Blizzard embraces kung-fu pandas for next WoW expansion

By Mike Flacy October 22, 2011

mists_of_pandaria_--_pandaren_monk — Image used with permission by copyright holder

During the opening ceremonies of Blizzcon Friday, Blizzard revealed the fourth expansion pack for the popular World of Warcraft series. Titled World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, the expansion pack allows players to create a new character called the pandaren, a panda bear creature that has training in martial arts. This is a neutral character, thus players can choose to join either the Alliance or the Horde with the pandaren. In addition, a new class called the Monk has been opened up in the game. Players will have the option of customizing the Monk to become a healer, a damage dealer or a defensive tank-like character to absorb the majority of damage from attacks.

Beyond the new zones like the Kun-Lai Summit, Jade Forest and the Wandering Isle to explore, the level cap has been raised by ten levels to 90 for the WoW veterans. Blizzard is also introducing a pet-battling system for players to pit pets against each other in PVP turn-based fights similar to Pokemon. In addition, Blizzard is adding a new time-trial mode for players to earn prestige points by completing dungeons in a specific amount of time. While Blizzard didn’t announce a release date for the new expansion pack, WoW players can get a sneak peak at the beta by signing up for the WoW Annual pass. By putting up an entire year’s worth of subscription fees for World of Warcraft, players get into the beta early as well as a free copy of Diablo III.

In addition to the expansion announcement, Blizzard also unveiled a Defense of the Ancients type of game where players control teams of heroes to annihilate structures on the opposite side of the map. Only titled Blizzard Dota at the moment, the game will utilize popular characters from many other Blizzard franchises. Similar to Mists of Pandaria, there is no release date for Blizzard Dota yet.

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Sea of Thieves beginner’s guide: 16 tips for new pirates

sea of thieves how to play solo sanctuaryoutpost 2

Cooperative piracy simulator Sea of Thieves is a game that drops players right off the plank and into the deep end of the ocean as soon as they start it up. You're left to figure out how to do almost everything alone or with a crew of friends. All of it is picked up through experience as you play, which is part of what makes Sea of Thieves interesting. There are tons of little nuances and best practices, however, that you need to become an effective pirate.

If you want to win sea battles, escape plunderers, gather treasure, and generally be the best pirate on the Sea of Thieves, there is a lot to learn. Luckily, these tips will make you an effective sailor, a deft brawler, and a smart privateer when you join up with a crew. Going it alone has its perks as well, so check out our tips for your lone pirate voyages.
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How to hack in Fallout 4

A computer terminal in Fallout 4.

No matter what perks or skills your character has in Fallout 4, hacking will always come down to your ability as a player. There's no way to cheat the system here, and if you don't grasp what the game is asking you to do, you're mostly out of luck. Terminals will hide great loot behind their cryptic puzzles, as well as allow you to take over certain controls to turn your enemy's security against them. Some have very interesting logs about certain characters or events for all you lore junkies out there. Hacking has tons of uses, so let's brush up on your computer skills and give you a refresher on how to hack in Fallout 4.
How to hack in Fallout 4
When you first interact with a terminal to hack in Fallout 4, it will be a little overwhelming. As long as you have a high enough hacking skill to attempt a hack, you can go right into the minigame.

The basic idea of hacking is to find words hidden in that jumble of letters and symbols. Your goal is to find the correct word to crack the terminal before you run out of attempts. Once you find any word and select it, the terminal will tell you how close that word is to the correct one based on how many letters it has in the same space as the answer in the form of a likeness rating. The higher the rating, the more letters it has in common. It is somewhat similar to Wordle, only you don't type in the words yourself.

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When the PlayStation 5 was originally released, it had the option to expand its internal memory, which was quite small at the time at a little under 900GBs. Of course, the issue is that there weren't any SSDs that worked on the new standard the PS5 was using, so even if you wanted to upgrade, you couldn't. Luckily, since then, there have been a lot of great SSDs for the PS5 that have been released, and upgrading its storage is pretty easy and can be done by pretty much anybody, provided they have a screwdriver. So, whether you picked up a PS5 from one of the PS5 deals or already have a PS5 and want to upgrade, be sure to check out the SSDs that will work great for your PS5 below.
Our favorite PS5 SSD deal

It wasn't that long ago that you'd have to pay well over $100 to get an SSD for your PS5, and often, it'd be slower than the pricier alternatives. These days, you can buy a Samsung 980 Pro 1TB SSD with heatsink for just $120 from Best Buy, thereby saving $45 off the regular price of $165. The SSD offers speedy performance while also having its own nickel-coated high-end controller to help deliver effective thermal control. It means it won't overheat and performance won't be compromised. Being a PCIe Gen 4 SSD, you get twice the data transfer speed of PCIe Gen 3 which is useful. Offering maximum read speeds of 7,000 megabytes per second, it's a good upgrade to go alongside your existing hard drive with 1TB offering plenty of extra space at a shrewd price.