News

Just kind of a roundup of today's gaming news since not much happens on Tuesday's.

Tweaknews.com has a review of the Ideazon ZBoard Gaming Keyboard. I really can't decide if this is the way to go, or if Logitech's G15 Gaming keyboard which relies on a traditional keyset is better. My G15 has been on backorder at ECost.com for some time so I guess I will continue wondering.

2Old2Play.com takes a look at the society of gaming and defines six different categories of the gamer.

Gamespot PC has some new videos of Dungeons and Dragons Online. The game looks like you would expect it to look...better than World of Warcraft. Graphics does not make the game, however, as we saw in Asheron's Call 2. Gameplay makes or breaks a MMORPG.

Rossignol takes a look at the Korean gaming culture. Gaming there has a lot of things I wish we had here (pro gamers that are celebrities), and of course, a lot of the negative things that holds it back (addictiveness, anti-social behavior).

IGN gives you 25 Neverwinter Nights 2 screens that should make your gaming PC cringe. Should be the RPG of the year for 2006.

That wraps up todays gaming news.

Tom's Hardware has an excellent article on what to look for in 2006 in 3D. F.E.A.R. is probably the most advanced graphics engine I've seen to date, but as this article shows, you can look for a whole lot more in 2006. This might be one of the best times to ask for that 7800GTX or ATI 1800. Of course, with most people playing World of Warcraft, and the rest playing Counter-Strike, not many really care for graphics at this moment. Just what have you done for me lately "in-game". Hopefully though, as the average system specs go up, so will the quality of gameplay in the most popular games.

We have posted a, in our opinion, thorough guide to installing addons for World of Warcraft. The main points covered are installing zip files, updates, and addon packs. WoW addons can make or break the game for a class like a priest or warlock, and this guide should get you well on your way to better gameplay, and easier tasks.

A Guide to Installing WoW Addons

World of Warcraft has built-in functionality that allows developers/programmers to improve the game experience by expanding upon the current interface. In many cases, these addons can prove to be essential to your success in the game by making tasks easier and allowing you to keep up with a wealth of information that you normally wouldn't be able to track. Despite this fact, I continually find more and more people in World of Warcraft that have never even heard of addons or think that they are a waste of time. After installing the addon, their attitudes change to something along the lines of "How did I ever live without this?" Therein lies the one danger in installing WoW addons, you may get addicted, and thus when playing WoW on another computer that doesn't have your addons, feel handicapped.
Installing a WoW addon isn't a difficult task, but to someone that doesn't know much about computers, it can prove to be quite frustrating. There are many things you need to know and I will do my best to go over them here. I am not a developer of addons (because there is an addon already for almost anything you can think of), but I do know a lot about how they work. Let's get started by listing two of the most popular sites to get addons:

WorldofWar.net -- This is one of the biggest sites for addons. 

A great week for gaming hardware and there are several nice articles that have been posted online to help you squeeze out the most from your system, whether it be 3-years old, or the newest gaming system available.

• Nvidia/Dell Quad GPU Video Card -- PC Perspective has a article on the new quad GPU system from NVidia sporting two cards with two GPU's each. This should definitely prove to finally be a good solution for F.E.A.R. at full resolution.

 

• Tom's Hardware has two great articles for gamers. The first reveals everything you ever wanted to know about your BIOS from A to Z. From how to update to settings that will speed up your computer. The article also has some tips on avoiding system crashes, and activating different features within your system. They also have a nice article on squeezing the most out of your lower-end video card.

 

• Another great addition to the Raptor line of hard drives, which is probably the fastest hard drive a gamer can buy was announced this week. All the details of the Western Digital Serial ATA WD1500ADFD 10,000RPM HDD are over at dvhardware.net.

 

• PC World asks, "Can you still build a PC for less?". The resounding answer is yes. We're going to feature an article here later in the week on building your own PC with a new case from Antec.

 

That's this week in hardware news. Anyone that wants to send in additional submissions can just use our contact form to let us know.