Time passes so quickly, It's been 1 year since the release of the Burning Crusade. On January 16, 2007, The Burning Crusade was released and sold almost 2.4 million copies worldwide in its first 24 hours of release, winning multiple awards from industry representatives. Since that time, World of Warcraft has reached the epic milestone of 9 million subscribers worldwide, and players have discovered the might of the Burning Legion, fought against the allies of Illidan in Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep, and even faced down the Betrayer himself in the Black Temple.
For those who have not yet had the chance to venture into the perils of Outland, a free trial of the Burning Crusade is available for download. For players yet to experience World of Warcraft, a free trial of the original game is also available.
Source: Blizzard
WoW - The Burning Crusade, 1 Year Anniversary
Blizzard introduced BlizzCast
Blizzard Entertainment officially launched "BlizzCast" - The official Blizzard PodCast.
In each of their episode they will go behind the scenes of the game making experience. Now that's something I always wanted to see :) - Blizzard also is going to interview the developers, asking them questions, hopefully showing what they do, their workplace etc...
To kick off our BlizzCast series, we've decided to begin where every great Blizzard idea begins, at the concept level. To speak with us we have Samwise Didier, our Art Director and concept artist for many of the popular Blizzard icons you've grown to love, such as the Pandaren, Fel Orcs, Dark Templars, Zerglings, and many more. We'll be chatting with Samwise on how he came up with the characters he did, as well as what it is like to work on both the Warcraft and StarCraft franchises.
Check out the BlizzCast Page Here! :)
ESWC announced Dota as a Official Game for ESWC 2008.
Electronic Sports World Cup announces DotA and Quake 3 as official games titles for 2008 competition in addition to Counter-Strike 1.6, Warcraft III and Trackmania Nations.
They announced the second pool of games that will be played in the ESWC 2008 Tournaments.
- Dota: Defense of the Ancients
- Quake 3
Dota competitions will be played on a stable map as 5x5 and it might be added in the upcoming ESWC tournaments!!
The finals will happen in USA, summer 2008.
Source: ESWC
Reduce Lag in WoW by 100-150 in 5 minutes.
The fix which only requires you to change 2 small things in the windows registry allows your ping in World of Warcraft to drop by 100-150, and it only takes about 5 minutes to apply.
Warning:
If you aren't comfortable changing files in your registry you may just want to wait for blizzard to create a working fix.
1 - TcpAckFrequency:
NOTE; if you are running Windows Vista this setting may not have any effect - a hotfix is needed which i'm tracking down. This works fine under Windows XP
Type "regedit" in windows "run.." dialog to bring up registry menu
Then find:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic
es\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\
There will be multiple NIC interfaces listed in there, find the one you use to connect to the internet, there will be several interfaces listed (they have long names like {7DBA6DCA-FFE8-4002-A28F-4D2B57AE8383}. Click each one, the right one will have lots of settings in it and you will see your machines IP address listed there somewhere. Right-click in the right hand pane and add a new DWORD value, name it TcpAckFrequency, then right click the entry and click Modify and assign a value of 1.
You can change it back to 2 (default) at a later stage if it affects your other TCP application performance. it tells windows how many TCP packets to wait before sending ACK. if the value is 1, windows will send ACK every time it receives a TCP package.
2 - TCPNoDelay:
Type "regedit" in windows "run.." dialog to bring up registry menu
Then find:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSMQ\Paramet
ers
Right-click in the right hand pane and add a new DWORD value, name it TCPNoDelay, then right click the entry and click Modify and assign a value of 1.
Click Ok and close the registry editor, then reboot your PC."
Basically, this fix is deactivating the Nagle algorithm to improve your ping. If you don't want to do it you can just wait for the 2.3.2 patch as it's supposed to deactivate it too, but I don't think you can test it on PTRs right now because the updated patch notes from the latest PTR Build (7705) are actually for the upcoming build (7710).
Source
Starcraft - Elky wins Insane money in Poker
Former Starcraft player Elky who used to look like the above picture after leaving starcraft went on to play Poker and he proved himself in a very differnt game!! after winning 2 Million Dollars for first place in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure on Thursday.
He was the first PokerStars player to achieve VIP Club Supernova status. He was the first PokerStars player to reach the Supernova Elite level. Second place, as far as ElkY is concerned, is barely worth the work.
"When you get second, people forget about you really quickly," he said.
Elky was a legendary starcraft player who was a silver medalist in 2001 and right after that he left Starcraft and came in the world of poker!
Hafiz Khan came second with the total money of $10,94976.
More News - Courtesy @ PokerStars
