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One Shots: Heading for the weekend
While technically Thursday isn't a weekend day for most of us, it's still a good time to start planning those epic adventures as our regular Lord of the Rings Online contributor, Vengar is doing. He writes in: I was thinking about the weekend upcoming and how many of us will be running into our favorite game worlds this weekend when I snapped this pic of my lvl50 Champion Vengar, 'The Just' from the Nimrodel server running into Middle-earth as he finds a beautiful sun setting over Bree after a long day of questing. Enjoy and have a great weekend!Something old, something new, something freaky, something... well, anything really. We're all about MMO screenshots from all the different worlds out there. Just send them in to oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name/server/guild and a brief description. Your screenshot(s) could be among the next ones featured here on Massively!%Gallery-9798%
Weekend news roundup, no talkcast this week
It's a quiet weekend here at TUAW HQ, as most of our US-based team is enjoying a well-deserved break over the Memorial Day holiday weekend. Since everyone's drinking mojitos by the pool, we're not doing a talkcast tonight (sorry!), but you can grab last week's show (featuring host Christina "C-Mac" Warren and the rest of the usual suspects) direct from Talkshoe or subscribe in iTunes.Here's a quick update on some of the stories making Mac and iPhone news this weekend: Daring Fireball's John Gruber weighs in on the upcoming iPhone refresh rumors, citing informed sources who tell him that the CPU and RAM upgrades for the next-generation handheld will deliver impressive performance boosts, making this year's model up to twice as fast as the iPhone 3G. He also backs up the expected addition of a magnetometer and a video-capable improved camera (alongside the long-rumored video editing tools on the phone). You can see a thorough roundup of the state of iPhone rumors over at Wired's Gadget Lab. Perhaps the upcoming iPhone refresh is behind the expected ramp-up in distributed support hiring noted earlier this week. Kwame Jones discovered a preliminary interface for renting and purchasing movies & TV shows on the iPhone and iPod touch, which should be loads of fun even though it will be limited to WiFi connections. MDN and other sites have noted a North Carolina effort to get Apple to build a major server farm in the Tarheel State, with up to $46 million USD in tax incentives available if the company reaches a $1B investment threshold in nine years. Seems a shame that lawmakers declared the scuppernong grape as the official state fruit a few years ago, doesn't it. Glenn Fleischman from TidBITS pointed out that the UVA freshman computing survey is out again, showing more impressive gains for the Mac platform year-over-year. UC Davis shows a tripling of share for the Mac over the past three years. In a very quick turnaround, Cartier sued Apple for two iPhone apps that it claimed ripped off its products -- and then promptly withdrew the action. Nicely done. The First Ascent team, videoblogging their way up Mount Everest using solar power and MacBook Pro laptops, reached the summit earlier this week. Congratulations! The long-admired Windows photo app ACDsee finally released a Mac beta this week; it's worth a look. More photos and inside views from the Zurich Apple Store opening via ifoAppleStore. Got something that's too good not to share? Give us a tip!
Gears of War 2 goes old school this weekend
Well, as old school as 2006, anyway, as Epic has announced another Gears of War 2 weekend event. This weekend, the sequel will get a touch of the original Gears of War experience, as Epic will be turning off the concussion from smoke grenades (thank you!), and limiting team size to four in public matches in the Execution - Warzone, Annex - KOTH, and Guardian - Submission playlists. The madness has started as of 9 AM EST this morning and will continue through Tuesday, May 26, at 9 AM EST. You can thank Memorial Day for that extra day of fun, folks![Thanks, Joe!]
Double experience in EverQuest this weekend
There's a new Tip of the Week being shared with the EverQuest community on the official forums -- kill stuff this weekend. Okay, so most players would have been killing stuff anyway, but the reason for the tip comes from the fact that there's more experience on offer than usual:EverQuest adventurers will be surrounded by a magical DOUBLE experience increase. And double XP means 100% extra XP, or 200% XP... Whichever way you want to look at it, that's a lot of XP! Happy adventuring!The experience rate will be doubled from 10:00AM PDT on Friday the 22nd, all the way through til 10:00AM PDT on Tuesday the 26th. This is actually a full four days worth of 2x experience gain, so if an extended EverQuest weekend was on the cards for you sometime in the near future, this might be the time to put that plan into play.
Remote control airsoft gun MacGyvered out of Wiimote, ioBridge, and Construx
It's the weekend, folks, and you know what that means -- time to blow off a little steam. By way of example, the folks that brought us that Wiimote coil gun a while back have returned to the scene with a little something they like to call OfficeDefender. Using the very same servo and ioBridge module as the last time, this hack finds the gun replaced with a Beretta 9mm replica airsoft gun. Also note the nice use of Construx in a non-beer or iPhone related context. If that weren't enough, this bad boy has a full-auto mode, moves 180 degrees horizontally, can be sighted with the head-mounted webcam and fired via Wiimote. We're not telling you that you can use this to hassle folks in the office come Monday, but you totally could. Videos after the break.[Via Engadget German]
Getting all the Well Read books
It's the weekend after Thanksgiving, the family has all left, there's nothing but turkey leftovers to eat, and you hit level 80 last week, and you're just waiting for your guild to level up so you can start the endgame. What is there to do on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon? Find all of the Well Read books -- WoWWiki has the guide I've been looking for ever since I first got excited about this achievement. I count 43 in total, and they've got a list of all the books you need and where you can find them for reading.The vast majority of the books can be found in Scholomance and the Scarlet Monastery, so a run through both of those instances (you can easily solo both at 80) will get you many of the books you need. From there it's time to travel the world -- Brill, Southshore, the Eastvale Logging Camp, Duskwood, and Booty Bay, and a few other places, depending on your faction (Alliance seems to have a little bit of an advantage there, as Stormwind and Orgrimmar have nice libraries. There are a few good books in Undercity, but the Orcs and Tauren aren't much for book learning, apparently).Seems totally doable in a quick afternoon, and while you won't really get anything but the 10 achievement points (and probably a nice chance to pick up some more of the old Azeroth explorer achievement), why else would you do this, other than to brag about it. Whenever anyone argues that you don't know your Azeroth lore, you can just point them to your Armory page, and tell them to check the part about you being Well Read.
WoW Radio at BlizzCon 2008
WoW Insider is heading off to BlizzCon tomorrow (I've got to catch a flight out of O'Hare first thing tomorrow morning), but we're obviously not going to be the only ones covering the event. Our good friends at WoW Radio also have big plans to keep you informed throughout the two days in Anaheim -- Totalbiscuit and the gang over there will be hosting live audio streams of all of the panels, both as they happen and after they happen, and they'll have shows, interviews, and commentary throughout the weekend (including our special live recording of the WoW Insider Show there on Friday night). We'll have liveblogs and updates here, of course, but you can drink right from the firehose of an audio stream there as well, all weekend long.TB has posted a special podcast outlining their plans for the weekend, so if you plan to do some listening to what's going on in Anaheim, check it out. Additionally, they'll also be chatting throughout the weekend in IRC, so feel free to join either #blizzcon08 on irc.quakenet.org or #wowradio on irc.mmoirc.com for up-to-the-minute chats and updates on what's going down near Disneyland.Sure, you could pay for the DirecTV feed and get just the video, or you could stay tuned to our sites for free, and pick up even more news and views about the big event. If you couldn't grab a ticket or didn't have the time or money to make the trip, don't worry one bit -- we're going to make sure you've got the best seat in the house.
Apple sells 1m iPhone 3Gs, 10m apps
Apple reports that it sold its one millionth iPhone 3G on Sunday, meeting (if not exceeding) many analysts expectations that it would do so. This came despite deep hurting surrounding activation of the new phones on Friday. But hold on: because of clever accounting, a sizable fraction of those handsets were already considered "sold" as soon as they left the loading dock in Asia, according to Fortune's Apple 2.0 blog. "In other words, some of those 1 million iPhones recorded as sold by Apple may still be in transit," they wrote. Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster had conservatively predicted that it would take 17 days for Apple to sell a million of the new handsets. He may be closer to the truth, if one counts only the units sold at retail over the weekend. Additionally, Apple noted that users downloaded 10 million apps from the App Store since it launched last week. In another press release, The Stevester called the App Store a "grand slam."
Age of Conan login servers besieged by Set [Updated]
Weekend warriors of the Hyborean variety may have to look into another extra-curricular this Sunday, as the Age of Conan login servers appear to be experiencing some troubles. Players reported serious lag spikes late this morning, developing into an all-out server downage. This blogger is currently unable to get back through the character login servers. Says Funcom Community Manager Famine, "It looks to be something externally right now but the operations guys are looking at it."Instead of rickrolling the official forums like many other players seem to be doing, might we recommend taking this as an opportunity to mow the lawn or walk the dog? Or if the outdoors isn't your thing, how about reading through our backlog of Age of Conan coverage?[Update: It appears the servers are back online. If we had known simply posting about the outage would bring them back up, we'd have done it much sooner!]
WRUP: A long week's weekend
Happy Friday! Maybe it's just because sickness set in at the beginning of this week, but for some reason the past five days have seemed unreasonably long, so the break of the weekend is a welcome sight today. Friday also happens to be the day where we ask: What aRe yoU Playing in this wide and wonderful world of MMOs?Kyle Horner says he's been enjoying himself in Ikariam lately -- he says it's a free-to-play browser based game that's "kind of like Civ," which makes it a must-check out. Michael Zenke tells us he's got Mythos and WoW on the docket for this weekend, along with another super secret game that we can't quite tell you about yet. But our own Tateru Nino takes the cake. Here's what she says she has planned for this weekend: "Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, Half Life 2 (original recipe), Team Fortress 2, UFO: Afterlight, The Bard's Tale, Imperium Romanum, City of Heroes, LotRO, The Longest Journey (original game), Two Worlds, Bioshock, Dream of Mirror Online, Neverwinter Nights 2, plus time in SL." Yowza. That's a lot of gaming.So what are you up to? Taking advantage of the extra XP in Pirates of the Carribbean Online? Trying to sign up to play Age of Conan? Or just desperately trying to finish up your taxes? Leave a comment below and let us know what's on your MMO plate this weekend.Previously on WRUP...
WRUP: Valentine's aftermath edition
Do anything fun for V-day yesterday? Living the single bachelor life that I do, I spent most of the evening blogging last night, although WoW got a little playing time, and boy, wasn't that new Lost just completely confusing? Now that we're in the romantic aftermath, it's time once again to ask What aRe yoU Playing this weekend?Our own Eli Shayotovich is going to be busy-- he's heading into City of Heroes for new epic archetypes, and Tabula Rasa for his new charcoal armor dye (that doesn't sound as fun as the archetypes, if you ask me). Me, I'm continuing to try and get my Hunter to 70 in WoW (these 60-70 levels are harder than I remember), and I'll also be playing Burnout Paradise online on the Xbox 360 (GT toucansamurai if you want to join me)-- it's not actually an MMO, though when you're driving around the same city with a bunch of other people, it sure feels like one.So what are you up to in the world of MMOs or elsewhere this weekend? Anybody diving into the WoW patch 2.4 PTR? Or checking out the new Book 12 content in LotRO?Previously on WRUP...
The Daily Grind: When's your playtime?
It's bright and early on a Sunday morning... and what are you up to? Reading up on MMO news, apparently! And since you're here, we may as well ask when you make time to play your favorite MMOs. Most of us are trying to fit in playtime around busy work, school, or family schedules. So when do you find time to make your playtime?
WRUP: Pre-New Year's Eve edition
It's Friday once again, and despite the fact that most of us had at least half of this week off, we're looking at another three- or four-day-weekend. So what are you going to do with it (a.k.a. What aRe yoU Playing)?Me, I'm glad to be home and resting after a pretty rushed holiday weekend, so it's going to be lots of relaxing. I haven't played a lot of World of Warcraft in a while, so I think my main goal this weekend will be to get back to my hunter and try leveling her as close to 70 as I can get. Just today, I finally bought my Retriever in EVE Online, also, so I see some more mining in my future as well. You know what they say: more ISK, more problems.Did you get anything fun to play over Christmas? What games are you sinking your MMO teeth into this weekend, and what are you aiming to get done in those games?Previously on WRUP...
WRUP: "The weather outside is frightful" edition
It's mid-December. The snow is here (in Chicago, anyway), and with it comes the single-digit temperatures, days spent indoors, and hot cocoa and marshmellows. This weekend is the perfect time to stay inside, snuggle up to your PC, and play some MMOs.So as we ask every week, What aRe yoU Playing? For me this weekend, it's all about EVE Trinity-- I was waiting for that little boot.ini snafu to die down before upgrading, but last night after CCP said it was OK, I took the plunge and downloaded all the new files. I played it this morning for a bit (the detail! the lights! beautiful!), and this weekend, I plan to get a good chunk of all the ISK I'll need for moving up to a mining barge (which I'm just a few days from skilling up to as well). So I'll be in game as Frank Dante this weekend-- say hi if you're also flying the unfriendly skies.What MMO is going to grab most of your attention this weekend?
Extra Legends of Norrath drops, new cards this weekend
SOE is promoting its new-ish Legends of Norrath online card game with the not-cleverly-named "Legends of Norrath Promo Weekend." The event begins at 2:00 PM PST this Friday (November 30th) and ends at 11:59 PM PST on Sunday (December 2nd).Players of the game both new and old will "enjoy an increased rate of card pack drops." Additionally, two nice new cards called "Laricel the Gatekeeper" and "Skyshield Maiden" will be obtainable only this weekend. So if you're a hardcore collector in the game, you'd better get to playin'! If you're not already familiar with Legends of Norrath, it's a trading card game playable inside EverQuest and EverQuest II as well as on its own through the Station portal. Players can receive special drops in both games that add cool new cards to their decks. Think of the card game in Final Fantasy VIII, only, y'know ... less lame.
The family that plays together...
Dshpls tells the story of his friend's girlfriend's family over on the forums-- mother, father, sons and daughter all play World of Warcraft together. As a lot of players say on the forums, it's not really all that weird anymore-- WoW is showing up on commercials and even grandmothers play the game-- but it does still seem like a rare occurrence. My parents just aren't the videogame type, and my brother and sister were never that interested, either, so I always think of WoW as a more social activity than a family one.But then again, whenever I abandon this bachelor life of "gaming blogger" and settle down in a house with a few more bedrooms than I need, I'll probably be inclined to do a little family gaming myself. As our own Robin Torres can tell you, gaming with family is just as fun as gaming to get away from family, and probably more fulfilling, too.When you sit down to grind EOTS marks for the Season 1 Arena awards this weekend, will your family be sitting next to you yelling to get to the Blood Elf tower? Or are you glad they're on their own, playing Sudoku and golf, rather than the videogames you love so much?
DS Daily: Which day?
That is, on which day do you seem to play the most? Perhaps a weekday that tends to be light on work, school, or whatever it is that takes up most of your time? Or do you get in most of your gaming time on the weekend? We know a lot of people who tend to set aside one day more often than others, so we wondered if the same was true of our readers.
Another week, another weekend!
So what's happening this weekend? Well, the Lunar Festival has ended, but the Darkmoon Faire is in Mulgore (and even though the rewards aren't as interesting with new Burning Crusade gear in the game, it's always fun to shoot yourself out of the cannon), it's Eye of the Storm battleground weekend, and, as always, the Fishing Extravaganza takes place in Booty Bay on Sunday. With so many things to do throughout Azeroth and Outland, what are your gaming plans for the weekend?
Another weekend is upon us...
And of course, that means that work is done and it's time for play! So what are your weekend Warcraft plans? Raiding? Questing? Grinding? Leveling? PvPing? Tanking, healing, or DPSing? I'll be working on grinding up my paladin alt -- slow-going for me, since I'm at the level where I'm stuck primarily in Stranglethorn Vale, one of my least favorite zones in the game. (But if I don't keep leveling, I'll never escape the place!) What about you?
It's Friday night... what are you playing this weekend?
Another week's ending which leaves us an entire weekend open for World of Warcraft. So the question is -- what are you up to this weekend? Grinding out levels on a main or alt? Grinding faction for the Aldor or the Scryers or someone else entirely? Questing in one zone or another? Running instances for some particularly interesting piece of gear? Playing around in Halaa or any of the other world PvP objectives in Outland? Training professions? There are countless things to do and only so many hours in a weekend.I'm going to be leveling my rogue's herbalism and alchemy skills -- a recent switch from mining and engineering. And so far, leveling a profession from zero has been just as tedious and unexciting as I remember.
