EA Denies Reports of Origin Hack

EA has denied reports that Origin has been hacked. In regard to several users complaining about their accounts being stolen on Origin’s official forums, an EA spokesperson tells IGN “At this point, we have no reason to believe there has been any intrusion into our Origin database.”

Specifically, users are getting emails claiming that their username and password have been changed despite taking no such action. A NeoGAF forum thread features several more complaints from users reporting similar problems.

EA provided the following statement to IGN regarding Origin security measures:

“Anytime a player has a question about the security of his or her account or personal data, we take it very seriously and take all possible steps to help. For any customer who cannot access their Origin account for any reason, we ask them to please contact Origin Help or EA’s customer experience group at help.ea.com. The robust security measures in place to protect Origin users accounts are constantly being expanded and upgraded, and we also strongly recommend customers take the protective steps of using strong passwords and changing passwords often.”

For now, it’s unclear exactly what’s happening to users and whether the password resets are some kind of technical glitch or a hack that EA isn’t aware of. We’ll continue to follow up with EA and will update this story with any additional info we receive.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following @garfep on Twitter or garfep on IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

Star Wars: The Old Republic F2P Restrictions Lessened

Bioware has announced that it will slightly loosen the restrictions facing free-to-play accounts due to "community and internal feedback".

In a post on the game's forums, lead designer Damion Schubert explained that changes would be made to the originally announced restrictions after they generated a mixed reaction.

“

It is important conversely that the subscription offers subscribers strong, tangible benefits over the Free-to-Play experience. We value our subscribers greatly, and they are crucial to the success of Star Wars: the Old Republic.

As a result, free-to-play players will now get a second quickslot bar, as well as the ability to run five Warzones each week. Under the original restrictions, there was no second bar for free-to-play accounts and only three Warzone battles could be played every seven days.

Schubert went on to address the worry that the limitations on Warzones will make queues longer, saying that if anything they should get shorter. He explained, "Our subscriber base likely will not shrink much, and for some of our competitors, converting to Free-to-Play has resulted in a subscriber increase! Which means that Warzone queues should likely see improvement from what you experience in game, and at minimum be relatively unchanged in experience.

"That being said, one of our golden rules is that the Free-to-Play experience should not cheapen the experience for paying subscribers. If it turns out that the Free-to-Play conversion results in a degraded Warzone experience once we go live for subscribers, you can rest assured that we will quickly make adjustments to the system to ensure that subscribers have an optimal experience.

"It is important conversely that the subscription offers subscribers strong, tangible benefits over the Free-to-Play experience. We value our subscribers greatly, and they are crucial to the success of Star Wars: the Old Republic."

Also addressed in the post is the potential for accounts to receive preferred status. Any former subscriber whose account has locked will automatically get preferred status, otherwise any F2P player who makes a single purchase through the game's official site will also have their account upgraded to preferred status.

Preferred status offers a range of benefits, ranging from increased server queue priority and an extra crew skill slot to obtaining the sprint ability at level 1 alongside access to your cargo hold.

No official launch date has been unveiled for the free-to-play option for Star Wars: The Old Republic, but it's expected to be available before the year is out.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Editorial Assistant and former SWTOR player. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter.

Source : ign[dot]com

Star Wars: The Old Republic F2P Restrictions Lessened

Bioware has announced that it will slightly loosen the restrictions facing free-to-play accounts due to "community and internal feedback".

In a post on the game's forums, lead designer Damion Schubert explained that changes would be made to the originally announced restrictions after they generated a mixed reaction.

“

It is important conversely that the subscription offers subscribers strong, tangible benefits over the Free-to-Play experience. We value our subscribers greatly, and they are crucial to the success of Star Wars: the Old Republic.

As a result, free-to-play players will now get a second quickslot bar, as well as the ability to run five Warzones each week. Under the original restrictions, there was no second bar for free-to-play accounts and only three Warzone battles could be played every seven days.

Schubert went on to address the worry that the limitations on Warzones will make queues longer, saying that if anything they should get shorter. He explained, "Our subscriber base likely will not shrink much, and for some of our competitors, converting to Free-to-Play has resulted in a subscriber increase! Which means that Warzone queues should likely see improvement from what you experience in game, and at minimum be relatively unchanged in experience.

"That being said, one of our golden rules is that the Free-to-Play experience should not cheapen the experience for paying subscribers. If it turns out that the Free-to-Play conversion results in a degraded Warzone experience once we go live for subscribers, you can rest assured that we will quickly make adjustments to the system to ensure that subscribers have an optimal experience.

"It is important conversely that the subscription offers subscribers strong, tangible benefits over the Free-to-Play experience. We value our subscribers greatly, and they are crucial to the success of Star Wars: the Old Republic."

Also addressed in the post is the potential for accounts to receive preferred status. Any former subscriber whose account has locked will automatically get preferred status, otherwise any F2P player who makes a single purchase through the game's official site will also have their account upgraded to preferred status.

Preferred status offers a range of benefits, ranging from increased server queue priority and an extra crew skill slot to obtaining the sprint ability at level 1 alongside access to your cargo hold.

No official launch date has been unveiled for the free-to-play option for Star Wars: The Old Republic, but it's expected to be available before the year is out.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Editorial Assistant and former SWTOR player. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter.

Source : ign[dot]com

You Can Now Migrate Your Xbox Live Account

Announced via the official Xbox forums, The Verge has picked up on the fact that Microsoft now allows users to migrate their Xbox Live accounts between regions. This was previously unavailable, meaning that anyone who moved to a new region was forced to connect to their now-foreign region. For instance IGN's own Mitch Dyer moved to the U.S. from Canada, but still has to connect to the Canadian Xbox Live service because that's where he first created his account. Sure, he could up and create a new one, but as many of you know it's easy to get attached to those oh-so-precious achievements and, you know, all the stuff you bought over the years.

The migration comes with some pretty hefty conditions, though. Most notably is the fact that the process can take up to six weeks, during which time your account will be unavailable. Additionally, per the post on the forums:

Some of the services and content that you are currently benefiting from in the country originally registered may not also be available in the country you are willing to migrate to.

All of your current subscriptions, except for Xbox Live Gold if you had any, will be cancelled. You may lose the ability to re-download some, if not all, of the content in your download history.

Any content that you will subsequently download after the account is migrated will be subject to any applicable geofencing rules of your new location.

Will you be taking advantage of this, or is the inability to use your account for a few weeks a deal breaker? It's nice to have an option at all, but the current conditions of it make it far from ideal.

Anthony Gallegos is an Editor on IGN's PC team. He enjoys scaring the crap out of himself with horror games and then releasing some steam in shooters like Blacklight and Tribes. You can follow him on @Chufmoney on Twitter and on at Ant-IGN on IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

Borderlands 2 Bug Wiping Progress for Some Players

A bug affecting some players of Borderlands 2 is apparently wiping unlocked progress. As noted in a 33-page thread on the official Gearbox forums, some players are starting up the game to find Badass Ranks, golden keys, heads, skins and achievement progress reset to zero. Worse still, menus displaying the content or challenges don’t actually reset, meaning the game thinks the content is unlocked even if you don’t have access to it, so you can’t re-earn skins or replay challenges in order to get them back.

The bug in question can be seen in the video below from YouTube user RyogaWanderer:

Gearbox community manager Chris Faylor responded to the thread, thanking fans for their feedback and noting “Our engineers are looking into this, and the information you've provided has proven to be a great resource while we investigate. At the moment, it seems to be a fairly rare issue and we'll keep you updated on when we resolve it.”

The only solution discovered so far comes in this post from user CrimsonSamuraiX who notes “If anyone logs into their character and notices you've been hit with the glitch and lost your badass ranks / skins, try immediately quitting the game without saving (shutting the game off on the spot might work too)." He reports that doing so has reportedly restored progress for some users.

We’ve reached out to Gearbox about the bug and will update with any comment we receive. Are you experiencing the problem? Tell Gearbox your situation on its official forums and let us know in the comments below.

Thanks to Joystiq for the heads up.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following him on Twitter or IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

Xbox 720 Development Kit Photos Surface

Photos of a next-generation Xbox development kit have emerged online. The images were first spotted on the AssemblerGames forums when a user named DaE attempted to sell the kit for $10,000. At the time, the pictures were met with heavy skepticism and many assumed they were simply a hoax.

Now, however, Digital Foundry has spoken to “multiple developers working on next-gen projects” as well as DaE himself and confirmed that the images are indeed a legitimate look at the hardware being used to develop games for Microsoft’s next-generation system.

The development kit is described as "an anonymous-looking black box" that has many parts in common with standard gaming PCs. Its placeholder dashboard contains the name Durango, a word that has long been rumored as Microsoft’s codename for the next Xbox. The dashboard’s two options are D3D11Game1 and NuiView, which Digital Foundry describes as “a simple tool for rendering camera views and data from an attached Kinect peripheral.”

Kinect functionality is a logical inclusion for the dev kit, as upgraded Kinect features have been heavily rumored and job listings related to the next-gen Kinect recently surfaced.

DaE reports that the most recent round of development kits were sent out in February, with Intel CPUs and an NVIDA graphics card. He says the kit sports 8GB of RAM (though other sources say 12GB) and has a 64-bit operating system.

We haven’t been able to verify these specs, but when we last heard about the system, sources told IGN it would be six times more powerful than current-gen consoles and would feature an AMD 6000 series GPU similar to the Radeon HD 6670. That specific processor includes support for DirectX11, a feature specified in most next-gen job listings. DaE also provided Digital Foundry with a screenshot of Microsoft’s Visual Studio coding tool being used for Durango.

Durango coding at work in Microsoft's Visual Studio tool.

Whether or not DaE’s specific claims hold true, it’s no surprise that these development kits are already in the hands of developers, as we heard back in November that Xbox 720 development kits would be ready by Christmas 2011. IGN’s own sources told us that development kits for the next Xbox were continuing to be manufactured as of May and that developers expect the next generation of consoles to start in 2013.

On top of that, job listings for work on next-generation games have been plentiful recently. We’ve seen postings from Infinity Ward, Id Software and Crystal Dynamics, as well as Microsoft’s own 343 Industries and Rare. It isn’t a stretch to imagine that we’ll see plenty more in the coming months.

Microsoft has yet to officially provide details about its next console, but we’ve reached out for comment about the development kit photos. It's worth noting that the development kit seen here is simply an early test model for developers to use and does not reflect what the actual final hardware will look like. For the details we do know about the system so far, read about what Microsoft’s recent patent filings tell us about the next Xbox.

All images in this article courtesy of Digital Foundry.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following him on Twitter or IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

Diablo 3 Exploit Creates Invincible Wizards

A new bug has been discovered in Diablo 3 that makes the Wizard Class invulnerable.

In a post on the official forums, user Doso explained how to become invincible by doing the following:

• Step 1: Select Teleport - Fracture. Bind it to a key


• Step 2: Select Archon, tested with Improved Archon


• Step 3: Hover your mouse over or near your charcter


• Step 4: Press Teleport


• Step 5: QUICKLY(!) Press Archon

Despite being uncovered yesterday, Blizzard has yet to respond to the situation other than by removing details of the exploit from the original post. A fair number of people have expressed their intent in the thread to make the most of Blizzard's mistake by farming Inferno difficulty, so it'll be interesting to see what the company does with loot obtained this way - especially given the existence of the Real Money Auction House.

Blizzard recently shared its feeling that the current endgame model for the title wasn't sustainable, and explained that it was looking into ways to amend this.

Cheers, Kotaku.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Editorial Assistant.  You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter.

Source : ign[dot]com