online posts(Subscribe to this feed)

Royalty thieves living in North America have been enjoying relatively lag- and disconnection-free online multiplayer in Fat Princess for about a week now. Europeans no longer have a reason to be jealous -- the online-fixing Patch 1.02 is now live in their respective continent. Don't believe us? Go ahead and boot the game up, and you should get the download prompt. See? There. Now, don't you ever dispute our credibility again, or else we're going to have a conversation. With our fists.

The only place yet to get the patch is Asia, though Titan Studios promises to have that territory up and running "by the end of the week."

[Via TRMK]

If you were an early adopter of Fat Princess living in North America who was let down by the game's disconnection-prone online multiplayer, you may want to give it another shot -- Titan Studios recently released a patch for the title which is designed to improve server stability, reduce lag, and fix a few in-game bugs (such as broken hat machines and scoring exploits).

Fret not, European cake-feeders -- according to a recent blog post announcing the patch's release, the update will be coming to your fair continent next week. Until then, you can always spend your time playing the game's entertaining single-player offerings. Better yet, you can don a silly hat and start throwing cake at ladies in real life. We're sure they'd appreciate that.

We've teased you with Second Skin before, but now you can watch the whole thing online for free. Word of warning: If you're a World of Warcraft player, or belong to any other obsessive MMO, the film doesn't paint a very flattering picture. But having said that, it does treat the subject matter with some respect by showing all facets: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Juan Carlos Piñeiro Escoriaza and Victor Piñeiro have put together a surprisingly good documentary that pulls back the cover on the other side of the screen. Until now, you couldn't see this work outside the film festival circuit, but thanks to Hulu, you can watch the entire movie after the break. Grab your popcorn and head on in!

Additionally, Second Skin will be released on DVD on August 25.

[Via Film School Rejects]

We know that not everyone was blessed with knowledge of aeronautical physics and interplanetary telecommunications, so we'll try and keep this simple. A recent Edge Online article examined the possibility of online multiplayer matches between human Earthlings and human Martians -- as one might expect, the future of galactic Left 4 Dead bouts looks pretty grim.

First off, NASA's two Martian orbiters, through which information is relayed to Earth, can only transfer a single megabit of data per second. Worse still, these orbiters only work in 15 minute increments before they must be repositioned -- a process that takes hours. Furthermore, bandwidth is unsurprisingly limited on the Red Planet -- messages between Earth and Mars usually suffer 4 - 20 minutes of lag, depending on the positions of the conversing planets.

Check out the full article for even more interesting tidbits about extraterrestrial multiplayer. It's all a bit pointless, though. From what we've recently learned, folks on Mars are far too busy causing property damage to play any video games.

With the grand scope of the battles featured in Zipper Interactive's MAG, you'd think it'd require a hefty, server-straining beta test. For now, though, it seems Sony's keeping it small -- a few people have seen their PSN friends participating in a MAG beta (as evidenced by the image above). All of these friends have something in common -- they're all on Sony's payroll.

Sony confirmed to CVG that an internal MAG beta is being conducted. Sure, this news has no bearing on you (unless Kaz Hirai signs your paychecks) -- still, it looks like we're that much closer to getting to play the game ourselves.

Lag can be a real buzzkill when you're trying to maintain million-punch combos -- unfortunately, those who got their hands on early copies of SNK Playmore's King of Fighters XII reported some "minor performance issues" during online matches. Fret not, fighting fanatics -- according to a recent email from SNK, the game is receiving a patch today on the PS3 (and " very soon" on the 360) which "should help improve the overall quality and stability of online play."

Day-one patches are usually frowned upon, but hey -- at least you won't have to suffer "issues" during your online bouts. Unless you're playing on 360, that is -- you lot will still have to wait for the patch to clear Microsoft's intimidating Certification Gauntlet of Death.

Those with clear recollections or inexplicable mastery of our terrible in-site search will recognize Toulouse as one of the voices heard in a recent debate regarding Xbox Live's GLBT policies. Unless you're under the impression that GLBT is a kind of sandwich, it may be worth your while to gain further details on the panel over at the GLAAD website.

The growth of Battlefield Heroes has been slow and steady -- a natural side-effect of EA and DICE's slow trickle release of beta codes for the free-to-play shooter. However, on June 25, Heroes' floodgates were flung wide open, letting every would-be cartoon soldier access to the title. Now, about 19 days since that fateful event, EA has revealed some impressive statistics: Over one million players have registered for the online battle.

That's quite a few digital soldiers, but we're curious to know how many of those decided to purchase fancy hats for their militaristic avatars, and whether EA is turning a profit thanks to the sale of said chapeaus. We've emailed EA to try and find out.

[Via Big Download]

Writing on the Command and Conquer Den, community manager Aaron "APOC" Kaufman said that those who play the single-player campaign of Command and Conquer 4 will need to constantly be connected to the internet, in much the same way as players of MMOs. "As of right now, you need to be online all the time to play C&C 4," he explains. "This is primarily due to our 'player progression' feature so everything can be tracked. C&C 4 is not an MMO in the sense of World of Warcraft, but conceptually it has similar principles for being online all the time. While some may be taken aback by this, we've been testing this feature internally with all of our world-wide markets."

OK, indulge us in a bit of conjecture. What strikes us as weird is that, just last week, What They Play editor John Davison said on 1UP's Listen Up that he wouldn't be surprised for games to adopt a streaming model (read: no physical media) by the time C&C 4 is released. It seemed sort of oddly specific at the time, but now we're wondering if there might be more reasons that your computer has to be connected to play. Just saying.

[Via Voodoo Extreme]

The internet has played a big part in the drama of Iran's recent presidential elections, disseminating information about the re-election of controversial leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faster than most major news outlets. Fearful of this powerful resource fueling further unrest, the Iranian government has cut off all online activity -- all but gaming.

Apparently, Ahmadinejad's government is not afraid of protesters communicating via World of Warcraft to plan the next protest rally, as noted by Security to the Core and GamePolitics. Also, Ahmadinejad has not yet downloaded Prince of Persia's Epilogue and is just dying to know how it all ends.

Things are heating up both outside and in the World of Warcraft lately, as we're gearing up for a big time content release. Joystiq's sister site WoW.com has all the news you need about patch 3.2, from the latest changes and updates to when we'll actually see it out on the live realms. Read on for more about the biggest and best MMO around.

News

• Patch 3.2 PTR patch notes
  Here's the breakdown on what'll be in the Public Test Realm very soon.
• Crusaders' Coliseum details released
  Blizzard gives out deets on what we'll see in the next big instance added to the game.
• Patch 3.2 changes to the tiered Emblem system
  3.2 will bring both new sets of gear tokens to collect, as well as some tweaks and updates to old ones.
• New Shaman totem interface revealed
  Shamans will have new ways to both watch and lay down their totems.
• Class Q&A: Mage
  Blizzard answers questions on "the iconic caster" class.

Features

• WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2
  Everything you need to know about the upcoming content patch, and then some.
• The OverAchiever: Guide to Midsummer Fire Festival Achievements
  The Fire Festival is back, and so's our guide to get the most out of it.
• Insider Trader: Patch 3.2 profession change analysis
  What's new with professions? Read this column and find out.
• The Queue: Patch 3.2 and beyond the infinite
  Our readers ask questions every day, and we offer up answers just as often.
• Guildwatch: We're not even in his guild
  Another week brings another look at all of the guild drama, downed, and recruiting news from around the realms.

By now, you must have heard about MAG -- an ambitious 256-player online shooter. We've seen it in action and have even tried it out for ourselves, but what's it all about, and what's this Shadow War we keep hearing of? Luckily, this developer video diary (posted after the break) gives us a look into the storyline of MAG and its fictional Shadow War backdrop and answers all those questions.

We get a closer look at the maps, weapons and characters seen in the game, while Zipper details the various PMC groups vying for power in the Shadow War. The clip also shows off some all-new gameplay footage, so make sure you don't miss it.

When you just read the name of EA's newly-announced Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online, you were probably hoping for the same thing we were: a massively multiplayer golf/RPG hybrid that rewards Magical Big Bertha drivers for completing timed raid instances.

Sadly, it's a golf game that you'll be able to play through your web browser on courses such as Pebble Beach, TPC Sawgrass and St. Andrews. There's no pricing announced yet for the fall release, but we know it will have a "multi-tiered subscription structure" and beta sign-ups are open now.

It sounds neat, but we can't help but be bummed we'll never get to putt grind for our epic golf cart.

With the release of the recent full-length trailer for Modern Warfare 2, the gaming populous' attention has been turned away from the original Modern Warfare (considering the game's getting a follow-up, we think its Modern-ness could be disputed by this point, but we digress). However, Infinity Ward community commissar Robert Bowling (a.k.a. fourzerotwo) recently stopped by Major Nelson's podcast to explain why CoD4 shouldn't be ignored quite yet -- it just hit the remarkable 13 million player mark on Xbox Live.

This number is impressive for two reasons: First, it's two million more players than the last Xbox Live total we heard for Modern Warfare back in March. The second reason has been mentioned by a few gaming blogs already -- it's surpassed the total number of World of Warcraft players. Impressive? Well, yes -- though nobody is forced to subscribe to Call of Duty 4. As far as pure, lucrative retention is concerned, we think WoW still takes the cake.