It’s been a while since we’ve posted on Dota (or anything for that matter), so it seems like an appropriate time to catch up.  Dota 6.58 ushered in some deep revisions to items and heros alike.  Dirge and Storm Spirit have been completely reworked, and key items like the basher, blade mail, and heart have also undergone substantial alterations.  Several new commands have been added, notably “-mines” so that techies can now count how many mines he has laid, and “-switch” so that games that are plagued by leavers can be balanced.

Although the “-switch” command is a useful tool (since there are so many leavers), it creates the wrong incentive.  People that are prone to leave a game have even less reason to stay because they know that others will compensate for their actions.

Dota 6.58b, like most “b” versions, suffices to correct a plethora of bugs in the latest version.  The changelog is as follows:

* Fixed a rare bug introduced last version with Nevermore’s ultimate
* Fixed a bug with Cranium Basher
* Fixed a suicide bug with Heartstopper
* Fixed a bug with Overload
* Various tooltip fixes
* Fixed some rare glitches that could cause some abilities to malfunction
* Fixed various -switch related bugs
* Switch now works if all but one player votes for it, instead of requiring 100%
* Fixed truesight on The Frozen Throne
* Decreased Undying’s model size a bit
* Fixed conflicts between Viper Strike and Venomous Gale
* Fixed Soul Rip targetting problems on Tombstone
* Fixed -mo/-ro in -gameinfo
* Fixed a bug when picking up invisibility rune while under the Phase effect from Phase Boots
* Fixed -mr failing to be recognized as a gamemode
* Fixed Rapier damage values when being carried by a non-owning player

Bethesda announced today that its ”Winner of E3 2008’s ‘Best of Show‘” will be released to eager fans in North America on October 28, and to European fans a mere 3 days later.  10 years ago Fallout 2 riveted RPG enthusiasts with its balanced yet open-ended adventure set in a post-nuclear wasteland.

Bethesda assures us in no uncertain terms that Fallout 3 will maintain the vision of the previous Fallout games while delivering even more freedom of choice, but plot-wise is “[a] different story unto itself and isn’t directly connected to any of the other storylines.”  This has allowed Bethesda enough creative license to reinvent the details for Fallout 3, in what will undoubtedly be the biggest single-player RPG hit of 2008.

The full press release is as follows:

August 20, 2008 (Rockville, MD) – Bethesda Softworks®, a ZeniMax Media company, announced today that its highly anticipated title, Fallout® 3, will be available on store shelves and online in North America on October 28, 2008 and in Europe on October 31, 2008. Developed at Bethesda Game Studios – creators of the 2006 Game of the Year, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion® – Fallout 3 is slated for release on the Xbox 360®video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system, and Games for Windows.

“We are very excited to let gamers get their hands on Fallout 3, the latest chapter in this beloved and highly acclaimed franchise,” said Vlatko Andonov, president of Bethesda Softworks. “To meet the huge demand for this title by our fans worldwide, we are planning one of the biggest launches of any game released this year.”

Fallout 3 features one of the most realized game worlds ever created. Set more than 200 years following a nuclear war, you can create any kind of character you want and explore the open wastes of Washington, D.C. however you choose. Every minute is a fight for survival as you encounter Super Mutants, Ghouls, Raiders, and other dangers of the Wasteland.

Hailed as one of the most anticipated games for 2008, Fallout 3 has already won numerous awards including Best of Show from the official Game Critics Awards at E3 2008, a selection voted on by an independent group of journalists from 36 leading North American media outlets that cover the videogame industry.
Fallout® 3 has not yet been rated by the ESRB.

CoroCoro Mag recently revealed that the latest Poké-craze, Pokémon Platinum, would be released in the near future–a story that Nintendo Japan jumped on to confirm. But what will this mean for the Poké-fanatics? Apparently Pokémon Platinum will “serve as a companion to the two current-generation titles, Diamond and Pearl — much like Yellow, Crystal, and Emerald did for their respective generations.”

Kotaku quips that “we’ll likely be treated to new sprites for many the monsters, and a few tweaks to the story, but not many new entries into the ol’ Pokédex. Perhaps that expansion will come in the franchise’s next generation, Pokémon Ununbium and Cadmium.”

Last night, Icefrog made public his latest version of DotA Allstars, and there are a LOT of changes in this update.  For instance, ownership of items is now tracked so when you steal an item from your team it is “muted,” unless of course the person has left the game.  All hotkeys can now be remapped, and recipes can now be bought with a full inventory! 

You can download DotA 6.52 (not AI) here.  Check out the monstrous change-log as follows:

6.52 Changelog
===============

* Rewrote all item code and systems. It now supports things like properly tracking item ownerships, fusing recipes with a full inventory as well as fixing a lot of older miscellaneous bugs and usability issues, and setting groundwork for other things in the future
* Fixed all CustomKey problems. All hotkeys in the game can now be properly remapped to any other hotkey
* Map strings are now properly allocated to allow players with different language versions to play with each other without having to download multiple maps themselves. This means, for example, that you can play or watch games with your English version of the map with someone using a Chinese, Korean or Russian translated version of the map without any problems. The maps for the other languages will be posted on getdota.com alongside the English version for each release

* Lowered side angles on Bristleback
* Agility Morph and Strength Morph can now be clicked on directly for one-time use
* Morph interval is smoother when it levels (same overall rate though)
* Improved Elder Form attack animation
* Improved cooldown progression on Soul Rip
* Rewrote Timewalk to keep constant speed (so its not slow motion when you click nearby)
* Dark Rift can now be cast by targeting minimap
* Increased AutoQuills release requirement on Bristleback from 200 to 300
* Improved cooldown progression on Primal Split
* Improved initial AI on Dopplewalk image to make it less obvious when it’s created
* Sonic Wave cooldown no longer improves per level in non-scepter form
* Reduced Reverse Polarity AOE a little
* Reduced Dragon Knight’s Breathe Fire manacost
* Undid a portion of the cooldown buff done on Elder Dragon Form last version
* Increased Huskar’s attack range from 350 to 400
* Lowered Puck’s attack range from 600 to 550
* Increased level 2 and 3 Purge’s damage to summoned unit
* Lowered Faceless Void’s strength gain
* Improved Faceless Void’s cast animation time
* Increased level 3 Insatiable Hunger cooldown
* Lowered Sand King’s base armor
* Improved cooldown progression on Spirit Bear
* Lowered movement speed on Beastmaster’s Hawk
* Increased Abaddon’s movement speed slightly
* Scream of Pain manacost is now constant on all levels
* Increased Primal Roar cooldown by 10 seconds
* Lowered Living Dead bounty and increased their magic resistance
* Decreased Timelapse cooldown
* Increased Immolation damage on level 3 Primal Split’s Fire panda
* Lowered Sven’s agility gain
* Improved Huskar’s attack animation time slightly
* Scaled the movement bonus on Chemical Rage (lower at level 1, level 3 remains the same)
* Lowered Scepter upgraded Doom’s cooldown
* Increased cast range on Drunken Haze
* Changed Fatal Bonds from damage to HP loss (numbers adjusted to keep it at the same effectiveness)
* Lowered Medusa’s attack animation time
* Lowered Will O’ manacost
* Undid manacost change on Level 1 Reaper’s Scythe
* Slightly reduced Rikimaru’s cast animation time
* Scattershot gives vision on the area it is cast on
* Flesh Heap now works with denies
* Lowered cast range on Neutral Dark Troll’s Ensnare
* Increased cooldown on Neutral Dark Troll’s Raise Dead

* Items now have muted form when carried by non-owner (aside from a few exceptions like regeneration and leaver items). -pm can be used if you want to allow pooling in your games
* Improved basic item’s descriptions layout and presentation (133979)
* Flying Courier cannot carry Observer Wards from enemy base
* Lowered transmute bounty on previously untransmutable creeps (lvl 6)
* Change Sange and Yasha recipe costs and bonuses it gives as well as fixing some minor inaccuracies with it
* Flying Courier can no longer carry Aegis
* Added Blades of Attack to the Goblin Shop
* Increased the Fountain’s bottle autofilling range
* Increased Diffusal Blade’s agility bonus by 5 (carries through to Manta Style)
* Lowered Black King Bar duration slightly
* Increased HP loss rate when Armlet is activated

* Improved Lina’s projectile and visuals (170933)
* Added allied only overhead cast effect for Assassinate (203083)
* Listed maximum targets for Wrath of Nature in the tooltip (212395)
* Added special effect when Berserker’s Blood is stacked at a high level (176376)
* Added special overhead allied-only text to show duration while channeling Unstable Concoction (196859)
* Added a sound effect when Culling Blade kills a hero
* Added new Power Treads icons for the agility and intelligence versions (207886)
* Added an allied-vision only visual effect for Weave (139374)
* Lowered volume on creep horn sound
* Improved Dragon’s Tail’s visual effect (192582)
* Added a new visual effect for Soul Assumption
* Improved King Leoric’s visual effects (180737)
* Changed Mana Void visual effects (211058)
* Removed status buff icon for Hunter in the Night when it isn’t affecting him
* Puck and Clinkz now have a chance to get an alternate “fun name” like Ursa

* Fixed a fatal error problem when upgrading Flying Courier after reloading from saved game
* Fixed some overhead text effects that would show through fog of war
* Fixed a bug when either of Rot, Sand Storm or Storm Seeker are in the same area
* Rewrote Juxtapose and Dopplewalk image creation to fix a rare minor bug
* Fixed a minor bug with moving Lothar’s Edge while not in cooldown
* Fixed an exploit with Lanaya
* Fixed Phantom Edge to properly stack with Magic Resistance like the others
* Fixed a bug with Primal Roar that could occur when used on blinkers
* Fixed a control loss issue in recent versions with Sand King when Burrowstriking
* Rewrote Reverse Polarity to fix some rare issues with it stunning but not pulling
* Fixed some minor bugs with Assassinate
* Fixed World Tree and Frozen Throne towers not sharing bounty with allies
* Fixed Sand Storm not affecting sleeping neutrals properly
* Fixed the interruption requirement to leveling up Storm Seeker
* Fixed a minor bug with the damage of Invoker’s Tornado not syncing accurately with the cyclone effect
* Fixed a minor bug with Dagger and Aegis creating blank dummy items in base
* Fixed Centaur’s Return from triggering off on ally attack order
* Fixed a rare issue with not properly creating Haunt images (DonTomaso)

* XL Mode changed to have 4 hero removals per side instead of 3
* Minimap now does a special ping to allied players when a unit uses Scroll of Teleportation or Boots of Travel
* Improved Scroll of Teleportation code to armor enhance the building you are teleporting to when you click in the area instead of only when directly clicking on the target
* Various other map performance optimizations
* Added lots of music modes. You must have music enabled to use these. Use ‘-music xxx’ where xxx is one of the following added options: off, random, nightelf1, nightelf2, nightelf3, human1, human2, human3, orc1, orc2, orc3, undead1, undead2, undead3, other1, other2, other3, other4, other5
* Added a new mode -poolingmode(-pm) to allow pooling
* -lvlup now allows a number after it to level up faster in test games
* Reduced delay on End Game scoreboard for Sentinel victory
* -roll without specified number now does it out of 100
* Added command -list for use in -sd to show the pick options again
* Changed follow allied unit range to move closer to the target
* Restored and fixed previous issues with -unstuck
* Added a time delayed warning message when the game is in -test mode (some people have been abusing private chat to activate it before using -ah to clear the screen in order to use test commands to cheat without anyone knowing)
* Added commands -rollon and -rolloff incase people spam with roll. Default is on
* Added single player commands -killall/-killsent/-killscourge (169041)
* Added a new mode -observerinfo(-oi) to display extra information for game broadcasters/observers when you hover over player heroes
* Initial creep waves in -ap now spawn 30 seconds later
* Added single player test command -time xx to set the time of day
* Improved the text display on courier death
* Added a new single player or -test mode subcommand (-noherolimit) that lets you get multiple heroes, primarily for video editors that have been requesting it
* New Invoker story from the contest (Ike_Ike)

Vivendi recently silenced its naysayers, revealing that their subscriber-base has hit an all-time high of 9.3 million players.  Although there is no release date set for the highly-anticipated World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard still manages to post record profits.  Gamasutra reports:

Vivendi has chalked up the increase not only to its WoW subscriber base, but the release of its The Burning Crusade expansion, which saw release in China in the latter part of the third quarter … The company also noted that its subscriber base has continued to grow from the 9 million mark it celebrated in July to more than 9.3 million, which it says is up more than one million subscribers since December 31 of last year.

Throughout history, many unusual events have occured on Black Friday:

In contrast to all the horrors that have plagued the Friday immediately following Thanksgiving Day, contemporary Black Fridays symbolize the point in the year that retailers start making net profits.  Because profits are denoted in accounting by Black, and deficits by Red, it follows that this day be called Black Friday.  With all this having been said, expect to see many different sales ads, like Best Buy, CompUSA, Sears, Target, JCPenney, Walmart, etc., for Black Friday 2007.

Finally, after a long, patient wait, EA has officially released a PC demo for their new epic-FPS Crysis.  The demo is single-player only, weighs in at a bloated 1.77GB, and requires NVIDIA driver updates to play, but it’s a small price to pay to kick some virtual alien ass!

With a lot of new tweaks in place, including fixing a major bug with the Ogre Magi and limiting the number of power treads you can carry, DotA Allstars 6.49 (not AI) and DotA 6.49b (not AI) are available for download.  You can download the beta version here.  DotA 6.43b with AI version 1.4 is also now available for download here.  The changelogs are as follows:

6.49b Changelog
================
* Fixed a major bug related to Ogre Magi from last version
* Few other minor fixes
* Can only carry one Power Treads now
* Fixed the recoded Fissure to work properly with Aftershock

6.49 Changelog
===============

* Added a new recipe item (Armlet of Mordiggian)
* Added a new recipe item (Orchid Malevolence)
* Added a new recipe item (Shiva’s Guard)
* Added a new base item (Javelin,139527)
* Remade Power Treads
* Changed Monkey King Bar recipe
* Remade Vladmir’s Offering
* Reduced Ultimate Orb price by 50 gold
* Mystic Staff price from 2900 to 2700 gold
* Reduced movement speed bonus from Boots of Travel by 5
* Reduced Linken’s Sphere recipe by 100 gold
* Changed the second secret shop model (to Goblin Shop) and the shop’s carried items
* Bottle and Ring of Basilius no longer shift positions in your inventory when used
* Reduced Black King Bar cooldown from 100 to 85 seconds
* Increased Kelen’s Dagger of Escape cooldown from 25 to 30 seconds
* Improved Bloodstone’s charge regeneration rates
* Reduced mana cost on Hand of Midas
* Lowered mana cost on Helm of the Dominator
* Purchasing Bottle fills it to 2/3 instead of to maximum.
* Lowered Eaglehorn price from 3400 to 3300 gold
* Dagon’s mana costs and cooldown now decreases per level
* Reduced mana cost on Nathrezim Buckler
* Euls and Guinsoo now share cooldown
* Lowered Gloves of Haste price from 610 to 550 gold
* Recoded Aghanim’s Scepter. It can now be dropped, sold and disassembled. It also properly updates itself in deathmatch.
* Decreased Linken’s Sphere cooldown from 60 to 40 seconds
* Reduced Hyperstone price from 2300 to 2100 gold
* Remade N’aix
* Changed Crystal Maiden’s Brilliance Aura to a global effect
* Increased Acid Spray duration by 4 seconds
* Undid previous Jugg armor buff and increased starting strength by 3 and movement speed from 290 to 295
* Removed the invulnerability period while Priestess of the Moon is leaping
* Lowered Puck’s initial Intelligence and Intelligence Growth
* Lion’s Mana Drain is now faster (same mana drain over 4 seconds instead of 5)
* Changed Dark Rift from channeling to cast delay and reduced mana cost
* Increased cooldown on Call of the Wild
* Increased Lich attack range from 500 to 550
* Increased Pit Lord’s movement speed and starting Intelligence
* Improved cast and attack animation time on Broodmother
* Decreased cooldown on Death Coil from 15 to 11 seconds
* Rewrote Fissure to avoid Entangle and Impale based spell conflicts
* Improved Chen’s movement speed by 5
* Reduced Bristleback’s strength growth from 2.7 to 2.2
* Reduced Poof’s cooldown and mana cost
* New loading screen art (kunkka.deviantart.com)
* Added player index flags to replays
* Fixed a typo with Reaper’s Scythe
* Fixed some rare exploits with the Freeze Leaver system
* Improved Harbinger’s story (Terrorblaze)
* New Spectre background story (-Jenova-)
* New Visage background story (Grujah)
* New Storm Spirit background story (Inferno[DK])
* New Ogre Magi background story (Digital Anomaly)
* New Alchemist background story (Inferno[DK])
* New Lion background story (vertigo12)
* New Centaur background story (-Jenova-)
* New Slardar background story (Inferno[DK])
* New Tinker background story (Grujah)
* New Rigwarl background story (Volcove)
* New Zeus background story (Inferno[DK])
* New Pudge background story (Inferno[DK])
* New Traxex background story (Volcove)
* New Vengeful Spirit background story (-Jenova-)
* New Mortred background story (Inferno[DK])
* Fixed various item tooltips
 

This week is a good week for gamers, because Toys-R-Us has a fantastic “buy 2, get 1 free” deal (no coupon required) on all of their video-games.  Because common sense isn’t always common, they specify that the free game will be the one whose price is the lowest.  Even better, this sale is available in-stores and online, and runs from today till next Saturday, October 20.  Quantities are limited, so it’s probably better to buy sooner than later!

 

Some of the recently released Starcraft 2 images are bizarre, featuring a wide-range of concept art for the Dark Templar Terran Viking, Marine and more.  I can’t wait for Blizzard to release an official Starcraft II demo!  Check out the latest Starcraft II concept art and screens: