Source: videogamesblogger.com

A World of Warcraft tournament-style competition has been announced by Blizzard for players of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game and it’s millions of players.

The global tournaments will use the game’s arena system and take place within special realms where gamers can instantly craft level 70 (the highest experience level currently attainable) characters with “epic equipment” to do battle with others online.

Starting in April, there will be two rounds of online qualifiers in Europe, South Korea, North America, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. Entry will cost £12 in Europe, 20,000 won in South Korea, $20 in North America, and NT$450 in the other three regions. The qualifiers will run for six weeks, and teams will play 3-vs-3 matches, with the top four teams advancing to the regional finals. Winners of the regional finals will then vie for a slice of $27,000 in cash prizes, and the winners of the global championship will net themselves a $75,000 grand prize.

Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime commented, “eSports is one of the most exciting facets of online gaming today. We’re pleased to expand World of Warcraft’s tournament options for players who want to focus mainly on the competitive aspect of the game.” — Via WoW Europe

Source: videogamesblogger.com

Warhawk patch v1.3 is coming soon and it will add two new troop equipments (the Bio-field Generator and the Field Wrench) as well as a bunch of other new additions such as:

* HOME Game Launching

This Home integration update allows players to be able to form groups, meet in their apartments, discuss tactics, and then launch a game of Warhawk all together.

When you’re in your apartment, all you do is whip-out your virtual PSP, select ‘create game’ and pick Warhawk. From there, you get to start your own player server, pick a game rotation, set server options and then immediately launch Warhawk with all of your friends! You can also pick to not make your game viewable to the other Warhawk players around the world, or you can make it a ‘public’ game that puts all of your friends into the server together, and leaves open slots for other global Warhawk players join.

* New VOIP Options:

Players are now able to select between PTT and Open-Mic. Players can also tune the voice-activation level to tune out all the embarrassing background noise that may be going on while you’re playing. Players also now get to more clearly see who’s talking. It’s displayed on the right side of the screen. Also supported is an “all-talk” server option so that you can enable cross-team trash talk. It also now shows which player is speaking at the score screen too. And players from the score screen can choose to mute/un-mute their VOIP.

* New Player-Created Paint Schemes & Insignias:

If you’re an avid Warhawk player then you know that they are sponsoring a contest that allows players to submit their own custom paint schemes for the Nemesis and Warhawk. They’re also allowing players to submit custom insignias as well. They’ll be picking the winners and including these new customizations with the v1.3 patch.

So to summarize, this patch includes: New troop equipment, HOME Game Launching, VOIP updates and player-created customizations.

A specific release date for the patch has yet to be announced.

Source: videogamesblogger.com

The Eye of Judgment Expansion set 2 is already in printing by Wizards of the Coast, with the series of new cards due for release this Spring.

Several of the cards have been revealed on the official Eye of Judgment Sony blog. Take a look a them below.

An exact release date, a final name or pricing details have yet to be announced for the second set in the Collectible Card Game phenomenon that uses the PS3 camera to bring your cards to life. Although there were distribution issues with the first set of Eye of Judgment booster packs and gamers had trouble finding them in stores. That, along with rampant card copying which made it easier for people to cheat in online matches, hampered the collection aspect, so hopefully Sony and Wizards have ironed things out and cracked down on the piracy problems with this second set.

Source: ps3blog.net

Trailer for the next PixelJunk game, Dungeon:

Q Games also mentions the next PixelJunk game, called Dungeon, which is still early in development.

Feature Article on Gamasutra
Interview on Level Up

Source: seganerds.com

DRX, a long time Sonic fan and member of Sonic Retro forums, has acquired hundreds of Sega prototypes. It is also said to have documentation and other unconfirmed things. He has said that he will release Sonic the Hedgehog prototypes this upcoming Saturday. Stay tuned for that. He hasn’t made any other announcements about releasing anything else.

DRX said that he got a entire years worth of backed up data from Sega of America, from 1993 to 1994. Most of the stuff is the original builds and meant for developers to test.

[source: Download Squad]

Source: thexboxdomain.com

Source: thexboxdomain.com

You may have heard of it, or even experienced it. Halo 3 players will be seeing a new glitch fix this week from Bungie. It seems as if there is a little complex problem when two players melee each other at the same time. The auto-update it seems has been sent off to Microsoft for Certification and should be coming sometime this week, according to the report.

“The Short Version

Melee contests will only produce a winner if he has a sizeable health advantage over the loser. Otherwise, both players may die in the clash.

Bungie goes on in the report to further explain the problem, Read on to find out what’s going to take place.

[Image from Joystiq Via Joystiq]

Jereme “Restless Devil” Puik

The Halo 3 “Fix”

In Halo 3, there is explicit special treatment for what is called a “melee contest”, which occurs when two melee attacks occur almost simultaneously. Specifically, when the host starts to throw a melee attack, there is a short window after that (three frames, or approximately 100ms) during which the host will watch for a retaliatory melee attack. If one arrives inside that window, it is a contest. Besides smoothing out the latency differences between clients (it works the same way when one client melees another), this allows a client with a ping as high as 100ms to compete with the host on a far more even footing than Halo 2 allowed.

So now we have the contests, but how are they resolved? Having determined that we cannot trust timing in an environment with latency, we instead use the remaining health (including shields) of the contestants as the tie-breaker. This is about as fair as you can get, within the conventions of Halo—the guy who did more damage comes out on top. Specifically, the winner of the contest still takes melee damage from the loser, but is protected from death and lives to fight another day.

On paper, this method addresses the host advantage (among others) and is scrupulously fair. There’s just one problem:

Check out the full report here to read into all the details.

Source: thexboxdomain.com

We love them for it and have always had so much fun with it. Evil Avatar just spotted a new report that says LEGO Indiana Jones will give us 4 player co-op! Now, all we need to know is which characters good ol’ Indy will be paired up with in this adventure. I know this is a big off point, but don’t forget to check out the new trailer for the Indiana Jones movie along with the games trailer.

Anyone that’s been a fan of the Lego Star Wars titles knows that they are solid games for cooperative play. And if you’ve been following stuff in Lego-land you know there’s a new Lego game coming out based on the Indiana Jones movies. It looks like the folks over at Lucas Arts have decided to keep the focus on co-op play, and this time they’ve upped the ante by including a 4 player co-op mode.

[Via Evil Avatar and Co-Optimus]

Jereme “Restless Devil” Puik

Source: seganerds.com

It’s Monday, which means Nintendo has updated its Virtual Console, and this week brings good news for Sega Nerds the world over.

Phantasy Star II has arrived.

Originally released in 1989 on the Sega Genesis, Phantasy Star II is cherished by gamers and many in the media as being one of the greatest games of all time. The RPG features turn-based battles, the customary epic story-line, and a large cast of endearing characters to help you save the Algol star system.

The game will run you 800 Wii points, or $8, and is rated E for Everyone.

Source: videogamesblogger.com

Here’s a list of this weeks U.S. game releases. The most popular games are Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney on DS, The Club on Xbox 360, PS3 & PC, Dragon Quest Swords: the Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors on Wii, and FIFA Street 3 on Xbox 360, PS3 & DS. On the downloadable games front we’ve got today’s Ninja Gaiden III and Phantasy Star II on the Wii Virtual Console, as well as N+ on Xbox Live Arcade (updates Wednesday), and Ball 7 Deluxe, Bloodties and Largo Winch: Empire Under Threat for PC through GameTap. No word yet on any PlayStation Store games (updates Thursday).

Monday:
FIFA Street 3 (Xbox 360, PS3, DS)
MX vs. ATV Untamed (Wii)
Need for Speed ProStreet (PSP)
Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom – $5 (Wii Virtual Console)
Phantasy Star II: The End of the Lost Age – $8 (Wii Virtual Console)

Tuesday:
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (DS)
Dynasty Warriors 6 (Xbox 360, PS3)
Dragon Quest Swords: the Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors (Wii)
History Channel: Battle for the Pacific (PS3)
My Horse and Me (PC)
Pimp My Ride (Wii)
The Club (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

Wednesday:
N+ – $10 (Xbox Live Arcade)

Thursday:
Ball 7 Deluxe (GameTap)
Bloodties (GameTap)
CABAL Online (PC)
Largo Winch: Empire Under Threat (GameTap)