Earlier this week Blizzard revealed the cinematic for it’s newest expansion World Of Warcraft: Mists Of Pandaria at GamesCom. As expected Blizzard offers up a visually amazing cinematic that includes some humor and showcases Blizzards attempt to get back to the roots of WoW by featuring a battle between and orc and human. Check out the cinematic below.
World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria expansion is set to be released 9/25/2012.
The latest expansion for World Of Warcraft promises to keep things fresh with lots of new features and content. Blizzard takes a different approach this time around and has decided to focus more on world events and features to keep you engaged. MOP will be introducing a whole new continent this time around with stunning environments.
Mists of Pandaria is loaded with new features including the new playable race the Pandaren. The Pandaren are unique in that they are the only race that begin the game without any ties to the Horde or the Alliance. As you progress with your new Pandaren character you will be given a choice at level 10 as to what side you would like to choose. With the Pandaren comes of course martial arts which brings with it a new class, the monk.
A whole new continent will be yours to discover as you fight your way to the new level cap of 90. Dungeon challenge modes will provide more incentives to run through content more than once and keep things fresh. New scenarios promise to give you a reason to roam out in the world with your friends and complete tasks together.
There is a whole new continent in this fourth expansion that includes many new zones including Kun-Lai Summit, Townlong Steppes, The Jade Forest, Vale of Eternal Blossoms, Valley of the Four Winds, Dread Wastes, and Krasarang Wilds. With this release also comes the addition of Pet Battles which will have all your favorite pets dueling it out in turn based combat. When this expansion was first introduced I was surprised and a bit nervous as the direction Blizzard was going seemed so different that it made me wonder how they were going to make all this work. As time has gone on and the beta has been updated over and over, things started to become clearer and my initial feelings about the expansion started to change. I plan to go more in depth on this expansion once we move past the beta and really get into the content. It is too early too tell how this expansion will hold up compared to previous releases but I remain optimistic as Blizzard drives toward a September 25th release date.
Many major MMORPGs are becoming free-to-play and its all because of the communities around these games speaking out. Many subscribers to these games feel less value in the product between major updates and don’t want to commit. Drops in subscribers are a major problem with these types of games. Star Wars: The Old Republic has recently announced that this fall it is Star Wars: Old Republic going to offer a free-to-play option that will allow players to reach up to level 50. Blizzard Entertainment has also released a free-to-play version of Diablo III up to level 13.
Players will be given a choice as to whether or not they want to pay to gain access to otherwise restricted features. The bottom line is here that with the option of free-to-play you have a better chance of holding on to players and keeping their interest in the game but also you make it easier for new people to get into your game. I know from personal experience that there have been many times where I wanted to get into something new but didn’t want to commit to a subscription.
Minecraft Pocket Edition, the mobile edition of the popular game, has been updated to version 0.3.3 for the iPad and iPod and has a few nice additions.
First, many well known bugs have been corrected in this update including the furnace, sapling and leaves bugs. Bow and arrow support also makes its way in along with skeletons and spiders.
The Pocket Edition of Minecraft is available for Android and iOS and if you haven’t played this version you should definitely give it a shot.
Build on, my friends!
Microsoft is looking to “Re-Imagine email” in a transition of Hotmail into Outlook.com, a web based version of outlook that boasts a simpler and more connected email service.
Hotmail has been successful for Microsoft and still has millions of users worldwide. However, Microsoft felt that Hotmail needed a major update. Hotmail will now become something familiar, Outlook.
Many of us use email less then we used to mostly because of the recent popularity of social media sites like Facebook. Microsoft understands this trend and has responded by allowing you to connect to Facebook and Twitter.
Connecting Outlook.com with your Facebook or Twitter account will automatically update your address book to include all of your friends and family. You will also be able to instant message anyone who is also online with Facebook or Outlook.com, right from your inbox. Getting the latest update from a contact, as well as being able to see their profile picture, can be done just by opening an email from them.
An innovative feature that looks appealing is Sweep, a scheduled clean up of your inbox that will remove spam and other bulk emails for you on a regular basis. Outlook will also automatically categorize newsletters,social updates and photos for you.
Outlook.com will also contain free Word, Excel and PowerPoint web apps to better tie in with Office. You will also get 7 GB of storage with SkyDrive, which is Microsoft’s cloud application.
Aside from all of the nice features, the new Outlook is very clean and has a nice feel to it. I think Microsoft is taking steps in the right direction here as this will better integrate with Windows 8 when it becomes available.
For more information and a preview of the new Outlook.com, follow the link below.
Outlook