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BlizzCon 2010 and StarCraft 2 Invitational

Today marks the first day of Blizzcon 2010! The event is taking place in the Anaheim Convention Center in California and will be running till tomorrow evening. Unfortunately Blizzard is providing a Direct-TV stream that costs 40-fricken bucks, BUT there is this Ustream feed up RIGHT NOW! Also, if you hit up the main page, there is links to the free RTS and WoW streams. Hopefully there’s be some good shit going down :P I’ll try and follow it as much as possible and provide some recap later. Enjoy!

Another link for streams: http://tv.esl.eu/de/esltv_stream/

Other Tags: D3, WoW, StarCraft II, SC2

World of Warcraft patch 4.0.1 Is out!

Hey guys it’s Jalmari here to talk about the new World of Warcraft patch 4.0.1 that was released Tuesday. Links to the patch notes can be found here :
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/patch4p01.html

So where to begin?! I’ll start off at the beginning i guess…
After playing the patch for 4 days I still have mixed thoughts. The general, yet major changes to the game are as follows: (I’ll briefly talk about each)

The new UI: Is almost completely redone. Upon logging in I was completely lost and confused as to where things were and everything looked completely different. After 4 days of play however, I think I’ve got the hang of it. There is a new guild interface which I don’t care for. It is now a separate tab brought up by the letter “J”, instead of being part of the old social button. Although it is weird to look at, it has its perks. Anyone that is on in the guild will show up and there are tabs at the top to specify what you need to know about them. The best one, I think, is the guild professions tab. Clicking this will allow players to view the professions of guildies that are on and letting them scroll your prof book to see if you can do anything they need. This is a great feature! Other UI changes include spell alerts. These are new notifiers for players with procs. When a spell or ability is proc’d, a flashing spell alert flashes on the screen and the spell will light up on your bars. This is a great way to never miss those procs people! great for dpsing. Another big change was the player page. The page is still opened with the letter “C” however upon doing so opens the page like normal but gives a side arrow to view stats. This window was very detailed and gave a great overview of all aspect of my toons.

HUGE CHANGES-
MP5, Armor pen,Spell Power(on items) and Defense are GONE. Armor pen has converted into crit and MP5 is gained by spirit now for healers. Intellect has been reworked and now gives Spell Power as well. This is a crazy new thing. My Shammy, spec’d resto before the patch, was sitting at about 24k mana. After patch day she is now at 33k. Most geared pally healers are sitting at around 40-45k mana. Defense is gone, replaced by a talent in the respective tanking trees(ie. Druid, Warrior, Pally, DK) making them uncrittable. Kinda cool but the tanks now have to waste two talent points for that… : / These numbers are insane for me to comprehend. I really hope this doesn’t get out of hand… with blizzard adding all of this stuff, numbers for Cata are going to be huge. I just hope it all makes sense and doesn’t become a crazy race to see who can get the biggest numbers. Already, in most top guilds, its getting out of hand. Most good players in ICC are pumping out a steady 25k dps. Its just….dumb really. NO SKILL INVOLVED!
The talent trees have all been reworked. Players now have a 31 point talent tree with 41 points to spend. Cool addition, but bogus. On most of my toons i got to dabble into the other trees after spending the for 31 in one tree(this is necessary because the other trees are inaccessible till 31 points are spent in one tree) however, on my prot warrior i had to spend all 41 points in the prot tree to get the necessary talents needed to tank. Kinda BS, but whatever.
New talent trees can be accessed here :
http://wowtal.com/#k

Reforging: 40% of any one secondary stat on an item can be allocated to add a new secondary stat to the item.
– This is a fantastic addition to wow. Visit a reforger in all the major cities, talk to them, place an item with a ilvl 200 score or better and you can add stats of more desire to play style. Example was with my Shaman. I put in my shoulders and converted 40% of my crit into haste. Doing this w/ most of my stuff, im at almost 1k haste now. Awesome :) haaaa

Another new feature is the raid lock-out system. Icecrown Citadel and Ruby Sanctum now use it. This system provides the opportunity for a character to defeat each raid zone’s encounters once a week. A character may now complete the encounters during the week with different raids of either 10 or 25 players. THIS IS CRAP! one can only once per week. A 10 or a 25 man. once you do one, you can’t do the other. IT IS THE WORST IDEA EVER! The idea is that if you raid a 10man and down 5/12 boss’s in ICC, then you can join a 25man group that has done the first 5 and finish out icc. It is my opinion that this will be thrown away. People are revolting! I think it is terrible!

Sooooo this is getting long, and I’m tired of ranting and raving lol more about the patch is soon to come, so until then..

Cheers, Jalmari

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Azgalor&cn=Jalmari

Shout Out: Reddit vs. D2JSP Grudge Match

I have a series of videos for you guys this Feature Friday. Recently Reddit and D2JSP had a little grudge match a few nights ago.  Even though there aren’t any big name players in the matches, the games ended up being quite awesome. My favorite caster Psystarcraft was on the Reddit team and just stomped the entire D2JSP team, causing a little controversy in the D2JSP community. Check out the games below. GG

Psy vs Myke

Psy vs Minigun

Psy vs Fayth

Psy vs Kiom

Psy vs Rick

Other Tags: StarCraft II, SC2, PsyStarcraft

Major League Gaming: Washington DC (2010)

Another exciting stop for MLG starts today and runs all weekend sporting intense Halo 3, Halo Reach, StarCraft 2, World of Warcraft, Tekken, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl matches in Washington DC. It’s going to be a great weekend with some of the best players bumping heads for a chance to be crowned MLG Champions in November! Don’t miss any of the action with the free stream starting today at 5:30 PM ET (4:30 PM CST), and don’t forget you can always upgrade for $10 and get the pausable HD stream. Should be a blast.

Check this page for the main stream and bracket information.

Update: There was some great matches tonight for both Halo 3 and StarCraft 2. Unfortunately I can’t watch everything, so I’m not sure how the other games went. Final stream featured 3 matches between drewbie and SLush. Very exciting micro action between the terran and zerg player (respectively). If you have any time this weekend, I highly recommend checking it out, and if you’re feeling extra fanatical…or generous, you could spend the $10 and get the HD stream. Although beware, the quality, at least on my end, wasn’t that much better for the actual matches (but close-ups of players crying after losses was about 720p). Nice…

Other Tags: SSBB, StarCraft II, SC2, WoW, MLG, Pro Circuit

Review: Ventrilo vs. Mumble

It’s been about a month now since we made the big switch from Ventrilo to Mumble and I wanted to take a moment to share my thoughts and help guide others in making the right choice for their VOIP needs. Firstly, know that I’ve been using Vent for about 6 years, so switching to Mumble wasn’t easy, but there were a few distinct elements about it that got me hooked.

It seems prudent to talk about audio quality first since that’s undoubtedly what most people are curious about. In comparison to Ventrilo, I would say Mumble’s clarity is better. Voices are crisp, clear and sound much more human than Vent’s ever did. It also doesn’t have that annoying sound effect every time you push-to-talk. I will admit however, that that was kind of hard to get used to. I was so accustomed to having an audio notification every time someone said something that when it wasn’t there I kept thinking I was disconnected from the server. It took about a week or so before I was really comfortable with it being gone, and in fact, I actually find it much better. In the past that sound effect could actually impede clarity if you pushed to talk while someone else was talking.

Mumble’s notification system is a game overlay. Now I actually have this disabled at the moment because I know everyone’s voice in our server, but I could see this being extremely useful for PUGs or ringing when you have no idea who’s who. Please note that with it enabled, it will come up in applications like Adobe Photoshop and anything else resource heavy.

Latency between what’s said and when it’s heard is extremely fast. I did some testing with my roommates and when he spoke in his room, it was almost instantly being said in mine. Very impressive and what’s even better is that this can be configured how you want it. If your network isn’t the best, you can make packet latency higher to return yourself to a more Vent-like approach.

Look and feel. I have to admit that Mumble doesn’t look very cool. I mean Vent wasn’t winning any awards either, but Mumble especially looks kind of…opensourcey. Now that I’ve been using it a month though, I’m growing to like it, but that was definitely something I kept noticing. Fortunately you can download or make your own skins for it! Which I thought was really bad ass because I totally want to make a sick Spawn Room one. In fact, if you have any suggestions for a good skin, post a comment and I’ll see what I can do.

Finally, I wanted to mention hosting. I purchased my Mumble server from the one and only Apoplexy Industries, for 15-20 bucks cheaper than Ventrilo (per year)! Awesome. But this is where it gets kind of sketchy because the configuration of Mumble isn’t exactly user friendly. I had to dig for a while to figure shit out and it required me to edit files, and make more users and blah blah blah. So if you’re not exactly tech savvy, you may want to find someone who is before purchasing your server. On a more positive note, getting everything set up with the default settings is a breeze.

Conclusion

Mumble is great. So far I really like it and I think it competes well with Ventrilo, even with its flaws. If I were to recommend them to a room full of potential VOIP buyers, I would recommend Mumble over Vent for almost all of them. Here’s how I’d break it up:

Ventrilo: For casual gamers looking for a popular VOIP platform, with a decent interface. These people are the ones that don’t care a whole lot about maximum performance and won’t need split second orders to be executed in a fast-paced environment.

Mumble: For hardcore gamers, raiders, scrimmers, and those in need of a performance VOIP service. I’d also recommend it to normal computer users that are more tech savvy and those looking for a cheaper VOIP option. You will get a better service, with better audio quality and quicker response times. It’s probably the best choice for FPS gamers, StarCraft 2 players, World of Warcraft raiders, and other fast paced games. If you’re looking to switch, seriously consider Mumble.

Update: Don’t forget, if you want to test out Mumble, hop on Spawn Room’s and give it a whirl. We don’t bite. :)

Other Tags: VOIP, Mumble, Ventrilo, hosting, AI

Shout Out: Team Pandemic

This Top Team Tuesday I wanted to talk about a team that has a long history of eSports gaming, has been iconic in it’s formation of the industry, but unfortunately didn’t survive the test of time and has shut down as of this year. Team Pandemic grew from a LAN team in Arkansas and went on to create a formidable professional team that competed in a variety of games. It wasn’t too long ago that I was personally watching them play in some intense Team Fortress 2 matches and I remember their name being included in all kinds of online and WCG-esque tourneys. It’s a shame they’ve gone, but their impact should not be forgotten.

Their website now sits with a saddening press release explaining their demise, but Google searches reveal that their website is still functioning in the background. Obviously it’s not being updated, but you can still view the old roster, news items, and whatnot.

It’s not exactly clear if this is the last we’ll hear of Pandemic. Their press release hints vaguely that the organization still plans on being involved with the industry, but maybe in a new form. Someday, if we’re lucky, maybe the team will be revived and Pandemic’s cry will be heard in StarCraft 3, Counter-Strike: Space Edition, and Team Fortress 7! Maybe…

Other Tags: TF2

Shout Out: UberCharged.net Competitive Team Fortress 2 Guides

Hey all you TF2 fanatics out there! In case you’re new to the competitive world of Team Fortress, I wanted to mention a kick ass website with a great competitive Team Fortress 2 guide! It’s called Ubercharged.net and has a great list of TF2 players writing for it. When I was learning competitive medic and scout, this guide was a godsend at getting me started. It has some great tips and tricks, and references to YouTube videos that give you visual explanations. As usual, I’m also going to recommend supplementing your TF2 reading with plenty of demos. Watching pros play is just as vital as playing the game. L2P and GL HF lil’ nublets.

Other Tags: guide, guides, TF2

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