GeekwithEnvy

Games

Lifetime Ban for League of Legends Pro

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 LoLSS19

Pro gamer, Christian Rivera, who goes by the name I_Will_Dominate, has just been served a lifetime ban from the e-sports team of developer Riot Games. Rivera competed professionally as part of Team Dignitas for the game League of Legends. This should come as no surprise to those who follow him as he has been in trouble 8 times before and has received numerous warnings about his attitude toward other gamers. Here is a quote from the ruling.

“Despite the punishments and official warnings, his harassment score has risen more than 30% from early August to the present date, placing him at the top of the list of North American pro players and among the worst 0.7% of all North American players,”

An official post on the League of Legends community forums states the developer’s low tolerance level for this type of behavior.

“I’ve got some tough news to share with you. We take sportsmanship and player behavior very seriously, and we fundamentally believe that pro players should not be exempt from scrutiny over their behavior.”

“Promoting good sportsmanship and improving player behavior is a mission that’s extremely important to Riot, and this ruling is a reflection of our commitment.”

Update from Polygon.

 

 

Featured App: Smart Aliens

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Smart Aliens is a social hangman-like game that you can play with your friends via Facebook, or 3 random people from all over in real-time. At first you may think..”oh, hangman, okay whatever”, but this game is actually way better than I expected.

You first pick your alien avatar, then you choose to play the arena mode, or duel mode. In arena, you will be asked to make your bet amount, Rookie Arena-5 gold, Gamblers Arena-10 gold, and Psychopath Arena-15 gold. Inside you are joined with 3 other actual players, no CPU. The game will give you a category and letters to choose. You must choose carefully, once you lose all your lives you lose your bet twice! The game’s gold coins are used in the shop to buy bots, different avatars, traps and medikits. These things will help while in the arena with other players to make sure you win, by taking lives away from them, or refilling your lives.

ArenaMultiplayer SmartAliens
Arena Multiplayer, SmartAliens

 

The avatars are cute and funny looking, some come at a high price, and there is one that you must have the paid version to get. Although you don’t have to buy the app (since there is a free version) the paid version gives you some perks, like extra gold. I wanted a certain alien, but she was very expensive and the winnings for each round, really don’t add up very fast, so I feel like they know you will definitely buy the full version and more gold to get what you want, otherwise, you would be playing for a pretty long time before you got it. That is the only con that I believe this game has. Overall at $1.99, I think it was a good buy.

Available at the App Store and coming soon to Google Play. You can also check out their website at www.smartaliens.com

Features include:

DUEL mode: Challenge your friends in a turn-by-turn game.
ARENA mode: WARNING! ADDICTIVE GAME! Play against 3 other aliens in real-time!
FACEBOOK: Connect with Facebook, invite and challenge your friends.
TRAPS: Assured victory by trapping your opponents with the lightning, the psycho keyboard or the kidnapping.
SUPER POWERS: Upgrade your alien to reveal letters at the beginning of a round, block lightning or resurrect from death.

 

 

Mists of Pandaria Patch 5.1 Live

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Mists of Pandaria patch 5.1 “Landfall”, is now live on all realms. The new patch is packed with updates including item level upgrades, Brawler’s Guild, Pet battle updates, new scenarios, class changes and much more.

Here is a quick rundown of what to expect: World of Warcraft_Mists of Pandaria Male Pandaren

Brawler’s Guild:

  • Entry into the brawler’s guild is by invitation only.  Invitations can be found on the black market auction house, by invitation from somebody within the guild, and occasionally as drops from certain Horde and Alliance NPCs.
  • You will be able to fight challenging bosses one-on-one in fighting rings for special achievements and awesome looking gear.

Two New Factions:

  • You can obtain special rewards and mounts with the two new factions introduced in 5.1, Operation: Shieldwall (Alliance) and Dominance Offensive (Horde).

All New Scenarios:

  • Krasarang Wilds and A Little Patience (Alliance)
  • Dagger in the Dark and Domination Point (Horde)

Pet Battles:

  • New Wild Pets to Capture
  • A more polished Pet Battle UI
  • New Pet Tamer with Daily Quests
  • A new item has been introduced that can be used to upgrade the quality of Battle Pets: Battle-stones.

Bug Fixes (Complete List)

  • The effect of PvP Power on healing will now appear correctly on the Character Sheet.
  • Swooping Plainshawks no longer use abilities from the Bird of Prey Hunter pet family.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause crops to fail to appear when players entered Sunsong Ranch while several hundred yards up in the air.
  • Players who have learned the Terrible Turnip pet can now continue to find Ominous Seeds when harvesting Cooking Ingredient crops.
  • Classes
    • The responsiveness of many abilities and effects has been improved, including: Renewing Mist, Halo, Rogue Poisons, Revealing Strike, Rime, Killing Machine, Maelstrom Weapon, Sudden Doom, Ultimatum, Scent of Blood, Crimson Scourge, and Sudden Death.
    • The following spells now display less intense visual effects for other players: Hellfire, Death and Decay, Hurricane, Astral Storm, and Explosive Trap.
    • Earthquake’s sound effect is now quieter.
    • All spells that cause Forebearance can no longer be applied simultaneously.
    • Hunters
      • The snare provided by Ice Trap is now more responsive when enemies enter or leave the area of effect, and its effective area more closely matches the visual effect.
      • Lock and Load will now activate correctly when Ice Trap is triggered by an immune target, as long as a susceptible target is within the area of effect.
      • Fixed several issues involving Trap Mastery, Entrapment, Glyph of Black ice, and Glyph of Ice Trap.
      • The Growl pet ability will no longer cause diminishing returns against bosses that are immune to its effect.
      • Glyph of Black Ice now correctly benefits from the increased duration provided by Trap Mastery.
      • Glyph of Ice Trap now causes the visual effect of Ice Trap to match the increased area of effect provided by the glyph.
    • Mages
      • Fixed an issue with Glyph of Icy Veins that could prevent all three bolts from firing.
      • Fixed an issue with Glyph of Icy Veins that could prevent the affected abilities from doing the correct damage.
    • Warlocks
      • The Felguard and Wrathguard pet ability, Threatening Presence, will no longer be auto-cast by default.
      • Pandemic no longer smooths the damage when extending dots with different amounts of spellpower.
    • Warriors
      • Execute damage with high amounts of Vengeance is now capped at the Warrior’s maximum health to prevent it from reaching excessive numbers.
    • Professions
      • Banquet of the Steamer and Great Banquet of the Steamer now correctly provide Intellect to damage based casting classes. Healers will continue to gain Spirit from these foods.

For complete patch notes please visit Blizzard’s official post.

How To Play Diablo II LOD on Windows 8

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Many of us are enjoying the recent release of Diablo III but some of us still love to play Diablo II Lord of Destruction, and with Windows 8, that can be a little problematic.

Diablo II Lord of Destruction is an outstanding game that became an instant classic when it was released on June 29th in North America. Even over a decade later, Diablo fans still play Diablo II LOD on Battle.net and in single player mode. However, the operating systems we use have changed quite dramatically over the years and with each new version usually comes a new set of problems for gamers who enjoy playing classic titles.

DII LOD Cover Art Diablo II Lord Of Destruction
Diablo II Lord of Destruction Cover Art (Blizzard Entertainment®)

If you have attempted to play Diablo II LOD on Windows 8 you will notice many issues, including some serious lag. Here are a few steps you can take to make sure your Diablo II LOD experience in Windows 8 is just as good, if not better, than it was back in 2001.

This quick “how to” assumes that you have already installed and patched the latest version of Diablo II LOD on your system. If you need patch information you can obtain it through Blizzard’s official patch site.

Before launching the game, right click on the game’s shortcut and select “Properties”, then select the “Compatibility” tab.

Once on the Compatibility tab, select the following options:

  • Check “Run this program in compatibility mode for” and set the value to “Windows XP SP 2/3”
  • Check “Reduced Color Mode” and set to “16-bit (65536) Color”
  • Check “Disable display scaling on high DPI settings”
  • Optional “Run this program as administrator”

Once you dial in these settings click Apply and then OK.

The next step is crucial if you want to reduce or eliminate all of the glitching and lagging that is known to plague Diablo II LOD on Windows 8.

Obtain an 3DFX Glide Wrapper, this is a little application that will allow you to use the Glide interface with Diablo II LOD. I have found that GLIDE3-to-OpenGL Wrapper by Sven Labusch seems to work the best out of any I have tried so far.

Download the files from Sven’s site and read the “ReadMe.txt” file. This will contain the most current instructions for installing and setting up the wrapper. Be sure to re-run the video test after the wrapper is installed and set it to use Glide.

** Note: You Will Also Need to apply compatibility settings to run the Diablo II Video Test (D2VidTst.exe) * *

 

That’s it! Hopefully you will be successful in your attempts to get Diablo running smooth. Just follow the directions closely and have fun!

Featured App: Happy Street

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Every once in awhile you stumble upon an app that is, at first okay, but then after getting into it, ends up being so addicting you can’t put it down. Happy Street is that addicting game and it’s free. You start off with Billy the adventurer, and Pepin the merchant. They will guide you though the tutorial and have you building your first houses, stores and mini games. Every time you build a house you gain a new resident who stays in your village and buys things from the stores and stands you create, which earns you in-game coins so you can keep growing your village.

Happy Street ScreenShot

 You can go to the forest and mountain to gather resources such as fish, rocks, flowers, wood and more to create things like wood planks, which yes, have a timer on them. The buildings and resources eventually get timers that will go up to 24 hours till they are finished, but this game is so fun, I really don’t mind. The time element keeps the game interesting. Other characters will also give quests continuously throughout playing, which will earn you coins and flooz. Flooz is the special currency in the game that is harder to come by and they do give you the option to buy more, just like most apps now. Starting at 99 cents you get 9 and it goes all the way up to $99.99 for 1500. This is just an option and I have had no pressure to buy more, and I have not done so. As long as you keep doing the quests you will earn just what you need.

The game also is linked with GameCenter so you can earn achievements and add your friends. Having friends is a good thing, you can ask them for some resources you may need and they could have it so you don’t have to wait 8 hours for it to be made. So if you are into cute little animals asking you to make them anvils and cider so you can upgrade your medieval house, this awesome crazy addicting game is just for you.

Available in the App Store and Google Play!

Features:

– Meet Billy, Zoe, Pepin and other unique characters.
– Customize your characters.
– Discover 3 unique environments and more to come.
– Trade and visit your friends.