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Encrypted Text: The evolution of rogue PvP
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here. During the lull between WoW expansions, I've been trying out a few action real-time strategy games like League of Legends and Dota 2. One of the things I've been learning about A-RTS games is that there are several different roles that the characters can fill. While WoW typically revolves around the tank/healer/DPS trinity, these PvP-only games have much more diversity. For example, there's the nuker role, which focuses on quick bursts of damage, and the disabler role, which focuses on controlling enemies to set up a kill. If you look between the lines, some of these roles are present in WoW PvP as well. Rogues have been relied upon to provide the stuns and snares to control targets, as well as to provide the burst needed to eliminate our enemies. We've worn a lot of hats over the past few years, and we've found ways to excel in each niche.
November sales data: Mac desktops down, laptops strong
The NPD data for November retail sales have arrived, and the news is not that cheery: year-over-year Mac sales were flat last month, while Windows PC sales grew 7 percent over 2007's total. Desktops on both platforms got hammered, with 20% drops across both platforms -- Windows machines down 15% and Mac desktop sales down a dramatic 38%. Some of this may be attributable to the long-idle Mac mini (soon to be refreshed, we hear), static feature set of the iMac, and reduced purchasing of Mac Pros and iMacs by education and corporate customers, but consumer buying is clearly down for the desktop. The tables are turned on the portable side: year over year, Mac laptop sales grew 22 percent for November vs. a Windows increase of 15%. This is good news for Apple's refreshed portables as customers do seem to be taking to the unibody models. It's not clear from the report whether the blossoming netbook category, which includes a sizable chunk of machines shipped with a flavor of Linux, counts entirely as Windows laptop sales or if it's chopped up by the shipping OS -- I'll try to find out. Update: NPD tells me that the Linux netbooks were included in the Windows sales number, but those configurations didn't make a material difference to retail sales. Did your microeconomic purchasing plans for year's end get derailed by the macroeconomic circumstances? Let us know below.
Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy coming to Wii
Who would have thought that we would wake up to an image of the Grim's face from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy? Certainly not us. It was rather disturbing to our non-coffee eyes. On second thought, we are always happy to see more news about the Wii and games gracing the system with their presence. Midway had this to say: "The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy for the Nintendo Wii is expected to utilize features that are unique to the Wii system. This includes use of the split controls, motion sensing and more. The Wii version is intended to support both the GameCube and Wii controllers. The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy on the Nintendo Wii is also expected to include content–specific gameplay features that will be available only on the Wii platform. More details on these features will be released at a later date." While we haven't really seen a whole lot of games stem from cartoons do really well in this industry, we know that the Wii offers a fair chance to every game to fully utilize its unique controls. Go Nintendo also has some screens for you to check out.
