Year: 2008

Categories
Mostly Everything

I HEART Mark Jacobs

No, this isn’t a spelling error. She likes Marc Jacobs. I like Mark Jacobs.

This is the short note that appears once you load the new WAR Client:

Folks,

A little over three years since work began on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, the day of reckoning is now upon us. When we acquired the rights to do a Warhammer Fantasy based MMORPG from Games Workshop back in 2005, I promised them we would create a great and glorious game; a game that they could be proud of and one that would bring Warhammer Fantasy to the entire world. And here we are, about to enter a brand new MMORPG world. Everyone at Mythic hopes that you enjoy your adventures in WAR as much as we have enjoyed creating WAR. We hope that this will be an epic journey for you and for our game as this is but the first step for both of us. What you will see today is just the beginning of WAR’s evolution as we plan on putting even greater effort into enhancing and expanding WAR just as we did with Dark Age of Camelot. Enjoy your Head Start but remember, you have a long road ahead of you so take time to enjoy the scenery along the way.

My thanks go out to every one of you who reads this letter for choosing to be a guest in our world and for pre-ordering our game. My thanks also go out to every member of Mythic Entertainment and Electronic Arts who helped make this game and this moment possible. It was a truly team effort and it shows.

WAR is now upon us and it is glorious!

Mark Jacobs
VP, GM EA/Mythic Entertainment

Congratulations Mark for putting out a remarkably epic title!

[source]

Categories
Mostly Everything

Warhammer Online: Rally for Philippine Players!

Ah, the Joys of War!

Thus a few good things must come to an end. And we’re talking of preview weekends and open beta. Today, the Warhammer Herald announced:

WAAAGH!!!!

What an awesome week it’s been!

Not only has the feedback been terrific but with your help we’ve been able to get the game in great shape for launch.

Beta started over a year ago and it’s truly amazing to see how far things have come, the community has grown and game just continued to improve more and more.

This has been an awesome experience and we are proud to have shared it all with you. Celebrate this moment because for many WAR is Here!

We now welcome you to take a few hours, catch up on sleep, and to all of our CE Pre-Order customers come on back at 1PM EDT for the opening of Head Start and be the first to blaze your destiny in the forges of WAR!

We cannot wait to begin the journeys to come with all of you and whether you join us in the Standard Edition Head Start or come back for launch on the 18th we look forward to welcoming you and sharing your adventures and victories in our world.

In just a few short minutes the Open Beta servers will be closed at 4AM EDT. Enjoy these last moments and prepare for those to come in the years ahead.

The road has been a long and awesome experience, but you aint seen nothing yet!

It is with our deepest gratitude and thunderous excitement that we officially end Beta. Congratulations, WAR has come and together we will unveil it to the world, a new day rises and with it comes the Age of Reckoning…

We’ll see you on the battlefield…To WAR!!!

Texted Kiven today asking what server he’d be playing in. It would be cool if the Pinoys bunched up in one server (actually, 2 servers – one for Order and another for Destruction). The logical choice would be the Oceanic servers but from what I heard, some people have a better pipe connection to the US than Australia depending on your ISP.

The Collectors Edition (me! me!) head start happens on the afternoon of the 14th (US time). Thus far, the game has delivered almost everything I looked for in an MMO including this:

WTF! I’m only LEVEL 2 and already fighting Dragonzz!

DING! GRATZ. TY.

For organization purposes, I think the best place to go to rally into the “living guild” would be over here. Of course, I’m not imposing on anybody. It’s just nice to see a familiar face i nthe battlefield – even if he is your enemy! I’ll probably be found playing at the Darklands or Ironclaw Oceanic servers. On second thought it’s actually more strategic to choose a server that wasn’t in the open beta (like Marius) as a lot of guilds have already chosen these. It’s psychology, no really (!!!), and choosing the “default servers” might cram the queue. Y tu?

P.S. Warhammer Oceanic has a listing of guilds here.

Categories
Mostly Everything

Canon Sale and Philips Bodega Sale!

Boy oh boy, Christmas sales are rushing in time for the early Christmas shoppers! Here are two technology sales happening in the metro. Philips will be doing a bodega sale this weekend with up to 70% off and Canon will be doing a sale from the 15th to the 26th of the month.

PHILIPS SALE SEPTEMBER 13 2008

CANON SALE SEPT 15 – 26 2008

Please note well that from the 15th to the 16th, the venue for the sale will be in the PBCom Building Food Court in Ayala Avenue, perfect for those who work really near there! From the 16th onwards, the sale will be in the new Anson’s beside Landmark across Greenbelt 4.

Also, today was the first day of the Trinoma Style Therapy sale! It’s cool that Trinoma has a regularly updated blog that keeps consumers updated on what items they had for the sale. Ah, technology, I loves it!

Categories
Mostly Everything

What a GENIUS this iTunes 8!

So along with the hot iPods, iTunes released the new Genius feature for iTunes 8.0 that does two things. First, the new version allows you to make on-the-fly playlists based on one song that you choose. The choice is heavily dependent on the genre, artist and I even think it has something to do with the cadence of the song. iTunes chooses similar beat counts for that playlist.

The second part of Genius is the iTunes recommendations sidebar, which is their monetization model. When you’re playing songs, iTunes can recommend songs from their library which you can click to purchase. It isn’t available in the Philippines, sadly (see first image).

The Genius concept is not new. Online services such as Last.FM and Pandora have implemented this related playlist scheme for quite some time. Of course, sometimes you get really off recommendations.

I tried a few playlist creations based on KENNY LOGGINS, JAMIROQUAI and RICK ASTLEY and got pretty good results (hmm there are one or two out of place songs, but hey, sometimes Geniuses make mistakes too!). The first song in the 25 song countdown is where all the songs are based from.

Share your Genius Playlist Mix? 🙂

P.S. And yes, I listen to BARRY MANILOW, OK? Mandy, FTW.

Categories
Mostly Everything

4th Gen iPod nano colors (Cute naman!)

The rumors are true – the 4th generation iPod nanos are out. Apple has gone back to the roots of the nano, foregoing the fatty design for the gum stick form factor of the 1st and 2nd generation + the curved edges. And they’ve upped the memory too at 8GB and 16GB. Sigh. Flash memory just gets cheaper and cheaper. Every year, a new iPod owner gets at least twice the memory for the same price. It goes the same for all tech gadgets.

They did a great job with the colors – these aren’t the typical shades you’d find in your everyday gadget. According to Technograph, the rumored pricing is P12,000.00 for the 16GB version.

Apple, where’s the FM tuner? 🙂