If you got onboard early with StarCraft II Heart of the Swarm and pre-ordered the game before December 18th, you will have access to test out the beta version of the game. Amazon will be sending out promotional beta key codes with actual physical pre-orders. That’s a pretty sweet deal. Blizzard Entertainment will be releasing StarCraft II Heart of the Swarm will launch 3-12-2012. You can get more information about the upcoming expansion from our earlier post here.
Update: PCGamesN.
The Battle.net World Championship – World of Warcraft LIVE!
Event Schedule:
Friday, November 16
Stream: WOW Main
Stream: WOW 02
Saturday, November 17
Stream: WOW Main
Stream: WOW 02
For a complete schedule you can head to Blizzard’s World Championship site here.
The gaming community, contrary to popular belief, is a very social community that rivals the competitive nature of any group of sports fans. This is my main case for for the rise of the gamer bar.
The competitive gaming market is growing rapidly, in-fact it’s blowing up. Major League Gaming is seeing a viewership rise that has surpassed 10 million. Big prizes are at stake, not to mention a chance to have the ultimate bragging rights. These competitions are intense and are won or lost based strategy. Often, a competition will come down to the wire, the deciding factor could come down to one kill, this stuff is addicting.
We stock pile our favorite snacks, grab some drinks and immediately become immersed into our favorite gaming competition. We pick apart the strategies of the pros and we try to employ their techniques in our own gameplay. We are after all, a new generation, a generation of gamers, and we love everything about gaming.
We are very passionate about our games, you only need to head to the nearest game store on a game release night to see fans queued up in the cold and rain, waiting patiently as they discuss everything from strategy to artwork with other fellow gamers. There’s no doubt in my mind that the idea of a social gaming establishment will catch on in more communities as time goes on.
Some have already jumped into the game (pun intended), places like the AFK Tavern, Battle and Brew and EXP offer a place to have a drink and rack up your DKP. Tournament nights, geek trivia, battle.net tournament broadcasts and other MLG broadcasts, all coupled together with good food, brews and friends is simply amazing.
Many people will travel great distances just to have a good time and watch a tournament, but they shouldn’t have to. Hopefully these establishments will catch on, so this kind of experience can reach fans in their hometown.
Mike Morhaime of Blizzard Entertainment has released an announcement that there has been unauthorized access to Blizzard’s internal network.
Morhaime states that they have taken steps to close the breach in security and are now working closely with law enforcement to investigate the situation.
It is important to note that Blizzard does NOT believe that any personal information such as credit cards,billing addresses or real names have been compromised. Although they do mention that some internal data was illegally accessed, including a list of email addresses for battle.net users. Information about players on North American servers such as personal security question, Mobile and Dial-In Authentication we also accessed. However, this information alone is not enough to gain access to battle.net accounts.
Passwords to battle.net accounts were also compromised but these passwords are scrambled using Secure Remote Password Protocol (SRP) which protects passwords.
Blizzard cautions that even though the passwords are scrambled you should still consider changing your password.
An automated process will be coming along in the next few days to get battle.net users to change their secret questions and answers.
For more information on this subject please head to the official link below.
http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/important-security-update-faq