Author: Donster

All current World of Warcraft subscribers can start playing Classic today at no additional cost

WoW® Classic rings in the game’s 15th anniversary, with celebrations in Battle for Azeroth to follow in the coming month

Grizzled veterans and hardy newcomers alike can now experience Azeroth as it was in its earliest days with World of Warcraft® Classic, which is live starting today and included at no additional cost as part of everyone’s WoW® subscription globally. World of Warcraft Classic has been a labor of love for Blizzard, and the result is an authentic re-creation of the pre-expansion game in its most feature-complete state, as it was during 2006’s “Drums of War” update (patch 1.12.0). Blizzard has continued to bring WoW Classic realms online around the world to accommodate the more than two million players who have created characters in anticipation of today’s launch, and will work to add more based on player population trends.

Watch the World of Warcraft Classic Launch Trailer HERE.

World of Warcraft®, which has been played by more than 140 million players over the past 15 years, has evolved considerably across seven expansions, with numerous features, enhancements, and quality-of-life improvements. In many ways, World of Warcraft Classic is more unrelenting and demanding of self-direction from players than today’s version of the game. Bonds among the community are paramount—activities like raids and dungeon runs must be organized collectively by players on the same realm, with the toughest challenges requiring 40 coordinated and committed souls to surmount.

Classic’s Azeroth is equal parts wonder and hazard, and its trials will push players to their limits. The Alliance and the Horde, in the midst of outright war, are made to reckon with forces whose powers transcend their own brutal conflict—including some of the most iconic and love-hated of villains of the Warcraft® universe, like Ragnaros the Firelord and the Archlich Kel’Thuzad.

“It’s been a long time coming, but we’re overjoyed to welcome our friends new and old to classic Azeroth,” said J. Allen Brack, president of Blizzard Entertainment. “The community’s excitement is infectious and deeply motivating—it’s clear they’re as thrilled as we are to relive the World of Warcraft Classic experience. We look forward to rediscovering its wonders and challenges together with them, starting today.”

World of Warcraft Classic will continue to expand in the weeks and months following today’s launch, allowing players the opportunity to live through pivotal moments in Azeroth history previously lost to time. Among the host of features and activities set to be introduced to the game across six phases are iconic raids like Blackwing Lair, Zul’Gurub, and Naxxramas; player-versus-player battlegrounds like Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, and the classic version of Alterac Valley; and time-limited server-wide events like the Ahn’Qiraj War Effort, and the Scourge Invasion.

More information is available on the official World of Warcraft Classic website.

Check out these latest hardware announcements for today from around the web. Also included are some hardware news bits, and on some days, a few rumors tossed in for good measure. Click on the links below to read the official press release, visit the products web page, or to an independent news source.

• Phanteks Announces Glacier Gigabyte Aorus Xtreme Kit and C360-series Blocks
• be quiet! Announces Shadow Wings 2 White Fan Series
• Thermaltake Gaming Announces the Level 20 GT RGB Gaming Keyboard
• Noctua Teases All-black Coolers – VIDEO
• ASUS Unveils its GeForce GTX 1650 Low Profile Graphics Cards

Source: TechPowerUp!

AMD Monday posted the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition. Version 19.8.2 beta comes with optimization for the week’s big AAA launch, “Control,” with up to 10 percent higher frame-rates compared to the older 19.8.1 drivers. The new drivers also include optimization for the interactive novel “Man of Medan.” The drivers add HDCP 2.3 support for Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards.

Among the bugs fixed are a “Rocket League” application hang on task-switch, performance-drops with “League of Legends” when performing a task-switch; system instability seen with Radeon RX 5700-series when memory-overclocking while a 3D application is running; and minor stutter noticed with “Fortnite” in the first few minutes of gameplay.

The new Radeon Software Adrenalin 19.8.2 beta drivers are available online at the AMD driver download page.

Source: TechPowerUp!

NVIDIA has released the GeForce 436.15 WHQL drivers. These drivers come game-ready for the day’s big AAA game launch, “Control.” The drivers also introduces Video Codec SDK 9.1, the software-end of NVIDIA’s on-chip video transcoding hardware, which adds a new NVEncode API, support for CUStream in the NVEncode API, and bug-fixes to H.264 MVC encoding. The drivers also pack Optical Flow SDK 1.1. Among the application-specific bug-fixes are display corruption of tracks in “Forza Motorsport 7,” and system crashes observed when installing NVIDIA drivers on systems that have multiple graphics cards with mixed GPU architectures (eg: a system that has a “Maxwell” graphics card and a “Pascal” graphics card.).

You can download the GeForce 436.15 WHQL Game Ready Drivers via GeForce.com.

For the U.S. Navy aviators of Task Force 38, the air war over the pacific ran right to the limit

By David Sears @ Historynet.com

FROM HIS HELLCAT OVER coastal Honshū—the main Japanese home island—U.S. Navy Lieutenant (junior grade) Henry J. O’Meara marveled to see a Tokyo Plain “so thickly studded with airfields that 10 or a dozen were visible from almost any point.” O’Meara, 21, had experienced combat, but many of his fellow aviators in the aircraft carrier Yorktown’s Fighter Squadron 88 were getting not only their first glimpse of Japan’s heartland, but a first exposure to aerial warfare. After plastering enemy fields with tons of fragmentation bombs on July 10, 1945, O’Meara and mates were brimming with swagger. However, O’Meara wrote afterward, the fliers also were “quite disappointed over the lack of Jap planes in the air.”

Read on…

Source: Blue’s News

An Update on Battlefield V with Ryan McArthur has a status report on Battlefield V, discussing the latest goings-on in the military shooter sequel. This includes details on what DICE is fixing in an upcoming version 4.4 patch, map update plans, and their goal of being more communicative and transparent going forward. In that vein, Ryan announces they are cancelling development of their five-versus-five competitive mode, offering the following explanation for the change in direction:

The added focus on improving the quality of the experience and adding more of the content you want has led us to step back from our original plans to offer a competitive 5v5 mode. Not creating this mode was a tough decision, but vital for us to more quickly reach our bug-crushing and content goals. However, we will still pursue building a competitive gaming experience in Battlefield™. We know that there’s already an existing competitive scene in our community, and we’re helping build features to support these communities. We want to work more closely with our players to help improve the tools that they have available to shape their play experience. This way, we can better support the places where competitive Battlefield V play already exists.

This change in focus allows us to better deliver on our promise of new content that we know our players will love, as well as providing new ways to enjoy some of our more intense existing modes.

Source: TechPowerUp!

AMD late-Tuesday silently posted a WHQL-signed version of Radeon Software Adrenalin 19.8.1 drivers that it originally released as a Beta on August 12. The new 19.8.1 WHQL drivers, released on 20th August, are the first proper WHQL drivers since AMD’s Radeon RX 5700-series launch. Besides WHQL, the underlying code is identical to 19.8.1 Beta, and hence the changelog is untouched. TechPowerUp confirmed with AMD that there are no underlying code changes, and that WHQL signing is the only change. Adrenalin 19.8.1 adds Microsoft PlayReady 3.0 DRM standard compliance to Radeon RX 5700-series GPUs.

The new Radeon Software Adrenalin 19.8.1 WHQL drivers are available online at the AMD driver download page.

Check out these latest hardware announcements for today from around the web. Also included are some hardware news bits, and on some days, a few rumors tossed in for good measure. Click on the links below to read the official press release, visit the products web page, or to an independent news source.

• EK Water Blocks Launches Meltemi – 38mm Thick High-Performance Fan
• Thermaltake A700 Aluminum Tempered Glass Edition Full Tower Chassis Launched
• Lian Li Introduces the TU150 Chassis
• Comet Lake-S CPUs Allegedly Command New LGA 1200 Socket and 400-Series Chipset
• Thermaltake Launches RGB-Less H-ONE Gaming Memory Sticks With Little to no Fanfare
• BIOSTAR Launches the RACING B365GTA RGB LED Gaming Motherboard
• FSP Launches FlexGuru 250W & 300W Modular FlexATX PSUs

Wargaming pulls the curtain on the long-awaited ship class for its popular naval combat game with a brand new cinematic trailer and gameplay video

After recently announcing the upcoming arrival of submarines as playable vessels in World of Warships, publisher and developer Wargaming has unveiled more details on their unique features as well as their plans for the launch of the long-awaited ship class during gamescom 2019.

Watch the brand-new cinematic trailer and a gameplay video showing the submarines combat abilities!

Three nations will be the first to receive these stealthy combat machines, including:

• The United States: the Cachalot (Tier VI), Salmon (Tier VIII) and Balao (Tier X).
• Germany: the U-69 (Tier VI), U-190 (Tier VIII) and U-2501 (Tier X).
• USSR: the S-1 (Tier VI), L-20 (Tier VIII) and K1 (Tier X).

In the next couple of weeks, players will be able to get a first glimpse of submarines during the upcoming Super Test phase. Prospective commanders can already look forward to this fall’s PvP event, which will let them try out submarines from the first three nations for a limited time to evaluate the changes brought by the introduction of the new ship-class before its actual release. Wargaming is looking to expand the selection of submarines to other nations in the future, with the Japanese fleet to follow, as well as the future introduction of additional researchable and premium ships.

The uniqueness of submarines resides in their ability to appear in places where they are least expected, dislodging enemy ships from choke points via surgical torpedo volleys before disappearing again. Submarines will have the best stealth capabilities in the game, as they will be able to dive below the ocean surface and evade visual detection as long as their supply of oxygen allows it.

This brand-new ability will let players launch surprise attacks on the enemy team and become invulnerable to most types of damage. Submarines will however be relatively slow and have the least amount of hit points, requiring from prospective commanders thoughtful use of their unique mechanics, as well as good positioning and situational awareness to turn the tides of battle.

When submerged, submarines will lose vision of enemies in the battle. They will need to plot their course and detect other ships with the help of another new mechanic, the hydrophone. This feature will allow them to determine the direction to the nearest enemy ships and visualise their surroundings when diving, actively helping them with their spatial awareness.

Players will also gain the ability to adjust their aim after firing and to alter their torpedoes’ course by pinging certain parts of an enemy ship using their sonar. This new feature will however be a double-edged blade, as it will show the submarine’s position on the minimap for a short period of time.

The introduction of submarines will also bring new weapons and mechanics specifically designed to counter them. Destroyers will be particularly efficient at hunting down submarines and special zones will appear on the surface once they get close to their prey. Once they’ve acquired a target, destroyers will be able to use brand-new weapons designed to sink submarines hiding at high depth: the anti-submarine mortars and depth charges, which will be activated automatically when they sail above their opponents.

Wargaming has also launched today the new update 0.8.7., the second of the French Arc, which lets player research and unlock the complete line of French Destroyers.

Visit the official World of Warships website now to sign up and play World of Warships for free!

Kneel before your Sovereign!

THQ Nordic, by the grace of all gaming goodness, comes forth as herald to all journalists and content creators, streamers and media partners. Bare witness and receive our greetings!

Know that before the good people of gaming, for the richness of all that we hold true and dear, and in exaltation of the genre Grand Strategy, we hereby announce to thee: Knights of Honor II: Sovereign! The second of its name, combiner of depth and accessibility, to become the shining light in the grand strategy realm when it draws swords on PCs all over the world in 2020.

Witness the first trailer HERE.

Knights of Honor II: Sovereign is THQ Nordic’s first step into the Grand Strategy genre. In cooperation with the veteran game developers at Black Sea Games, the goal is to craft a medieval strategy experience that maintains all the depth players expect while breaking new grounds on approachability. Choose your medieval kingdom and lead it to glory or ruins – the fate of your subjects lies in your hands. Manage your economy, guide your people’s religion, be the master diplomat and a fearless general: become the ruler your people love, and establish a legacy that will live across the generations.

About Knights of Honor II: Sovereign

Choose your kingdom and be the king as you wrestle over control of Europe in this fresh take on medieval real-time grand strategy. Knights of Honor II: Sovereign includes all the depth players desire while being the gate-way game to the grand strategy genre, presenting the world as a living, breathing miniature, alive and ripe for the taking. Choose your royal court carefully and determine the destiny of your people, be it riches, conquest, intrigue, trade, or defeat! Raise armies to defend your lands or take war to the enemy – even jump into battle directly in action-packed RTS combat. The path is open: become the true Sovereign of your people.

Features

• Accessible Grand Strategy – From religion to city development, experience exciting depth with better approachability than ever
• Real-Time Gameplay – Medieval Europe comes alive, no turns needed
• Royal Court – Appoint Marshalls, Clerics, Merchants, Diplomats, and Spies to exert your will across the land
• RTS Battles – Directly lead your armies in riveting RTS combat
• Robust Multiplayer – Join with multiple friends to take on the challenges of medieval Europe

Knights of Honor II: Sovereign is scheduled for release in 2020. Screenshots are available on the Knights of Honor II: Sovereign Steam page.