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Motorola apparently planning another year of existence with claimed 2009 lineup for Verizon
Our first thought when we saw Boy Genius Report's alleged shots of Moto phones that'll find a home on Verizon in 2009 was, "holy cow, these look fake." And yes, granted, they're all renders -- but what really set off the alarms for us was the fact that they look... well, nothing like Motorolas. At all. But then we thought about it for a second and realized that hey, you know, when you're a once-great cellphone manufacturer losing market share hand over fist and you're looking for the Next Big Thing, you probably want to try something a little new, a little fresh, and a little crazy. So on that note, Verizon can apparently expect a "Rush 2" early in the year that continues Moto's contribution to the low-cost messaging phone trend; the "Calgary" (pictured), looking like a high-end Sidekick Slide minus the Sidekick; the "Inferno," presumably succeeding the ZN4 (which was coincidentally codenamed "Blaze"); and finally the gorgeous "Flash," which -- as far as we're concerned -- should just take the A3000's place. So yeah, these could be an elaborate hoax, but for Motorola's sake, we hope they're not.
[UPDATED] Warlock changes in patch 3.0.3
Patch 3.0.3 isn't a hefty patch by any means, but it did bring some pretty nice changes for Warlocks. Some were simple bug fixes but others were outright improvements. As we reported, the Dreadsteed spell will become trainable to all Warlocks at Level 61. Players no longer need to do the quest line, which opens up at Level 60. The character must have Journeyman riding skill and the Felsteed spell learned. Despite this welcome change, I implore all Warlocks to do the quest. It is one of the best and most flavor-rich quest lines in the game, and any Warlock worth her salt will have fun keeping up the Bell, the Wheel, and the Candle. The cost of materials are trivial in the new economy, so there really shouldn't be any excuse not to do the quest now. High level friends can and should (we're Warlocks, after all) be bribed to chaperone Level 60 Warlocks with the Dire Maul Achievement.[UPDATE: Thanks to our industrious readers, I needed to change my shorts (I'm sending you my dry cleaning bill, Augustus) when I read about this change... the coefficients to Corruption and Immolate were significantly buffed to 20%. That's just... wait, let me change my shorts again (blast you, Augustus!). Oh, and apparently Ritual of Doom is actually cool now. It no longer kills a party member, the Doom Guard lasts for 15 minutes and just disappears afterwards like a zit to Oxy afterwards. How polite. So wow, yeah. Bdew, you can split my dry cleaning bill with Augustus.]
Universal wins bidding war for EA's 'Dante's Inferno' movie rights
The cart has beaten the horse to the finish line as Universal Pictures garnered the film rights to Electronic Art's as-yet unannounced game, allegedly titled Dante's Inferno. The studio beat out Paramount, New Regency, MGM and Warner Bros. in the multi-million dollar deal. According to Variety, the plan is to release the movie closer to the "beginning of the game's life cycle" -- no word on when that will be. EA has yet to confirm the game's title, which is simply speculated to be Dante's Inferno and involves a "journey through the depths of hell." We're still wrapping our brains over a movie being tied to a game's release so soon ... times are a changin'.
So much for Chaos and other Warlock stories in build 9014
You might have heard that Chaos Bolt now deals Fire damage instead of the nebulous "Chaos" damage, which was actually an amalgamation of all schools of magic. On one hand, this is good news because getting Kicked or Counterspelled while casting it won't lock Warlocks out of every spell. On the other hand, this means Fire immunities will stop it cold. This makes the spell easier to implement or work with, and further enforces the use of Fire spells for Destruction. It's not even a Shadow and Fire version of Frostfire Bolt. It's just... a bolt Fire that looks like Alien larvae. Now, the coolest thing about Chaos Bolt was how it conceptually penetrated through immunities. Ghostcrawler explained that making immunities have vulnerabilities would only create a vicious cycle. Now, the spell only goes through absorption effects -- which is fine, really, but makes Chaos Bolt merely another direct damage Fire spell. Is it a great 51-point talent? I don't know. It deals pretty good damage, I'll give it that. But I'm not sure it's worth 51 points.Curse of Doom can now only produce Doomguards from targets that yield experience or honor, which was a necessary change considering it's now a 100% chance if CoD delivers the killing blow. It still can't be cast on players, though, which is a bummer. Haunt was retuned to heal for 100% of the damage it deals, which isn't so bad considering the 200% I raved about last time was bugged to hell, anyway. Oh, and Everlasting Affliction affects Haunt instead of Shadow Bolt, which is excellent because it relaxes Affliction's already complex rotation.
Demonology 101: the Infernal
Alright, we've covered all the basic pets on Demonology 101, including the Felguard talent from the Demonology tree. Today we'll take a look at one of two gimmick pets that hardly see any actual play -- the Infernal. The Infernal is a pet summoned through the Inferno spell and isn't technically a Warlock pet in the traditional sense. With a 20-minute cooldown to the spell, think of it as an emergency pet like a Shaman's Elemenals.Unlike an Elemental, however, the Infernal can be controlled with traditional pet commands but has no special abilities. Used purely for amusement purposes as the standard pets perform better in most situations, it gets even more left behind in Wrath of the Lich King as there are no new talents or abilities that make it more useful.
Warlock glyphs in Beta build 8905
I'm having a lot of fun with the new Inscription profession. Not necessarily as an Inscriber, but as the recipient of these cool new customization features. As Daniel noted the last time, the Warlock glyphs look pretty sweet, and more glyphs for Warlocks appeared recently in the Wrath Beta. And just like the last time, a few of them really do look pretty spiffy, like this one for example...Glyph of Drain SoulYour Drain Soul ability occasionally creates an additional soul shard.We might as well call this the Soul Shard specialization glyph -- an extra shard for Drain Soul? Yes please! Even if you pack your bag full with 28 Soul Shards before heading into an instance or raid, Warlocks still find themselves in situations where they run out of it, specially for those who have Shadowburn thrown in. Timing Drain Soul just right so it doesn't gimp your DPS is a pain in itself, so an extra shard for the effort is pure win. Besides, procs like these are like an Azerothian mini-lottery. This is also perfect for those lazy Warlocks -- and there are a ton of those -- who only bring a handful of shards to an instance.
Skill Mastery: Army of the Dead
Ever since we first heard about the spell, I have been without a doubt drooling over Army of the Dead. This level 80 Death Knight spell allows you to summon an army to your beck and call. In specific, it's a 6 second channel spell that summons several weak undead to taunt and fight your enemies. In addition, you take less damage equal to your dodge plus parry chance. It costs one of each basic rune type, and has a 10 minute 20 minute cooldown (You see how swiftly things change in the Beta?). You can see the spell in action above (video found on Deathknight.info). You may notice some problems. For example, some the ghouls stand around and do nothing. In addition, the damage reduction on channeling does not seem to be working. Still, it's pretty cool seeing all those ghouls decend on the enemy, even if they are lowbie scarlets.
Tilt, Duo, Inferno, and Q9h to blow out AT&T's October?
These are all devices we know folks have been waiting for, so we're delighted to finally hear some whipsers that launch windows are being put in place. First up, the AT&T Tilt -- alias 8925, alias Kaiser -- is rumored to be priced at $299 on a two-year or $374 on a one-year agreement. The Pantech Duo, which Amazon jumped the gun on over the weekend, will be launching for $199 on a two-year, which makes the Amazon pricing a bargain already. The Nokia 6555 "Inferno" gets priced at $49.99 on contract -- a steal for a sharp lookin' 3G flip, we figure. Last but not least, the Motorola Q9 global finally materializes for a cool $299, putting it head to head with the Tilt. All four of these are supposedly scheduled for shipment to stores on October 1, making for a very interesting month. Everyone know which of the four they're choosing yet?[Thanks, Amy K.]
Planescape Trilogy planned for NWN2
After you finish the core campaign in Obsidian's Neverwinter Nights 2, you won't have long to wait before jumping into the mod community sandbox. A small outift known as Rogue Dao Studios is hard at work on the Planescape Trilogy, a series of modules that promise 45 hours of gameplay in the Dungeons & Dragons Planescape campaign setting (home of that other RPG). The first module, Purgatorio, will be available at the Neverwinter Nights Vault in December, and if you register at Rogue Dao's forums, you can sample some of the music and visuals from the game.[via GameBanshee]
Readers pick best webcomic (April 30 - May 6, 2006)
Even though we are all dead tired at E3 and this is the last (or second-to-last) thought on every Joystiq reader's mind, we still are required by law* to announce the winner of the Weekly Webcomic Wrapup ... and Penny Arcade's Inferno-esque Levels of Developmental Hell took the top spot with almost half of the popular vote. We are sure the guys over at Bungie are feeling an eerily similar fate to Level 14 this week (the fruits of their labor we will likely see at Microsoft's press conference today).Second place went to GU Comics' stab on the ESRB, and third place was claimed by Little Gamers' geek test. Thanks to everyone who voted; we may be busy at E3, but be sure to let us know of any great game-related (especially E3-related) webcomics you come across this week.* Not really, but that's kind of obvious.[Thanks again to Scott Johnson for all the comical E3 banners]
