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Bear witness to Cory Schmitz's Joystiq T-shirt design
Yesterday we showed off our prize-winning design by Mr. Josh Smith, which we're sure you're still reeling from. We hope, however, that you haven't completely stuffed your eyeballs because they'll want to feast on the design we're about to show you from our buddy, Cory Schmitz. Not only does it just look cool, but it also features two references to the infamous Joystiq theme days. We love it a lot, and we hope you do too. Ready? OK.
Blizzard's Tom Chilton on World of Warcraft's patch 4.3 and beyond
It may be hard to believe, but World of Warcraft's Cataclysm expansion has been out for the better part of a year now. All the while, players have been on a long and arduous adventure to defend the lands of Azeroth from the nefarious Deathwing and his minions. In an interview with Blizzard's Tom Chilton, Joystiq brings to light some details on the dragon's imminent demise as well as a few insights on what players can expect from WoW's patch 4.3: Dragon Soul. Chilton details the upcoming Transmogrification system, which allows players to customize the appearance of their gear by transferring one item's graphic to another. He also discusses the new Void Storage system, which grants increased storage space, with the caveat that any item stored in the void will be stripped of all gems and enchantments. The pièce de résistance of the whole affair is, of course, the final showdown with Deathwing himself. Players will have to traverse three separate five-man instances, which will culminate in a huge battle that doesn't just feature Deathwing as the opponent: He's the battlefield as well. But we don't want to give it all away, so head on over to Joystiq for the full, juicy interview.
Reminder: Design a Joystiq T-shirt and win a console with games!
We're sure you're already feverishly working on your T-shirt designs for Joystiq; we just wanted to remind you that you've only got until Sunday to submit yours. One winner is going to get their T-shirt made by Joystiq and get a console of their choice with five randomly selected games, so get to designing. Complete rules and submission guidelines are after the break. Just a note: Don't feel like you have to prominently feature our logo. As our boy Petey M. demonstrates, our last winner had a really cool image with the Joystiq name just sort of lovingly placed at the side. Good luck! (Update: Technically, the winner of our T-shirt contest in 2006 was Mr. Philip Palermo. Here's his great shirt.)
Bethesda's Todd Howard not interested in an Elder Scrolls MMO
Whenever the subject of untapped RPG franchises that could make the jump to MMOs comes up, Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series is almost always mentioned. After all, if Blizzard and BioWare made the jump, why not the folks behind Oblivion? In talking with our sister site Joystiq at PAX, Bethesda's Todd Howard fields the question with blunt honesty. "I like this kind of game better," he said. "You know, it's what most of us are into. I'm not really an MMO guy. I respect them, I look at them, but I don't play them. It feels more real to me when I'm the hero and it's crafted for that. A community aspect to it, I recognize a lot of people would want that in a game like this, but it changes the flavor for me. Of course, one man's feelings toward the genre aren't always enough to stave off corporate demands, but Howard says that isn't the case: "We can just do our thing, and it's kind of grown with each game. So there was no pressure from anybody above me to say 'Hey, you need to change this.'" That doesn't mean Bethesda will forever abstain from MMOs, however. Bethesda's parent company, ZeniMax Media, built an MMO customer support facility in Ireland earlier this year, an indication that online gaming may very well be in the company's future.
Design a Joystiq shirt and win a console with games!
When you, freshly showered, throw open your bedroom closet and decide how you'll hide your shame that day, don't you wish a Joystiq garment could be among your options? In fact, don't answer that, it's rhetorical. You've been asking for years for another Joystiq T-shirt design contest, and it's finally happening: In the coming weeks, we'll soon be rolling out two Joystiq T-shirt designs for sale, perfect for shielding your thorax from the elements. Unlike the last time we did this, we've commissioned an artist to create a design for us, and you're just going to love what he's working on. Well, we bet you will -- he hasn't made it yet -- but he's done enough cool gaming-related stuff in the past that we have plenty of faith. But of course, the shirts are still going to be gracing the thoraxes of our readers and we wanted to give you the chance to leave your thumbprint on the annals of sartorial Joystiq history. We're not looking to con free work out of you pros, mind you -- we want everyone with a great idea, some gumption and a working knowledge of MS Paint to have a chance. (Of course, if you happen to be a pro who just wants to show off, we won't turn our nose up at you.) Besides, whatever money we make on the shirts, we're putting right back into free ones to give away at events. So come up with a cool, completely original design for a Joystiq shirt (rules and suggestions after the break) and send a high-quality JPEG our way. Between the Joystiq staff and readers, we'll select our favorite, and that artist will win their choice of a 360, PS3 or Wii and five randomly selected games for that system. Plus, assuming the design's dope enough, we'll make it into a real shirt! You've got two weeks, so what are you waiting for? Go get your ... you know, brushes or whatever it is one uses for T-shirt designing. We don't know. That's why you're doing it.
Turtle Beach Xbox Chat Adapter gets the hands-on treatment, admirably untethers talkative gamers
Back at E3, Turtle Beach unveiled its wire-ridding Xbox 360 Bluetooth Chat Adapter bundled with its XP500 headset (a re-badged PX5), but there were no accounts of how the dongle performed. That's now changed thanks to Joystiq, who've gotten their lucky mitts on one of ten prototypes. Spoiler: they're really enjoying the little guy. Voice quality was reported as being "excellent" and the device easily paired with headsets. There's no annoying charging cable required either as the XBA juices off the controller, but only time will tell how that impacts battery life. The big quirk critics found was that its single button, which operates as a muting / pairing and on / off switch, was oft-engaged accidentally -- obviously not ideal for newb trash-talking. Sure, it's not totally seamless like Tritton's official digs, but Xbox aficionados should certainly be stoked about soon having options to ditch those chat cables for good.
The Joystiq Network's E3 coverage kicks off
Our network is abuzz with E3 news this week. Our friends over at Joystiq and Massively are hard at work in the convention coal mines, doing their best to bring us the best coverage they possibly can. If you're interested in gaming outside of World of Warcraft and want a rundown of the day's events, this post is for you. We will be covering just the last 24 (or so) hours in this E3 roundup, so if you're interested in any of the information that came in over the weekend or early Monday, I highly recommend checking out the entirety of both Joystiq's coverage and Massively's coverage.
Hang out with Massively (and Joystiq) at the E3 2011 reader meetup
So E3 is coming up, and you what that means: games booze! If you've done the convention circuit before, you know that listening to PR reps and watching multiple presentations on the greatest-game-in-the-history-of-games pales in comparison to the opportunity to indulge in a bit of pub-crawling with industry types. If you're over 21 and a fan of Massively, Joystiq, or WoW Insider, you'll want to mark Friday, June 10th on your party-going calendar. The Joystiq crew will be taking over the La Cita bar in downtown Los Angeles for a swag-filled shindig sure to please the most discriminating gamer. And if not, hey, you can always drink with us. Massively's on the ground in Los Angeles during the week of June 6-9, bringing you all the best news from E3 2011. Whether you're dying to know more about Star Wars: The Old Republic, RIFT, or any MMO in between, you can bet we'll have it covered!
How the E3 sausage gets made: Our gear
As the Joystiq staff barrels toward Los Angeles over the course of today, each staffer will come packing his own set of tools to tackle the coming week. As you already know, the E3 festivities begin Monday morning and go strong for four days, so it goes without saying that these gear pictures don't include the countless gallons of caffeinated beverages which will be consumed -- chock 1.5 iced coffees to me thus far today -- not to mention other precious energy-providing items. Head into the gallery below for an in-depth look at how the sausage gets made. If you're into that kinda thing, of course.%Gallery-125330%
The Engadget Show - 021: Joystiq's Chris Grant and Justin McElroy, Babycastles, gadgets, gaming
It's another episode of The Engadget Show, in which we keep on keepin' on and give you a taste of what's to come next week. That's when the Electronics Entertainment Expo happens, and we just couldn't keep from going all gaming for this month's episode. It all starts when Tim and Brian take a look over some of the month's biggest gadgets, like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the iCade. Then, we take a trip down to Babycastles, the indie arcade where the gamers make the games -- and the cabinets. After that, Joystiq's Chris Grant and Justin McElroy join us on the stage to dish up just what's coming next from Sony. NGP? Wii HD? Project Cafe? Intrigue. It's a gaming-heavy, genre-busting show this week that you won't want to miss. So what are you waiting for? Watch it now! The video stream is above, or download the show in HD below! Hosts: Tim Stevens, Brian Heater Special guests: Syed Sulahuddin, Kunal Gupta, Chris Grant, Justin McElroy Producer: Guy Streit Director: Michelle Stahl Executive Producers: Joshua Fruhlinger and Michael Rubens Music by: Narwhalz of Sound Visuals by: Nonhorse Taped live at AOL Studios Download the Show: The Engadget Show - 021 (HD) / The Engadget Show - 021 (iPod / iPhone / Zune formatted) / The Engadget Show - 021 (Small) Subscribe to the Show: [iTunes] Subscribe to the Show directly in iTunes (MP4). [Zune] Subscribe to the Show directly in the Zune Marketplace (MP4). [RSS MP4] Add the Engadget Show feed (MP4) to your RSS aggregator and have it delivered automatically. [HD RSS] Get the Engadget Show delivered automatically in HD. [iPad RSS] Get the Engadget Show in iPad-friendly adaptive format.
Hey, you! Wanna write for Joystiq?
You don't go to sleep without your Dave Hinkle action figures. Your walls are covered with paparazzi photos of Ludwig Kietzmann's exclusive beach tryst with Dead Space Girl. You still pine for the blue and orange color scheme. You are, in short, a Joystiq fanatic. Or hey, maybe you've never heard of Joystiq, but you love video games more than air. Either way, if you're ready to turn that passion into dauntingly large piles of cold, hard cash we may just be ready for you. Over the next couple of weeks, Joystiq will be hiring a few new staffers. So, you're interested, huh? Well, follow us after the break!
How to Vote Joystiq in the Webbys
We've just got a couple more days until the end of voting in the 2011 Webbys and, frankly, we're starting to get a little nervous. After a brief, shining moment in 2nd place yesterday, Joystiq is now firmly ensconced in 4th. To help you be the hero we need, we've created a helpful audio-visual walkthrough that you can find right after the break. We hope you like it. Thanks in advance for the help!
Nexon's Daniel Kim talks demographics, pre-paid gaming cards
Our friends at Joystiq recently spoke with Nexon CEO Daniel Kim about the runaway success that is the company's pre-paid gaming card program. While Nexon is a well-established gaming powerhouse outside of the U.S., the company's American market is nothing to sneeze at either, with 12 million users spread across its portfolio (7.6 million of them in MapleStory alone). A big part of Nexon's American success is the pre-paid gaming card, an ubiquitous fixture at retail outlets including Target and 7-11. Kim tells Joystiq that a key factor in raising pre-paid card awareness among consumers was the implementation of an in-game quest designed to train users to head for the music section of their local Target superstore. "So three months leading up to the actual release of the card, we actually had a quest in-game to go get allowance from an NPC, go to the Target store, go to the music section, go find a CD card," he says. Kim also provides a bit of insight into Nexon's customer demographics, stating that "our median age is really 17, 18, 19." Many of the company's users weren't previously online gamers, and Kim says the microtransaction model is the key to customer attraction and retention. "There's no barrier to entry. If they have a computer and an internet connection, they can download the game and play for as long as they want," he says.
Update to the Massively makeover
Hello, readers! It's been a few weeks since our massive Massively site overhaul landed, and our web gurus have been scurrying in the background fixing bugs and responding to your reports. Not all of the bugs have been vaporized just yet, but we'd like to update you on the status of some of the problems that most affect you. RSS -- Our most-reported problem over the last few weeks revolved around our RSS feeds. Many users reported a doubling-up of posts as the site spewed out two copies of every post. Others reported an inability to subscribe to specific categories and bloggers, and still others were finding that every RSS feed was producing copies of the podcast (great news for podcast fans, I guess!). Our techs currently report that all of our RSS feeds should be functioning now, but they note that many RSS readers do not well tolerate the kind of switcheroo we had to do. If you're still having problems, unsubscribe again from all of your Massively feeds and try resubbing one more time. I can tell you that I am using Google Reader and stopped having problems a few days ago. If you need to resub to specific feeds, this will help: for the writers, visit the individual pages on our team portal; for columns and features, hop over to our columns list; and for specific games, click on your chosen game in the games list for a category with a feed button. There's more behind the cut... follow along!
SOE's The Agency delayed until late 2011
Whatever happened to The Agency? Inquiring minds want to know, and since Sony Online Entertainment's internal memos haven't been given the WikiLeaks treatment, we'll have to take company president John Smedley at his word. "There was a moment in time in our company where we looked at our own stuff with a clear eye and saw we have to do better," Smedley told Kotaku in a recent interview. Translation: it ain't ready 'til it's ready. While the spy MMO's launch would seem to be quite a ways off, fans should be glad to hear that it hasn't been shelved entirely. We haven't seen hide nor hair of the title since E3 2010, but hopefully the extra time will serve to boost the game's stock in the same vein as SOE's other upcoming MMO. DC Universe, originally scheduled to launch last November, has apparently benefited from the extra test cycles if the scuttlebutt surrounding yesterday's NDA-drop is to be believed.
Report: Game Informer bigger than Time, People and O, more circulated than Family Circle
Game Informer is bucking the death of print, increasing its audience over the past year by another 800,000 readers and topping out at a "paid and verified" circulation of 4,364,170, according to a new report by media monitoring service BurrellesLuce. The magazine is just a measly 100K-and-change subscribers away from surpassing National Geographic and landing in the top five of most-circulated U.S. consumer magazines -- and it's not even for old folks! Published by GameStop Corp., a one-year Game Informer subscription is included with the mega-retailer's PowerUp Rewards Pro membership (and was previously bundled with its now defunct Edge card). So, yeah -- we're all subscribers. You're welcome, GameStop.
Don't panic -- Massively's getting a makeover! [Update #5]
Blizzard isn't the only team around preparing for a cataclysm. The perceptive among you might have noticed a few subtle changes around Massively today and wondered what was going on. Is it the end times?! Nope! In fact, we have exciting news! Tonight (Monday, November 22nd) and continuing through the week, we'll be rolling out our brand-new site. That's right, folks: Massively's getting a much-deserved facelift meant to bring the site in line with our community's needs and position us a bit more prominently alongside our sister site, Joystiq. We'll not only be easier on the eyes but easier to navigate, and best of all, we'll have a new and improved login and comment system. Rejoice! We'll get a new URL too -- massively.joystiq.com -- although www.massively.com will continue to redirect just fine to all the content you love, old and new. Over the next week, Massively might be a little bit weird as our Gnomish Engineers scramble to get a site of this size into its new outfit, so please bear with us while we tinker. Just to quell any remaining fears -- we're not closing down, we've not been bought out, and we're not selling out to corporate overlords. We've always been part of the Joystiq network; it's just going to be a bit more obvious now. The same bloggers will still be bringing you the same MMO posts and features as before. We're just going to look a whole lot more stylish doing it. We'll keep you posted as the rollout continues! [Ongoing updates are behind the cut! Last update was at 11:05 a.m. EST on Wednesday, November 24th. -Bree]
GamersFirst CTO talks about APB: Reloaded
While news of All Points Bulletin's impending resurrection is a few hours old at this point, it's still worth taking a peek at one of the better interviews on the subject. Our friends at Joystiq got to talk about the upcoming F2P APB: Reloaded with GamersFirst's Bjorn Book-Larsson, and the CTO/COO had some interesting thoughts on the subject. "We think of it as an opportunity. It's worth our effort to take it and combine it with all of the user data we have and let the game take its time to reach its full potential," Book-Larsson said. He goes on to touch on APB's potential popularity in non-traditional markets, particularly South America, and also illustrates how it complements the company's existing WarRock FPS. As for changes to the Reloaded version, Book-Larsson says the major one will be the fact that all the game's action districts will be accessible without a fee. As with most F2P titles, the ultimate goal is to get the player in and hooked "because at some point you're going to run into a situation where you'll want to spend money," he says. Check out all the details at Joystiq.
GamersFirst to resurrect APB: Reloaded as a free-to-play title
The saga of All Points Bulletin has become one of the dominating MMO stories of 2010, with its buggy launch, premature shutdown, hunt for a new owner, and rescue by free-to-play publisher GamersFirst last week. Displaced APB fans who are wondering what plans GamersFirst has in store for the game should find themselves bouncing with glee today: The publisher is definitely planning to bring back the game, now entitled APB: Reloaded, as a F2P version. GamersFirst's Bjorn Book-Larsson sees the move as a win-win for both the publisher and players: "APB was a game that had several exceptional features and some brilliant ideas, even though it was plagued by some initial balance and monetization issues. We want to take all the unique features of this title, such as its unparalleled character, weapon and car customization systems, and convert the game to a true free-to-play game. We are deep into the planning and early execution stages for this next chapter of APB and we will share more details in the near future." The purchase of APB's assets means good news for ex-Realtime Worlds employees, who will now receive any outstanding wages and promised holiday pay. APB: Reloaded should be coming back online in the first half of 2011.
Get your Kinect launch coverage at Joystiq!
It's less than an hour away until Kinect drops in Times Square, as the motion-sensing peripheral is set to make its debut to a throng of freezing buyers. You know what that means -- our brothers-from-other-mothers at Joystiq are on the scene, chatting with folks that have sat for over two days waiting for the camera-equipped controller. Head on over for the full scoop!
