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Microsoft's all-in-one 365 subscription is available for schools
Microsoft just launched its latest bid to bring its services into every aspect of schools and the workforce. To begin with, it's offering its all-encompassing Microsoft 365 subscription to education. Schools can pay a single per-person rate to get Windows 10, Office 365, the Enterprise Mobility and Security Suite and even Minecraft: Education Edition. Office 365 for Education is already free, but Microsoft is betting that all the other perks will be worth it for faculty that wants a one-stop shop for the software they need. It'll be available on October 1st -- too late for the return to school, so don't be surprised if you don't see this used in earnest until the winter semester or next fall.
The makers of HipChat are launching their Slack competitor, Stride
The Slack competitor space is a little crowded these days. There's Facebook's Workplace, Microsoft's Teams, Google Hangouts and Doist's Twist. Now, Atlassian, the maker of HipChat, is introducing another option -- Stride.
Teams is Microsoft's most intriguing productivity app yet
Group-collaboration software isn't anything new, but in recent years we've seen an explosion of new solutions aiming to redefine how teams work. There's Slack, of course, which has spread across startups and big organizations like wildfire. But even before that, companies relied on things like HipChat, Yammer and plain old IRC. When Microsoft first unveiled its own offering last fall, the not-so-subtly named Teams, it initially seemed like the software giant was just jumping on the latest productivity bandwagon. It also seemed a bit redundant, since Microsoft owns Yammer. But it quickly became clear that Microsoft had some big ideas in store.
Dropbox Teams will offer a host of business features to free users
Dropbox for Business is an increasingly important part of the company's revenue stream -- there are more than 130,000 businesses using the service -- but there are many more people out there using the company's more consumer-focused free service and its $9.99 monthly subscription plan. Millions of those users are in fact using their personal Dropbox accounts to get work done, as well -- so now Dropbox is going to offer a set of tools to make it a lot easier for individuals and smaller businesses to use Dropbox with a team of co-workers. In fact, that's the name of the new service that launches tomorrow: Dropbox Teams.
Tweetdeck lets you share accounts without sharing passwords
Until now, if you wanted to share Twitter log-in credentials with members of your team, it meant sharing a password. Thanks to TweetDeck, you no longer have to use the same info. The 140-character social network now offers TweetDeck Teams for its popular app: a tool that allows groups to employ the same account with admin and contributor roles. When you need to add a colleague to the social workload, all you have to do is authorize that user, and once they accept the invite, they'll be good to go. As you might expect, access can be revoked at any time by the admin, and those folks have control over the password. Contributors can tweet, follow/unfollow, schedule tweets and make lists, but they won't have any access outside of the app. The new feature starts rolling out today for TweetDeck on the web, Chrome and Windows.
EVE Online nixes industry teams
Not every new idea is going to take off and be a smash hit, as CCP definitely understands this as much as anyone. The EVE Online developer said that the implementation of industry teams earlier this year has been vastly underused, and as a result, teams will be removed from the game entirely in 2015. "We have been closely tracking all related industry metrics and dials and it is apparent to us that usage of teams has been very low relative to the goals we set for it -- with single figure percentage use in manufacturing jobs and near nonexistent use in research," CCP wrote. Industry teams had allowed players to hire NPCs to help out with industry jobs. The feature will be "methodically removed" over the next few months, although players will be able to use teams until they are forceably retired. On another note, EVE tweeted that it has freed up over six million names from former trial players and has made them available for general use.
EVE Evolved: Has the industry revamp worked?
When I was first introduced to EVE Online back in 2004, a big part of the attraction for me was the promise of a huge player-run economy in which the only real laws were those of supply and demand. With only a handful of tech 1 ships and modules available to build and everything made out of the same basic minerals, science and industry were pretty easy for new players to figure out. Over the years, more complexity has slowly been added to industry via features like Starbases, Salvaging, Capital Ships, Tech 2 Invention, Planetary Interaction and Tech 3 Reverse Engineering. Today's industrialists have to contend with hundreds of different items that are often arranged in sprawling component manufacturing chains, which can make it hard to figure out exactly how to make a profit. The recent industry revamp attempted to solve this problem with a full user interface overhaul and a revamp of material costs and manufacturing prices. All of the relevant information for using a blueprint was packed into a slick new combined Industry UI, allowing new players to find the info they're looking for in-game rather than through websites or opening dozens of item info windows. It's now been almost two months since the industry revamp went live, and while the market for many items is still going to take several months to fully stabilise, the dust has finally begun to settle. So what's the verdict? Has the industry revamp worked? In this edition of EVE Evolved, I consider whether the industry revamp has been successful, how easy it is to make a profit in the new system, and whether it's worth setting up your own industrial starbase.
League of Legends introduces the new Team Builder queue
You know what you're good at playing in League of Legends. Which is all well and good, but sometimes you choose to play something that requires a degree of support that's just not there from the rest of your team. Wouldn't it be nice to just choose your character and your playstyle right from the start, so you can form a team meant to compliment your strengths and weaknesses? That's what the new Team Builder queue is all about. Queueing up requires selecting both your character's position and role, then filling in the blanks by matching with other players who can support your initial decision. You can also invite friends in to the queue along with you, filling out the missing spots with other suitable candidates. A preview video is embedded just pas the cut, but you should take a look at the full article and FAQ for more information on forming a team that's the best it can be.
Design your own team logos, uniforms in Madden NFL contest
EA Tiburon kicked off a design contest late last week for the next game in the Madden NFL series. The developer is challenging fans with creating new logos and uniforms for the game, and is accepting submissions now through March 7. EA's last release in the series, Madden 25, brought back the ability to relocate NFL teams in the game to 17 different cities. While the contest announcement stresses that EA prefers user-created logo and uniform designs based on those 17 cities and the dozens of team names that were created for Madden 25, it will accept submissions that involve other team names and locations. Those looking to enter their designs for, say, a Milwaukee-based football franchise can download EA's uniform and logo design packet (in .zip file form) to get started. [Image: EA Sports]
MechWarrior Online discusses the state of the game and the road to launch
MechWarrior Online has already gone into open beta with a functional cash shop, but the game still isn't officially launching until September. So how's the road to launch looking so far? According to creative developer Bryan Ekman, it's going quite well. Despite summer traditionally being one of the slowest times for games like MWO, the community has been strong and growing. The development team is also thrilled that response to the game's first charity drive was immensely positive, with Sarah's 'Mech raising over $40,000 for the Canadian Cancer Society on the first day of release. So what comes next? According to Ekman, the development is currently split into two teams, one focused upon major features and the other on content. A revamped UI and the Community Warfare system are the two biggest elements for the feature team, while a new map, Terra Therma, is set to debut next week. Third-person mode is also in testing for those who prefer to see their multi-ton death machines from the outside. Players would be well-served to look at the full letter for more dispatches about the game's future as September creeps closer.
EA inks exclusive deal with Barcelona for FIFA, PES gets Argentinian teams
When you think about soccer, FC Barcelona is one of the teams that likely comes to mind, especially because its forward, Lionel Messi, is arguably the best player in the world and co-cover athlete for FIFA 14. EA Sports certainly recognized this when it announced this morning that it settled on a three-year exclusive agreement to become the "official video game partner" of the soccer club. With the partnership in place, EA captured 3D head scans of 17 Barcelona players for use in FIFA 14. Meanwhile, Konami recently announced an agreement to bring 20 soccer teams from the Argentinian Football Association to Pro Evolution Soccer 2014. The license isn't on an exclusive basis according to Konami's announcement. The list of 20 AFA teams to be officially licensed (featuring correct kits, logos and team colors) for the game can be found after the break. Local Argentinian Fox Sports announcers Mariano Closs and Fernando Niembro will also be included in the game.
FIFA 14 will have 19 'authentic' Brazilian teams
EA Sports announced that it reached licensing agreements with 19 soccer clubs in Brazil today, and will be bringing those teams to FIFA 14 this year. FIFA 13 had 20 Brazilian teams, but not all of them were exactly "real." Unlike the English Premier League, Brazilian league team licenses are negotiated on a team-by-team basis. FIFA 14 will include 19 authentic teams, "meaning authentic kits, club name, crest and real players," an EA representative told Joystiq. "However, unlicensed clubs can still feature in-game under our FIFPro license which enables us to use real player name/likeness," EA added. So of those 20 Brazilian teams in FIFA 13, a handful were unlicensed clubs. That means fully-licensed teams such as Internacional, Nautico and Ponte Preta in FIFA 14 were seen as I. Porto Alegre, N. Recife and P. Campinas in FIFA 13. "We call these clubs 'art generic' because an artist makes the kit/crest look very similar. Football fans know the difference," EA said. FIFA 14 will only include clubs from the Campeonato Brasileiro Serie A league (the top league of three within Brazil's professional soccer system) with the exception of Palmeiras, a popular team that was recently relegated to Serie B. EA does not have licensing agreements in place for use of team logos and kits for two Serie A teams that were in FIFA 13 and Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer 2013, EC Bahia and SC Corinthians. The publisher is still in negotiations for "additional club and league licenses and will have more announcements to make." FIFA 14 is due out in North America on September 24, and will also come to PS4 and Xbox One later this year.
Riot Games' plan to standardize eSports
Ask a couple of Riot Games' employees what goes into choosing players for League of Legends' annual World Championships, and they'll rattle off a strange series of acronyms and words that represent tournaments from around the world: Major League Gaming, the IGN Pro League, ESL's Intel Extreme Masters Series, OGN, IPL, Dreamhack, Tales of the Lane, and so many more.The route from just playing for free online to the top of the World Championship ladders is so confusing and circuitous that most press outlets don't cover it, most players don't follow it, and even most eSports fans couldn't explain it all. There's a jargon to it (littered with player and team names full of weird capitalization and strange spellings) that's about as complicated to understand as the notoriously complex game itself.Riot's Vice President of eSports Dustin Beck even says that a recent tournament he attended was a big mess on its own: "The tournament kept pausing, it never started on time, you didn't have a schedule to know when your favorite teams were playing. It wasn't a fun experience, for me."Still, eSports is one of the biggest factors in League of Legends' overwhelming popularity, with thousands of people attending these tournaments, and millions (almost ten million, in fact) watching live online. So how does Riot plan to smooth out those wrinkles that keep an even larger audience out of the game? The company will take the game into Season 3 within the next few weeks, and with it begins Riot's eSports headliner, the League of Legends Championship Series.
ArenaNet's plans for supporting Guild Wars 2
Guild Wars 2 has been live for more than a month. Now that ArenaNet has more or less dealt with initial problems like server stability, absurd imbalance, and exploits, the company can start looking forward. ArenaNet devs have long talked about providing new content and huge support for the game, and a blog post this morning details some of their plans for that. ArenaNet has "formed multiple live teams focused on expanding Guild Wars 2 in the long term." So what are those teams, and what do they do? The Live Security team is all about cracking down on bots, spammers, and scammers. The Live Response team is made up of the fine folks addressing balance issues and bugs. The Living World focuses on adding new content and rewards for PvE and WvW. There's a PvP and Esports team focused on making Guild Wars 2 the best PvP game it can be. Holidays and Events have their own special team, dedicated to keeping up the Guild Wars legacy of amazing holiday content. In addition, the Holidays and Events team will be creating one-off events that occur in the world. The Mac and Performance team is working on getting Guild Wars 2 to run on the widest possible range of hardware. Bonus teams will take care of any projects that don't fall in the direct domain of other teams. Last but not least, the Commerce team will be keeping an eye on the Guild Wars 2 economy and thinking up new goodies for the Black Lion Trading Company. Hit up the full post for all the gory details.
Dev Juice: Help me set up a multiperson dev team
Dear Dev Juice, We have a 3 man dev team with the iOS developer program (as a small company plan) and we are getting ready to move up to Xcode 4 once Lion is out to the public and the have a stable sdk. What is the best way to set all of our systems so we can each build for adhoc distribution instead of just one of us being able to? Thanks, Brandon Dear Brandon, You can easily build for Ad Hoc on more than one machine at a time. Just export your developer provisions and certificates from Xcode's organizer. Click Export Developer Profile, enter a password that you will remember and verify that password. Save the file to a convenient location such as the desktop. You will generally have to enter an administrator password during the process to allow Xcode to access your local keychain. Once created, you can transfer this profile file to another Macintosh system and import it through the same Xcode organizer screen. You will be prompted for the password. Once imported, just do the same build-and-archive, sign-with-the-ad-hoc-provision building of IPAs on the remote installations that you would do at your home system. Happy Developing!
Wasteland Diaries: Lone wolf
An MMO is a massively multiplayer online game. So what would attract a lone-wolf type to something that is massively multiplayer? You would think this would drive someone who enjoys his solitude away. This is simply not the case, as every MMORPG has lone-wolf players. If that MMO happens to be Fallen Earth, with its post-apocalyptic setting, it might seem to attract individualistic survivalist types who strive to be self-sufficient. I have never played an MMO in which so many people were withdrawn, introverted, and downright antisocial. Well, it is the apocalypse, and there are times when I just want to be left alone to kill in silence. I am a bit of a lone wolf, myself. But many times, trying to get a group together can be like pulling teeth... from a drunken throwback's maw. Sure, people aren't bound to be as friendly in a ravaged, unlawful world like the one we call home in Fallen Earth, but sometimes the wasteland can be a very lonely place. I enjoy doing my own thing as much as anyone else, and in many cases I don't want to stop what I'm doing to help other players, but I tend to. And I'm almost always glad I did. After the cut, I'll take a look at the pros and cons of being a lone wolf.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The replacements
Hey, guys, did you know that Going Rogue is launching in less than a week? That's crazy. It feels especially strange to me, since this was an expansion that had barely been announced when I started here, and has since become pretty personally important. But we're not here to talk about my vague feelings about the impending launch, we're here to talk about its larger implications for City of Heroes -- namely, the obvious systemic changes that might well be coming when the expansion goes live. Now, some of you are doubtlessly going to point out that we're not even getting our first Incarnate slot, the expansion isn't changing any part of the system, and so forth and so on. But you forget that there is an interesting change to the system coming that we all know about: the fact that archetypes will no longer be allegiance-locked. That's right -- whether you're in City of Heroes or City of Villains, you'll no longer be limited to five different archetypes. And considering the fact that the archetypes are roughly analogous on both sides now, this might have just a bit of an impact.
Aika allows players into the gates of the arena
In a game focused on PvP, arenas can be a tricky things. If everything is set up nicely then they show off the strengths of the game at their finest; if there are flaws, it's a bit like highlighting them with a magnifying glass. Aika has decided to take the plunge, but not on a small scale -- the Aitan Arena doesn't go halfway. The battles are geared to 100 players on each side, with each team duking it out until only one remains standing. Divided into four level brackets, the Aitan Arena pits two teams against one another with a maximum capacity of 200 players on a first-come first-served basis. While that might sound a bit limiting -- especially with only two windows open per day -- the wide brackets and rotating schedule should allow everyone a shot at the match. The real limitations will come once the match starts; with the competition heightened by the fact that there are no respawns within the arena. Once you drop, you're out of the match. Take a look at the full announcement on the official site, and get your blades sharpened for the newest PvP venue in Aika.
Castle Crashers PS3's Arena features team-building exercises
Our favorite part of the original Castle Crashers was always the brief (but intense) competitive bouts which would crop up every time the players rescued a princess. We'd always swear allegiance to one of our former allies: "Let's have a pact of non-aggression until we deal with the other two!" The agreement would be honored until our accomplice was at his weakest, and then, ever so swiftly, we'd carry out our inevitable betrayal. The Behemoth has interpreted this concept in the Arena mode for Castle Crashers on the PS3, which will now let players divide up into teams represented by a wide range of colorful flags. Check out the video after the jump to see how the buddy-buddy on buddy-buddy action breaks down.
Interview with Paul Sams, Steelers owner
As we reported the other week, Blizzard COO Paul Sams is now co-owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers (who are stepping up lately), and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette hit up Mr. Sams for a quick interview about being at the intersection of Azeroth and Steeler Nation. Turns out the man who collects everything Blizzard has also been a Steelers fan since he was four years old, even though he's from California. And we were right with all of the speculation: he got connected with the Steelers management through Legendary Pictures producer Thomas Tull, and when the chance came to own part of the franchise, he jumped.They also talk about expanding out to Carnagie Mellon University -- Blizzard has a thriving educational program in Irvine, but Sams says that they are looking to expand that, so Pittsburgh is a possibility. And finally, he says that the Warcraft movie is being scripted at the moment -- Sam Raimi will do Spider-man 4, and then it's all Azeroth for him. In the meantime, let's see about getting some of this Steelers news in the game -- even if we can't get an epic football to toss around, surely we'll at least see a Tauren somewhere named "Bill COW-her," right?
