GameBlog’s Year 2007 Preview

It is the last day of the year and we are going to bring you news on what GameBlog is going to be like in the year 2007.

Let’s recap on the Year 2006, GameBlog has acheived the following:

• We have covered on major games like World of Warcraft, DotA, Final Fantasy, Battlefield series, Company of Heroes, Football Manager, etc.
• We haved covered on major platforms, such as PC, PS3, Xbox 360 extensively.
• We have 85 posts to date. (This is the 86th)
• We have 519 comments to date.
• We have 38 tags.
• GameBlog has achieved 213,000 hits since July.
• GameBlog is run by one person.

Well, let me give you the Preview to the future of GameBlog in the year 2007.

• More coverage (means more work for me)
• To move to a dedicated server
• Set up forum

Please post your wishlist for GameBlog if you have any. Any suggestion is welcome.

Let’s fly off the the new year!

Merry Christmas!

GameBlog will like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas here. GameBlog will hope that you guys will patronise us as frequent as possible and we will bring you more information regarding your gaming needs in the days ahead.

We are currently involved in planning for something. So do watch out for it.

Once again, Merry Christmas!

World of Warcraft v2.0.1 released

For all the WoWers out there, log on to your WoW account now to download the latest patch from Blizzard. The patch is 492 MB in size.

As the change log is a VERY VERY long list, I will list out the GENERAL changes here only.

Changelog

General

• All players will have their talent points reimbursed and will have access to new talents throughout their trees; this includes the 41-point talents. Several new abilities have also been added for all classes.
• All pets will now receive a percentage of their master’s armor, spell damage, spell resistances, attack power, and stamina.
• Low-level spells cast by high-level players will receive smaller bonuses from +healing and +spell damage.
• HoTs, DoTs, and channeled spells have been re-balanced to receive a more appropriate (higher) percentage of +spell damage and +healing.
• HoTs from different sources will now stack (i.e. multiple druids can cast the Rejuvenation spell on 1 target).
• New item property “Resilience” has been introduced. Resilience reduces your chance to be the victim of a critical strike, and reduces the amount of damage critical strikes do to you.
• Weapon Skill now does the following:
  • Weapon skill will no longer reduce the percentage damage lost due to glancing.
  • The player will gain 0.1% to their critical strike rating per weapon skill against monsters above their level.
• When casting a buff on a low level target, the appropriate rank of the buff will automatically be applied.
• In PvP, Crowd Control effects will last no longer than 12 seconds instead of the full duration, with a chance of a heartbeat resist.
• Players will no longer lose faction when under the influence of “Mind Control” or the Gnomish Mind Control Cap.
• Several improvements have been made to the Macintosh client, including support for Multi-Threaded OpenGL on Intel Macs running OS X 10.4.8 or higher.

Summary

• Revamped PvP Honour System
• New Talents available; 41 talent points.
• Looking for Group Tool
• Arena Skirmishes

You can read the entire patch notes here
For more information on the new interface, Looking For Group, you can visit the Burning Crusade website for more details.

You can check out the latest patch note at the World of Warcraft Patch Note section.

Download Link (Incremental Update fron 1.12.x to 2.0.1)
Filefront
Fileplanet

Halo 3 trailer online!

The new Halo 3 trailer is released online by the game developer, at Xbox Live Marketplace. The trailer is on the game page of Halo 3. You need to enter your birthday in order to watch the video. I think this is due to the ESRB rating on the game.

here is the video! Enjoy

Registration for Halo 3 beta is now on, at Halo Official Website. Currently the beta is for North American gamers only. The European Halo 3 beta will start next Spring.

These are the requirements for Halo 3 beta:

• An Xbox 360 Pro console or an Xbox 360 Core console with hard drive
• A Xbox Live Gold subscription
• A Microsoft. NET Passport account with a Xbox Live gamertag tagged to it

Halo 3 beta

This is the screenshot for the upcoming 60 seconds Halo 3 ad which will be airing on Monday, 4 December, during Monday Night Football at ESPN. This is an awesome screenshot, it has become my wallpaper. The filename of this picture is also interesting. It is named as “ineedaweapon”, directly downloaded from Bungie.net. Cool name, cool Master Chief.

By the way, the CG was created by Hollywood FX house, Digital Domain, with assets from Bungie.

This ad announcement come with the announcement on the beta of Halo 3 worldwide. Yes, worldwide. By the disappointing part is, it will not start until Spring 2007. Somehow, this a bucket of water that just poured onto the fans of Master Chief and Halo. However, the registration for the beta will start on 4 December, for the America. As for other continents, no news yet, but keep your ears and eyes open for it.

As for the 60 seconds ad, those who do not have the cable tv, you can download form Xbox Live Marketplace or Xbox website after the airing of the ad on Monday, according to Bungie.

Halo 3, the second sequel to the popular Xbox game, Halo, is going to be released next year exclusively for Xbox 360. You can check out the release date of the game from the Game Release Date page.

Nintendo Wii released

The last of the 3 next generation console has been released. Nintendo Wii does not feature fancy hardwares like the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360, however it comes with innovations, such as the Wii Remote.

The Wii Remote is basically a 2 parts controller which features normal directional controls and the movement of the controller itself, as a control. Interesting concept. Now Wii players will no longer sit down at a couch and let the fingers do the movement, but the whole arm and body will be involved too.

Wii is much smaller than Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in terms of thickness width. But this small powerhouse does great job in keeping you hook on the games.

The Wii is the cheapest among the three consoles, priced at US$250. Visit Gamespot for the complete coverage of the hands-on of Wii.

Halo 3 Screen

This is one of the screenshot for Halo 3, the sequel to the popular Xbox series Halo.

The screenshots are from http://www.1up.com, you can see more screenshots from this site.

Gameplay is expected to be the same as Halo and Halo 2. That is the plus point of this game. Graphics wise will be better, because Xbox 360 has better graphics chip than the Xbox. GameBlog will cover more when there is news on this game.

Sony suffers loss from sale of PlayStation 3

Thousands of people lined up and slept in the corridors of the street in US, waiting for the day to start and get their dream console, the Sony PlayStation 3.

PlayStation 3 (PS3) is the second next generation console released, over a year after the release of Xbox 360. Nintendo Wii will be released soon too. While Xbox 360 has already scooped up the majority of the next generation consoles, Sony and Nintendo is not going to let fate decide itself.

The PlayStation 3, powered by multi-core Cell Processor, nVidia Reality Synthesizer and high definition Blu-ray drive. The selling price? US$599 for the 60Gb model, while US$499 for the 20Gb model. Reports show that Sony is suffering heavy losses in the sale of PlayStation 3. The manufacturing cost of the lower end PS3 is US$806 – Sony suffers a loss of US$307 per unit. The higher end model, with Wi-Fi connectivity and memory card slots, make Sony loses US$240 per unit.

As the PS3 looks more like a powerful supercomputer in the consumer market, the components of the console doesn’t come cheap. The Cell processor from IBM costs US$89, the RSX graphics chip from nVidia costs US$129 and the Blu-ray drive costs US$125.

Microsoft too, suffered loss from the sale of Xbox 360 last year. Microsoft lost US$126 per unit. Console makers usually lose money when selling their consoles, but earn from the sale of accessories and games. With a single blu-ray discs costs around US$25, PS3 games may not come cheap. However, the enjoyment factor may override the burning pockets of gamers around the world.

PlayStation 3 is out

In case for those who still don’t know, Sony released PS3 few days ago. The release does not come with the many new games. However, blockbuster games like Final Fantasy XIII will be release next year. Good news is, PS3 can play Final Fantasy XII.

20GB PS3 costs US$499, while the 60GB model costs $599. Asia countries like Singapore still does not have local distribution of PS3, therefore the import version costs skyscraper price. In Singapore, the 60GB model costs SG$1599! If the PS3 spoil, there goes the thousands buck.

New DotA Allstars on beta

The much anticipated DotA Allstars will be releasing new version soon, according to www.dota-allstars.com. Currently, the new version is on beta testing stage. We hope that the new version will release soon as 6.37 has already been out for quite a long period of time.

We will bring you the new version once we get hold of it. Meanwhile, stay tune at GameBlog for more updates.