MMO Genesis

PAX 2012: God of War: Ascension

Damadspiderx — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 16:57:03 GMT

This past weekend at PAX, I was fortunate enough to moderate a panel with some of the top minds working on God of War: Ascension. While getting inside the heads of the creators of Kratos’ next adventure was a treat, we did a lot more than just talk. The team brought early sketches of Kratos (dreadlocks!) and the first playable video of the original God of War, before the Blades of Chaos were irrevocably bound to his forearms. We also revealed Ascension’s big bads, the Furies, with a close look at Mageara, the "enforcer” of the mythical tio.

Blizzard's Network Breached

Damadspiderx — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 04:00:24 GMT

Blizzard said today if found illegal and unauthorized access to its internal network. The company said a list of e-mail addresses from Battle.net users outside of China were accessed, but found no evidence of compromised financial information, however.

Blizzard said it's currently investigating the situation. Company president Mike Morhaime issued a statement, which can be read in full below.

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Players and Friends,

Even when you are in the business of fun, not every week ends up being fun. This week, our security team found an unauthorized and illegal access into our internal network here at Blizzard. We quickly took steps to close off this access and began working with law enforcement and security experts to investigate what happened.

At this time, we’ve found no evidence that financial information such as credit cards, billing addresses, or real names were compromised. Our investigation is ongoing, but so far nothing suggests that these pieces of information have been accessed.

Some data was illegally accessed, including a list of email addresses for global Battle.net users, outside of China. For players on North American servers (which generally includes players from North America, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia) the answer to the personal security question, and information relating to Mobile and Dial-In Authenticators were also accessed. Based on what we currently know, this information alone is NOT enough for anyone to gain access to Battle.net accounts.

We also know that cryptographically scrambled versions of Battle.net passwords (not actual passwords) for players on North American servers were taken. We use Secure Remote Password protocol (SRP) to protect these passwords, which is designed to make it extremely difficult to extract the actual password, and also means that each password would have to be deciphered individually. As a precaution, however, we recommend that players on North American servers change their password. Please click this link to change your password. Moreover, if you have used the same or similar passwords for other purposes, you may want to consider changing those passwords as well.
In the coming days, we'll be prompting players on North American servers to change their secret questions and answers through an automated process.

Additionally, we'll prompt mobile authenticator users to update their authenticator software. As a reminder, phishing emails will ask you for password or login information. Blizzard Entertainment emails will never ask for your password. We deeply regret the inconvenience to all of you and understand you may have questions. Please find additional information here.

We take the security of your personal information very seriously, and we are truly sorry that this has happened.

Sincerely, 

Mike Morhaime

Capcom Reveals More Information On Resident Evil 6's Agent Hunt Mode

Damadspiderx — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 14:10:16 GMT

We already learned that Ada Wong has her own campaign in Resident Evil 6, and that you can play as zombies, but now we know more about how it will all work.

With Agent Hunt mode, players will be able to enter the games of others (who elect to let people in) and play as zombies in an attempt to hunt them down. Here are the details on how to access the mode once the game releases in October as outlined by Capcom:

Complete the main campaigns for either Leon, Chris or Jake to then unlock the Agent Hunt stages for each of those respective campaigns.
When creating a Resident Evil 6 gameplay session a player has the option to allow/not allow Agent Hunt.
When a hunter searches for a session to join they will see whether or not other players from around the world want to allow hunters into their game.
The hunter then picks another player’s session to join and jumps into that session (please note only certain stages will be available for Agent Hunt sessions).
The agent side can be either a single human player with an AI partner, or two human players in co-op mode. Up to two separate hunters can join an Agent Hunt session. When a hunter dies they respawn in the same session as a different random enemy from that area.
If the hunter eliminates the agent then they will be taken to a ‘hunt successful’ results screen where they can join another session if they wish.
If the agent is eliminated then their game session will end exactly as if they had been playing a standard game session with CPU enemies.
If the hunter quits the session then the agent’s game continues as normal with all AI enemies.

Resident Evil 6 is coming to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on October 2, with the PC version set to follow at an unspecified time.

World Of Warcraft Subscribers Drop By Over 1 Million

Damadspiderx — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 13:55:58 GMT

Player subscriptions for World of Warcraft has dropped to 9.1 million worldwide, Activision Blizzard announced today. Last quarter, total subscribers were at 10.2 million. It's not all bad for Blizzard, however. Diablo III has sold more than 10 million copies since launch. 1.2 million of those came from the World of Warcraft Annual Pass.

The upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, launches September 25, 2012.