Countless people lose control of their World of Warcraft accounts on a daily basis, whether through good old-fashioned hacking, falling for phishing scams, clicking on bogus email links, etc. In answer this ever-growing problems, Blizzard released the World of Warcraft Authenticator at an extra charge, offering participating players a solid layer of security between their passwords and WoW account. Up till recently, the WoW Authenticator proved robust and secure, but has since been the target of a successful hacking attempt.
Blizzard suspects a keylogger may be involved. A Keylogger is a nefarious bit of code that sits on your computer and reports all keyboard interaction, ultimately ratting out your passwords so a hacker.
So the Authenticator is not a fail safe way to keep accounts safe but it is still a very good investment. If you want to check to see if you have the virus just search for the file “emcor.dll” on your computer. If you have it then your account most likely has already been hacked.
Tools like the Authenticator can only do so much. It is really unfortunate that people are getting hacked even with this security measure but it all comes down to the user. Safe browsing habits, a good anti-virus, common sense (against phishers) and things like an Authenticator can make your account virtually hack proof.
A small group of loyal King’s Quest fans have been toiling away on a fan-made sequel to the classic adventure series for eight years. Eight years! At one point, Vivendi, the IP rights holder, got all uppity and made an attempt to shut the project down, but an agreement was reached that allowed the team to continue working on the project. Known as “The Silver Lining”, the team hoped to release the game, for free of course, at some point in 2010.
Unfortunately, Activision recently came into possession of the King’s Quest IP and are now acting like big, throbbing dicks. That’s a technical term, look it up. Activision has demanded that all materials relating to King’s Quest be removed from The Silver Lining Website, in effect destroying eight years of dedication and labor…and for what? They weren’t going to make any money from this project. The Silver Lining was made for fans by fans. No threat whatsoever to Activision’s license.
A sad turn of events that makes Activision the Darth Vader of the gaming industry, at least until the next corporate snafu comes along and pisses me off.
In 2005, Phoenix Online Studios received a Cease & Desist letter from Vivendi Universal, the owners of the King’s Quest IP, in regards to our work on The Silver Lining. We complied with the request, and over the months that followed, we were able to work out a non-commercial fan license with Vivendi that allowed us to continue our work on the game.
We have spent a lot of time recently reworking the material of The Silver Lining into episodic releases, with the first out of a planned five episodes completed, and submitted for review, and had hoped we would be able to bring our game to you, the fans, in the Spring of 2010.
Recently, however, ownership of the Sierra IP changed hands and became the property of Activision. After talks and negotiations in the last few months between ourselves and Activision, they have reached the decision that they are not interested in granting a non-commercial license to The Silver Lining, and have asked that we cease production and take down all related materials on our website.
As before, we must and will comply with this decision, as much as we may wish we could do otherwise.
We cannot say enough how much we appreciate the support we have had over these years from our fans. Without you, we would never have gotten this far. There would be no game to develop, and no one to develop it for. You have been amazing and steadfast, and we will always remember that and appreciate it more than we can say.
Sadly, after eight years of dedicated work and even more dedicated fans, The Silver Lining project is closing down.
What the future holds for us, as individuals or a team, we cannot say. We have an amazing development team, however, filled with talented and hard-working individuals, and we hope the teamwork and rapport we’ve developed won’t go to waste. We hope that when we do know what the future holds for us, our fans will be there to enjoy what we can give them still.
Again, thank you all so much for everything. This has been a long and crazy road, full of more twists than we could’ve anticipated, but more triumphs and wonderful memories than we could’ve ever hoped for. And for that, to all of you and to everyone on our team, we will always be grateful.
Blizzard is rolling out a new patch for the StarCraft II beta and, like most Blizzard patches, it takes a jackhammer to various skills, in some cases removing entire entire skills from units considered overpowered. Changelog below:
Balance Changes:Terran:
Viking:
The armor value for this unit in Fighter Mode has decreased from 1 to 0.
The damage done by this unit in Fighter Mode has changed from 6 (+8 armored) to 10 (+4 armored).
Reaper:
The damage done from D-8 Charges has decreased from 40 to 30.
The delay between attacks for D-8 Charges has decreased from 2.5 to 1.8.
Orbital Command:
The build time for this upgrade has decreased from 50 to 35.
Protoss:
Observer:
Gravitic Boosters: The cost of this research has decreased from 150 Minerals and 150 Vespene Gas to 100 Minerals and 100 Vespene Gas.
High Templar:
Phase Shift: This ability has been removed from the game.
Feedback: New Ability. Drains all energy from the target unit and causes damage equal to the amount of energy drained.
Colossus:
The building pathing radius for this unit has decreased from .75 to .5625.
Mothership:
Vortex: The energy cost of this ability has increased from 75 to 100.
Vortex: The target radius of this ability has decreased from 3.0 to 2.5.
Temporal Rift: This ability has been removed from the game.
Wormhole Transit: This ability has been removed from the game.
Mass Recall: New Ability. Teleports all of the player’s units in the target area to the Mothership.
Gateway:
The build time of this building has increased from 50 to 65.
Zerg:
Infestor:
Fungal Growth: The damage done by this ability has decreased from 48 to 36.
Fungal Growth: This ability now prevents affected units from burrowing.
Neural Parasite: Functionality changed. The Infestor now channels this spell, which lasts 10 seconds or until the Infestor is destroyed. You can now target all units with this ability.
Terran Infestation: The ability’s energy cost has reduced from 50 to 25 and Infested Terrans now spawn 1 at a time.
Bug Fixes:
Addressed an issue causing people to receive an “Internal Battle.net Error” message with their game client.
Muting your microphone will no longer cause your microphone to be turned off in the operating system once the program has exited.
Please note that the voice chat functionality has only partially been implemented. There are many known issues with voice chat that we expect to address in a future patch.
The “Medium” graphical settings were reconfigured to work better on appropriate machines. The video settings “auto-detect” functionality has been reset as a result.
Added a frame rate limiter to the game menus to prevent some graphics cards from running at higher frame rates than necessary.
Added GRB rating tags to the login menu for the Korean version of the Beta client.
I haven’t played World of Warcraft in a long time, mainly because I could rarely find anyone to group and raid with and guild politics always rubbed me the wrong way (get a life people). Recently Blizzard tried to address folks such as myself who tend to solo but would still like to venture into a dungeon now and then without standing around for 4 hours looking for a group.
Enter “Dungeon Finder”, the overhauled Looking For Group feature that radically alters how players can tackle WoW.
What’s it do?
This feature has replaced the Looking For Group tool and provides all-new dungeon party creation functionality.
Players can join as individuals, as a full group, or a partial group to look for additional party members.
Groups using this tool will be able to teleport directly to the selected instance. Upon leaving the instance, players will be returned to their original location. If any party member needs to temporarily leave the instance for reagents or repairs, they will have the option to teleport back to the instance.
Players can choose the Random Dungeon option.
The Heroic Wrath of the Lich King Daily Random Dungeon option will award two Emblems of Frost no more than once a day. read more…
The folks over at InfoAddict have a bit of a reputation for not being shy when it comes to sharing their opinion and they have taken a lot of heat for it in the past. It seems they didn’t learn their lessons though and they have gone after another much-loved property – the recent Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2 release, and they definitely aren’t pulling their punches.
Here’s just a snippet…
Here’s the deal: I’d say a good 60-70% of the time I am picked as a host in Modern Warfare 2. I can tell immediately that I am the host as the game behaves slightly different. Sound-effects of an automatic gun become more compressed and, worst of all, it takes nearly twice as many bullets to fell an opponent than when I am NOT hosting. My average score in a typical, non-hosted game is about 20-8. If I am hosting, this reverses to 8-20. Every…time.
This huge discrepancy ruins the game and reveals the overall illusion that stinks up Modern Warfare 2. It tells me that when I think I’m doing well, it’s probably because other players are lagging and when I’m doing bad, it’s not because I suck. In short, multiplayer is fundamentally flawed in Modern Warfare 2. Those of you with crappy connections will probably never be selected as host so you go on your merry way thinking you’re better than you probably are.
Once again Modern Warfare 2 is making the news and not for a good reason. Unlike last week, which found players exploiting a bug that allowed an individual to explode, this time around we have something more nefarious: a bug that spreads like a virus, infecting all players who come into contact with the carrier.
According to reports, players get “infected” by unwittingly joining a private match hosted by a carrier. They then get hit by the same issue — unlimited ammo and no reloads — and can pass it on if the end up hosting any games themselves. Allegedly, it’s “spreading like an STD.”
This unique issue started out as a mod on the PC version of the game, which we spoke about yesterday. It has been transported to the Xbox 360 and put to more sinister work. Infinity Ward is apparently “working” on the issue, and it appears that Microsoft is wielding its banhammer for anybody caught employing it.
Obviously, Infinity Ward has fucked up once again. Worse, they are threatening bans (once again) for anyone found exploiting their crappy code. How about we ban Infinity Ward for not open beta-testing their product like they did with the original Modern Warfare?
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