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Soul of the Ultimate Nation gets a German server
European Soul of the Ultimate Nation players, your lag shall forthwith be reduced! Webzen, the developer and global publisher of Soul of the Ultimate Nation, will be opening a brand new European server for those of you playing on the mainland. Klippe, the new server set to be physically based in Germany, comes in response to the growing European community in SUN. While the server will not be region locked to Europe and will be available for all regions, don't expect a good connection unless you live in Europe. But, on the bright side, you can play with your European pals if you want to suffer the lag. If you haven't played SUN in a while and you were frustrated with connecting to Etherain, the North American server, then perhaps now is the time to jump back in and give Klippe a whirl. It's up right now, for your convenience.
ZFS open source project abruptly shuts down, Snow Leopard weeps icy tears
The on-again / off-again love affair between Apple and ZFS seems to be all but over, with a brief but potent message on the Mac OS Forge project site stating the following: "The ZFS project has been discontinued. The mailing list and repository will also be removed shortly." If you'll recall, the implementation of the ZFS file system within Snow Leopard server was so close to happening that Apple actually published it as a feature of the forthcoming OS back in June of 2008. Now, however, all hope has presumably been lost. We'd bother explaining the rumors behind why all of this has suddenly crumbled, but honestly, will knowing the reasons really help the pain? No, no it won't. [Via TUAW]
Soul of the Ultimate Nation starts beta, blink and you'll miss it
Have you ever felt like a game or expansion is languishing forever in beta? Soul of the Ultimate Nation, the upcoming free-to-play MMORPG from developer WEBZEN, has an interesting approach to this particular problem -- they're running a short beta. A very short beta. A beta so short that it's easy to miss it until it's almost over. A three-day beta, specifically. That might sound like a recipe for disaster, but it might not be. According to the official press release, the game has already been running for quite some time in Asia, and the beta is primarily for the global version of the game which is going live at the end of the month. In order to appeal to more players, the developers are giving away free items to players who take part in the beta test, including those which are normally part of the game's microtransaction system. If you're interested in checking out Soul of the Ultimate Nation and want to get your hands on these items, of course, you'd better hurry -- the beta is ending October 16th, with the global version officially launching at the end of October.
Sun FlashFire's record-breaking storage performance will make network admins giddy
Most businesses look for a good mix between value and performance for the hardware they lock in the server closet, the majority of those leaning toward the "value" side of the equation. However, for those companies that dodged the economic downturn entirely and want only the best, there's the FlashFire storage array from Sun. It's 2TB of rackmountable bits able to perform 1.6 million read and 1.2 million write operations per second, with a sustained throughput of 12.8GB/sec. Sun says these are records, and we can't find anything to refute them, the closest being the RamSan-440 from Texas Memory Systems, offering an (until very recently) impressive 600,000 I/O operations per second with a 4.5GB/sec throughput. TMS, it's been brought.
Australian power grid attacked by virus, Linux saves the day
This isn't the first time we've heard of an institutional virus outbreak -- even the crew of the International Space Station had a neat little scare not too long ago -- and now various outlets in Australia are reporting that Integral Energy, which supplies energy to homes and businesses in New South Wales and Queensland, has suffered a particularly nasty visit by the W32.Virut.CF virus. When all was said and done, the company had to repair all 1000 of the facility's desktops. Furthermore, the Sydney Morning Herald reports that the company's anti-virus software hadn't been updated since at least February. Between the lack of anti-virus updates and the fact that segregation between the company's main network and the grid was "typically none at all" this story has all the makings of a disaster. Luckily, the grid itself runs on Sun Solaris -- and when control systems became infected, how did they fix the mess? That's right: by replacing them with Linux machines. A word to the wise: they do make anti-virus auto-updates for a reason.[Via The PC Report]
Ijji.com boasts over 9 million registered accounts
Ijji.com has hit a major milestone recently, revealing that their systems have tallied over 9 million accounts in their database. That's a pretty big number, and while they may not all be active accounts, it's still a very impressive amount of sign ups for anyone to have. This comes as good news to players of Rohan, Soul of the Ultimate Nation, Luminary, HolyBeast Online, and Atlantica Online, as ijji.com funnels players into all of those games. More people means more players, and more players ultimately means more of, well, everything. Ijji.com is still working on the upcoming MMOFPS, Huxley: The Dystopia, so those 9 million members will certainly come in handy in the future, as we'd all like more targets to shoot at for easy experience. Keep on signin' up, newbies! Fresh experience for all!
Soul of the Ultimate Nation closed beta test starts today for all ijji.com players
If you've been looking forward to Soul of the Ultimate Nation finally coming to America, well now's your chance to give the game a whirl. Today marks the opening of the game's closed beta test, which really isn't as closed as it sounds.If you're an ijji.com member, you already have access to the game. If you're not, well simply sign up for an account to get the ball rolling. Please be aware that only four territories have access to SUN on ijji.com currently, and that's Mexico, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. If you're having trouble logging in, check out this thread on their forums.Closed beta testers will also get the chance to win an exclusive in-game pet -- the husky. To win this illustrious pet, you'll need to fill out one of their closed beta test surveys and have more than 2 characters on your account. The winning 100 accounts will be chosen randomly and will be announced during the first week of the open beta.So while you're downloading the client, feel free to check out some of our exclusive screenshots below. You'll be awash in the game soon enough. %Gallery-65491%
Patch 3.2 PTR: Tauren Druid conversation may reveal lore and expansion secrets
Reader Chad forwarded us this screen shot of a conversation that takes place over on Elder rise in Thunder Bluff between two Tauren on the patch 3.2 PTR. Apparently it actually begins with a new quest by the Dalaran Portals, as pointed out in this thread at Scrolls of Lore, and while the quest leads nowhere, you do get to hear the linked dialogue. In it, Aponi Brightmane, a wounded warrior who wishes to return the front lines in Northrend, and Tahu Sagewind, a Druid, speak together about the history of Druidism, the moon, and the sun. They speak of Elune, whom they know as Mu'sha, one of the eyes of the the Earth Mother. They mention that it seems strange that if Tauren were the first Druids as their legends claim, that all Hamuul Runetotem teaches is the moon power of the Night Elves. Tahu wonders if Druids themselves, because of this, are out of balance. The idea segues back into the idea of the world out of balance due to the influence of the Scourge, wondering if sitting idle in Thunder Bluff is really a good idea when the Northern front is so bleak, wondering if balance must needs to be returned by action.
Ijji.com unleashes new screenshots for Huxley, Soul of the Ultimate Nation
Ijji.com sent us a whole slew of information about two of its upcoming titles to us today, and we figured that we should pass on the love. If you're looking forward to either Huxley: The Dystopia or Soul of the Ultimate Nation, you'll be happy to hear that we added 10 new screenshots of each to our galleries today. Huxley's screenshots show a few more battle scenes, including the scoped in view on one of their guns, while SUN has elected to show off some spectacular landscapes accompanied by some nice armors. If that wasn't enough, we also have two trailers, one featuring gameplay and the other a pre-rendered video, for Soul of the Ultimate Nation, featuring the Shadow class, included in this post right after the break. The Shadow looks like one heck of a wicked rogue class, so take the leap across the break to see his high flying, fast running stunts that even put the Team Fortress scout to shame. %Gallery-48874% %Gallery-65491%
Oracle just might produce a netbook after acquiring Sun
Oracle sure has come a long way since its cardboard laptop days, but is it really ready to take on the likes of Acer, ASUS, HP and Dell in the netbook area? During a brief appearance at Sun's JavaOne conference today, Oracle's main man Larry Ellison proclaimed that his firm "might build a variety of devices as a result of its planned acquisition of Sun Microsystems, including netbooks." Sadly, there was absolutely no elaboration beyond that, but it's certainly interesting to think of what a netbook would look / feel like with a Sun flair to it. Who knows, maybe we won't even have to wonder in a few months.
Soul of the Ultimate Nation finally makes its way to America
It's only two years late, but hey, we're not complaining! Ijji.com has reported to us that they've obtained the rights to publish Webzen's Soul of the Ultimate Nation in North America and that the game will release somewhere in late 2009. Soul of the Ultimate Nation, called SUN for short, is a hack and slash MMO developed by Huxley creators Webzen. The game was originally slated to be published in North America in late 2007, but the game's status went silent and slowly slipped off of everyone's radar. SUN features a quicker style of gameplay, more akin to a game like Dynasty Warriors than your standard MMO. To perform this feat, the game breaks the world map up into zones created by players in towns, very much like creating your own match in a first-person shooter. Players create these fields in order to hunt down monsters, solve missions, or complete quests. Players can also take objectives to assult areas in a siege-esque manner, where many players create rooms to assault one objective. In these cases, successful and unsuccessful sieges affect how the other in-progress games play out, altering the difficulty of the battle to show the turning tide of one side winning or losing. The game does feature persistent cities where players can mingle, much like it's first-person shooter brother, Huxley.
75-megawatt solar plant to power "first solar city" in Florida
Given that Florida has accurately been coined The Sunshine State, it's not at all shocking to hear that America's first "solar city" will be built in the state's southwest corner. Or, at least that's the plan. According to a new report, West Palm Beach-based Kitson & Partners is currently developing a new city near Charlotte County, which will get juiced by a massive 75-megawatt solar plant. Said plant will cost around $300 million to build and will be installed by Florida Power & Light; if all goes well, homes will begin construction on a sizable plot of land dubbed Babcock Ranch by 2011. If things don't go so well, we're told that the actual power plant will still be erected and fed into the larger grid. In other words, Florida's gettin' some solar power, with or without this newfangled concrete jungle.[Via Fark]
Recession roundup: Monday morning edition
It wasn't that long ago that Monday mornings in the office were a depressing time -- another cheerful weekend gone; another long week of work ahead. But, these days, being in the office on a Monday is a good thing, because if your login still works you've survived another scary layoff Friday. Spare a thought, then, for those whose system access has been cut off, including 1,300 from Sun (the first wave of a total of 6,000 planned job cuts), 8,000 workers at Sprint who are due to receive pink slips, 6,000 from Philips, and an unannounced number of IBM workers (rumored to be 16,000) who have also found themselves to be on the wrong side of the cost-cutting ax. In one final bit of cheery news, AMD has reported a $1.4 billion loss in the fourth quarter of 2008 and, after shedding its handheld graphics unit, is now selling its manufacturing operations to Advanced Technology Investment. Oh, sorry, you were hoping for some genuinely good news? How about this: that loss is smaller than AMD's $1.8 billion loss from the same time last year. Now have a great day!Read - Sun confirms 1,300 layoffsRead - Sprint Nextel Plans to Cut 8,000 Jobs in QuarterRead - Philips to Release 6000 Employees into WildRead - Several IBM employees report being laid off on Alliance@IBMRead - IBM Confirms LayoffsRead - AMD Reports $1.4 Billion Loss
Video: Shouting at disk drive causes high latency, low morale
Here's a tip for everyone who hasn't made the jump to solid state: try to be nice to your disk drive. Brendan Gregg from Sun's Fishworks team wanted to see the effects of vibrations on his disk array, so he proceeded to shout at it. On video. Yeah, we bet that's pretty embarrassing for the drive in question, and what results is a sharp spike the number of I/O operations that take over 5ms to complete. Moral of the story? Yelling at your computer isn't going to make it run any faster. How about next time we see how it reacts to Ozzy, Mozart and warm, gentle nuzzles? We've placed video of Gregg's sadistic hardware taunts after the break.[Via Slashdot]
Sun Direct launches DTH satellite service in Delhi, NCR
After Sun Direct became the first carrier in all of India to offer up MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) direct-to-home broadcast service, the company is now expanding its offerings to Delhi and the National Capital Region, the latter of which consists of Gurgaon, Faridabad, Noida and Ghaziabad. The starting package is priced at Rs 999 ($20) per month with a free set-top-box, although installation will set you back another Rs 1,000. No word on when it'll begin sending down HD channels, but we'd say it's about time, no?
AAPL up nearly 14% among broad market gains
Shares of Apple stock closed higher today, among a widespread buying spree that pushed the Dow Industrials up a record-breaking 936 points. AAPL closed at $110.26 per share, an increase of $13.46. Nearly 55 million shares changed hands. Microsoft, Dell, Google, HP, Sun, and AT&T also posted double-digit percentage gains for the day. Analyst firm Sanford C. Bernstein upgraded Apple stock to "outperform" this morning, saying the company's short-term prognosis looks good, despite the dip in the market. Bernstein did, however, cut its price target by $50 to $135. AAPL was up slightly in after-hours trading.
Vista, OS X updates could bring significant SSD speed gains
It's been a real roller coaster ride of emotions with SSD. The once lauded (at least in our hearts) savior of all things computing has, in real life, provided us with lackluster and even controversial performance gains, while battery improvements haven't been revolutionary and the prices still aren't exactly wallet-friendly. Most of that is unlikely to change in the next couple of years, but there's still plenty to be fixed in the short term. Samsung is working with Microsoft to define optimum packet sizes and best practices for reading and writing files to SSD as a potential update for Windows Vista, which is particularly optimized to work best with traditional hard drives. Sun is also working to improve SSD support with its next-gen ZFS file system, which in addition to powering its Solaris OS should be making an appearance in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, at least in the server version. There's clearly still plenty of untapped potential in SSD, let's just hope the powers that be figure this stuff out sooner rather than later.[Via Mac Rumors]
Where's Webzen?
Two Hammers at MMO-centric blog gamebunny writes that Webzen is slowly making a retreat from the North American market. The Korean publisher, currently developing the much-anticipated Huxley, has cut Parfait Station and Wiki (aka Project Wiki) from its game roster on the North American site. Although Webzen has not announced cancellations of the titles, only three games remain displayed on the site: MU, Soul of the Ultimate Nation, and Huxley. Release dates are not set for SUN and Huxley. The disappearance of Parfait Station and Wiki comes on the heels of Webzen relinquishing their publishing rights to All Points Bulletin, three years after having obtained them. Real Time Worlds bought back the rights to APB in April. These changes could diminish Webzen's presence in the North American market for the foreseeable future, and their radio silence on where Huxley is in terms of release doesn't help matters. Quite a number of people seem to be excited about Huxley, particularly among the Massively team; we can only hope that Webzen is just re-prioritizing their projects and releases for North America, and that they're not going to disappear on us anytime soon.
Crystals hold promise of affordable solar energy, may have been purchased on eBay
We have no real way of verifying whether or not these so-calls crystals were purchased alongside some bizarre time machine on eBay, but we'll take this guy's word for it and assume not for the time being. Reportedly, University of Queensland professor Max Lu has teamed up with researchers in order to grow "the world's first titanium oxide single crystals with large amounts of reactive surfaces." Put simply, these very crystals can "absorb sunlight and convert it into electricity." It's said that Lu has been working on the project for some 15 years, and even now, he doesn't expect the creation to be commercially viable for another decade. Aside from morphing into fairies and making dreams come true, the things could also be used to "purify air and water." Pair this up with an invisibility cloak and we'll really be in business.[Thanks, Brendan]
D&DO Module 7: The Monk
When we first sign on to the special Demo server Turbine had set up to show us Module 7, we found that they'd created a level 16 Monk for us to play with. The Monk class has been in the pen-and-paper game for a long time, but DDO is introducing them with Module 7 as the tenth player class in the game.As we signed in and got set up, the folks from Turbine introduced themselves: Kate Paiz (who we've spoken with before) is the game's senior producer, and Stephen Muray, lead systems designer, and Jesse Smith, a content designer on the game, also joined us as well (Turbine's Director of Communications, Adam Mersky, also spoke up at the end of the session). As the screen loaded up, Paiz said that with the design of the Monk, they wanted to create a class that played significantly differently from anything they tried before. All of D&DO's combat is real-time (as in, you must press a button to attack, rather than just choosing a target), and the Monk's new abilities add a twist to this system. Basically, the Monk has four different stances (Ocean, Mountain, Wind and Sun -- the developers said they drew a lot of the Monk's lore from Dungeons and Dragons' Oriental Adventures supplement book), and each tweaks his or her abilities and attacks -- during most of the playtest, we used the Sun stance to try and do more damage, though the designers said that depending on how the Monk is specced, he would also be able to tank and or do some self heals and group buffs as the class trained up. All of the Monk's abilities are governed by Ki energy, which can be tseen in a meter below the health bar, and is simply earned by attacking. Muray mentioned that this was to counterweight the pen-and-paper Monk's "times-per-day" abilities -- in pen-and-paper D&D, many Monk abilities can only be performed once or twice a day, and while Ki energy still lets players perform Monk tricks much more often, they are still kept limited enough that choosing what abilities you use your Ki on is very important. "Did you just Abundant Leap across that gap? Nice!" But one of those abilities stands above the rest: Abundant Leap (a variant, we were told of Dimension Door in the pen-and-paper game). Starting around level 10 or 11, the Monk can perform a move (with a low cooldown costing a very low amoung of Ki) that pushes them forward in space with a quick jump -- as you hit the ability, the screen blurs, the Monk leans forward, and suddenly you're about 15 yards ahead of where you last stood. Abundant Leap was, during our session, the most fun thing to do as a Monk -- even in noncombat situations (and perhaps especially in noncombat situations), we were leaping and jumping as much as we could. Once, to cross a gap, we jumped, in midair hit the leap ability, and landed gracefully on the other side. It's a minor ability in the overall scheme of things, but Abundant Leap, almost more than any of the other moves we used, makes you feel like a Monk.Overall, the class seems fairly balanced, and Paiz said that they had put a lot of time trying to keep the class not only faithful to the pen-and-paper version, but also a dynamic part of the MMO environment. It should definitely be a fun reroll for everyone playing DDO, and for the players who level it all the way up, the later abilities should offer a lot of interesting twists on what the team has created in the game.After loading the game and playing with the new class for a bit, our game began in sight of a peaceful shrine to one of D&D's greatest heroes.Click here to continue the preview...
