When a gamer is first introduced to the online gaming community they quickly hear about the concept of clans. A clan is a group of gamers who form a team to take part in online competitions and leagues. In recent years clans have moved away from being large groups of people to becoming small single team clans who play in a single competition.
As a result the difference between a clan and a team has become blurred. This League is a system designed to give a gamer the ability to manage their clans and hopefully to create a clear distinction between the concept of a clan and a team. To do this the system allows the management of an overall clan, and within the clan the clan members can become members of multiple teams.
This allows a clan to be a large group of members who can create multiple teams of different skill levels for different games. Another goal of this functionality is to encourage the development of highly skilled teams. Being able to form a large group of gamers increases the chance of attracting more skilled players and putting them into a single team. The team you play in is no longer a clan made up of the first 5 friends you have convinced to join you, but an organised entity of people with the same skill level
This gaming series is going from strength to strength and even the number of copies being shipped is surpassing some people’s expectations. Japan had a 3 month head start and had 2 million copies of Final Fantasy XIII sent out, but just in the first week of other places getting the chance to get their copies, it has shipped 3 million copies. This game has had high praise from anywhere you look at. Another interesting fact is that the series as a whole has shipped over 96 million copies of games.
Now this is a concept that has been discussed before here, but we finally are seeing some traction. At GDC, the CEO of OnLive has announced that this service will be launching in June. It is a service where a gamer can use OnLive’s servers to play games for a subscription fee. The gamer does not need to install the game on their own PCs or Macs at all. It seems however it will only be in the USA, as lag will be a pain and will be available for $14.95 subscription. There is also the MicroConsole which would be a dumb terminal which plugs into the TV and lets you connect and play from OnLive’s on servers.
It has been almost 30 years since the original Tron movie came out and now we have a direct sequel coming out shortly. If you click here, you can watch the new Tron Legacy trailer. If you are unsure what Tron is, basically it is hard to explain, but computer programs do battle and people get sucked into the cyberworld and an adventure results. The movie comes out in December.
What did you think of the trailer? Will this be as good as the original?
Well it was going to happen sometime in the future, but Harmonix have officially announced that Rock Band 3 is well on its way. It was announced on their Facebook page and will be heading out for a Christmas holiday launch. No other details are released yet, except that someone has said that they wanted to teach people how to play instruments in the game properly. This will be something to keep an eye out as news trickles out to see how it will top the previous incarnations in the series.
With the cryptic clues and recent announcement that the sequel to the 2007 sleeper hit, comes even juicier news. The game will star Chell and GlaDOS, but it will take place hundreds of years into the future. Multiplayer is being put into the game with Co Op mode with players playing as robots and reflections cubes will be put into the game as well for laser redirection puzzles. Valve is also saying that this will be a full game, compared to the original which was just like a “test bed.” It will be out this Spring on Xbox 360, PC and Mac.
In a badly kept secret, Valve has officially announced that Steam is heading to the Mac operating system, also known as OSX. This means that Valve games like Counter-Strike, the Half-Life series, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal and Team Fortress will be ready to play on a Mac system when it is launched in April. Another feature will be called Steam Play which will allow you to play the same game on either PC or Mac and it will save your position for the game etc.
Do you know many Mac users who will be interested in this?
Well the game stopper has happened. Due to the always online DRM incorporated into the PC sequel of this game, if you could not connect to the internet and/or connect to the authentication servers, you could not play the game, even in single player mode. The Ubisoft servers were overloaded that much that they were down for long periods of time and still seem to be having issues. Even booting up the game takes forever, if you actually could get into the game. On the forums over at Ubisoft, a representative has replied to all the angry posts by saying; “Clearly the extended downtime and lengthy login issues are unacceptable, particularly as I've been told these servers are constantly monitored. I'll do what I can to get more information on what the issue is here first thing tomorrow and push for a resolution and assurance this won't happen in the future."
Has this personally happened to you or someone you know? Will Ubisoft remove this DRM in future games?
