gryphon
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The stuff that launched at CES 2017 but never came out
CES is the busiest time of year for Engadget, with our team spending a week on the ground in Las Vegas looking for the latest and greatest products from companies of all sizes and persuasions. Last CES was no different, with our editors checking out a plethora of smart televisions, wireless earbuds and mesh routers. And there's always a few oddball things -- remember Razer's three-screened laptop? But while Project Valerie was just a prototype never really meant to see the light of day, most of the stuff we see does hit store shelves... eventually. Now that it's mid-December and CES 2018 is mere weeks away, we thought we'd check on a few of the products that haven't made it to market. Some were pushed back and will join the class of 2018, while others will only live on in Engadget's post archives.
The Gryphon router manages to be both stylish and feature-rich
As a group of former raunchy young people, we grownups know all too well the sorts of shenanigans a youngster can get up to on the internet. There's no shortage of companies that want nothing more to protect those wee tykes from themselves, but Gryphon is special. The company has built a full-featured (not to mention stylish) wireless router that uses machine learning to help keep would-be intruders at bay. Throw in sophisticated parental controls, dead-simple management from an iOS or Android app and the ability to build a mesh network without having to break out a manual, and you have a seriously thoughtful piece of networking gear.
12 Days of Winter Veil Giveaway: Plush Gryphon and Plush Windrider
12 Days of Winter Veil is under way here at WoW Insider. That means 12 days of giveaways, 12 chances for you to win some of the awesome swag we've accumulated over the year. Whether you've been a good goblin or a naughty night elf, there's a chance that WoW Insider has a holiday gift for you this season. For the launch of Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard was kind enough to give us some loot to pass out at our midnight release meet-and-greets. Unfortunately, one of our locations canceled their midnight release event at the last moment, leaving us with a bit of excess loot. Today, all of you get a shot at that loot -- we're giving away a plush gryphon and a plush windrider. Today's entry is a little different than what we've done so far: you need to choose which of the two pets you want, declaring your allegiance with a "For the Horde!" for a shot at the windrider or "For the Alliance!" for a shot at the gryphon. You may only enter once, so choose carefully. To enter for a chance to win, leave a comment (following the instructions above) on this post before 11:59 p.m. ET, Wednesday, January 2, 2013. You must be 18 years of age or older and a legal resident of the United States or Canada (excluding Quebec). You may only enter once. One winner will be chosen at random for each item and we will contact you via whichever method you've used to comment. Official rules here.
Angels Online takes flight on the wings of Gryphons
The Sorting Hat has spoken, and Angels Online has joined Gryffindor House (sorry, we watched Harry Potter this past weekend)! The dev team is happy to announce the addition of Gryphon pets to the game -- pets that appear to do double duty as mounts. The Gryphon is the guardian and main symbol of the Aurora Faction in the game, and represents speed and power. However, over time, the Gryphon has become a myth to the people, unseen and unbelieved. This changed as the Gryphon appeared during the pirate siege of Aurora City to save the day. A few "nom noms" later, and the pirate threat was history. Characters will now have access to this powerful beast, who will offer them a huge boost to movement speed and player attributes when used. To check out Angels Online's new Gryphon, head on over to the site and explore the game for free.
Reminder: Vote for your favorite plushie photo
Have you voted in the Plushie Photo Contest yet? Today is the last day to choose your favorite Plushie in the Wild and Plushie in Captivity. As of this writing, Muzz is currently in the lead in the Captivity contest and it's neck and neck between Jowell and Thatshot in the Wild contest. Time is running out for you to affect the outcome. Vote now in the polls after the break.
The Queue: The dating game
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Today's edition of The Queue is one part off-topic and two parts on-topic, but each and every part is worth it. Trust me on that one. Oh, and there's a couple more bad words than usual. You have been warned. I hope none of you are too scandalized by it. Windswept asked... "There is this girl I like that works at the mall, I want to ask her out but I don't know how. What would YOU do?"
Plushie Photo Contest: Show us your plushies
So you hopped into the Blizzard Store and ordered yourself a plushie or two. Or maybe you picked up one from BlizzCon. Regardless, there you are, with at least one official Blizzard stuffed toy. Whether you collect them for yourself or have a child for whom you say that you bought them, you have one or more in your home... but now what? Does he sit on your desk? Does he sit on your lap? Is he used to recreate famous in-game battles? And the most important question of all: have you taken pictures of it? We here at WoW.com want to see your best plushie photos. There will be two categories: Plushies in The Wild and Plushies in Captivity. We will narrow down the best of both categories and offer them up to the readers for voting. The top three of each category will receive loot codes, provided by WoWTCGLoot.com. Details are after the break.
The Queue: Battle.net
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. So we said that we would have a special edition of The Queue this past Saturday. It never happened. Why? Well, the intent was for it to be entertainment while we all sat in the queue for BlizzCon tickets. Yammer about BlizzCon, get excited, all of that sort of thing. Adam and I put ourselves in the ticket queue, were getting ready to push the post out, and then... ticket sales were over. It was kind of a pointless post at that point! So it never happened. We apologize for that.The ticket sales went surprisingly smoothly. We're always going to find something to gripe about (holy crap why don't they have more tickets) but the whole thing didn't come tumbling down this year, and that's such a massive improvement over last year. It was a good thing.Dusseldorf asked..."Is there any benefit to converting my account to a Battle.net account? I see problems with Battle.net users logging in all the time, and was just wondering the point of converting."
Breakfast Topic: If you could add game mechanic to WoW what would it be
Last night I was flying down to Un'Goro to do the Hard Boiled Noblegarden achievement. Long flights get me thinking, at least they did until I installed the Bejeweled addon. World of Warcraft has changed so much since I started playing and 3.1 has brought some of the most interesting changes: dual specs, the hearthstone timer nerf.Now as I was flying, my guild whispered me asking for my aid in Naxx 10. Fortunately they could summon me but it reminded me of one of the biggest problems with flying in Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, you can't get off a bird. Yes I know you can log out and then log back in to be deposited at the next flight point but it's hardly ideal if you need to get off right now. Since I first started playing, I've wondered why Blizzard don't implement a handy eject button that you could use when on long flights. You could be thrown from the back of your gryphon or wind rider and gently parachute to the ground. Alternatively they could just allow you to hearthstone while flying. But I digress. Readers, I want to know if you could add one mechanic to the game what would it be?
Breakfast Topic: Your favorite mount?
Mounts are one of the best parts of World of Warcraft, especially the flying ones. Over the course of levels 30-80 we collect a bunch of them (so many that there's even an Achievement for it -- don't forget to check out our guide) and everyone has one or two tied to their action bars that they use every day. I've got two: the Big Battle Bear) and a Zhevra. But in an ideal world, we all have a list: the Ashes of Al'ar, the now removed Amani War Bear, the Spectral Tiger, the Deadly Gladiator's Frost Wrym ...Top of my list? While I love dragons (and have my eye on a Twilight Drake), the mount I really want is a unicorn. Yes gentle readers, an actual unicorn. Not a striped zebra crossbreed found wandering in the Barrens but a pure white beast of myth. Last week, while exploring the Argent Tournament in Icecrown, I finally found one. Granted it's technically a 'Quel'dorei Steed' but it's a unicorn - with an Azerothian twist. I only hope Blizzard decide to turn this vehicle into an actual mount -- and soon because I will grind anything to get it.Anyway, it got me thinking about mounts (and don't forget we have an awesome guide on the subject). I have a friend who collect everyone going (he's got ninety nine at the moment) and strives for the Ashes to complete his collection, others are still using their race-specific epic mount or gryphon/wind rider. So I ask you, readers, what mount do you want the most? It doesn't matter if it's an old mount now removed, a ridable version of your favourite Azerothian animal or just something straight out of myth, speak up.
New Death Knight starting screen and skeletal gryphon mount
Fresh from the new Beta build today: new Death Knight starting screens and our first look at the Death Knight flying mount – a skeletal gryphon! The starting screen pictured above is pretty cool. The Death Knight is standing on a terrace surrounded by Northrend. Neat. Be sure to click on the picture for a hi resolution image.The gryphon that we're seen, which is pictured after the break, is about the same size as a normal flying gryphon – but a complete skeleton. The actual name of the flying mount item is "The Winged Steed of the Ebon Blade." It is something that I'm really looking forward to picking up now, and I'm pretty sure most of you will be as well.Lots of great bits of information coming out from this beta patch – stay tuned for more
All the World's a Stage: How to roleplay your way to level 70
When you decide to roleplay, a whole new world of imagination opens up to you -- soon you realize that all the World of Warcraft is a stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players.A friend of mine recently complained that lately leveling has been extremely tedious. Even with characters he might feel excited about at first, he eventually gets bored after just a few quests. We talked about this for a little while, and he brought up the fact that if he was going to play WoW by himself he might as well play a single-player game instead. It got me thinking that, in spite of all the demand people have for more solo and casual content, this is significantly better when we play it together. Even when I play by myself, my eye is always on my friends list to see if someone I know is going to show up and chat with me. Thinking about my friend's problem, I thought maybe it would really help if he and I were to go questing together -- so we found the two characters we had with the smallest level gap between them and we decided to go at it. Rather than just just going through the motions of killing the various enemies listed on our little quest sheets as if we were buying groceries or something, we made it into a neat little roleplay experience.In fact, there are lots of quests in the game that are very appropriate for roleplaying. When you get together with your friends to level up and quest together, you can focus on the quest that has the deepest possible connection to your own character, or the one with the most intrinsic storyline. Of course there are many other throwaway quests you can do along the way, like "kill 10 Generic Humanoids" or whatever, but it works best to pick one that seems to have some meaning to you or your character and start there.
Breakfast Topic: Flying Mounts and Professions
The Engineering flying machine has been out for a while now, and it's been a pretty big hit. It's a nice classic piece of Warcraft tradition and lore and good unique reward for someone with enough gumption to craft what may seem like hundreds of Adamantite Rifles on their way to 375 Engineering. Of course, something that shiny is going to attract admirers and tons of people who want one for themselves. The issue crops up every few weeks on the general forums or the suggestion boards: Someone wants a crafted flying mount of their own without switching professions. If they got themselves up to 375 in their chosen skill and want to spend another thousand gold or so on expensive trade skill items for a flying mount, why shouldn't they? It'd be a great way to show pride in your trade skilling prowess and give one more way to shed that plain old Wyvern or Gryphon and set yourself apart from the crowd. You could go with, say a nice flying carpet for the tailors, maybe a flying mortar and pestle for the alchemists. Now, I tend to agree that it's probably good enough that Engineers are unique in getting a flying mount in the same way that, for example, Leatherworkers get drums or Blacksmiths get weapons and armor. But then again, I also have to say that Engineers already get some pretty awesome goggles for a unique reward anyway, and a flying carpet would be pretty sweet. So what do you think? How about a leather-winged glider for Leatherworkers? Or do you think that it's enough that the Engineers have a mount that's taken from previous lore and people should stop asking for silly stuff that's never appeared in Warcraft before?
Patch 2.4 has better ways to go
Blizzard has started to realize that travel (as in real life) can be boring in the game. On the Public Test Realm (PTR), they have put a few new ideas to good use when forcing players to travel long distances to get to new content.I copied my character to the PVE test server (once it started working again), and began a flight to Quel'Danas from Ironforge. First off, I already had the flight path, which was refreshing to start with. The odd thing is that upon reaching the gates of Ironforge, the bird rocketed straight up vertically which panicked me a little until I realized that it was on purpose. All the sudden, welcome to a loading screen appeared. I was dropped on the far side of the Ghostlands gate and continued my flight all the way north to the new content at Quel'Danas. This shaved off several minutes flying time and provided an easy way to bridge an old flight path to a new one easily. A flight path spanning from the original content to the content now in the expansion (technically a patch is both and neither) is the type of crossover innovation I knew Blizzard was capable of doing.Another new idea is to provide a quest reward to transport you to Shattrath, Darnarian's Scroll of Teleportation from the new quest Know Your Ley Lines. This is as opposed to the hearthstone you get. This item only has a 20 second cool down, so at least the outbound trip from Quel'Danas to Shat will be quick and painless. Blizzard is adding some creative ideas to help travel become a bit easier especially for those who have run around the world and picked up every last flight path during the course of their rise to 70, and now are tired of flying everywhere. Now what I wonder is how travel to and from the floating city of Dalaran will work, not to mention other destinations, once it has blasted off from Hillsbrad and begun to hover over Northrend. Perhaps travel will be done in much the same way. This isn't all that new, since boats already use a very similar mechanism from Darkshore to Azuremyst Isle. I imagine things will get even trickier to manage with 2 expansions up and running, from a technical perspective for Blizz, so it is nice to know that they are thinking ahead on how we will get there, get back, and generally move about the world we love. Nice to know indeed.
I spent how much on my alt?
Just this weekend I did something I never expected I would do: Spent 5,000 gold on epic flight. On my main? Oh no, I've had that for months now. I spent 5,000 gold on my alt. My alt! Good gravy!Honestly, I don't really regret it, it's mostly the shock of spending that much gold on an alt that gets me. I'll definitely be putting the epic gryphon to good use, I play my alt quite a bit. Like I mentioned in another recent post, my alt is almost my second main. Pretty much full epics, has seen the insides of Zul'Aman, Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine, capped Blacksmithing, all of that. The fact remains, though, it is an alt. 5,000 gold on an alt!I can't be the only one crazy enough to do this, am I? Surely there are others with alts that have epic flight? Most of my friends poked fun at me about it, but besides waiting for Wrath of the Lich King, what am I going to use that money for anyway? I suppose I could feast on Stormwind Brie instead but I have a feeling an epic gryphon is a little more useful, no?
Around Azeroth: Safeguarding Stormwind is hard work
Reader Ted of Gurubashi sends in this interesting shot taken inside Stormwind City. Up along the city walls, and entirely unaccessable, are a scattering of Gryphons. No doubt there for the safeguarding of the city -- but they are so distant from the ground that I imagine they often go completely unnoticed.Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! Or perhaps you'd just like to see more of your pics from Around Azeroth. %Gallery-1816%
WoW Moviewatch: Epic gryphons on crack
This video is pretty short, and is just for the purpose of showing off what those of you who haven't been on the test realms are missing. I'm sure this'll get patched any day now, but seeing an epic gryphon freak out is just something you should do at some point in this world (of Warcraft). As you can see, the bug only happens when you fly forward for more than a couple seconds; strafing or hovering doesn't have the same graphical glitch. Still, seeing my bird behaving like this makes me wonder if it really was worth that pile of gold. After all, I don't even have that many miles on it! I wonder if it's still under warranty...Previously on Moviewatch...
Around Azeroth: Sheep on a Gryphon
Bugs happen. Like the one you see here, in which player Abelard is stuck appearing as though he's riding a gryphon. Sure, you don't see players running around on gryphons every day, but it's not so uncommon as to be worthy of note, for the most part. Well, except, maybe, for this shot, sent in by moink, which shows a player in such a situation who has just been polymorphed. Tee hee.Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! You can attach a picture file or send us a link to one -- and don't worry about formatting, we'll take care of that part. See more of your pics from Around Azeroth. %Gallery-1816%
New Gryphon Mirage amp brings ultra-hifi to the "people"
While we must question the sanity of a manufacturer that bills their 16,900 Euro (21,188 US) amplifier as "more accessible and more flexible than ever before," we really can't argue with the end results. Gryphon's new Mirage Control Amplifier is being targeted at the custom home installation market, which is apparently fairly "consumer" for Gryphon's taste, and if they manage to pull this off without sullying their precious "audiophile cred," it looks like they've got a winner here. The main innovation present here is a wireless control section that can be mounted to the preamp box (as pictured) or can float freely, with the boxy preamp stashed away out of sight. Gryphon also has developed dedicated software that can be purchased separately to integrate the unit with AMX or Creston home automation systems for a close approximation of multi-room audio. There's also that fancy "magic wand" remote, which doesn't quite look like the Harry Potter variety, but happens to be built out of solid aluminum just like all the rest of these components, so we're not complaining. We're not exactly sure when this thing is available, but it looks like if you've got the Euro you should be able to finagle one this month or so.
Around Azeroth: Follow the leader
Reader Grunt, of Anub'arak (EU), sends in this great screenshot that of a full raid flying out to Stranglethorn Vale to turn in the Heart of Hakkar and receive a swank buff. And, well, when you have 40 players clicking on the gryphon master at nearly the same instant, asking to fly to the same place, this is the effect you get -- sort of a gryphon conga line!Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! You can attach a picture file or send us a link to one -- and don't worry about formatting, we'll take care of that part.
