DC Universe Online is currently free-to-play and allows players to play through the entire game either as heroes or villains. Cash shop items and DLC packages are also available to help extend the life of the game for those willing to help support the community.
Zoom On Monday night Blizzard announced that it would re-enable game limits in Diablo 3 in the near future .The studio said the limit is meant to help stamp out bots and exploits, and that anyone who is locked out of Diablo 3 for making too many games in a specific time period can contact Blizzard and explain the situation in order for Diablo 3 to be unlocked.
En Masse has partnered up with Amazon.com to sell TERA chronoscrolls, which are redeemable for a month of game time or for cold, hard gold from in-game brokers.
So I was browsing the web and I have found question and answers regarding Vella the Female Lann. I do play Vindictus and I am going to step out of the FPS zone to talk a bit about this character. You can find the original link here regarding the information.
Popular Free-to-play MMO Introduces Fleet Advancement System, Allowing Players to Construct Their Own Starbases. Perfect World Entertainment Inc. Today announced the release of Star Trek Online Season 6: Under Siege. This latest major update to Star Trek Online introduces the Fleet (Guild) Advancement System, which allows Fleet members to construct, level-up and defend their own Starbase.
Do you drive like a boss? Prove it! Leading online game publisher GamesCampus.com has unleashed a fully loaded update for their hit online racing game, Drift City. Continuing the story of Neo City, alongside numerous additional items and interface changes, now is the best time to zip over to the revved up Drifty City community at http://driftcity.gamescampus.com/, where downloading and jumping straight into the game is always free!
With the first Blade and Soul update on July.13th, the number of concurrent users has exceeded 230,000. In addition, since the level cap has been up from 36 to 45 last week, Ncsoft has announced that players can enjoy the Blade and Soul free 15 level trial.
With the PlanetSide 2 beta said to launch in the next month or so, SOE has partially revealed it's fantastic-looking CG trailer for the game titled "Death is no Excuse" which is planned for a July 25th reveal.
In May, Electronic Arts announced that it was asking for fan feedback regarding its Origin online store. Now, it appears at least some of the suggestions are becoming a reality. EA announced today that in the coming days, the company will roll out Origin client update 9.0, which the firm is calling a "landmark" revision.
According to the latest reports, Russian developer Astrum Nival's plans to bring Allods Online to China may have hit a brick wall, a gigantic one that is. Set to be officially launched by publisher Giant Interactive, Allods Online was touted as the Free to Play version of a "WoW-killer" and garnered overall positive responses since entering Beta late last year. So what happened just before the game is ready to launch?
Star Wars: The Old Republic's executive producer Rich Vogel is no longer with the company. Vogel was instrumental in the development of SWTOR, overseeing all aspects of the MMO before and after its launch in December.
According to several foreign reports and player forums, a certain character class is getting left behind in NCsoft's Blade & Soul. The class is none other than the Summoner, who was the darling of every gamer during the final Closed Beta test. While its popularity is largely due to the surprise cat summon (link), the playing style of this supposedly "easy" class is getting to gamers' nerves.
Sigil Adstringo is the first dungeon you come to where you can skip a lot of trash. Compared to previous dungeons, this speeds up the completion process considerably. On the other hand, the bosses themselves are much tougher, creating a challenging instance. When looking at the map below, keep in mind that while you can kill all of the trash, you can go from boss to boss while skipping a majority of it.
MLG has released details for the first MLG League of Legends Arena taking place August 3-5. The three-day event will feature four of the world's best League of Legends teams, competing live from the MLG Studio in NYC for a $10,000 1st Place prize.
Today we offer this selection of the 10 best browser games of July of 2012. Here you can take a look to the 10 best browser games that most caught our attention this month. Feel free to leave comments or share experiences about these games! ## 10 ## World of the Living Dead (WoTLD) is [...]
Perfect World Entertainment Inc. has announced the release of Star Trek Online Season 6: Under Siege. This latest major update to Star Trek Online introduces the Fleet Advancement System, which allows Fleet members to construct, level-up and defend their own Starbase. Alongside new Fleet events and additional end-game content for max level players, with Season [...]
Gala Networks Europe has announced Phoenix, the upcoming update for its action-packed MMORPG Dragonica. The update comes with a complete graphics overhaul to the game and introduces a new screen resolution option, the anticipated chain combos and a special limited-time offer for players with a character over level 50. Phoenix is also set to introduce [...]
The Spirit Tales' Summer Updates continues this July 18th, and the players will experience a level cap increase from Lv. 50 to Lv. 55, paving the way for new instances, stronger monsters, and better gear. This update is the latest in a series of updates, designed to further game play options for players. These latest [...]
Nexon America has released a new video that highlights the new Assassin characters and a new PVE map in its online MMOFPS, Combat Arms. The new PvE map, "Nexexis Lab" where the evil Nemexis organization's top secret labs must be infiltrate by a fireteam and all within destroyed. The video also shows off the new [...]
The kick ass Summer Sale isn't the only thing the Steam team has up their collective sleeves this week. Yesterday, Valve launched a brand-spanking-new Valve Linux blog to chronicle the company's forays into open source, and the initial post was a doozy: it confirmed all those earlier reports that Valve is working hard to get Steam up and running on everybody's favorite open source operating system. Actually, scratch that; the 11 person Valve Linux team already has the Steam client up and running.
From the blog:
The goal of the Steam client project is a fully-featured Steam client running on Ubuntu 12.04. We've made good progress this year and now have the Steam client running on Ubuntu with all major features available. We're still giving attention and effort to minor features but it's a good experience at the moment. In the near future, we will be setting up an internal beta focusing on the auto-update experience and compatibility testing.
Of course, gaming services are useless without games, so the team is also working hard at porting over Left 4 Dead 2, and reports success at getting it up and running natively on Ubuntu 12.04. "Our goal is to have L4D2 performing under Linux as well as it performs under Windows," the team writes. After that, the plan is to start moving other Valve titles onto the open source bandwagon, too.
The team promises to update the Valve Linux blog often, and they'd love to hear feedback from gamers like you to keep things appropriately open and community-driven. Pop that site into your RSS feed reader of choice, folks.
In even more "future tech" news, Micron announced today that it has started mass production of a 45nm phase change memory solution for mobile devices. Phase change memory -- so called because it uses heat from an electrical current to flip between varying physical states -- is considered a possible successor, or at least competitor, to Flash in the non-volatile memory market. Micron's chip is the first phase change memory solution to become widely available in quantity.
Micron's 1.8V chip actually contains both 1Gb of phase change memory and 512Mb of low-power DDR2 memory, which share the same interface. The company hopes this initial solution will become popular in feature phones -- unsurprising, given the low total memory amount on the chip. Future designs will target other mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.
Phase change memory erases cells at the bit level rather than in entire blocks, which makes it faster and more efficient than Flash when it comes to writing data. As far as reading data goes, hopping over to Micron's mobile PCM FAQ page shows that the chip hits random read times of 400MBps -- none too shabby, especially for a first-generation product. Micron says PCM offers faster boot times, as well.
Like Flash, phase change memory has a limited lifecycle, but since each cell can represent multiple bits thanks to their shifty nature, PCM can theoretically last longer than Flash. Micron's new technology is rated for 100,000-plus write cycles.
Applying thermal paste to a CPU before dropping a heat sink on it isn't too much of a pain in the butt, but you have to do it carefully; as pretty much everybody reading this site probably knows, air bubbles and uneven application can affect cooling performance. What if you didn't have to worry about applying thermal paste? Crazy talk, I know, but during last week's Techno-Frontier convention in Tokyo, Sony Chemical & Information Device Corp was showing off a thermal sheet that it said has the same thermal conductivity of traditional paste.
Most system builders who even know about thermal sheets -- such as Sony's own EX50000 -- scoff at the idea of using them, as they simply don't work as well as pastes, even though thermal sheets are thin and flat, bubble-free, longer-lasting and easier to apply. Sony's prototype EX20000C sheet is only 0.11 to 0.78 inches thick and conducts heat as well as paste thanks to its unique design, which Tech-On! reports is basically just silicon jam-packed with carbon fibers.
At the convention, Sony showed off the Ex20000C's ability to cool down CPUs using a side-by-side comparison of identical, yet unnamed processors; one used the EX20000C thermal sheet, while the other used a traditional (yet also unidentified) thermal paste. The thermal sheet actually kept the CPU 3 degrees (Celsius) cooler than the thermal paste. (Pictured above)
Intriguing, sure, but the EX20000C is still just a prototype. Would you consider using a thermal sheet if it conducted heat as efficiently as paste? (If not, you should check out our thermal paste showdown to see which compound you should be using.)
Microsoft on Monday confirmed that a wily bug in Skype could, in some instances, cause instant messages (IMs) to be delivered to a different IM client than the one intended. It only occurs when Skype crashes during an IM session, which Microsoft said could result in the last IM entered or sent ending up finding its way to a random contact. Today Microsoft started rolling out a hotfix.
"The hotfix addresses an issue that occurs only when a user's Skype client crashes during a Skype IM session, which may in some cases result in the last IM entered or sent prior to the crash being delivered to a different IM contact after the Skype client is rebooted or logged in as a new user," Microsoft said today. "Although we cannot determine precisely how many users may have been affected by this error, we believe the number is small given the very specific circumstances under which the error occurs."
According to Microsoft, only certain Skype clients are affected, including Skype 5.10 for Windows, Skype 5,8 for Mac, Skype 4.0 for Linux, and Skype 1.2 for Windows Phone. Unaffected clients include Skype 5.9 for Windows, Skype 2.8 for Android, and Skype 4.0 for iOS.
At a time when computers are trending towards smaller towers and shrinking form factors, Lian Li decided to blatantly buck current tradition and release the PC-X2000FN, a hulking brushed aluminum enclosure with support for oversized EATX motherboards. The PC-X2000FN is made up of three separate compartments so that you can stuff a smorgasbord of components inside while maintaining some semblance or organization.
The case itself measures 27.3 inches tall but only 9.4 inches wide. The top compartment holds four of the seven hotswappable 3.5-inch drive bays, along with a 2.5-inch cage for installing up to three solid state drives (SSDs), Lian Li says. Two additional 3.5-inch HDD and a single 2.5-inch SSD can also be installed in middle compartment.
Lian Li claims the middle compartment is by far the roomiest, allowing DIY builders to cram hardware inside without worrying about space limitations for expansion cards and CPU coolers, the latter of which offers up to 7 inches of clearance. The case supports graphics cards up to 13.3 inches long.
Power supplies up to 9 inches install in the bottom compartment and are aided by ventilation slits underneath, along with a pull-out filter to rid yourself of unwanted dust bunnies.
There are a lot of features (which you can spy on the case's product page), as there should be when the asking price is a hefty $499.
Microsoft is once again in hot water with European Union (EU) antitrust officials, this time for failing to fully comply with a 2009 settlement in which the Redmond software company agreed to give customers a choice of which Web browser to use when installing Windows. For the most part, Microsoft had been doing that, except in some instances where PCs shipped to European customers with Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 pre-installed.
"Under a December 2009 decision of the European Commission, Microsoft is required to display a 'Browser Choice Screen' (BCS) on Windows PCs in Europe where Internet Explorer is the default browser. We have fallen short in our responsibility to do this," Microsoft said in a statement. Microsoft added that, "Due to a technical error, we missed delivering the BCS software to PCs that came with the service pack 1 update to Windows 7.
This is the only scenario Microsoft admits falling short on its agreed upon obligation, noting that it "missed serving the BCS software to roughly 28 million PCs running Windows 7 SP1." European customers who purchased PCs running the original version of Windows 7 or relevant versions of Windows XP and Vista were unaffected, Microsoft claims.
It's unclear whether EU officials will fine Microsoft for its oversight. For its part, Microsoft is taking steps to show it's acting in good faith. Within just one business day of learning about the "technical error," Microsoft fixed the problem on new PCs and distributed BCS software to ones that had already shipped. Microsoft also offered to voluntarily extend its browser agreement with the EU for an additional 15 months.
"We understand that the Commission will review this matter and determine whether this is an appropriate step for Microsoft to take," Microsoft said. "We understand that the Commission may decide to impose other sanctions."
Over the weekend, Symantec revealed that a recent antivirus update wreaked havoc on certain Windows XP machines, causing them to crash with the dreaded "blue screen of death." According to the company, the update in question slipped through the "compatibility testing part of the quality assurance process for SONAR signatures" and remained available via LiveUpdate between 6:25 p.m. PT July 11 and 2:51 a.m. PT July 12.
Symantec has identified the cause of this whole problem. Apparently, these blue screens (error code 0x000000CB) were the result of an unintended threesome involving certain third-party software, the SONAR signature update (20120711.011), and the Windows XP Cache manager.
"On July 11, 2012 at approximately 10:30 PM PT, Security Response started receiving reports of customers experiencing blue screens after applying definitions July 11th revision 18 and SONAR (SONAR is the behavior-based technology that is part of Symantec Endpoint Protection's Proactive Threat Protection.) definitions July 11th rev11," the company said in a Knowledge Base article on the issue. "We are currently restructuring our testing process to improve compatibility testing and will not be releasing new SONAR signatures until this new process is in place."
The flawed update has already been replaced with updated signatures and a workaround is now available for affected machines.
At a special event in San Francisco earlier today, Microsoft raised the curtain on the 15th version of its Office productivity suite, which has historically been a huge cash cow for the company. Speaking at the said press event, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer the new Office "will fully light-up when paired with Windows 8." Well, turns out there really aren't an awful lot of things out there beyond Windows 8 that can fire up the new Office, for Office 2013's pyrotechnics are reserved for Windows 8 and Windows 7 only and users with older operating systems will need to upgrade in order to get in on the action.
According to the Office Customer Preview FAQ page, the new Office requires either Windows 7 or Windows 8 (Release Preview or higher) to run and that "it isn't possible to install on a PC running Windows XP or Vista." While Microsoft's decision to not support the archaic Windows XP is not surprising, the two—er, few—remaining Vista users probably did not see this coming. It's worth noting here that unlike the new Office, its predecessor, Office 2010, supports three generations of Windows beginning with XP.
Players without a previously active SWTOR account can now play Star Wars: The Old Republic up to level 15 with no charge or time limit! You do not even need to enter a playment method. Furthermore players can now earn an in-game reward (Kurtob Alliance Speeder) for inviting your friends to take part in the 15 level trial.
All players who have already referred a friend through the Friends Trial and have had their friend purchase the full game, will be retroactively granted a Kurtob Alliance Speeder via in-game mail.
This has been an exciting week for me as two of my favorite games received significant updates this week. First Dungeons & Dragons Online released their Menace of the Underdark expansion which boosted the level cap from 20 to 25, introduced a new Druid class and introduced Forgotten Realms to DDO. If this was not enough excitement already Star Wars: The Old Republic also released Patch 1.3 which introduced a much needed Looking for Group tool as well as Ranked (PvP) War-zones.
To be honest I have not had much time to check out DDO this week. I got as far as installing the update, logging in and confirming that I can now earn experience past level 20. However I spent quite a bit of time in SWTOR both pre-patch and post patch and I can tell the game has never been better.
I had a chance to test the LFG tool for a Heroic mission and a Hard Mode flashpoint. In both cases the group finder matched me with a group instantly. This has to do with a fact that I play a Sith Assassin Tank. I bet DPS players have a longer wait. Once I was matched up with a group, the group finder game me an option to travel to my heroic/flashpoint which saves allot of travel time. Please note that although the Group Finder takes you to your quest, it does not take you back. So if you queue up for an Illum Heroic and you are in the fleet, it will take you there but not back.
I also purchased a bunch of legacy character perks such as a portable repair droid as well as instant travel to my home world, fleet and Black Hole. Unlike the previous legacy perks these were actually more reasonably priced.
As the week progresses I will hopefully get more time to try out more all this new content
Bioware has released the date for SWTOR's Update 1.3. On June 26th there will be a scheduled maintenance for four hours on Tuesday, from 2AM CDT (12AM PDT/3AM EDT/8 AM BST/9AM CEST/5PM AEST) until 6AM CDT (4AM PDT/7AM EDT/12PM BST/1PM CEST/9PM AEST). All game servers and SWTOR.com will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than four hours, but could be extended.
Game Update 1.3: Allies introduces new features for all SWTOR players including a Group Finder tool, Legacy Perks, Ranked Warzones, and Adaptive Gear! Now you will be able to quickly find groups to take on Flashpoints, Operations, Warzones, and Planetary Heroic Missions. The Legacy System incorporates new bonuses including Advancement Perks which allows you to customize your leveling experience. With Adaptive Gear, social gear can now be used in combat, by fusing it with corresponding armor bonuses and creating slots for modifications.
French artillery and tank destroyers, new battlegrounds, and two new game modes, Assault and Encounter, are on their way with Update 7.4 for World of Tanks.
There have been some very confusing messages from Bioware today about the game potentially going free-to-play at some point in the future. The first was a GamesTM.co.uk article that suggested that SWTOR may be looking at free-to-play. This article was quickly deleted suggesting that this was perhaps a mistake. I though a Bioware employee simply misspoke. However Bioware has followed up with another interview that also mentions free-to-play model as a possibility in the future.
"The advent of free-to-play is certainly a change in the dynamic of the PC market... when you have an IP as broad as Star Wars, we're definitely going to look at opportunities to grow that business"
It is hard to say if this is a good or bad thing. In most free-to-play games you still have the option of continuing your subscription and becoming VIP. However I know many hardcore players will stop seeing SWTOR as an AAA MMO as soon as the free-to-play mode is announced. Personally I am not sure it is time yet for this game to go free-to-play. They still have many more subscribers than RIFT and if that game can make a pay model work I think SWTOR can do it as well.
Are you looking forward to Lord of the Rings Online expansion Riders of Rohan. If you are a LOTRO player you will be pleased to see that Turbine has been working hard to promote this newest addition to their flagship MMO. Today I want to compile all the information released over the last few months into this post to provide readers with all they need to know about LOTROs upcoming expansion.
First let's start with the must watch cinematic Turbine has released
There is a short Riders of Rohan Teaser that show off some of the mounted combat:
There is also the Riders of Rohan Trailer that does not contain any in game footage but rather uses actors to tell the back story of the people of Rohan.
There is also a behind the scenes video showing the filming of the above trailer.
Now that you watched the videos and are excited about the expansion here is some additional information.
The release date for Riders of Rohan is September 5th 2012. There are 3 expansion editions (Base 39.99, Heroic 49.99 and Legendary 69.99). All expansion editions will come with future access to the instance cluster (to be released after the expansion) as well as an in game items and Turbine Points. Choose wisely because only the Legendary edition unlocks all the quest packs and an additional bag slot.
You can pre-order Riders of Rohan right now and view the differences about the expansions at:
If you are not planning to purchase the expansion this is still exciting news for you. That is because you will still get access to the Rohan Region as well as the Epic Story in Rohan. You will still be able to get access to a War Stead by completing a quest line. However players that do not purchase the expansion will not get access to all aspects of mounted combat (only 1 of the 3 traits).
There is a Riders of Rohan Pre-order FAQ that answers many of the questions of what you get for free and what you need to buy.
If you are not an existing LOTRO player there is never a better time to get started. There is an excellent Steam Starter Pack that gets you a tone of free ingame items or you can always just play for free by downloading the game from Lotro.com
Bioware has released further larger waive of available servers for transfer. The list is rather large now, a full list is available at http://www.swtor.com/transfer. I have personally completed my transfer yesterday. It took about 5 minutes. My new server is great there were already 260 people on the Fleet and there are still people transferring. Main Chat was buzzing with calls for Flashpoints and Operations. I some players are calling this SWTORS Second Launch.
You are subscribed to email updates from Home To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.
The kick ass Summer Sale isn't the only thing the Steam team has up their collective sleeves this week. Yesterday, Valve launched a brand-spanking-new 
In even more "future tech" news, Micron announced today that it has started mass production of a 45nm phase change memory solution for mobile devices. Phase change memory -- so called because it uses heat from an electrical current to flip between varying physical states -- is considered a possible successor, or at least competitor, to Flash in the non-volatile memory market. Micron's chip is the first phase change memory solution to become widely available in quantity.
Microsoft on Monday 
At a time when computers are trending towards smaller towers and shrinking form factors, Lian Li decided to 
Microsoft is once again in hot water with European Union (EU) antitrust officials, this time for failing to fully comply with a 2009 settlement in which the Redmond software company agreed to give customers a choice of which Web browser to use when installing Windows. For the most part, Microsoft had been doing that, except in some instances where PCs shipped to European customers with Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 pre-installed.
Over the weekend, Symantec revealed that a recent antivirus update wreaked havoc on certain Windows XP machines, causing them to crash with the dreaded "blue screen of death." According to the company, the update in question slipped through the "compatibility testing part of the quality assurance process for SONAR signatures" and remained available via LiveUpdate between 6:25 p.m. PT July 11 and 2:51 a.m. PT July 12.
At a special event in San Francisco earlier today, Microsoft raised the curtain on the 15th version of its Office productivity suite, which has historically been a huge cash cow for the company. Speaking at the said press event, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer the new Office "will fully light-up when paired with Windows 8." Well, turns out there really aren't an awful lot of things out there beyond Windows 8 that can fire up the new Office, for 
