Windows 7 prices announced

From the Windows Team Blog:

The estimated retail prices for upgrade packaged retail product of Windows 7 in the U.S. are:

• Windows 7 Home Premium (Upgrade): $119.99
• Windows 7 Professional (Upgrade): $199.99
• Windows 7 Ultimate (Upgrade): $219.99

And the estimated retail prices for full packaged retail product of Windows 7 in the U.S. are:

• Windows 7 Home Premium (Full): $199.99
• Windows 7 Professional (Full): $299.99
• Windows 7 Ultimate (Full): $319.99

For Windows XP users, Tom's Hardware has this news:

Microsoft has said that it will offer upgrade options for users to move from Windows XP to Windows 7, but to be clear, those are only for purchasing software licenses. There will be no software upgrade path.

“I can confirm that customers will be able to purchase upgrade media and an upgrade license to move from Windows XP to Windows 7 - however, they will need to do a clean installation of Windows 7,” a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to The Register. “This requires the user to back up their data, install Windows 7, re-install the programs and restore their data.”

In addition, a limited (but as yet, unknown) number of pre-orders of the Home Premium and Professional upgrades will be discounted, to $49.99 and and $99.99 respectively.

Michael Jackson is dead

And Farrah Fawcett went with him.

Battlefield Heroes moves to open beta

The official site is here. If I have the time to look for mirrors (if there are any), I'll post them here.

A little blurb from Ars Technica:

The game, which Ars reviewed in early form last August, is free for all players and supported by ads and microtransactions. The ads are mercifully only on the front end on of the game. The microtransactions originally affected gameplay in a cosmetic way only, but EA added "convenience items" that allow casual players to catch up with more intense ones. In the cartoonish game, players level characters by battling on different maps. Characters have healing skills and special powers and there are vehicles for use, and EA and DICE have promised content updates.

ArmA II demo released

Apparently, there's quite a bit of content, as the download is fairly huge at 2.4 GB. An equally huge list of mirrors is available here. Note that the demo also includes a stripped-down version of the game's map editor.

ArmA II doesn't look quite as pretty as most recent shooters, but that's because the game worlds are enormous, and the online game supports up to 50 players (and a myriad of vehicles and other stuff). Although it has a strong FPS element to it, it's more of a "war sim," which means the command and control system is extremely complicated. Overall, it looks a lot like CoD4 in its setting, but be prepared for a much steeper learning curve. Also, expect lots of bugs.

I'm going to download it while I'm at work tomorrow. If anyone's interested in trying it on Saturday, give me a buzz.

L4D update

The new matchmaking and custom content systems are live, and the sample content for the authoring tools now includes the source files for every stock map. The full changelog is available here.

Anything you can do, I've already done better

Still trying to wrap my head around the marketing decision here.

I caught this on Gamasutra:

"Up until the beginning of May, OTX had been tracking the title as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. More specifically, we asked a representative group of gamers in the U.S. whether or not they had heard of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. At that time, approximately 40 percent of all gamers in the U.S. claimed that they had heard of this title."

He continued, "However, once it became clear that Activision was positioning the title as Modern Warfare 2, OTX removed 'Call of Duty' from the consumer survey, and the awareness levels dropped to 20 percent. In other words, the Call of Duty brand association essentially doubles the awareness for the game. That is quite a remarkable statistic."

By all accounts, Modern Warfare 2 is going to sell a bazillion units, so dropping the Call of Duty handle isn't likely to hurt anything. What I'm having a hard time understanding, though, is what Activision and/or Infinity Ward hope to gain from it. Brand recognition is usually a good thing, isn't it?

Yes, it is ... at least until something damages the brand. If you find out that a certain model of car explodes as the result of a simple rear-end collision, you're probably not going to buy any model of car from the company that engineered the death-trap. I have no idea whether IW (and really, it had to be their decision) actually thinks the Call of Duty brand is damaged in some way, but I just can't think of another logical explanation.

If I'm right, it speaks volumes about IW's views on the quality of Call of Duty: World at War. They created the franchise, and maybe they think Treyarch fouled their waters.

WoW brings the gay

Actually, this isn't a joke ...


From Destructoid:

Usually, WoW players need to invent an excuse as to why they've never been with a woman, but now they have a perfectly legitimate reason. It's Pride Month in the USA, and that means World of Warcraft once again held a mirror to the real world and enjoyed its 5th annual Pride march on the Proudmoore server. A gay time was definitely had by all.

The march was attended by what have to be some of the best-named guilds in the world: Go Girl! (Escorted by Dykes on Bikes), Proposition Taint, The Real Houseboys of Silvermoon City, Willy Wankers and The Chocolate (Cake) Factory, Bears in the Woods, Spider Pride, Gordok Ogre Float, Battlebots, Priests with Pom Poms, The Bunny Float, Proudmoore Divas and Seksi Sehkurridy complements of War Taint.

And from Game Politics:

"There were a variety of activities including Pre-Parade Festivities, March, Meetup with Alliance, Nude Duel Championship final round, March to Ratchet, Dance Boat Party to Booty Bay, Azeroth's Next Top Model Competition, Crafting Faire and Post-Parade Dance Party in the Bay."

Hackers have a new challenge

Excerpt from Game Politics:

Proposed System for Game Retailers Would Activate Discs at Time of Purchase

The Entertainment Merchants Association, a trade association which represents a large segment of North American video game and DVD retailers, thinks it may have a solution which could save the retail industry billions by reducing costs, curbing theft and potentially making the purchasing experience more pleasant for the consumer.

The EMA’s solution is “benefit denial” technology that would disable movies and video games until unlocked at the point of sale - sort of like gift cards which have no value until activated by a sales clerk.

BTW

For everyone who has complimented me on the post immediately following this one: Maugchief wrote it, not me.

Rant of the Day

Yeah, so I was reminded last night of why I enjoy ITOE so much. I joined a game of versus last night on L4D. Ended up being on a team with three other people who apparently know each other and play together a lot. They had their own server and everything. After we all join the game, we have to type "!ready" into the console to even start the game.

We play as survivors first on Blood Harvest. I can tell this isn't going to go well because the first thing that happens is they start making weapon selections and how we should only have one person with an uzi, etc, etc. I just grab a shotgun. Whatever. About half way through, we get a tank. We all have molotovs at this point and they all throw theirs at the same time. Not accidentally, by the way. This was the plan. I figured if the tank already has three molotovs at his feet, it's probably not a bad idea to save one for later. Apparently that was not how I should be playing the game and they start whining about me saving my molotov and then resort to talking about me as though I wasn't even there. They even tried to vote kick me but luckily the other team was decent guys.

By this time, all three of them had been incapped by the tank and I was the only one left. I start reviving the closest one and one starts shouting that I should revive him first because he claims, no joke, that he's "pro". A few minutes later, we're all incapped. Now it's our turn as infected. Before we even start, they're saying they wish they had admin privileges so they could just boot me. I had had enough so I figured I'd make it easier on them and left of my own accord.

Crazy thing is that I had been chatting with them in the lobby for about five minutes and they seemed cool. As soon as the game started, I pretty much went on mute because they were such jerks. By the way, at no point were any of the comments said "to" me. They were all just "about" me between themselves.

I just can't help but wonder how you can get to a point that the way you play a game is the "right" way and anyone not doing things your way don't deserve to even play on the same server as yourself? Do they actually have people come in and say "Wow, your way of playing is so much more fun than my way. I think I'll stick around and be your understudy in the arts of proper weapon selection and molotov timings."

So yeah, nothing of real importance in this post but I just felt like ranting a bit. Take it for what you will. Also, normally I wouldn't point fingers, but this case was a bit extreme. So if you happen to run into "k1 Mayhem", "Scumbag", or "Lexi [deviant_obscurity]" in-game, feel free to blast them in the face with an auto-shotty for me. Or just don't throw a molotov. Either way.

(I didn't do my usual proof-reading, so hopefully this is at least coherent.)

This is your brain on WoW

So there's this guy - we'll call him Steve - who just found out that his mother canceled his World of Warcraft account:

He's that angry because he knows, deep down, he's going to live with his parents forever.

Speaking of L4D...

The official blog has some useful information in the latest post:

Add-Ons
Third party campaigns are designed to be installed using a new Add-On framework. Content authors will be able to package up their new maps, along with new posters, models, and textures, into a single .VPK file. To install and activate this content in-game, players need simply download the .VPK and double click on it. Alternatively, they will be able to drop it into a new "addons" folder. The list of installed add-ons will be viewable from a new item on the 'Extras' main menu flyout.

Matchmaking
Because Left 4 Dead is all about sharing, we've re-tooled Left 4 Dead's matchmaking system to provide extensive support for custom add-on campaigns. When creating or searching for a lobby, a new option named "Add-on campaign" will let you select from among the add-on campaigns that you have installed. You can then find games or lobbies as well as create a lobby for that campaign. You can invite your friends, too. If they do not have the campaign installed, they will automatically be offered an option to download it.

We've also made it easier to create lobbies by adding a 'Create Lobby' option directly from the 'Play Online' menu. Once you're ready to go, the new matchmaking system will automatically try to find any dedicated servers nearby that have the custom add-on campaign installed, or you can make your own local server.

There's also some info on the release build of the SDK.

Revel in your depravity

With Left 4 Dead, my mercurial tastes have done me a service. When I first got the game, I didn't care much for Versus, so I stuck with the Campaign mode until I had played all four campaigns into the ground. Then came the Survival Pack, with a new game mode that I enjoyed for all of 15 minutes. (Amping up the difficulty to get a few extra hours out of a game has always struck me as a cheap contrivance, especially when there are so many other games to play.)

But lately, I have rediscovered Versus. I'm enjoying it immensely now, and I expect that the warm, fuzzy clusterf*ck I'm experiencing at present will continue for quite a while. Apart from the mode's diversity - both compared to the other modes, and between different sessions of Versus - the main factors contributing to my L4D resurgence are these: (1) my gaming crew made the belated transition with me; and (2) they all bring the suck as epically as I do.

Versus mode is the ultimate griefing engine. There's nothing fair about it, and the infected team is rewarded not so much for skill at the controls, but for being devious, sadistic, and ruthless a-holes. You wait for one survivor to get soft and lag behind, then you pounce on him and rip his nipples off. Or you donkey-punch three of them a country mile off a roof (to instant death, of course). Or you administer the ultimate indignity of puking green sh*t all over them in their most precious, vulnerable moments. Doing this to strangers is lovely. Doing it to your friends is sublime.

Versus is all about sapping your opponent's will to continue. The genius of the whole ordeal is that it throws things like balance and predictability out the window, and lets each session degenerate into something like a civil war reenactment with heavily-armed monkeys ... and space aliens ... and Pat Boone on crystal meth. It's fun as all hell, and I'm content that I didn't figure that out until recently.