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The wonderful Gaile Gray announced on Monday the new Guild Wars Account Restorations system, here's the post for more info:
We are pleased to announce that in the process of developing tools for Guild Wars 2, our programming team has created a tool that will provide limited restoration options for existing Guild Wars accounts. In the past, account restorations or roll-backs were not technologically possible. With the development of the new tool, our Support Team is ready to move forward with account restorations on a case-by-case basis.
For a Guild Wars game account hacked after October 1, 2011, the Support Team’s new tools will provide the team with the ability to restore many hacked accounts to their pre-hack status. Restorations will be accomplished through the use of a periodic, archived “snapshot” process that will record and store full account details for each Guild Wars account. This means that while the account may not be restored to its status at the exact hour preceding the hack, it can be restored to within a few hours or days of such an event.
Please note that restoration service is possible only for accounts that were compromised after October 1, 2011 and under limited conditions, as outlined below.
Any restoration process must be handled with great care. To protect the integrity of the game and its economy, Support will first need to carefully research the hacking incident and perform the following steps:
Verify that the person requesting the restoration is the original owner of the account.
Confirm that the request is for a hacking incident that took place after October 1, 2011.
Review account history preceding and during the hacking incident to establish with certainty that the account was hacked by a third party.
Take action on the account of the hacker and others who may have been involved in the incident. Terminating all such accounts will remove the hackers from our game community and will also remove all stolen items from the game economy.
Restore the account, when appropriate.
Each of these steps is important and combined they will require time. We must take reasonable measures to protect against bogus restoration requests, we must restore only for the original account owner (in accordance with the Guild Wars User Agreement), and we must also take care to restore an account only when we have taken action on those involved in the hacking incident, thus removing the stolen items and preventing the creation of a duplicate set.
In the event your Guild Wars account is hacked, our Support Team will review the details to see if they can use the new Account Restoration Tool to help address the situation.
Account Restoration Tool facts:
Individual characters cannot be restored; the tools operate on the account as a whole.
The tool restores any account any name changes or similar credit-based purchases that may have been affected by the hacking incident. For instance, if the hacker used a rename credit, the character rename will be reversed and the credit will be replaced.
Account restoration does not affect any CD keys that were applied to an account.
We are really pleased to have this new capability and look forward to helping qualified Guild Wars players if they have the need for an account restoration. If you have any questions about the Guild Wars Account Restoration Tool or the processes involved in its use please feel free to post here in the Guild Wars Support forums.
If you have questions about the account restoration process, please feel free to post in the Account Restoration Questions thread, and we’ll do our best to get you answers.
So yeah, discuss this new feature below and for more info, use the link above
Following slight rewrites from id Software's John Carmack to avoid potential patent infringement, the source code behind Doom 3 was made public on Tuesday for open source use.
The source does not contain any game data, which is still covered by the original EULA.
The source also does not include functionality enabling rendering of stencil shadows via the "depth field" method (commonly called "Carmack's Reverse"), which lawyers from parent company Zenimax said might infringe on a patent for a Creative Labs 3D shading technique.
According to Carmack, minor tweaks were made to the code to avoid any infringement: he recently tweeted that the workaround "added four lines of code and changed two."
Lazard Capital Markets has downgraded Activision-Blizzard stock from "buy" to "neutral" in light of World of Warcraft's declining subscription numbers.
Lazard analyst Atul Bagga does not believe Activision-Blizzard can stop the hemorrhaging of World of Warcraft subscriber numbers due to age and increased competition in the space. The downgrade was mainly motivated by data coming out of a recent survery of 381 online gamers conducted by Lazard Capital Markets (along with Peanut Labs) . The survey results have Lazard Capital projecting a potential 900,000-1.6million player drop due to the the imminent launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic alone. 50% of those who were actively subscribed to World of Warcraft during the time of the survey stated they would be purchasing The Old Republic, while 38% said they may pick up the title.
Bagga wasn't entirely pessimistic, however, noting that half of former WoW subscribers polled during the survey stated they may return to World of Warcraft if Blizzard put on a special promotion, and that 33% of former subscribers would return to the game with the launch of Mists of Pandaria, the game's next expansion.
Heh, have a look at Blizzard's 7th anniversary TV ad for WoW, last year of course was Mr. T pitying the fools, this year is the godling himself, Chuck Norris
On death, a proper score is given based on how many experience orbs the player has collected.
When flowing lava hits a water source directly from above, it creates Stone where previously the lava would flow through the water.
You can toggle between three states when pressing F5 (first person, third person back, third person front), having the addition of 3rd person view from the front.
Ender Pearls have a unique ability. When thrown, the player will teleport to the Ender Pearl's impact location, but take 2 and 1/2 hearts of fall damage. They will not work in Creative.
Fences no longer block you from moving onto their space. You can now stand next to them, like you can with glass panes and iron bars.
They will also connect to solid blocks.
There is a slight delay between jumps when holding down the jump button, so that the player no longer bounces between ceiling and floor in two-block-high spaces.
"The End" (unofficially called "The Ender", or "Enderlands"), which replaces the previously announced Sky Dimension.
End Portals take the player from the Overworld to The End. To go back to the Overworld, one must defeat the Enderdragon and jump through the portal that appears.
New sounds for the Skeletons' walk to make them sound more skeleton-y.
Bow models now appear in third-person larger and in 3D.
If water or lava is above a ceiling that is a single block thick, particles of water or lava will drip through, provided you are within 13 blocks of the ceiling.
Hardcore Mode – Locks the difficulty to Hard and forces you to delete your world if you die. The health bar changes appearance to indicate you are playing in Hardcore mode.
