General Gaming Article

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• Best Cloud Storage
• Titanfall’s PC Version Will Require 48GB of Space
• Win a CyberPower PC Hadron Hydro Mini-ITX Gaming PC
• First Dual-Booting Windows and Android Phone Slated for June Release
• Pre-Order Price List and Specs Pop Up for Refreshed Haswell CPUs
• Microsoft Offers Windows XP Users Free Access to Data Migration Tool
• Leaked Photos Suggest Samsung Will Wrap Chromebook 2 in Faux Leather
• EVGA's Newest GeForce GTX 750 SKUs Wield 2GB of GDDR5 Memory
• Newegg Daily Deals: Western Digital 1TB Internal Hard Drive, Asus VS Series 23-inch LCD, and More!
• Enermax ETS-N30 Budget Cooler Coming Soon

Best Cloud Storage Posted: 03 Mar 2014 04:46 PM PST Best Cloud Storage: 15 online cloud storage services compared The convenience of cloud storage is undeniable: your data and media at your fingertips from any Internet-connected device—what's not to like? And there's certainly no shortage of options to choose from, most of which are totally free up to a certain capacity. The trick is deciding which cloud service to use. After all, there are notable differences between them. Some are ideal for security mavens who want to preserve their anonymity (and the anonymity of their data). Others are better for folks just looking for a massive dumping ground for a ton of data. And still others are geared toward those keen on sharing all sorts of files with their friends and colleagues. In this roundup, we'll break it all down for you and identify the best cloud storage services. We'll also show you how to encrypt files that you store online and how to combine multiple cloud-storage accounts into one unified pot. Amazon Cloud Drive The free iteration of Amazon's Cloud Drive nets you 5GB total of space to work with, but there's a bit of a catch: Don't go expecting to upload huge files to the service, as you're capped to a maximum of 2GB per file. If you need more overall storage, you'll be ponying up in various increments up to and including $10 a year for 20GB of space, $50 a year for 100GB, and a whopping $500 a year for a full terabyte of cloud storage (oof!). Amazon's Cloud Drive presents a pleasing list of your files in its online app, though we wish it was more integrated with the company's other cloud storage offerings. On our benchmark—a 132MB transfer of 24 total files—Amazon clocked in at 3:15 (min:sec). That's not the speediest of upload times among all the cloud services we tested; worse, the files you upload to Amazon don't appear to be encrypted once they hit the server. Amazon Cloud Drive operates as a simple downloadable app for your PC that syncs a folder's worth of files to your online storage, in addition to a web-based tool for managing your files in the cloud. The latter comes with a ho-hum player that lets you view your pics, listen to your tunes, or watch your movies—it ain't pretty, but it works.  Annoyingly, Amazon only lets you share a single file at a time with friends via pre-generated URLs. www.amazon.com Apple iCloud Yes, Apple's iCloud is technically a cloud storage service—and then some, once you factor in the service's ability to synchronize your contacts, calendars, notes, and more across your various iOS-friendly devices. You can't really do much with iCloud if you're not an Apple aficionado. However, if you're using a PC—and just a PC—then you really have no need whatsoever to install Apple's meager iCloud app. You can only really sync files from your iOS devices' Photo Streams to your PC (or, conversely, photos from a specified PC folder to your iPad or iPhone). Otherwise, it's not like Apple's giving you a folder for dumping files into that will somehow synchronize with other PCs you've installed the iCloud app onto. If you do own multiple Apple devices, iCloud's feature set (and device integration) is pretty awesome in most ways, save for its price—beyond the 5GB you get for free, there is a yearly fee of $20 for an extra 10GB of storage, $40 for 20GB, or $100 for 50GB. To Apple's credit, the company doesn't count iTunes movies and music purchases against your total storage quota. And the core offerings—mail, contacts, calendar, and notes synchronization—should hardly chip away at your free 5GB. Additionally, Apple stores your information using 128-bit AES encryption at minimum. www.apple.com Bitcasa This desktop- and web-based cloud service delivers a pretty hefty amount of free storage—10GB—in addition to everyone's favorite caveat: no restrictions whatsoever on the file sizes you want to throw into your online pool. And if you need more room, Bitcasa offers a single, awesome option for supplementing your pool: $99 per year for unlimited capacity. Bitcasa dumps an "Infinite Drive" onto your system as a new drive letter. Whatever you toss in heads up to the cloud but, unlike Bitcasa's peers, the files aren't automatically mirrored on your local hard drive. A built-in caching mechanism ensures that you still have access to your most-used files when you're offline, and you can adjust just how big your cache is via the app. As for the app's performance, it took us a mere 19 seconds to send 132MB of files on up—a killer transfer time. Bitcasa's cache is a critical part of its offline functionality, and we're glad for it! You can mirror folders on your hard drive if you want more standard cloud-sync functionality, and your data always remains protected on Bitcasa's servers with 256-bit AES encryption. Sharing your files is as easy as viewing them; you can watch movies, listen to music, or view your stored pictures using Bitcasa's web interface. www.bitcasa.com Box Ten free gigabytes of storage await those who sign up for the free version of Box.  However, you're limited to storing files no larger than 250MB each on the service—practically a sneeze in the cloud-storage world.  Adding more oomph to your online offering incurs a monthly fee of $9.99 for 100GB on a personal account or, if you sign up for a "Starter" small business plan, $5 per user for pooled storage of 100GB in total.  Doing so bumps you up to a file size limit of 2GB per. For some inexplicable reason, Box has decided to make simple media streaming a paid-for, add-on service. Box offers four different apps for getting your PC to play with its cloud storage; it seems a bit overkill to have users piecemeal together the functionality they prefer. We couldn't get the "Box for Office" app to play with our copy of Office 2013, and the standard, folder-synchronizing "Box Sync" app took 3:51 on our transfer test—that's quite lengthy for a single app. There's no way to view media files you send to Box via its web interface; the service is designed for adding, editing, and sharing documents and text. To that end, we do enjoy how the "Box Edit" app allows you to start new files and edit them using the office apps on your local desktop, before they're automatically saved up to the cloud when you're done. www.box.com Cubby This no-nonsense cloud app—desktop and web—offers up 5GB of free storage with a single file-size limit of 2GB. Adding more storage will set you back anywhere from $3.99 per month for 100GB to $39.90 per month for a full terabyte, but Cubby demands that you buy a year's worth of capacity up front. (In other words, you're locked in.) Cubby is simple, quick, and easy to use, and you don't even have to change up your existing folder structure if you don't want to. To sync your files with the cloud, you can drag them into a new "My Cubby" folder the app creates, or you can right-click existing folders within your drive's hierarchy to add them to the synchronization list—a pleasant feature for those who don't want to move data around. Cubby protects your files with AES 256-bit encryption on its end, but the speeds of the synchronization leave a little to be desired. The service clocked in at 3:46 to shoot our 132MB batch of test files up into the cloud. Sharing your stored files with others is as easy as sending a provided link to files or a folder to your friends. Cubby also incorporates media playback and version tracking into its web app, automatically deleting old versions of your files as you start to fill up space. www.cubby.com Dropbox Dropbox gives you a total of 2GB to start with; additional storage can be had for a not-so-insignificant $99 per year for 100GB, $199 per year for 200GB, or $499 per year for 500GB. Adding version-tracking to your Dropbox tacks on another $39 annually. Dropbox stashes a single, simple folder onto your hard drive (which you can change, if you prefer). Anything you throw into this folder gets synchronized into the cloud and protected with AES 256-bit encryption. You can modify how much bandwidth you want the app to eat up when it's uploading and downloading, and even "selectively sync" certain folders on certain computers. An added "LAN sync" feature speeds up the process by copying files from your other Dropbox-friendly, networked sys-tems instead of pulling them from the cloud—although it only took Dropbox a mere 7 seconds to sync up our 132MB file test. LAN sync has saved us so much file-syncing time on our home network, it's almost impossible to measure. Sharing folders and files with others is as easy as copying a link that Dropbox provides, but your friends will have to have Dropbox accounts if you want to collaborate within a single folder that's shared among all. The Dropbox web app seamlessly lets you view your photos, rock out to your music, and watch your movies directly in your browser. www.dropbox.com MediaFire The desktop app for Media-Fire is a bit worthless. Its primary purpose is to provide you with a means for copying files—one at a time—to the service's online cloud storage. Even then, MediaFire is fussy: At one point, we thought we were deleting and uploading fresh sets of files, but the service was instead keeping triplicate copies of our benchmark test. The only redeeming quality of MediaFire's boring desktop app is how it lets you take screenshots of your PC and upload them directly to your cloud storage, but that doesn't appeal to most people. Our test file transfer took a whopping 8:40 to jump up to the cloud. Manipulating these files via MediaFire's web interface felt sluggish, and the online storage itself is a bit slow to refresh with newly uploaded files. A built-in media player lets you listen to music and watch videos, but shrinks the latter down to a fixed size—so much for our 720p video. We're not exactly sure why a cloud storage app needs a semi-comprehensive screenshot feature, but it's there nevertheless! MediaFire does offer a generous free capacity of 10GB, but restricts your uploads to 200MB per file unless you pony up for a paid version of the service (starting at $49.99 annually for 100GB of storage). www.mediafire.com Click the next page to read about Microsoft OneDrive, SugarSync, and more!     Microsoft OneDrive (Formerly SkyDrive) Ah, OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive). If you're using Windows 8, you'll probably have noticed that access to the OneDrive cloud is baked into the OS by default. It's also a downloadable app for the more traditional "sync files in a folder to the cloud" kind of access—which we greatly prefer. OneDrive's online media player (no audio!) is one of the best we've seen of the major cloud service providers; you can even tag your friends. The free iteration of OneDrive gives you 7GB to play with, but your files are limited to a maximum size of 2GB each. Bumping up your storage costs $10 a year for 20GB, $25 for 50GB, or $50 for 100GB. There's no additional encryption for anything you slap into OneDrive, and there's certainly not a great deal of speed for files synchronized via the desktop app. Our 132MB transfer test clocked in at 3:56. We do, however, love OneDrive's "Fetch" feature—if you set up the desktop app correctly, you can actually tap into your computer from afar and access any file on any drive within your system. It's a crazy-convenient way to access files without having to put them into OneDrive in the first place, and you can stream videos or view pictures from the OneDrive web app itself. (No audio files, though; sorry!) www.onedrive.com SpiderOak We wish we had more to report about this allegedly super-secure cloud storage app. However, it's so secure, that it didn't let us into the cloud service no matter how much we tried to run through the fairly simple-seeming account setup process.   The major boon to Spider-Oak is that it's designed as a "zero-knowledge system." The company has no idea what you share to the service; a benefit to user anonymity unless you forget your password, forever locking your ability to access the ultra-secret data you've stored. Part of the process involved with generating encryption keys for SpiderOak is that you must run the associated desktop app before you can access your cloud storage for the first time. Try as we might—and we let it run overnight, even—our app just sat at the third step of SpiderOak's setup process. That's supposed to be the part where the app downloads your account information from SpiderOak's servers; in our setup, it was the Achilles' heel that turned our feeble attempt at accessing cloud storage into a bit of rain. Don't waste your time with this one. www.spideroak.com SugarSync The free iteration of Sugar-Sync is a little bit buried on the cloud service's website, but signing up nets you five free gigabytes of storage with no limit to the size of files you can place within your online cloud. Additional storage isn't cheap: $74 per year for 60GB, $99 for 100GB, $249 for 250GB, or $399 (!) for 500GB. We appreciate SugarSync's hybrid approach— synchronization and cloud-only storage. Installing the desktop app slaps a new "SugarSync Drive" into Windows Explorer, with three folders to play with: Magic Briefcase, Mobile Photos, and Web Archive. The first is your general, speedy dumping ground—it took all of seven seconds for SugarSync to upload our 132MB batch of test files. The second is where mobile pictures you take will end up if you enable AutoSync. The third is a cloud-only directory whose contents don't eat up actual space on your hard drive. SugarSync's web app holds up to five versions of the files you've synchronized into the cloud. Sharing and downloading zipped copies of your folders is super easy; viewing videos or listening to music is not, as SugarSync doesn't come with a web-based player for your media. All of your files are, however, protected with 256-bit AES encryption within SugarSync itself. www.sugarsync.com Ubuntu One Yes, even the Linux folk have their own cloud service. Technically, you do as well, given that it's accessible via a downloadable PC app or web-based interface. Developer Canonical grants users 5GB of free storage, with a 5TB limit on the size of individual files you can upload to Ubuntu One. Additional storage costs $29 per year for every 20GB you want to add to your cloud; tapping into the service's music-steaming companion app tacks a $4 monthly cost onto the bill. Sharing files via Ubuntu One is a pain-free process; uploading them, not so much Canonical might want to work on the speeds of Ubuntu One's desktop app. At about nine minutes into a simple 2.1MB file transfer—yes, that little—we decided to give up, lest our full benchmark test start to rival 24 Hours of Le Mans. What good is a cloud service that takes so long to handle simple file uploads? Selecting new folders to synchronize to the cloud, as well as sharing them, is just a few mouse clicks away within Ubuntu One's intuitive desktop app. Even if you get your media files uploaded before the next millennium, however, know that Ubuntu One comes with no way to watch movies or listen to music via its web interface. U-bummer.  www.one.ubuntu.com Tresorit Don't get confused; a "tresor" in Tresorit terminology simply refers to a cloud-synchronized folder. The service's handy downloadable app helps you create new "tresors" and convert existing folders on your hard drives to "tresors," which you can then share with others by tossing an email their way via the app itself. Unfortunately, only Tresorit users can be granted access to your files, limiting the app's overall potential. Unless they also install Tresorit, however, they can't access what you've sent them. Tresorit works decently as a single-user cloud backup system, although it's a bit on the slow side—it took 4:09 for our test files to transfer over, and the Tresorit app doesn't give you any status indication at all as to how many files you have left to upload or even the speed at which they're zooming along. There's also no web-based version of Tresorit for you to use to tap into your cloud storage. While you get 5GB to play around with, you're limited by a 1.5GB file size cap and, er, your 5GB total—as we go to press, Tresorit is still working on offering storage expansions for its users. www.tresorit.com Mega Like MediaFire, Mega is just an online dumping ground for your files; it doesn't even offer a downloadable app to make it easier. However, Mega is the Fort Knox of file uploaders, using AES 128-bit encryption alongside 2048-bit RSA keys to maintain the anonymity of files both stored on and shared via the service. (Just don't lose your password, or you're stuck.) Even Mega's sharing aspect is driven by its hyper-awareness toward security; we approve. A free sign-up gets you 50GB of space with absolutely no restrictions on the size of files you'd like to upload to the service. Adding more space costs annual fees—and it's in Euros: €99 for 500GB, €199 for 2TB, and €299 for a whopping 4TB of storage. Transferring files to fill your massive amounts of space might take a bit of time, however. Mega took 4:02 to upload 132MB. If you want, you can set a speed limit for your uploads to conserve bandwidth, and you can even have Mega skip files in a batch if you've previously uploaded them, to save a bit of time. Sharing files is as easy as right-clicking a file or folder, selecting Get Link, and sending along the encrypted link to anyone who needs your files. You can also just send the link sans encrypted key, if you want to post something public and have certain people contact you for the final bit they need to access the file. www.mega.co.nz iDrive Though it certainly uses the cloud, iDrive operates more as a backup-and-restore app than a true "cloud synchronization" app like so many of its aforementioned peers—or distant cousins. First, the details: You get 5GB of free storage when you sign up, capped at a maximum file-size limit of 10GB per. Adding more storage costs $49.50 for 150GB, $149.50 for 500GB, and $299.50 for 1TB, per year. iDrive's "Archive Cleanup" will automatically delete files on your cloud storage when they no longer exist on your hard drive— a beautiful backup feature. Selecting files and folders to back up to your iDrive can be a bit cumbersome via the desktop app, and sending files to cyberspace isn't the speediest of routines. We clocked a total transfer time of 2:48 for our benchmark files; you'll spend far more than that clicking through iDrive's interface when deciding what you want to back up. iDrive does allow you to share backed-up files with others using randomized links; you can also access your files via iDrive's web app and listen to your music, although there's no provision for watching videos. We like how you can remotely log into your iDrive on a PC via the web to change your to-be-backed-up folders. It's as convenient as iDrive's built-in AES 256-bit encryption is stress- reducing when it comes to keeping your data secure. www.idrive.com Click the next page to read our summary and info on how to beef up your cloud storage security.     The Cloud-Storage Standouts: A Summary As you can see, cloud storage apps tend to pick and choose from a wide assortment of potential features and, unfortunately, a wide range of speeds. It's hard to find a perfect diamond, but we were most pleased by the luster of one cloud app in particular: Bitcasa. It's fast, encrypted, offers more storage than most services for the low, low cost of nothing, and gives you access to an unlimited total capacity for a price that would net you considerably less on other cloud services. If you care more about security than speed, Mega's your ticket. You don't get a downloadable app with which to synchronize to its servers, but you do get a ton of storage with an almost obsessive focus on security and encryption through all stages of the uploading (and sharing) process. Even Mega's owners seem quite confident of the service's capabilities, offering up cash rewards (up to €10,000!) for anyone who can expose vulnerabilities that might otherwise open up a user's files to pilfering. Though we weren't keen on Box as a general cloud service, we have to tip our hat to its functionality as an office-themed cloud app. It's not the place where we'd want to stash our critical files, movies, music, or any of that, but the service's tie-ins to  Office apps (or Google Docs!) alongside its role-based sharing capabilities make Box an ideal choice for those looking for a cloud service geared toward business-based storage and collaboration. Encrypt Thyself: Beef Up Your File Security With Boxcryptor Sure, a number of cloud-storage providers offer powerful encryption on their end—designed to give you a little peace of mind by preventing the very providers hosting your files from knowing their exact contents. But is that really the case? Dropbox, for example, says it offers 256-bit encryption, but it's highly unlikely the service encrypts your files locally before passing on the indeterminate 0s and 1s to its servers. In other words, what good is encryption if a cloud storage provider knows the key? That's where a free app like Boxcryptor (www.boxcryptor.com) comes into play. Install the app and set a password—and make sure you don't forget it because, if you do, you'll have no way to decrypt the files you encrypt. Boxcryptor lets you know that your files and folders are encrypted by displaying their names in a lovely shade of green. Like most cloud-storage apps, Boxcryptor creates a new drive letter within Windows Explorer. Only, instead of listing your files and folders, the Boxcryptor volume lists the various other cloud service apps you have installed on your system—like Dropbox, for example. Stick with us. When you go to view these "services" within the Boxcryptor volume, you'll be staring at the standard synchronized folder you're used to looking at. Only, now, you can use Boxcryptor to encrypt files you've already synchronized—or, one step better, create a new encrypted folder whose contents is automatically encrypted by the app prior to being synchronized with whatever cloud provider you prefer. Why do we like this method better than, say, TrueCrypt? It's more seamless and "drag-and-droppable," unlike TrueCrypt, which requires you to unmount your entire encrypted volume for the synchronization process to occur—which can get a bit annoying. Wuala LaCie is big on security, offering up AES 256-bit encryption for any file you store on its Wuala cloud service (and going to great lengths to let you know that, no, they aren't peeking at your files). You get 5GB free to start with on Wuala, and an individual file-size limit of 40GB. More storage starts at $39 yearly for 20GB and caps out at a mighty 2TB for an annual fee of a mere $1,999. Wuala allows you to fine-tune your file sharing, so long as your friends are also Wuala users. Like Tresorit, there's no web-based Wuala interface for you to use (save for when you're sharing files or folders with others via the app's cleverly named "Secret Web-links"). You can synchronize your files to the cloud simply by dragging-and-dropping them in the new W: share drive that the app creates. And Wuala's speedy, too: It took the app just 26 seconds to sync up our 132MB benchmark files. If you don't feel like dragging-and-dropping, you can also have Wuala synchronize the contents of folders on your hard drives to new folders within Wuala. Popping offline still allows you access to files you've recently downloaded, but it's possible you won't be able to access your entire cloud setup. www.wuala.com Combine Your Cloud Storage So, you want to go the free route. As in, you want to sign up for as many different cloud storage providers as you can get your hands on and find some magical way to mash them together into a single, unified chunk of storage. The messy way of doing this involves installing each service's desktop app and mentally assigning each to a particular subset of your files—perhaps Dropbox for your MP3s, Bitcasa for your movies, and Box for your documents, etc. It's not pretty, but it's certainly one way to beat the cloud-storage game without having to pony up a single penny. Jolidrive presents a no-fuss method for combining your cloud storage providers, but you can't really do all that much with your data once combined. Let's get fancier. There's a web-based app called Jolidrive (www.jolicloud.com) that allows you to access a number of different cloud services via one convenient portal. The best part of the equation is Jolidrive's cost: absolutely free. Once you've signed up for the app, you're presented with a screen that allows you to combine your cloud storage accounts with your master Jolidrive account. Supported cloud storage services include a number of those mentioned in this article—Box, Dropbox, MediaFire, OneDrive, SugarSync, and Ubuntu One (to name a few). CloudKafé's interface is a bit more Windows 8 Metro than Windows 7 Explorer, which may or may not be to your file-browsing liking. The one bummer? Jolidrive is akin to read-only access: You can't move files around your various cloud services, nor can you even use Jolidrive to upload files—downloading and streaming only. You'll find that this is the one unfortunate caveat of a number of similar, free services. CloudKafé (www.cloudkafe.com) is another web-based, mash-everything-together cloud-storage organizer—one with a user interface that bests Jolidrive in some aspects. It allows you to share items from your various cloud services by dropping them into a CloudKafé "basket," which you can then allow others to access by emailing them a link via CloudKafé itself. The paid-for web app Otxio (www.otxio.com) does allow you to copy-and-paste files between connected cloud service providers, but it'll set you back a one-time fee of $39.99 for doing so. And note that we said "copy-and-paste," not move—the latter being the more desirable way to interact with one's individual cloud services. We love Otxio's interface and feature-set, in that the app allows you to perform all the basic functionality (downloads, deletions, sharing, and uploads) that you'd otherwise expect to find in your individual cloud services. Like CloudKafé, you can create individual "spaces" of files—groupings of data that can be populated with any of your files from your individual cloud services—which you can then share with others. Otxio packs some powerful functionality into its cloud-storage combining, but don't expect a free pass. That said, Otxio isn't perfect; its file-uploading feature only allows you to stick one file at a time (no folders) into a particular cloud service. What we wouldn't give for a batch uploading feature (or, at least, the ability to upload full folders). Still, it's a small price to pay to be able to ride on the free coattails of the web's more popular cloud storage providers.

Titanfall’s PC Version Will Require 48GB of Space Posted: 03 Mar 2014 03:20 PM PST Titans need their space Titanfall will require 48GB of storage space on the PC according to Respawn Entertainment co-founder Vince Zampella. Responding to a question on Twitter about how much space the FPS game would need he replied, "About 21GB of download and 48GB installed." This means that the PC port is more than double the size of the Xbox One version which requires only 20GB.  The multiplayer-only game is being developed using a modified version of Valve's Source engine. Its minimum PC requirements were revealed, back in February, that the game would run on 64-bit versions of Windows 7, 8, and 8.1. Other requirements included an AMD Athlon X2 2.8GHz or Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz processor, 4GB of RAM, 512MB of VRAM, and a Radeon HD 4770 or GeForce 8800GT.  No recommended specifications have been released as of yet. However, the game's minimum requirements are almost exactly the same as Battlefield 4's own, yet DICE's title only needs 30GB of HDD space. Titanfall may feature large mechs and AI bots, but it could not be enough to justify the need for so much space on the PC.  Titanfall will launch March 11 in North America and March 13 in Europe for the Xbox One and PC platforms. While the Xbox 360 version has been pushed back to March 25 in North America and March 28 in Europe. Why do you think Titanfall requires 48GB to install? Let us know in the comments! Follow Sean on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Win a CyberPower PC Hadron Hydro Mini-ITX Gaming PC Posted: 03 Mar 2014 03:18 PM PST Enter to win a rig with a i7-4770K CPU, EVGA GTX 780 GPU, and more! It's time to give away a free gaming rig to one of our lucky followers - this time it's a CyberPower Inc. Hadron Hydro 300 small form factor gaming machine. It's a fully-loaded Core i7-4770K machine with a liquid-cooled GTX 780, and has dual 840 EVO SSDs despite its small dimensions. No purchase is necessary and it's available to US and Canadian residents! To apply, answer this question, "What is the name of the chip that powers the Nvidia GeForce GTX 780?" on our Facebook page. Full Prize Description: One winner will receive one grand prize consisting of a CyberPower Hadron Hydro 300 High Performance Computer which includes: Intel Core i7-4770K, 16GB DDR3 1866, EVGA GTX 780 Hydro Copper, 2x Samsung 840 EVO SSD 120GB, 24X DVD burner, EVGA Hadron Hydro chassis-  used (tested by the Maximum PC team).  Prize has an approximate value as used of $1,900.00 See official rules (next page) for prize details. Start Date:03 Mar 09:00am PT End Date:14 Mar 09:00am PT Future US, Inc.'s computer will be the official time clock for the Sweepstakes. NO PURCHASE OR PAYMENT OF ANY KIND IS NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A PURCHASE WILL NOT IMPROVE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. The privacy policy are here. Click the next page for official rules.  Official Rules Win a CyberPower PC Hadron Hydro Mini-ITX Gaming Rig Contest!  OFFICIAL RULES  1.  SPONSOR:  This promotion (the "Contest") is sponsored and administered by FUTURE US, INC., 4000 Shoreline Court, Suite 400, South San Francisco, CA 94080, +1 (650) 872-1642 ("Sponsor"), is in no way sponsored, endorsed, or administered by, or associated with, Facebook, Inc., or CyberPowerPC Inc. or Facebook, Inc., and is subject to the following terms and conditions.  2. ELIGIBILITY: Contest is open to legal residents of the fifty (50) United States and District of Columbia (excluding Arizona, Rhode Island, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, U.S. military installations in foreign countries, or in any other U.S. territories or possessions); and Canada (excluding the province of Quebec).  Void where prohibited by law.  Entrants must have attained the age of majority in their state and country of residence (usually at least eighteen (18) years of age) at time of entry, and possess an email address and a valid form of unexpired government-issued photo identification.  Employees of Sponsor, its/their respective parents, subsidiaries, affiliated companies, advertising, promotion, or production agencies, any companies who are promotional participants or prize providers, web masters and web suppliers, and the foregoing employees' household or immediate family members (defined as parent, spouse, child, sibling, or grandparent) are NOT eligible to enter Contest.  By their submission of entry, entrants warrant they are legally entitled and authorized to make such submission, either on their own behalf, or as to information submitted upon the express authorization of another on whose behalf the information is submitted.  In the event of a dispute as to the winner's identity for online entries received from multiple users having the same email account, entries will be deemed made by the authorized subscriber of the email account associated with the entry.  The authorized account subscriber is the natural person who is assigned the email address by the internet service provider (ISP), on-line service provider, or other organization responsible for assigning email addresses.  Invalid or ineligible entries shall be excluded from consideration.   3. TIMING:  Contest begins at 9:00 a.m. Pacific time on March 3, 2014 and ends at 9:00 a.m. Pacific time on March 14, 2014.  Future US, Inc.' computer will be the official time clock for the Contest.  Online entries must be received by Future US, Inc. by 9:00 a.m. Pacific time on END March 14, 2014 to be eligible.  4. HOW TO ENTER:  Submit the answer to the question "What is the name of the chip that powers the Nvidia GeForce GTX 780?" and complete the requested fields online at https://apps.facebook.com/maxpccm/pages/1875fd7aaef6f1daabcd66660795da6c. No team entries and no corporate or institutional entries are permitted in Contest.  Limit one entry per person. 5. ORIGINAL WORKS.  You hereby warrant and represent that (a) you own all rights to all materials that you submit to Sponsor in connection with Contest ("Entry Materials"); (b) you have never submitted Entry Materials in another contest; and (c) all such Entry Materials are original works or authorship on your part and have not been copied, in whole or in part, from any other work and do not violate, misappropriate or infringe any copyright, trademark or other proprietary right or any privacy right of any other person or entity.  6. PRIZES AND ODDS: The Grand Prize consists of a used (tested by Maximum PC editorial staff): CyberPower Hadron Hydro 300 High Performance Computer ("Prize").  Specs include: Intel Core i7-4770K, 16GB DDR3 1866, EVGA GTX 780 Hydro Copper, 2x Samsung 840 EVO SSD 120GB, 24X DVD burner, EVGA Hadron Hydro chassis.  Prize has an approximate value as used of $1,900.00.  Prize must be delivered to zip/postal code listed on Winner's entry, and delivery may take six to eight weeks. The odds of winning will be determined by the number of eligible entries received. Prizes cannot be transferred, assigned, substituted, or redeemed for cash, and must be accepted as awarded, but Sponsor reserves the right to substitute any prize with a prize of equal or greater value should the advertised prize become unavailable for any reason.  Prizes will not be fulfilled outside the United States and Canada; will not be fulfilled in Arizona, Rhode Island, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, U.S. military installations in foreign countries, or in any other U.S. territories or possessions; will not be fulfilled in the province of Quebec; and will not be fulfilled where prohibited or restricted by law.  Winners will be responsible for all taxes (federal, state/provincial, and local) and all expenses not listed herein related to acceptance and use of any prize.  Any person residing in the United States and any United States citizen living abroad, who wins $600 or more worth of prizes from Sponsor in a calendar year will receive an IRS form 1099 after the end of the calendar year in which the prizes were awarded, and copy of such form will be filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).  Limit one Prize per person. 7. JUDGING: One (1) winner will be selected by a judging panel comprised of editorial staff of Maximum PC ("Judges").  The Judges will randomly draw entries from all entries received, until they find an entry containing an answer that is accurate in alignment with Maximum PC's report on the question.  Judging will be completed by March 19, 2014.  Sponsor's decisions on all matters related to Contest, including Judges' selection of the winning entry, shall be final and binding and within their sole discretion.  Winning is contingent upon compliance with all terms and conditions set forth in these official rules; any entry or any potential winner identified thereby found at any time to fail to comply with these official rules will be held invalid and ineligible for award. 8. NOTIFICATION:   Each Winner will be notified by email by March 21, 2014.  Each Winner so notified must within three (3) business days of notice of prize award, complete, execute and return the provided Affidavit, Waiver, Release and Indemnity Agreement including, where lawful, a Publicity Release (plus any additional documents required at the discretion of Sponsor).  Failure to comply with the requirements of this paragraph (or the return of any prize or prize notification as non-deliverable) may result in disqualification and in the forfeiture of any right to a prize.   To obtain any legally-required winners list, send a self-addressed envelope with sufficient prepaid postage to: Maximum PC, "Win a CyberPower PC Hadron Hydro Mini-ITX Gaming Rig! Contest", c/o Future US, Inc., 4000 Shoreline Court, Suite 400, South San Francisco, CA 94080.  (Residents of Vermont do not have to include return postage.) 9. FUTURE US, INC.' USE OF ENTRIES.    You hereby grant Future US, Inc. a perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide license and right to utilize the Entry Materials you submit in connection with Contest.  The Entry Materials become the property of Future US, Inc. and will not be acknowledged or returned.  Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, you acknowledge that Future US, Inc. shall have the right to use, modify, reproduce, publish, perform, display on all forms of media, distribute, make derivative works of, sublicense, and otherwise commercially and non-commercially exploit the Entry Materials in perpetuity and throughout the universe, in any manner or medium now existing or hereafter developed, without separate compensation to you or any other person or entity.  You agree to take, at Future US, Inc.' expense, any further action (including, without limitation, execution of affidavits and other documents) reasonably requested by Future US, Inc. to effect, perform or confirm Future US, Inc.' rights as set forth in this paragraph. 10.  PRIVACY POLICY:  By participating in the Contest, you acknowledge and agree that Sponsor may collect the personal information submitted by you and use the information pursuant to Future US, Inc.' standard privacy policy, the terms of which can be found at http://www.futureus.com/privacy.php , which terms and conditions entrants accept and agree to by submission of entries pursuant to these official rules.  Each entrant/winner also understands and agrees that he/she is providing information to Future US, Inc. and not to Facebook, Inc. or CyberPowerPC Inc.  11.  RELEASE:   By participating in the Contest and/or accepting a prize, an entrant/winner agrees to defend, release and hold harmless the Sponsor, CyberPowerPC Inc., and Facebook, Inc., and their respective parents, subsidiaries, affiliates, divisions, advertising, production and promotion agencies, any companies who are promotional participants or prize providers, web masters and web suppliers, and the foregoing companies' officers, directors, shareholders, employees, representatives and agents (collectively "Releasees") from and against any actions, claims and/or liability for injury, loss or damage of any kind to persons, including death, or property (including the violation or infringement of any proprietary or personal right of any individual or entity) resulting in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, from participation in the Contest, and/or the use, acceptance, or possession of a Contest prize, and/or participation in a Contest prize-related activity, including any action, claim or liability arising from the unauthorized submission of any information, and/or for any printing, production, technical, typographical, human or other error in the printing, offering or announcement of any prize. By participating in the Contest and/or accepting a prize, an entrant/winner consents to and gives the Sponsor the right to use, publish, and display a winner's (and where applicable an entrant's) name, likeness, city and state, and prize awarded, for the purpose of advertising, trade, publicity and promotional purposes in any media now known or hereafter discovered, worldwide, and on the Web, in perpetuity, without review, notification or approval, and without additional consideration, unless prohibited by law.  12.  LIMITATIONS OF LIABILITY:   Entrants agree that by participating in the Contest they release the Releasees from any liability in connection with: (a) Entries that are ineligible as a result of being lost, late, illegible, damaged, incomplete, inaccurate, delayed, unintelligible, non-delivered, stolen, postage due, or misdirected, or the failure to capture any such information; (b) Any typographical or other human or technical errors in the offer or administration of the Contest, including but not limited to errors in advertising, these official rules, the selection and announcement of a winner(s), or the distribution/awarding of a prize(s); (c) Any omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay, misdirection, damage, availability, accessibility, miscommunications, injury, technical malfunctions or traffic congestion on the Internet/telephone network, or at any website, satellite, computer, telephone, cellular or cable transmissions or lines, or any combination thereof; (d) The unauthorized access to, or alteration of, entries; (e) Jumbled, scrambled, delayed, or misdirected transmissions, computer hardware or software malfunctions, failures or difficulties, or for any other errors of any kind, whether human, technical, mechanical, electronic or network, including, without limitation, any errors which may occur in connection with the administration of the Contest or in any Contest-related materials; and (f) Damage to en entrant or other person's system or equipment occasioned by participation in this Contest or downloading materials from the Contest website, or any combination thereof.  Persons who tamper with or abuse any aspect of the Contest or website, as solely determined by the Sponsor, will be disqualified (and all associated entries will be void), and Sponsor reserves the right to terminate such entrant's eligibility to participate in this or any other promotion offered by Sponsor.  Entries generated by robotic, programmed, script, macro or other automated means or by any means which subvert the entry process will be disqualified.  Sponsor reserves the right to modify these rules for clarification purposes without materially affecting the term and conditions of the Contest.  In the event that the Contest is infected by a computer virus/worm/bug, or is not capable of running or being executed as planned (as a result of but not limited to an error, omission, defect, delay, misdirection, tampering, unauthorized intervention, fraud, action of entrants, or technical failure) or any other cause which in the sole opinion of Sponsor corrupts or affects the administration, security, fairness, integrity, or proper conduct of the Contest, Sponsor reserves the right in their sole discretion to disqualify any suspect entry or entrant and to cancel, terminate, modify or suspend the Contest.  In the event of such cancellation, termination, modification or suspension, notice thereof will be posted at the entry website(s) mentioned above, and winner(s) will be determined solely by Sponsor from among all eligible non-suspect and/or non-disqualified entries prior to action taken or as otherwise deemed fair and appropriate by Sponsor.  In such event, Releasees shall have no liability to any entrant who is disqualified due to such an action.  Failure to enforce any term of these official rules shall not constitute a waiver of that provision.  IN NO EVENT WILL THE RELEASEES BE RESPONSIBLE OR LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OR LOSSES OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF YOUR ACCESS TO AND USE OF THE ENTRY WEBSITE OR ANY OTHER WEBSITE ASSOCIATED WITH RELEASEES, OR DOWNLOADING FROM AND/OR PRINTING MATERIAL DOWNLOADED FROM SUCH WEBSITES.  WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGOING, EVERYTHING ON SUCH WEBSITES AND THE PRIZE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT, SOME JURISDICTIONS MAY NOT ALLOW LIMITATIONS OR EXCLUSION OF LIABILITY FOR INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR EXCLUSION OF IMPLIED WARRANTIES

First Dual-Booting Windows and Android Phone Slated for June Release Posted: 03 Mar 2014 10:27 AM PST This summer could see the launch of a smartphone running both Windows and Android Can't decide between Windows Phone or Android? Perhaps soon you won't have to. Mobile phone maker Karbonn Mobiles is said to be fairly close to finishing a dual-OS handset that will run both Android and Windows Phone platforms. Assuming everything goes to plan -- Karbonn Mobiles said it already signed a licensing agreement with Microsoft -- the dual-booting smartphone will launch by June of this year. "Microsoft has eased the regulations and is opening up its platform for other players. We signed the agreement two days ago and will launch a range of Windows phones in about three months," said Sudhir Hasija, chairman of Karbonn Mobiles, according to The Times of India. Hasija said the handset will target "techies" and office professionals. What Hasija and his company haven't decided just yet is what price point the dual-booting handset will compete at. There will likely be other handsets from different manufacturers that go the dual-boot route, especially with Microsoft giving its blessing, though it's not entirely clear what Redmond's strategy is. One possible angle is that Microsoft could be hoping to ride the success of Android by piggybacking on the open source platform, giving users a way to familiarize themselves with the Windows Phone platform without outright committing to it. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Pre-Order Price List and Specs Pop Up for Refreshed Haswell CPUs Posted: 03 Mar 2014 09:41 AM PST Look for new Haswell chips to appear in Q2 2014 Intel's Haswell refresh for the desktop is presumably only weeks away at this point -- rumor has it the new parts will show up in retail in the second quarter of 2014 -- and while we'll have to wait until then for the full scoop, an online store is already posting pre-order prices and specs of 10 upcoming Haswell CPUs. Most of them boast minor speed bumps of 100MHz over their predecessors. For that reason, don't hold your breath in anticipation of any major performance improvements. What you can expect (assuming the price list is accurate) are slightly faster parts, both in terms of base and Turbo Boost frequencies. In any event, here's a look at the 10 CPUs as they appear on ShopBLT (with credit going to CPU-World for digging these up): Intel Celeron G1840: 2.8GHz, 2MB cache, $47.51 Intel Celeron G1850: 2.9GHz, 2MB cache, $59.20 Intel Pentium G3240: 3.1GHz, 3MB cache, $70.96 Intel Pentium G3440: 3.3GHz, 3MB cache, $90.54 Intel Core i3 4150: 3.5GHz, 3MB cache, $132.73 Intel Core i3 4350: 3.6GHz, 4MB cache, $155.12 Intel Core i3 4360: 3.7GHz, 4MB cache, $166.31 Intel Core i5 4590: 3.7GHz, 6MB cache, $213.36 Intel Core i5 4690: 3.9GHz, 6MB cache, $235.75 Intel Core i7 4790: 4GHz, 8MB cache, $326.48 Comparing the prices of the new Haswell parts to currently listed ones on ShopBLT's website, it appears these will cost about the same as the CPUs they're replacing, while the old parts are likely to see a price drop. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Microsoft Offers Windows XP Users Free Access to Data Migration Tool Posted: 03 Mar 2014 09:13 AM PST Free access to Laplink's PCmover Express as Windows XP's support deadline looms Every indication up to this point suggests there will be no last second call by the governor to stop the execution of Windows XP, a dead OS walking. Well, sort of. Windows XP will still exist after its support deadline comes and goes next month, but it won't receive any additional security updates or be eligible for technical support. In an attempt to help the holdouts let go of the legacy OS, Microsoft has partnered with Laplink to offer Windows XP users free access to the latter's PCmover Express, a data migration tool. PCmover Express for Windows XP copies files, music, videos, email, and user profiles and settings from old PCs to a new one running Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1. It's not an all-or-nothing affair, as users can customize exactly what they want to bring over to their new device, Microsoft says. The migration tool will be made available to download in English later this week from WindowsXP.com, as well as French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish coming later in March. After that, it will be available in Korean, Chinese, Russian, and Brazilian Portuguese. As a reminder, support for Windows XP comes to an end on April 8, 2014. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Leaked Photos Suggest Samsung Will Wrap Chromebook 2 in Faux Leather Posted: 03 Mar 2014 08:14 AM PST A possible first look at Samsung's next generation Chromebook The standard disclaimer about leaked photos and rumors applies here -- always take these things with a monster-sized pinch of salt. That said, Twitter user @evleaks has a knack for getting his mitts on press photos of products prior to their official release, and one of the newest photos he's posted is that of Samsung's next generation Chromebook with a faux leather cover. He tweeted an earlier shot of the Chromebook on Saturday that showed only the corner of the Chromebook, giving us a close-up view of the faux leather that's stitched around the lid. Accompanying the pic is a blurb that reads, "Samsung's Galaxy Note 3 design marches on..." The Galaxy Note 3 also xomes wrapped in leather. A day later, he posted a full shot of the laptop with the description, "The Chromebook 2." In addition to the faux leather-covered lid, you can make out that it's a thin laptop with a single USB port on the right side. According to IBTimes, a few listings for Samsung's Chromebook 2 SKUs appeared on B&H Photo a month ago. Those listings showed 11.6-inch and 13.3-inch models, the smaller of which was said to use Samsung's Exynos 5 chip (probably an octa-core Exynos 5410 processor), while the larger model might sport an Intel processor inside. Image Credit: Twitter user @evleaks Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

EVGA's Newest GeForce GTX 750 SKUs Wield 2GB of GDDR5 Memory Posted: 03 Mar 2014 07:48 AM PST EVGA doubles down on memory Nvidia's been on a rampage releasing new graphics cards over the last couple of months, one of those being the GeForce GTX 750. The reference blueprint for the GeForce GTX 750 part calls for 1GB of GDDR5 clocked at 5GHz (effective) on a 128-bit bus, and while EVGA offers such a SKU, it's now offering a couple of models with twice as much memory -- EVGA GeForce GTX 750 2GB and EVGA GeForce GTX 750 2GB Superclocked. Both cards offer full support for Nvidia's G-Sync technology via DisplayPort. Those who opt for the Superclocked model will enjoy lower temps (5 degrees lower, according to EVGA) courtesy of a copper core insert. The Superclocked SKU also boasts faster clockspeeds -- 1215MHz base and 1294MHz boost versus 1020MHz and 1085MHz, respectively. EVGA says both cards are coming soon. In the meantime, you can hit up their product pages and input your email address to be notified when they're in-stock. The GeForce GTX 750 2GB runs $130 and the Superclocked model goes for $140, each of which is priced $10 more than their 1GB equivalents. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Newegg Daily Deals: Western Digital 1TB Internal Hard Drive, Asus VS Series 23-inch LCD, and More! Posted: 03 Mar 2014 06:29 AM PST Top Deal: Maybe in the future, someone will invent self-expanding storage -- a hard drive that increases in capacity when you fill it up. That'd be cool, wouldn't it? Sadly, such technology doesn't yet exist, but on the bright side, HDD storage is pretty affordable these days. For example, check out today's top deal for a Western Digital 1TB IntelliPower 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive for $60 with free shipping (normally $77 - use coupon code: [EMCPHHB26]). WD is pitching this drive at AV buffs who need 24/7 reliability for always-on video streaming. It has 64MB of cache and various technologies like Preemptive Wear Leveling (PWR), which makes the drive arm frequently sweep across the disk to reduce uneven wear on the drive surface common to audio and video streaming applications. Other Deals: EVGA SuperClocked GeForce GTX 770 2GB 256-bit Video Card for $330 with free shipping (normally $340; additional $10 Mail-in rebate) Asus VS Series Black 23-inch 2ms HDMI LED Backlight Widescreen LCD Monitor for $120 with free shipping (normally $160 - use coupon code: [EMCPHHB45]; additional $20 Mail-in rebate) G.Skill Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory for $77 with free shipping (normally $85 - use coupon code: [EMCPHHB33]) Intel Core Ivy Bridge-E 3.7GHz (Turbo 3.9GHz) LGA 2011 Quad-Core Desktop Processor for $305 with free shipping (normally $325 - use coupon code: [EMCPHHB32])

Enermax ETS-N30 Budget Cooler Coming Soon Posted: 02 Mar 2014 11:20 PM PST Enermax's budget CPU cooler sports LED lights If you're in the market for a new CPU cooler, Enermax has announced a a mid-range tower-style cooler with LED lights, U-shaped heat pipes, and Enermax's patented Stack Effect Flow (SEF) technology. On top of that, the blue LED lights add a cool sci-fi lilt to what could otherwise be a boring plain cooler. And who would want that? All jokes aside, Enermax's new cooler has a PWM capable fan, Vacuum Effect Flow (VEF) technology that incorporates bending fin tips to create air channels, and three 6 mm thick heat copper pipes. The unit itself is 92 x 79 x 134 mm and is compatible with sockets including AMD AM3+ and FM2+, and also Intel's LGA115X sockets. Enermax hasn't released any information about when these coolers will become available, but once new info is released we'll update this post with pricing and availability.

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MMO Updates

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• Repopulation adds adversarial camps, preps for Alpha 3
• Total Kickstarter pledges surpass $1 billion
• Grinding Gear's Wilson talks F2P ethics in Path of Exile
• Pathfinder Online's Ryan Dancey on crowdforging a 'minimum viable product'
• Drakensang Online now available for the Mac
• DayZ's dev team doubling up
• The Daily Grind: Have you created any pro-quality MMO fan content?
• MMO Week in Review: Maintenance mode is better than a sunset
• EVE Evolved: What to expect from EVE Fanfest 2014
• Harry Potter Online in limited production
• This 42-minute video contains all you need to know about Destiny

Repopulation adds adversarial camps, preps for Alpha 3 Posted: 03 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PST Filed under: Betas, Sci-Fi, Game Mechanics, MMO Industry, New Titles, News Items, PvE, Dev Diaries, Sandbox, The Repopulation Above & Beyond has released its latest monthly status report on The Repopulation. In February, the design team added the adversarial camps stretch goal to its sci-fi sandbox, which will allow devs to "generate much of the game's content on the fly and help ensure that players do not have a static experience." Additional work was done on the title's customizable XML-based UI, the harvesting mechanics, and a fitting system for robotic pets. February's "largest changes" came in the form of additional world content, as the dev team is looking forward to adding more testers for Alpha 3 "in a few weeks." Repopulation adds adversarial camps, preps for Alpha 3 originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 03 Mar 2014 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: Feb. update

Total Kickstarter pledges surpass $1 billion Posted: 03 Mar 2014 08:00 AM PST Filed under: Business Models, MMO Industry, News Items, Crowdfunding How much money have Kickstarter projects made since the service's April 2009 inception? That's right, over $1 billion-with-a-B dollars. MCV reports that US citizens lead the way with over $663 million in pledges, followed by backers in the UK, Canada, Australia, and Germany. On April 28, 2009 -- Kickstarter's first day -- a total of 40 people pledged $1,084 to seven projects. On March 13, 2013 -- Kickstarter's biggest day to date -- 54,187 backers forked over $4 million-plus for 1,985 different projects. While Kickstarter isn't restricted to gaming drives, they do lead the way in terms of total funding with over $215 million in pledges as of press time. Total Kickstarter pledges surpass $1 billion originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 03 Mar 2014 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: MCV

Grinding Gear's Wilson talks F2P ethics in Path of Exile Posted: 03 Mar 2014 07:30 AM PST Filed under: Fantasy, Business Models, Game Mechanics, Interviews, MMO Industry, News Items, Free-to-Play, Crowdfunding, Path of Exile Gamasutra reports that over five million people have signed up to play Grinding Gear's Path of Exile title. The company hasn't disclosed how many of those people are actually paying for the free-to-play Diablo-style game, but Path of Exile's critical and financial success invites a closer examination of its business model. Unlike most F2P titles, Path of Exile completely avoids gameplay gates and delaying mechanisms and thus avoids the dreaded pay-to-win stigma. Microtransactions are purely cosmetic, and Grinding Gear's crowdfunding campaign has now morphed "into a permanent rewards-based structure for monetization." Managing director Chris Wilson tells Gamasutra that PoE's supporter packs are a big part of the game's success story in addition to traditional microtransactions, the latter of which offer "enough money to run the company on" by themselves. Wilson says that players want to support PoE because its business model puts gameplay first. "We've been careful when designing the game so there's no paying for game content or advantage in the game," he explained. "We've purposefully divorced any game mechanics from the monetization." Grinding Gear's Wilson talks F2P ethics in Path of Exile originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 03 Mar 2014 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: Gamasutra

Pathfinder Online's Ryan Dancey on crowdforging a 'minimum viable product' Posted: 03 Mar 2014 07:00 AM PST Filed under: Fantasy, Business Models, Game Mechanics, MMO Industry, Dev Diaries, Sandbox, Crowdfunding, Subscription, Pathfinder Online In response to our recent editorial questioning whether we are in fact in the middle of a sandbox renaissance, Goblinworks CEO Ryan Dancey has penned a Massively-exclusive dev blog to explain why his game, Pathfinder Online, is indeed at the center of such a renaissance. Pathfinder was specifically mentioned in our article as a possible example of those pseudo-sandboxes that rely too heavily on creating a space for players to butcher each other without bothering to create the mechanics for anything else. Dancey hopes to clarify his game's outlook today. Read on for his dev blog, in which he discusses what he means by "minimum viable product," distances Pathfinder from the cripplingly expensive graphical arms race plaguing the industry, and elaborates on just how Goblinworks plans to roll out this "crowdforged" MMO. Continue reading Pathfinder Online's Ryan Dancey on crowdforging a 'minimum viable product' Pathfinder Online's Ryan Dancey on crowdforging a 'minimum viable product' originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 03 Mar 2014 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

Drakensang Online now available for the Mac Posted: 03 Mar 2014 06:30 AM PST Filed under: Betas, Fantasy, Free-to-Play, Mac Bigpoint has announced today that Drakensang Online is now available for the Mac. "Our aim is to provide everybody easy access to Drakensang Online regardless of the operating system they use. We are very happy to invite Mac users everywhere to join our large community centered on the best 'hack and slay' gameplay available, with truly outstanding graphics and an epic story. We believe that this will enrich the Mac MMO space significantly," says Jürgen Frerichs, Associate Producer of Drakensang Online. This move now brings Bigpoint's entire game library to for the Mac. You can download the Apple OS X beta client for Drakensang Online on the game's official site. [Source: Bigpoint press release] Drakensang Online now available for the Mac originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 03 Mar 2014 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

DayZ's dev team doubling up Posted: 03 Mar 2014 06:00 AM PST Filed under: Betas, Horror, MMO Industry, News Items, Sandbox, Buy-to-Play DayZ may be losing creator Dean Hall toward the end of 2014, but the popular zombie sandbox project will be gaining several additional developers. "We are inducting a large number of new people to the team, effectively doubling the whole project," wrote Hall on the DayZ dev blog. GamesIndustry.biz reports that Hall also reiterated his intention to move on, but stated that he will remain "in a leadership role until at least the end of the year." DayZ's dev team doubling up originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 03 Mar 2014 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: Dev blog Via: GI.biz

The Daily Grind: Have you created any pro-quality MMO fan content? Posted: 03 Mar 2014 05:00 AM PST Filed under: Sci-Fi, Culture, MMO Industry, News Items, Opinion, The Daily Grind, Sandbox, Music, Crowdfunding, Star Citizen, Buy-to-Play I spent part of the weekend listening to Star Citizen's blowaway-badass unofficial soundtrack. It's unofficial because award-winning composer Pedro Camacho has been tapped to score Cloud Imperium's space sim sandbox opus for realz. Fortunately, though, that hasn't stopped an enterprising group of musicians from creating their own pro-quality digital album and releasing it for free on the SC forums. What about you, Massively readers? Have you created any noteworthy fan content for your favorite game? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind! The Daily Grind: Have you created any pro-quality MMO fan content? originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 03 Mar 2014 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

MMO Week in Review: Maintenance mode is better than a sunset Posted: 02 Mar 2014 05:00 PM PST Filed under: MMO Industry, Massively Meta, Week in Review, Miscellaneous At the end of every week, we round up the best and most popular news stories, exclusive features, and insightful columns published on Massively and then present them all in one convenient place. If you missed a big MMO or WoW Insider story last week, you've come to the right post. As one of the first three MMORPGs ever, Asheron's Call made its mark in the genre with live events, hybrid character development, and a failed but later resurrected sequel. This week, Turbine comforted veteran players with the news that the venerable old sandbox will retreat to maintenance mode rather than sunset in the wake of the company's recent layoffs. The studio plans to make both classic AC and its sequel, Asheron's Call 2, free-to-play and allow player-run servers by the end of the year. Read on for the rest of this week's top MMO stories. Continue reading MMO Week in Review: Maintenance mode is better than a sunset MMO Week in Review: Maintenance mode is better than a sunset originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 02 Mar 2014 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

EVE Evolved: What to expect from EVE Fanfest 2014 Posted: 02 Mar 2014 03:00 PM PST Filed under: Video, EVE Online, Business Models, Culture, Events (Real-World), Expansions, Game Mechanics, MMO Industry, New Titles, PvP, Opinion, Hands-On, Events (Massively's Coverage), World of Darkness, EVE Evolved, DUST 514, Dev Diaries, Player-Generated Content Almost 10 years ago, EVE Online developer CCP Games started a new tradition with the first ever annual EVE Fanfest. The event started out as a largely informal gathering in a tiny venue that allowed players and developers to mingle on a more personal level, but it's now grown into something massive. Over a thousand players now make the annual pilgrimage to EVE Online's birthplace in Reykjavik, Iceland, to hear what the future holds for their favourite MMO. For many, the event is also a social gathering, a chance to swap stories with other players, and a rare opportunity to meet the corpmates they fly with every day in the virtual galaxy of New Eden. The Fanfest weekend is typically a packed schedule of panels, talks, roundtable discussions with developers, and keynote speeches revealing the future of the game. While the event is understandably focused on EVE Online, it's recently expanded to cover aspects of DUST 514, the latest goings-on with World of Darkness, and even CCP's new virtual reality dogfighter EVE Valkyrie. CCP has announced that this year's event will see a monument to the EVE playerbase unveiled in Reykjavik Harbor as well as the first reveal of EVE's summer expansion, but what else can we hope to glean from this year's event at the start of May? In this edition of EVE Evolved, I delve into the EVE Fanfest announcement and speculate on what we might expect to hear from this year's event. Will this be the year that World of Darkness gets some serious news? And what's new for DUST 514? Continue reading EVE Evolved: What to expect from EVE Fanfest 2014 EVE Evolved: What to expect from EVE Fanfest 2014 originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 02 Mar 2014 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

Harry Potter Online in limited production Posted: 02 Mar 2014 01:00 PM PST Filed under: Betas, Fantasy, Video, New Titles With a hot IP, a devoted fan-base, and a fantastical world begging to be explored further, a Harry Potter MMO has been on many gamers' "most wanted" lists for years now. We just got word that Harry Potter Online is indeed in production, although this comes with a serious caveat. The production website for Harry Potter Online is up and running with forums, a gallery, and some basic information about the game. However, it looks as though developer Bio-Hazard Entertainment has yet to receive the full go-ahead from Warner Bros.: "Seeing that it could be a really great business plan, a license was given that would allow the company to begin production on the MMO up until beta. Once beta was hit it would then be decided [by Warner Bros.] if the production would be a good investment or not." The proposed Harry Potter Online would allow players to choose to attend one of three schools of magic, take on roles like Aurors and Lamorians, and become masters of various professions such as potions and herbalism. And yes, if you were wondering, there will be Quidditch. The developers said that a promotional video, trailer, and live interview will be coming soon. You can see some of the game's concept art and hear the devs talking about the game in a video after the break. [Thanks to Cherie for the tip!] Continue reading Harry Potter Online in limited production Harry Potter Online in limited production originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 02 Mar 2014 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

This 42-minute video contains all you need to know about Destiny Posted: 02 Mar 2014 11:00 AM PST Filed under: Sci-Fi, Video, Game Mechanics, Lore, MMO Industry, New Titles, PvP, News Items, PvE, Destiny, Buy-to-Play If you're not sure what to make of Destiny, a new 42-minute video from Destiny Updates is worth watching. The clip touches on the game's MMO, RPG, and shooter aspects, as well as its social building blocks, its economy, and its gear and progression systems. The video is filled with timestamp links, so if you want to skip ahead to the section on, say, cooperative multiplayer, you can. Click past the cut for the full clip. Continue reading This 42-minute video contains all you need to know about Destiny This 42-minute video contains all you need to know about Destiny originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 02 Mar 2014 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: YouTube

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