Spicing things up today, the guys over at Traveller's Tales have released a new batch of screenshots from their upcoming Action-Adventure title, LEGO Batman: The Video Game. The new screenies show off various character models including Batman, Scarecrow, Commissioner James Gordon, and Mr. Freeze! Enjoy:
It looks like the anti-detection abilities of World of Warcraft botting tools such as Glider, OpenBot and Inner Space were once again proven to be imperfect. Blizzard celebrated the May 20 launch day of Age of Conan by doing some spring cleaning of their own - booting out tens of thousands of botters and other cheaters. In addition to botters, the Banstick of Doom was applied to account traders, gold sellers, gold buyers and those repeatedly cheating in the Arena by win trading. Some estimates put the number at over 300.000 accounts, but we have to wait for Blizzard's press release for the official figure.
You can amuse yourself with the obligatory whining from those who ended up at the receiving end of the banstick here. The thread is already 41 pages long, which is remarkable when you consider the fact that banned accounts cannot post in the official World of Warcraft forums - so this thread covers only the moaning coming from people who own multiple accounts or (ab)use someone else's account to post their proclamations of innocence. A tip of the iceberg, so to speak.
Timing Is EverythingThe timing of this latest ban wave is hilarious - at least to me. It's as if Blizzard wants to dump the undesirable part of their playerbase to Funcom's lap. It's obvious that Blizzard has been "taking names" for quite a while, probably ever since patch 2.4.2 which is rumored to have included a new detection routine to catch these botters.
To apply the bans on the launch day of Age of Conan is probably more than just a coincidence. My guess is that Blizzard waited with their massive list of confirmed botters and other lowlifes until Funcom managed to get their game out, and then dropped the hammer - hoping that at least some of them would pick another game to exploit when they venture out to get a new MMO account. After all, hunting down and banning cheaters takes considerable effort, and processing all the inevitable complaints about "unfair" bans requires a lot of expensive customer support manpower and it seems that some people just can't get a hint. It's not like this is the first time Blizzard has mass-banned cheaters.
Buried at the tail end of a press release boasting the sell-out of the collectors edition (111.000 units), Funcom did some additional damage to their faction towards their customer base today. They confirmed what was pretty much known for a while - no (real) DX10 in Age of Conan at launch, and no, it won't be added in anytime soon...
While Funcom is thrilled with the early success of Age of Conan, and proud of the game launching this week, the company regrets to inform gamers that the DirectX 10 version of the game will not ship with the initial launch. As Microsoft’s DirectX 10 is undoubtedly the future of PC gaming, Funcom has decided to ship only the DirectX 9 version at launch, giving the team more time to focus on building a DirectX 10 version worthy of Microsoft’s great vision for the future of PC gaming. This postponement will let Funcom include even more features in the DirectX 10 version of Age of Conan than originally planned.
The DirectX 10 version will be premiered at the German Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany, August 20 – 24, 2008. A special preview showing off the advanced graphics made possible by DirectX 10 technology will be unveiled this summer at nVidia’s NVISION event in San Jose, California, August 25 – 27, 2008.
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Interestingly, the Age of Conan retail box contains the "Optimized for DirectX10" tag.
Now before I get mugged by the AoC fanatics who point at the client options and say "but it says DirectX10 right here", a brief explanation; While the client contains a "DirectX10" mode that you can turn on, and while it might actually use DX10 API, it's still using Shader Model 3.0. Just go and look at the "Shader Model" dropdown. Currently Age of Conan uses no SM4.0 shaders (or any other DX10 features for that matter). As Funcom is, by their own admission, going to demonstrate their shiny DX10 mode next August, they are still some way off from actually getting it there.
The press release also contains one other interesting tidbit...
Additional retail figures for the standard edition of Age of Conan are also highly impressive. In total, Funcom is shipping around 700.000 copies of Age of Conan on day one. This impressive figure for a PC game is powered by equally impressive pre-order numbers. As a result of the tremendous interest and recent order increase, Funcom has not been able to fulfill all orders of Age of Conan in several markets due to current server capacity limitations. Extra orders of servers are now in place to facilitate for handling of more customers.
So, it may very well be that my earlier guess about launch will be correct. More precisely, there will be a shortage of game boxes at launch. Let's hope it's not as bad as with World of Warcraft back when it launched...
On a related note, Funcom seems to have locked down their official Age of Conan forums pretty hard - you need to have an active Early Access account in order to even read the forums at the moment. It's pretty common to limit posting privileges to paying subscribers, but effectively asking you to buy the game before you can read what others think about it is almost unheard of. One can only wonder what Funcom's motive for the completely closed forums actually is.
Creating a little buzz today, the guys over at Maxis have released a brand new gameplay trailer for their upcoming evolution title, Spore. Running just under two minutes long, the video showcases the early cell phase of the game, where you start off as a "simple organism which is dropped onto your planet by way of meteor." Check it out:
Thanks to GameTrailers for the above stream. The video is also available for download at WorthPlaying. Stay tuned for more mirrors! ;)
AMD has been spreading details of a new program called AMD GAME! this week.
The primary goal of the AMD GAME! program is to make the hardware requirements for PC gaming easier to understand for non-tech savvy PC gamers. System vendors and PC builders will feature a AMD GAME! logo on their computers if they meet the regularly updated hardware specifications set by the AMD GAME! program. So, if a computer is advertised as a AMD GAME! capable system, it should reliably be able to deliver 30 frames-per-second or over at 1280x1024 in current games. For faster computers, there will also be AMD GAME! Ultra level of performance, which should signify a system is capable of running games at over 30 frames-per-second at a 1600x1200 resolution.
It does not look like AMD GAME! stickers will be adorning game boxes -- for now. At the start of the program, it looks like this initiative is solely aimed at computer retailers. But in the future, this may change, and the AMD GAME! logo could become something like the Microsoft's Games For Windows marketing campaign.
While the AMD GAME! program does not look like it will be of any help to committed PC gamers or hardware enthusiasts, it could help out the less experienced PC purchaser. From personal experience, on more than one occasion I have talked to someone who was disappointed that their brand new computer was incapable of playing a game -- they did not realize that their new machine did not come with a gaming-worthy video card.
Keeping the good news coming tonight, Codemasters has announced that their highly anticipated racing title, Race Driver: GRID, has gone gold and will be hitting stores on May 30th. To celebrate the big news, the developers have fired-up a final list of all the cars and tracks you'll find in the game. Pretty impressive stuff!
Also, if you haven't checked out the demo yet, a list of mirrors can be found right here. :D
Available for download today is some of the first gameplay footage from Electronic Arts' highly anticipated RTS, Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3. Running just under two minutes long, the video highlights both land and naval combat, base building, and unit abilities. Very cool stuff! Check it out:
Thanks to GameTrailers for the above stream. Prefer a manual download? We have you covered:
GamersHellGamersydeStrategy InformerWorthPlayingRed Alert 3 is scheduled for release in October 2008.
