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World of Warcraft Launches in China

The popular MMORPG title has officially launched in China this week. Blizzard is working with Chinese company The9 for the infrastructure.

Blizzards World of Warcraft MMORPG game is one of the top online games this year across the world and China’s contribution will only propel Blizzard to new heights. At one point during the beta test in China, Blizzard saw more than 500,000 users playing on their China based servers simultaneously.

A completely rebuilt pricing and security structure had to be developed for the Chinese market. Under the new system users can download the game, but have to activate their account by purchasing an authorized CD. And instead of paying a monthly subscription fee like you would here in the U.S. users in China must buy cards with points on them and then use those points for playing time. Sounds sort of goofy, but security is extremely important to Blizzard.

You can read more about this story at Gamesindustry.biz

Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.

Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.

Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.

Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.

Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.