SpawnPoint

Just late yesterday, Take-Two and FireAxis announce a new 'Civilization Revolution' for the PS3 (and other consoles I believe).  This isn't the first port attempt of this series to the console, but hopefully this one - works!

You can read about the recent press release here

Its interesting to note that, and I am sure this was strategic, that June 4 Sid Meier did a interview with Playstation.com. The full interview can be found here.

Some of his comments are found below.  I'm not a big console player (though I will as my kids get older) - still, if Sid can suck up a new generation of players in the console format for these strategic (and use of mental powers) games - I will have hope for our future!

From dashing corsairs to futuristic settlements, golf courses and even the entirety of human history itself, if there's a subject of interest to joystick jocks, chances are visionary designer Sid Meier has already explored it.

A legend in the PC strategy and simulation arenas with over 25 titles to his credit spanning a nearly three decade-long career, happily, he's now turning his attention to a subject presently much closer to heart… Next-generation console gaming.

"Thanks to the launch of platforms like PLAYSTATION®3, the time is finally right for this transition," explains the perky auteur, whose most recent awe-inspiring work includes swashbuckling action-adventure Sid Meier's Pirates! for PSP® system. "Computers no longer have the edge on set-top systems. The technology is there; the audience is ready for deeper and more gripping experiences; and the bar's formally been raised in terms of enthusiasts' expectations. I hate to use the word convergence, but I don't know how else to describe the situation… The timing couldn't be more perfect."

 

The one game you are LEAST likely to find me playing.. Nintendo DS Dream Skincare”

Players input their daily body temperature and weight by marking a graph that shows up on the touch panel, according to Konami Corp., which made the software.

The “beauty navigation software,” as Konami describes it, asks questions that the player answers such as skin tone and smoothness, as well as exposure to sunlight and hours of sleep.

Advice on a daily regimen for healthy skin pops up on the screen, including directions to drink more water, or to eat apples and ginger, food that had a reputation for warming up the body.

Hormonal balance is key for avoiding wrinkles and age spots, and body temperature and weight fluctuations are good indicators for any hormone swings, which can get awry from overwork and stress, according to Konami.

OK  - So 1st of all, I already know I am a big geek. No need to repeat it, k?

Check this game out

Physics game - planets - gravity.  What else could be more fun?

I just wanted to say good bye to everyone here. It was great experience, great fun but I have other things I have to do with my life now. I wish you all well.

Shane is now playing Last Chaos. Have a nice day.
Last Chaos is an on-line role playing game where thousands of players can simultaneously be connected, fight and upgrade their courage and battle skills through adventures, quests and crafting skills with fellow adventurers.

Feel free to download this piece of crack here

Have a wonderful feel good and Chaotic day.

The latest World of Warcraft patch 2.1.2 has been released by Blizzard and can be downloaded from SpawnPoint. What follows are the patch notes.

General:
* Arena and Honor Rewards: As part of the inauguration of Season 2, the costs of all Arena items and Honor items has been reduced.
* Improved Mend Pet, Abolish Disease, and Abolish Poison no longer play sounds when there is nothing to dispel.
* Players can no longer fail with skinning at maximum skill.
* Spellcloth: Creating spellcloth will once again only summon one Angered Nether-wraith.
* Some new cooking recipes are available from Kylene in Shattrath City.
* A recipe for a superior resilience gem has been added and is rumored to be held by the residents of Halaa.
* Procs: Most procs are set to trigger only from spells which cost mana, but inadvertently disallowed spells which cost a percentage of base mana. That bug has been fixed and so such spells will now trigger many procs they did not previously trigger.
* Players will no longer slow down to walking speed when closely following another player.

Druids:
* Druids in Swift Flight form can no longer loot herb nodes.
* Force of Nature: This spell will no longer causes players it is cast on to enter combat with nearby creatures. All of the treants summoned will now attack a neutral creature they are summoned on.
* Tree of Life: The bonus healing aura from this talent will reactivate when a Banish effect wears off a Druid in Tree Form.

Hunters:
* Fixed bug with Misdirection where sometimes only two attacks were redirected instead of three.
* Entrapment: This talent will no longer causes Hunter to stand up or stop eating and drinking when it procs.
* Improved Mend Pet: This ability will no longer cause Hunters to stand or to interrupt eating and drinking.
* Poison Spit: These abilities will now appear in the correct order in the pet training menu.
* Scatter Shot: This ability will now trigger Thrill of the Hunt.
* Thunderstomp: These abilities will now appear in the correct order in the pet training menu.

Mages:
* Molten Armor: This buff can now proc when the Mage is sitting.

Paladins:
* Corrected the amount of damage done by Seal of Vengeance on a target affected by Judgement of Crusader.
* Improved Concentration Aura: This ability now correctly reduces the duration of silence and interrupt effects by 30%. In addition, the reduction in duration of silence and interrupt effects from this ability will no longer stack with other such reductions.
* Judgement of Blood: Effects which increase your damage by a percentage will no longer cause Paladins to take excessive damage from casting this spell.
* Seal of Blood: Effects which increase your damage by a percentage will no longer cause Paladins to take excessive damage from this spell’s procs.

Priests:
* Feedback: This buff can now proc when the Priest is sitting.
* Shadowfiend: This creature will now reset to full health when it is summoned. It will also automatically attack your current enemy target when it is summoned.
* Surge of Light: The buff from Surge of Light will no longer prevent Inner Focus’s charge from being consumed. In addition, it is no longer possible to get two free Smites when this ability procs.
* Touch of Weakness: This spell can now trigger Surge of Light when it does critical strikes.

Rogues:
* Sword Specialization: The change to Sword Specialization making its extra attacks appear in yellow has been reverted. Extra attacks will appear in white and act like any auto-attack. They will no longer reset the swing time of your weapon.

Shaman:
* Focused Mind: This ability has been changed to reduce the duration of silence and interrupt effects, rather than increase resistance to them.
* Frostbrand Weapon Rank 5: The damage on this spell was reduced slightly such that it will never do more damage than Frostbrand Rank 6.
* Lightning Shield: Procs from this buff will no longer cause neutral town guards to attack the Shaman. In addition, Nightmare Vine will no longer cause charges of this buff to be consumed.

Warriors:
* Overpower dims on the action bar when the player is affected by disarm spells.
* Sword Specialization: The change to Sword Specialization making its extra attacks appear in yellow has been reverted. Extra attacks will appear in white and act like any auto-attack. They will no longer reset the swing time of your weapon. Rage awarded will be calculated by damage dealt as with any normal auto-attack.

Items:
* PvP Trinkets: Insignia of the Alliance, Insignia of the Horde, Medallion of the Alliance, and Medallion of the Horde have all been redesigned. The trinkets for all classes now have the same effect: Dispels all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your character.
* Many raid items have had their art improved.
* Clefthoof Mace: This item’s name is now spelled correctly.
* Crystalweave Bracers: This item and its depleted counterpart now have spell critical strike rating as intended.
* Ebon Mask: This item now has sound when moved in a player’s inventory.
* Eye of Magtheridon: This trinket will now trigger when a Judgement of Vengeance is resisted.
* Relentless Earthstorm Diamond: The bonus damage to critical strikes from this metagem now applies to all types of damage, not just physical.
* Skyguard Rations: The stamina and spirit buff from this food has been decreased, as well as its duration.
* Talisman of the Breaker: The reduction in duration of silence and interrupt effects from this item will no longer stack with other such reductions.
* Vestments of the Devout Set: The damage absorb set bonus on this set will now absorb only 350 damage, matching its intended design and tooltip.
* Voidheart Raiment Set: The two-piece set bonus will now trigger from Death Coil.
* Voidstar Talisman: This item will now give the correct amount of resistance to Warloock pets.

Quests:
* Vim’gol the Vile now has a 30 second respawn cooldown.
* A problem with interrupting Vim’gol the Vile’s Unholy Growth spell has been fixed.
* Casting bar text was added when gathering a Corrupted Flower during the quest, “Botanical Legwork”.
* A distance-related issue was resolved when attempting to use the Fel Crystalforges at Forge Camp: Terror and Forge Camp: Wrath in the Blade’s Edge Mountains to create 5 Unstable Elixirs of the Beast.
* A problem that could result in Obsidia, Rivendark, Insidion, and Furywing not responding to their respective dragon eggs being used has been resolved.
* Sky Sergeant Vanderlip at the Skyguard Outpost in the Blade’s Edge Mountains will no longer display her Exalted faction gossip to those who have not attained that faction rank.
* All classes will now properly get credit for siphoning the crystal in the quest “Bloodgem Crystals”.
* Players will no longer fail to summon Insidion and Obsidia if the dragons are in combat when a player summons them.

Dungeons and Raids:
* Auchindoun: Sethekk Halls
o Time-Lost Controllers no longer remove buffs from players who are charmed.
o Heroic Mode: Anzu, the Raven God may no longer be pulled far away from the location where he is summoned.
o Heroic Mode: Anzu’s Spell Bomb is now a curse and he will no longer charge.
o Heroic Mode: The quantity and health of Minions of Anzu that spawn have been reduced.
o Heroic Mode: The frequency and duration of many of his abilities have been retuned to make the fight more forgiving.
* Auchindoun: Shadow Labyrinth
o The Cabal Summoner, Cabal Executioner, and Cabal Spellbinder mobs that interact with Murmur in the Screaming Hall in Auchindoun Shadow Labyrinth will no longer sometimes freeze their animations upon death.
* Black Temple
o It is no longer possible to engage the Shade of Akama without completing phase 1 of the encounter.
o Ashtongue Spiritbinders may now cast heals on Ashtongue Sorcerors, Channelers, and the Shade of Akama.
o The Illidan Stormrage fight encounter has received additional tuning and improvements.
* Caverns of Time: Mount Hyjal
o The number of preliminary waves before each boss in the Caverns of Time: Battle for Mount Hyjal event has been reduced from 12 to 8, and some of the larger waves have fewer creatures than before.
* Karazhan
o The door leading to the Celestial Watch in Karazhan now starts open, and Netherspite does not path so close to the door.
o The damage dealt by Netherspite’s Nether Breath has been reduced.
o Fixed a bug that caused the Karazhan chess event’s movement spell cooldowns not to display correctly.
* Tempest Keep
o When Kael’thas Sunstrider is engaged in combat, the doors leading to his room will now properly close.
* Tempest Keep: Mechanar
o Nethermancer Sepethrea’s Raging Flames should now periodically change their targets in Heroic mode.

Interface:
* Fixed an issue with some AddOns where dropdown menus go away after showing the world map.
* Fixed some Lua errors on /castsequence macros with conditionals.

World Environment:
* Chief Overseer Mudlump, Dragonmaw Pitfighter, Forgus, Goblin Merc, Gug, Horus, Lost Torranche, Officer Jaxon, Overlord Mor’ghor, Rumbpus, Telaari Jailor and Uriku: These creatures are no longer lootable.
* Darbel Montrose: This creature now always drops at least a good quality item.
* Lost Torranche: This creature is now skinnable.
* Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer: This buff will no longer give excessive critical strike rating to low-level characters.
* The Twilight Ridge: Burning Legion creatures in this region will now drop Marks of Kil’jaeden, Fel Armaments, and Oshu’gun Crystal Powder Samples.

Bug Fixes:
* Fixed a memory leak that may occur when a player alt-tabs out of the game, engages a screensaver, or locks their machine.

Take a close look at some of these cheats.. Do you suppose that, just perhaps, some developers are anti-BUSH liberals?


Invincibility
drlife
     
Instant kill
quwhba
     
Teleport
bushsux-oluaowr
     
Silver ring
iraqsux-eszaryz
     
Silver ring, weapon, garment
luvtana-aeviyaa
     
Less chunky
krisrox-lzjlcoj
     
More chunky
superchunky
     
Record a movie
movie
     
Display version
version
     
Free Ring
opnauticus

Top 10 MMO By Active User base!

1. World of Warcraft, released 2004 - 8.5 million subscribers. While Habbo is giving Blizzard a run, the numbers generally support WoW as the biggest MMO in the world. Important qualification, though: only 4 million are based in the West and monthly subscribers, while its 4 million Chinese players only pay roughly 4 cents an hour to play it in Internet cafes.  -- If you REALLY want to get addicted to crack, go to here and download it from SpawnPoint. 

2. Habbo Hotel, released 2000 - 7.5 million active users. The Finland-based “social game” MMO popular with teens and growing fast. Look out, Horde!

3. RuneScape, released 2001 - 5 million active users. A Java-based MMORPG operated by Jagex Ltd. with over nine million active free accounts. Boasts one million paying customers. Fancy that.

4. Club Penguin, released 2006 - 4 million active users. MMO for the kiddies developed by New Horizon Interactive. The game shares similarities with other social environments like Habbo Hotel.

5. Webkinz, released 2005 - 3.8 million active users. Here’s a novel idea: create beanie baby like stuffed animals, assign them a unique ID, then create an MMO portal in which kids can spend even more time using your product. When kids graduate from Club Penguin, they go to Webkinz (or so I’m told.)

6. Gaia Online, released 2003 - 2 million active users. Not quite an MMO, not quite a social site, but founder Derek Liu has openly stated the networks desire to focus on social gaming. Forums make up 30% of the current site activity.

7. Guild Wars, released 2005 - 2 million active users. Another MMORPG made by the popular NCsoft out of South Korea. No Mac love here, but a lot of active users.

8. Puzzle Pirates, released 2003 - 1.5 million active users. Published by Ubisoft and developed by indy king Three Rings, Puzzle Pirates merges casual games with a rising interest in pirate culture. Puffy shirt aside, it’s working like a charm.

9. Lineage I/II, released 1998 - 1 million subscribers. Published by South Koreas NCsoft, Lineage was once the most popular MMO of its day. At one point total active users peaked at 3 million. A Western release in 2002 mostly fizzled.

10. Second Life, released 2003 - 500,000 active users. No introduction needed here. Created by Linden Labs, this virtual world features a rabid fan base, inflated numbers, a high influx of corporate doppelgangers, and lots of digital genitals. First life optional.

Sigh.. I saw this on slashdot and figured I would have to post it after the whole 'Mode' and 'I Love Jack Thompson' thing.

European Union justice ministers met today in order to discuss the regulation of sales of violent video games to minors. Europeans were riled up last year when a German gunman shot several people before taking his life at a secondary school. A European Union Commissioner is taking advantage of the shootings last year called for stricter regulations in the video game industry. A motion introduced last month calls for legislators to "put in place all necessary measures to ban the sale of particularly violent and cruel video games.

Id chose to debut their new engine at a Mac conference because id's development team has been gradually using Macs more and more in the development process. But just what's under the hood of this new engine? The technology demo seemed to emphasize the textures being displayed -- over 20GB of textures spread across a vast and detailed racetrack. An id Software press release goes into specifics:

The new id rendering technology practically eliminates the texture memory constraints typically placed on artists and designers and allows for the unique customization of the entire game world at the pixel level, delivering virtually unlimited visual fidelity. Combined with a powerful new suite of tools designed specifically to facilitate and accelerate the content creation process, id Tech 5 will power games that contain vast outdoor landscapes that are completely unique to the horizon, yet have indoor environments with unprecedented artistic detail.

Ever been called a hacker? Good! That’s because you are good! And, because you know something they don’t. The number one thing you can do that will get you called a hacker, thus, win more…is walling.

There are a few levels of walling that will make you virtually invisible. Looking for feet and the ‘business’ ends of guns around corners is basic walling. If you can see an opponent’s foot, you know where his body is and you know what to do after that. If you are in the middle of a gunfight and your opponent runs around the corner, don’t try and follow him with bullets. Start shooting and aim in front of where he should be running, then aim for the upper body and keep firing until he’s dead. If just one bullet hits him, he will be stopped and the following bullets will finish him off. This way, no one can run from you (pat yourself on the back and start calling yourself Rambo.) Before you come around any corner, quickly fire 1 or 2 rounds at the edge of the corner. If an opponent is coming around the corner at the same time you are, a bullet will slow their momentum down and disorient them momentarily. This will give you just enough time to come around the corner at top speed for a quick kill.

Some players will do what is called noob walling. This comes in two forms. The first is standing up against a wall where opponents will commonly attack from, and simply unload clip after clip until they are killed (which they usually are because this is stupid for many reasons.) That is stupid because, if more than one opponent is coming around the wall, you cannot stop them all at the same time and two, you look really dumb. The second type of noob walling is firing in the general direction of you opponents the moment you are spawned to life. This also looks stupid and if you happen to land an accidental kill, you will not have earned it and your overall respect level will drop significantly.

If you are in a fight and find that you have the high ground on your opponent, use this to take a wall based headshot. The headshot will be relevantly easy because being that you have the upper angle on your opponent, you will be naturally inclined to do a headshot. You simply need to find your opponent. To do this, jump and move around until you locate your opponent. Once you find them, do one final jump to aim and when you land, fire through the wall and get the job done. Your opponent will never know what hit em.

The best weapon to wall with is a high caliber weapon. Anything with large ammo will do more damage coming through brick or wood or ice. I suggest walling with the AWP or Machine gun if possible. The other weapons may take 7 to 15 bullets to do a single kill with the wall slowing the bullets down.

Check out the interview of one of the creative directors of Starcraft II.  I'm in love and so excited that they are finally making this. I can put away Broodwars soon, perhaps!

Full Interview Available at http://eu.starcraft2.com/features/interviews/cinematicteaser.xml

So.. I just came across this today, some crap on Digg. The sad thing is, I've HAD conversations like this.

- SergioThree: there's other fish in the sea, man, she's just a girl

- Beatsfromkorea: no dude, that's bullshit.

- Beatsfromkorea: Think of it this way. if your precious copy of street fighter third strike broke and i told you "it's ok man, there's other games in the sea. here, play mortal kombat instead" what would you say? you'd be like, "xxxx that, gimme third strike."

- SergioThree: ...

- SergioThree: you just reached me on a level that i never thought possible

This is a boring topic. Reporting. We've been busy working on reporting.
* Reporting how many people are blogging
* Reports on how many people download files
* Reporting what files people are downloading
* Reporting on what servers people play on
* Reporting on what files are being uploaded
* Reporting on comments people are making
* Reporting on user registration trends.

Reporting is boring.. if you aren't a n INFOWHORE! :)

Reporting - Graphics - Popularity of blogs - COMING SOON!