item levels lower than he or she is looking for (and then have to repeat that process until you eventually either find a group that will bring you or give up entirely). We'd rather do our best to make sure you only see groups that you've actually got a shot at running with :) source
Patch 5.4.2: Blizzard's answer to oQueue enters testing [Updated]
It was announced at BlizzCon that Blizzard would be launching a revamped raid finding system, potentially in response to oQueue's huge popularity in finding groups for Flex and for things like the Celestial bosses required for the Legendary cloak. Lead Encounter Designer Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas has posted today about the first tentative steps towards realizing this goal launch of said group finder, namely a rework of the existing Raid Finding tool. The one you haven't ever used. His full posts are, as ever, after the break. At first, it will just work for Flex raids and World Bosses, meaning that it won't oust oQueue from the game, but it seems likely that Blizzard will expand this technology to the new raids and perhaps even to PvP in 6.0. Right now, on the PTR, there have not been a lot of changes to the existing system. It's still really hard to find -- open up your social pane, then go over to raid, then go to Other Raids, then select the raids you want to do. Celestials, Ordos and Flex are all cross-realm, but the others are not. Hit the break for Ion's full posts.
Major raid changes coming in Warlords of Draenor
During the World of Warcraft - What's Next? panel, Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas unveiled the way raiding will be unveiled going forward. As you can see above, the term flexible raid is no longer used to describe a difficulty setting, and the flexible raid scaling system has been more widely implemented. Here's how it will basically work: First up, the raid finder (LFR) will still aim for a fixed group size of 25 players. However, if you're in an LFR group and players drop before the next boss, that boss will scale to the size of the current group - as an example, if a raid of 25 players is fighting Paragons, then four players drop on the way to Garrosh, Mr. Hellscream (if you're nasty) will scale down to a 21 player size. What we now call the Flexible difficulty will become Normal in patch 6.0 - it will scale just as it does now. What we now call Normal difficulty (10 and 25 man) will scale flexibly and will be called Heroic difficulty. It will scale just as normal does. Finally, Ion pointed out that scaling the most challenging encounters in terms of design requires a fixed raid size, and so, they've chosen that size to be 20 players. This difficulty, analogous to what we now call Heroic will be called Mythic difficulty. I find it interesting that they chose to lock the most difficult raiding at a 20 player cap - I've always felt that we should have gone 10/20 at Burning Crusade's launch instead of 10/25, but I wonder why they didn't do a 10/20 split on Mythic for the dedicated 10 man guilds. I didn't expect that, but otherwise, I totally called it and I'm definitely excited. (I know for my guild, 20 man Mythic will be a lot easier to adjust to, but for dedicated 10's it won't be as easy a transition.) Also, please forgive me a moment of smuggery, but I called it.
Daily Roundup: Fitbit Force and ATIV Book 9 Lite reviews, Pebble iOS enhancements and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Weekly Roundup: HTC One Max review, PS Vita review, Apple confirms iPad event and more!
You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Flexible raiding's magic numbers
Blizzard Community Manager Bashiok has blue-tagged an interesting discussion on the US forums today, asking for more feedback on Flexible raiding's numerical breakpoints. Bashiok Right now there are some assumptions being made about mechanical breakpoints in Flex, but there are also some valid concerns. The orbs on Norushen for example may need tweaking. What would be super helpful is if people have examples of breakpoints they think limit them to having a certain number of people, and what those are. It's in everyone's best interests to be able to invite whoever they want, and not feel like they're limited to some number because of mechanic scaling. source The forum thread in questions certainly brings up some valid concerns. Bashiok mentions the Norushen orbs, where going over a breakpoint by just one player can provide a substantial DPS or healing boost for a boss which can prove a tight DPS requirement for some groups. The Sha of Pride's prisons are another one which seems reasonable -- over a certain number and you'll get three prisons as opposed to two, so it'd be easier for some groups to just not bring that one player who tips the balance. What's more, on AoE mechanic-heavy fights like Dark Shaman, simply having more people standing in bad is a problem, if they're not able to put out the DPS, or are failing at mechanics. Crawler Mines on Iron Juggernaut could well be another problem, as could Malkorok's swirls and Matter Scramble in Spoils.
Daily Roundup: LG G Flex revealed, HTC's One Max, FIFA 14 for Xbox 360 and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
oQueue how-to for Flex raiding on demand
So you want to do Flex raiding instead of LFR? Or as well as LFR, you crazy cats? But you don't have a guild or any friends or the time to sit in trade chat forlornly spamming "520 afflock LF Flex /w" for hours on end? You want to be out in the world doing Timeless Isle things rather than stuck in cities? If only there was another way to PuG Flex raids. Well fear not, my friends, oQueue is here to save your bacon. Or any other pork product. Before I get into the oQueue how-to, I am just going to dedicate a moment to openraid. If you're organised enough to be able to say "Yes! I can raid on Monday at 7pm!" then openraid.us or openraid.eu depending on your region should be your weapon of choice. This allows you to sign up for pre-arranged raids, or indeed to set up your own. But if you want to log in, and immediately hop into a queue for a flex raid, without the need for organization or flexibility, oQueue's the way to go. So let's get started.
Lenovo's mid-range 'Flex' line includes two Yoga-like laptops, a portable all-in-one (hands-on)
It's pretty much a given that everything we love about flagships will eventually make their way into more affordable products. And why shouldn't that include the form factors themselves? In addition to unveiling the Yoga 2 (as well as the ThinkPad Yoga for business), Lenovo is trotting out two additional convertibles, with prices that put them squarely in the middle tier. Meanwhile, the company also announced the Flex 20, a 19.5-inch, battery-powered all-in-one that's basically a smaller, cheaper version of the Horizon PC announced earlier this year. Starting with the laptops, the Flex 14 and 15, as they're called, each resemble the Yoga in that the screen folds backward, allowing you to use the notebook in different positions. Here, though, it only goes 300 back degrees, not 360, meaning you can't use these products in tablet mode. Basically, then, your choices are to use it as a traditional notebook, or fold the screen over into "Stand" mode (pictured above), with the screen facing outward, and the keyboard planted face-down. Follow all of our IFA 2013 coverage by heading to our event hub!
Ghostcrawler on flex raiding's rollout
We had some discussion last week here at WoW Insider regarding the proposed roll-out of the new Flexible Raiding system coming with patch 5.4. If you weren't aware, it was previously proposed that Flex would roll out in phases similar to what we've become used to with Raid Finder, meaning that at the initial release of the tier Flex wouldn't be available, and would come in week-by-week, wing by wing. Blizzard Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street commented on this on Twitter: @Xinek Not sure yet. We'd like for it to be sooner though. We want flex to seem more attractive to someone on the fence. - Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) July 13, 2013 Ghostcrawler's approach certainly seems to make sense. By pushing the new difficulty out sooner, more players will be enticed to give it a go, and hopefully more will like it. However, the downside for this is of course the hardcore players, who might feel even more obliged to take on the new difficulty for gear if it's rolled out sooner. However, they are such a minute percentage of the player base that it seems illogical to excessively punish the rest for their benefit! What's your take on this? When should Flex appear? Personally, I think I'd like to see the first wing release at roughly the same time as heroic, and then a wing per week until it's all out. I think Raid Finder should probably follow about a week behind that. But this is really just personal, and maybe you feel differently? If you do, then why?
Refresh Roundup: week of June 17th, 2013
Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging for an update. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it's easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don't escape without notice, we've gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery we could find during the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!
Flexible Raiding lockouts and queues clarified
As with any new feature, confusion abounds around Flexible Raiding and just how it will work. Blizzard Community Manager Taepsilum took to the forums to clarify various aspects, including lockouts. Taepsilum Right now, the idea is to have FR lockouts work very similarly to lockouts in LFR. You will be able to repeat bosses, and that will actually still be somewhat rewarding, you'll be able to use additional bonus rolls, earn Valor Points, and potentially loot some shinnies from trash... There's something unique about FRs though, I'll explain it with an example: Let's say you join a 12man and kill the first boss, leave the raid, and join a 20man, you might have to repeat the first boss. "Might", so how does that work? If everyone in the new 20man raid has already killed the first boss just like you did, then that boss will not spawn. But even if only 1 of the players in that 20man has not killed the first boss, he will spawn again and everyone else will have to repeat the encounter. source This is all pretty confusing stuff! WoW Insider reached out to Blizzard for some additional clarity on just how the raid lockouts will work, and they came back with some more information.
