Hero classes coming?

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Mojo:

I found this over on Tobold's site, and it purports to be leaked information from a play-tester explaining exactly how Hero classes will work. The explanation is similar enough to how classes work now--and it's kind of unimaginative and dull--for me to believe that this is how they will be, or at least very close to how they will be.

Here's a snippet:

Firstly each of the nine base classes can branch out to exactly three hero classes. For example, Druids can branch out to Druid of the Talon (nuking), Druid of the Claw (feral), and Keeper of the Grove (healing), while Paladins can be Champion of the Light (healing), Mountain King (defense, and yes they twisted lore here), and Knight of the Silver Hand (offense). More details on specific hero classes later. As you can see, each of the three hero classes plays to the strengths of that classes' three talent trees. However the main purpose of Hero Classes is to allow players to tangibly improve their characters at max-level through means other than gear. Since Hero Classes will be released after The Burning Crusade, they will be obtained at level 70. Surprisingly they'll not only be available to every player, without a quest, but they'll either be trainable for free at the corresponding class trainer, or require a simple and straightforward quest. Blizzard's reasoning is that Hero Classes should be a natural progression and reward for all players who have achieved max-level, rather than a grind for only the "hardcore".

There's two catches though: 1) specializing in a Hero Class is like specializing in a profession - you're stuck with it forever, and 2) you won?t immediately have access to all hero skills. Think of it as starting a new class - you start off with a couple of base abilities, you get a few more from class quests, and the rest come from your class trainer. The same applies to hero classes; picking a Hero Class will start you off with two new hero skills, and the rest will come from hero class training (called "hero talents") and hero quests. Here's the interesting part: hero talents uses Hero Points, rather than currency or regular talent points. Blizzard hasn't finalized how Hero Points will be earned, but they will most likely be obtained through a combination of experience/honor, and unique items that give you one or more hero points when used. Most likely those items will be given as both quest rewards, and drops off legendary mobs like Illidan and outdoor raid bosses (emphasizing the "heroism").

It sounds like it will lock you into one role pretty hard and also perpetuate the boring (to me at leats) Raid-or-Die paradigm. Yay? Click through to see the big list of what spec becomes which Hero class.

(Via Metroblogging Azeroth.)

Looking Real Good: fashion shots of normal people

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Cory Doctorow:

Pete sez, "Last week my friends and I quietly launched our new project; the basic premise is that interesting people upload photos of themselves looking their best. Every day there's a new person to read about on the homepage/RSS for 24 hours. There's no profit motive, and no opportunity to comment or vote or any other cruft; it's just an opportunity to wake up and see a fresh new face."

Link

(Thanks, Pete)

(Via Boing Boing.)

Google’s driving direx from New York to Dublin, Ireland

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Cory Doctorow:

Hilarious: ask Google Maps for driving directions from New York to Dublin, Ireland and they'll give them to you, including this step, "Swim across the Atlantic Ocean 3,462 mi." Weirdly, they instruct you to swim to France, drive the Chunnel to England, then take a ferry back to Ireland. Surely there's a more efficient totally impossible route?

Link

(via Kottke)

Update:
Dave sez, "Of course, you'd have to swim about 4.9mph for 29 continuous days to achieve this time. Considering that the worlds fastest swimming records (in a 50-meter race) are just over 5mph... your mileage may vary!"

(Via Boing Boing.)

Core’s Successor Announced

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Ars reports that Intel released details on Penryn, which will be the 45nanometer successor to our Macs’ beloved Core 2 Duo processors. There’s all kinds of geeky specs and details if you’re into the mechanics of computer processors.


But if you’re just in it for the looks, er, something like that, here are a couple of juicy deets that should make some sense to you.



  • We can expect video codec processes to see a 40% speed increase

  • 1600MHz front side bus with 6-12mb of L2 cache

  • Enhanced Power Saving features - should be great for portables!


But the biggest news seems to come in the Virtualization arena where they claim a 40% increase in virtualization processes. This should make running any other flavor of OS on our Intel Macs that much sweeter. Oh, and upwards of 3GHz clock speeds and beyond. All in all, next year should bring some mighty speedy Macs.

(Via The Apple Blog.)

Trademark Law Spinning Out Of Control

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Trademark law is unlike copyrights and patents in a very important way. Copyrights and patents are designed to give specific ownership over an idea or work to those that created it. Trademark, on the other hand, is not at all about ownership -- which is why it probably shouldn't be included under the "intellectual property" umbrella. It's really about consumer protection. You don't want consumers to be confused into buying a product believing it's one thing (say, Coca-Cola) when it's really something else (say, Bob's Cola). Unfortunately, with the growing intellectual property obsession among lawyers in this country, there's been an effort underway to stretch the intended meaning of trademark law away from just consumer protection into outright ownership. The latest is that lawyers are encouraging clients to trademark all sorts of phrases to prevent their general use without a license -- which seems like a clear First Amendment violation. One example given is a phrase that a former boyfriend used to say to Anna Nicole Smith. Apparently he (and his lawyers) are hoping that the trademark means that anyone who uses the phrase in "movies, books, TV programs, Internet programs and stage plays" will now have to pay up first. This is not at all what trademark law was designed for, and yet when we're taught that you can "own" ideas and concepts, it's no surprise to see people try to take ownership of simple words and phrases as well.

(Via Techdirt.)