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David Piner

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Razer Announces Raptor 27 – New Gaming Monitor

News
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You can now pay a lot for what most pay very little for thanks to Razer’s latest product: the Raptor. This thing is packed with features that you may have seen before, on most “gaming” monitors released. You get, as highlights: 1440p 144hz, edge-to-edge IPS panelHigh color accuracy and FreeSyncRazer Chroma base made out of forged aluminum.Five green Razer cables and a “CNC Milled” back for cable management.4ms response time. No VESA mount.USB C and 2x USB 3.1 ports.The Razer Raptor will cost $699 at MSRP So it’s going to be a good monitor, from all of the specs at least, there is no argument there. The question is, will it be a $700 good monitor when the average price for a 27″ 1440p 144hz monitor right now is about $400. $500 will get you into the curved premium Samsung range. The answer is likely no. It’s likely not going…

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Imperius’ Voice Lines Leaked – Awesome and Hilarious

News
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Data miners have ripped out Imperius’ (no one has has the plural figured out yet) voice lines and they’re awesome. You can listen to them over at the Heroes of the Storm Wiki, but they really shine. Heroes of the Storm is one of the few outlets we get to dive deeper into some of the character’s personal stories and with Imperius we get a lot. His disdain for mortals and the Nephalem (Diablo III’s player character) is well observed. One thing that gets me is he says “Your kind are an abomination!” to Diablo II player character heroes (like Xul). This is interesting to me because we know that Diablo I’s player characters were basically villains in Diablo II (Blood Raven, The Summoner and Spoiler: Diablo). They weren’t assigned on any special quest or notable outside of the fact the three of them went and slayed Diablo. In Diablo…

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Nvidia Geforce RTX 2060 to Replace RTX 1070 TI

News
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Graphics cards are expensive. Just, outright expensive. Buying a video card these days boils down to: Potato Tier: GTX 1050 – Sub $100Cheeki Breeki Potato Tier: RX 560 – $130 (570 & 580 are valid too)1080p No Problem: GTX 1060 6GB – $2501440p No Problem: GTX 1070 Ti – $350~$4004k Eh 1440p Bliss: GTX 1080 / 1080 Ti – $400~$6004k No Problem: GTX 2080 – $800 The RTX 2060 will replace the 1070 Ti at MSRP of $350 also known as “sold out day one on sale for $600.” Which I guess is nice? I mean, video cards are becoming like iPhones, there is little reason to upgrade anytime soon for any reason or anything. Once you reach the 1080 level, you can pretty much run 4k gaming at reasonable frame rates. I mean realistically the 1060 can push through 4k gaming, although at low frame rates. After the cryptocurrency…

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Real Life Loot Boxes, Gambling, Addiction and Innocence

Editorials
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You may have heard, a trend rushing through YouTube is various influencers are pitching a site where you open real life loot boxes to receive items. When you open one of those boxes, you will receive a physical item. You can sell the item back for cash or have the item shipped to you. Things range from exotic sports cars to some random tat off of Amazon, with all reports showing the weight distribution is “no exotic sport cars” and “tons of random tat.” There is a lot to unpack with this. You have a ner’do’well company that’s exploiting addiction and gambling. You have YouTubers ranging from innocent youths to just people trying to make a hustle. You have the games media sounding off every siren in the world because loot boxes are abysmal as is in the virtual world, importing them into the real world doesn’t help. The Company…

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Activision Blizzard is Being Weird

News
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Activision Blizzard is just outright being weird. It started many years ago when Activision bought Blizzard. At that point everyone declared Blizzard dead and that profits will rule the kingdom. That wasn’t… true you could say? Blizzard, under Mike Morhaime one of the co-founders of Blizzard, continued to prosper and be the one game launcher (Blizzard App, previously Battle.net) that no one complained about, Then 2018 hit and like many things, Activision Blizzard got weird. Mike Morhaime left the company, the CFO was poached twice and they basically began mothballing their very popular game Heroes of the Storm. All the while they spent most of the year being besieged by positive press about their profits. Then, there was BlizzCon where they announced the Diablo: Immortal game to basically people pausing and going what. Why did this happen? There is a lot to it, with many moving parts. If I had…

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Project Stream is a Future in Which Gamers Win While Consumers and Pirates Lose

Editorials
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It’s no joke that game piracy really hurts the industry. How it hurts the industry, I do not know. Most of the pirates I’ve seen probably don’t have enough money to buy the games they “steal” but nevertheless it’s a problem. I mean, if games don’t make money then investors don’t invest in games and then we’re stuck with GoFundMes and Kickstarter games that have as much success making it past the first released alpha build as you do getting your order right at the local fast food restaurant. The key to piracy is that the games code is executed within the PC that it is installed in. If you play, for instance, Fallout 4 then there is very little online connectivity built into the game. Everything, from NPCs to damage calculations, is ran through your processor and graphics card to present the game to you. The game’s code is…

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VPNs are Over Sponsored in Modern Media

Editorials
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Several years after the below article was wrote, the VPN issue still hasn’t been resolved. They’re just now far more expensive than they were before. Everything online right now is sponsored by VPNs and I don’t really understand it. You basically are glad handing another company your complete and total internet traffic instead of your home ISP, who now gets instead of mostly encrypted traffic gets all encrypted traffic. Every single tech blogger out there and now even gaming sites are just spamming it with VPN deals from a variety of VPN companies, who I assume are carting over buckets of gold. Let’s talk about VPNs. So a “Virtual Private Network” is slang for “this thing that connects your PC to other PCs via encrypted tubes over the Internet protecting your privacy get one today.” Which is, really interesting to me. I mean, REALLY interesting to me. In a traditional…

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Epic Games Store is a Schism The Gaming Community Doesn’t Need

Editorials
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Update: It’s 2023 and the following still remains mostly true. The EPIC Store continues to be a pain in the gaming community’s side. Fighting Steam is the past time for many people in this world it seems, as we’re now seeing the Epic Store vs. Steam battle keep raging on. Which is much like the golden ages of MMOs where almost every month a new WoW killer was coming to fight the champion, who won the war via attrition and investors tired of sending their money down a bottomless pit. Now Epic Games, Discord and even Kongregate the flash game site is trying to lure you into replacing Steam with their awesome storefront. This isn’t new, Razer started selling games in their zCoin software forever ago. Twitch has the ability to buy some games, but the purchases often help the streamer. Humble Bundle was once a monthly bundle of games…

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Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak Review

Reviews
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Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak was recently on the Steam Winter Sale so I finally picked it up, several years after release, because I noticed many top RTS articles had it prominently featured and I absolutely loved the Homeworld series. Deserts of Kharak was an interesting experience because it removed the Z axis from the original Homeworld series and placed the game flat on the ground, but kept the generally same gameplay. If you’ve played Homeworld before, then I’d say get it when it’s on sale or even when it’s not, because it’s more of the same but different enough that you’re not drowning in a formulaic experience. Persistence exists, so resources gathered are kept map to map along with units and their promotions. Units have an almost Atlus / Shin Megami Tensei vibe to how they play against each other’s weakness. Armored vehicles take strike vehicles out, but strike vehicles…

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Heroes of the Storm’s New Hero – Imperius Announced

News
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Not a lot is known about Heroes of the Storm’s next champion, other than he’s from Diablo 3 and was heavily featured in the expansion. We first met Imperius back in 2011’s Blizzcon, where the above concept art was introduced. It’s interesting that they’re moving for an Angel from Diablo 3 when we already have Auriel and Malthael. Andariel is a pretty popular request as she was the only female Evil until Diablo 3’s Diablo went and got a sex change. Of course, Imperius is a fan favorite too so this isn’t a giant upset. It’s just interesting that they’re expanding Heroes with more angels on the heels of announcing the reorganization of the Heroes of the Storm support team. Since we don’t know much about his abilities until January 2nd, let’s talk a little about who he is. Imperius is the archangel of Valor. He’s basically the greatest warrior…

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