This week’s episode is full of computer roleplaying game goodness, as well as some of the disbelief of a Nintendo-owned Harry Potter franchise. All that and Civilization VI and Turok excitement to boot.
The news includes:
Let us know what you think.
The patience of PlayStation 3 owners is wearing thin as retailers are reporting a 200% increase in PlayStation 3 trade-ins, usually for Xbox 360 consoles, as well as sales slumps for PSN points cards and fewer multiplatform game sales for PS3.
“In the first week of downtime we did not really see any major change in sales or trades,” says one source, a store manager at a major UK retailer speaking on condition of anonymity. “However from the second week onwards we have seen an increase of over 200 per cent on PS3 consoles being traded in, split almost 50/50 between those trading for cash and those taking a 360 instead.”
Another UK source has reported that the independent retailer had seen a “massive increase” in the volume of PS3s traded in in recent weeks, and has pegged the biggest trade-in demographic as “the hardcore online shooter crowd”, who are logically the group most likely to defect when their online gaming is wiped.
The long awaited Wrath of the Lich King is here! By long awaited, really, I mean, I waited a long time to get patch after patch of the next expansion to Blizzards best of MMORPG. Although I don’t know the architecture to creating the patches, it seems so dated in methodology. Why must I download 5GB of patches when one can just supply me with an option to pull everything.
The initial download was roughly 1.8GB for what I assume would be “the DVD” you’d be buying in the store. Once I install that baseline it requires another roughly 1.2GB “update” before you can launch the application. Once you launch the WoW executable it must download another 500MB or so of patch data followed by another 100MB of patch data followed by another 500MB of patch data. Then, and only then, can you login and start playing!
My first option was to use the character I transferred over from Scarlet Crusade and jump into the world. Wishfully thinking, I also migrated over my addons to see what would work. After receiving more errors than I can explain I logged out and disabled all the addons. We’ll wait on those.
Within seconds I noticed the date in the top corner, it seems WoW has evolved over the years from a black vortex of time suckage to something a bit more user friendly. An older patch included a clock on the map so you know how many hours you’ve got before the sunrises, allowing you to sneak in a few hours of sleep before work. Now, they’ve included a calendar so you will know just how many days you’ve been up without food or drink. I kid.
If you’ve got Microsoft Windows or an Xbox 360 you’ll be eligible for the public beta of Call of Duty: World at War by Activision. Although the game is set to deploy on the 11th of November, many of us will be able to get a taste of the multi-player action early by entering into the beta.
Activision has always been great about getting stable multiplayer beta’s for their Call of Duty series, hopefully this turns out to be as awesome. ” These betas will serve as an early chance for players to practice the tactics needed for survival in the intense chaos of Call of Duty: World at War’s Pacific and European theaters,” says their press release (below) and we’re ready to take on the challenge of “bug finding.”
Okay, in all honesty, most beta’s I’ve entered on my Xbox 360 have just been to get some free gaming in early and be able to feel cool about getting into the action before everyone else. In return, Activision gets some server stress testing and early feedback (if I’m so inclined to yell).
All-in-all, great news from the Activision crew.
