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Posts with tag big-download

WoW Insider Show Episode 45: Turpster every four minutes

Posted Jul 8th 2008 3:00PM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Mage, WoW Insider Business, Virtual selves, Humor, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King, WoW Insider Show, Worldwide Invitational

Last Saturday, as always, we sat down and spent about an hour discussing the latest and greatest in the World of Warcraft, and the results are now online for your listening enjoyment. Turpster and I were both on, as well as John "BigBearButt" Patricelli, and Kyle Horner, a blogger on our sister sites Massively and Big Download.
  • Turpster talked with us about WWI, what he thought of the big event in Paris, what it was like to play a Death Knight, and why he thought it was even better than last year's BlizzCon (including why this year's BlizzCon might be even better).
  • Kyle spoke with us about being a player who's just now getting back into WoW, and what he's excited for in the next expansion.
  • We talked a little bit about TCG cards, and whether it's fair for Upper Deck to give away the TCG loot.
  • Mages didn't get a lot of news during WWI, so we chatted about what they might get before Wrath of the Lich King.
  • We talked about the timing of the beta, and what the plan is for the rest of the Wrath release.
Definitely a fun show (and it features the only time I've ever gotten really angry at Turpster, though it turned out to be no big deal, and he's probably not fired from the show. Probably.). Give it a listen over on the WoW Radio page, and if you have a question comment, or insight about something we said, don't hesitate to email the show itself -- theshow@wowinsider.com is the address.

Thanks for listening as always, we'll see you next week.
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WoW Insider Show goes live tomorrow

Posted Jul 4th 2008 4:00PM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Podcasting, WoW Insider Business, Odds and ends, Blizzard, WoW Insider Show


Our weekly podcast is back on the air tomorrow afternoon, and Turpster should be back at home in England, ready to tell us all about the rest of his WWI trip. I'll be on, along with John "BBB" Patricelli, and we'll also welcome Kyle Horner from our sister sites Massively and Big Download -- he's just recently gotten back into WoW, so we'll chat with him about what's changed since he left and why he's coming back. We'll also read your email (since we missed it last week, we'll have a lot to go through, I'm sure) as well as other tidbits from WWI, what's up with the Wrath world event, and when all of these beta registrations might actually start meaning something.

So join us, won't you? Just tune in to WoW Radio live tomorrow afternoon at 3:30 Eastern, and you'll be able to hear the show live on the virtual airwaves. And you can join us in IRC if you'd like as well -- either chat on the site, or send your IRC client of choice to irc.mmoirc.com and the #wowradio channel. And if you'd rather email the show, you can do that, too -- theshow@wowinsider.com is the address for all your complaints, queries, and general Turpster praise.

We'll see you tomorrow afternoon as always.
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Activision-Blizzard merger may be complete on July 9th

Posted Jul 3rd 2008 7:00PM by Daniel Whitcomb
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, News items

WoW Insider sister site Big Download is reporting that the Activision-Blizzard merger is getting closer and closer to reality. They recently won another victory in court today, as a Delaware court struck down an attempt by the Wayne County Employees' Retirement System to gain a preliminary injunction against the deal.

We're now coming up fast the July 8th Activision shareholders' meeting, where they will vote to approve the merger. Activision has already said that they expect the merger to be official on or about July 9th, according to Big Download.

This, of course, squeaks in just under the wire for the E3 expo. Activision-Blizzard has already said they don't plan to participate, but that they will hold a press conference on or near the dates of the expo. It seems likely now that they will be officially announcing the completion of their merger.

Of course, we here at WoW Insider are hoping the merger isn't the only thing they reveal. A WoTLK cinematic and official release date or another L70ETC song on Guitar Hero would be nice, I'd say.

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New StarCraft II screenshots released

Posted May 29th 2008 2:00PM by Michael Gray
Filed under: News items, Rumors

New StarCraft II screenshots releasedAvid Blizzard fans are already watching the official StarCraft II website. Much like other unmentionable Blizzard products, information about StarCraft II is slowly making its way into the world. There may not yet be Tauren marines in our immediate future, but sharp-eyed David Craddock at the Big Download Blog spotted new screenshots released this week.

While some of the screenshots won't be recognizable or meaningful to new StarCraft initiates, most of the action is generally recognizable (in a general sense) to a veteran RTS player. You can definitely get an overall sense of troops, constructed bases, and how the fight might progress if it were animated.

These new screenshots feature the Banelings, which sound like pretty fierce critters in their own right. Banelings -- a "morph" of the zergling -- are chemically volatile little buggers who spend their lives angry, temperamental, and ready to explode at any given time. Through tender loving care, Zerg Queens have been able to engineer the banelings in such a way that they'll explode exactly when needed. Presumably, "when needed" means "all over your troops." You can see the Baneling's idle animation on their feature page on the official site. They pump and undulate, and really do look like something that's over-filled and ready to pop given a moment's notice. Kind of gross, really.

Most of the details about Starcraft II will come "closer to release date," but it's still pretty tantalizing to get a first look at notable, trademark troops.

Gallery: Starcraft 2

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Big Download talks to Blizzard about eSports and PvE/PvP

Posted May 13th 2008 11:31AM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, PvP, Interviews, Arena

Our newest sister site Big Download is just a week old, and yet they're already playing with the big boys -- Steven Wong has posted an interview with Blizzard's Lead Designer Tom "Kalgan" Chilton, as well as Paul Della Bitta and Joong Kim of Blizzard's eSports division about what it's going to take to tune the Arena game just right. As he did before, Kalgan confirmed that the Arena Tournament Realm is acting as a laboratory for changes and updates to classes.

Della Bitta confirms, also, that Blizzard is still interested in letting players watch the matches, either via television or some other way (we heard that way back when from WSVG's President -- when they were still around, anyway). And Joong Kim lays out a simple timeline for the Arena tourney: Blizzard expects the online portion to be finished mid-July, and the Global Finals will start later in the year, around October (which is when another big Blizzard event is taking place... coincidence?).

Wong doesn't get Kalgan to list a favorite class (obviously -- think of the torment that would cause on the forums), but he does confirm yet again that Blizzard isn't giving up on keeping both the PvP and PvE games the same. They want players using the same abilities as much as possible in both types of gameplay, and apparently they're committed to juggling both of those flaming torches for as long as they can.
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Introducing Big Download (beta), the newest site in the Joystiq network

Posted May 8th 2008 12:30PM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, WoW Insider Business, News items

Our good friends at Joystiq are passing out the cigars today -- the newest site in the Joystiq network (which WoW Insider is a part of, within Weblogs, Inc., which is a division of AOL) is called Big Download, is in beta, and is open right now for your browsing and file grabbing pleasure. We'll direct you to the most important part of the site, the World of Warcraft page, where you can grab Blizzard's latest patch and trailer at your convenience (in case you haven't gotten them yet), but the site's got lots of other good stuff, too, including that sweet looking Mirror's Edge gameplay video everyone's going gaga over, and even full MMO clients like Dream of Mirror Online and EVE Online.

The site's got a decidedly PC bent, which we're big fans of, obviously, and there's a news page which will cover PC and game file news from 1 to 100% downloaded. And with a feature called "My Tracker," you can sign in and every time there's a new file for a game you want (say, a certain 10 million player fantasy MMO that you just can't get enough of), they'll tell you right away.

Looks cool to us. The site is still in beta, as we said, so stay tuned for more updates and features all the time. And what's that you say? You want a place where you can get up-to-date, virus-free WoW addons, a place that never goes down and charges no fees and requires no registration to download from? Patience, my friends. In time, good things will come.
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