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In their continuing effort to create the best MMORPG available, the development team at Blizzard is currently at work on a new patch for World of Warcraft that adds a number of new features including a new player vs player honor system that allows players to access items and equipment by achieving rank in the honor system. Blizzard has details its plans to include new mounts, new armor sets, and new weapons, and more.

In addition, Blizzzard plans on new features in the coming months including player vs player battlegrounds, hero classes, and high level raid dungeons.

For a full list of features in the upcoming and future patches, please follow the link below

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Aspyr's Quality Assurance Lead on The Sims 2 for Mac, Karen Halloran, has posted her second developer journal entry for the upcoming people sim game. In the journal, Halloran talks about the aspiration system in the game and provides us with a new screenshot from the Mac version.

To check out the developer journal, follow the link below.

IMG: The Sims 2 Developer Journal #2

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With the announcement this week that Close Combat: First To Fight will be shipping next week, IMG presents the very last QuickTime movie from the upcoming first-person shooter from MacSoft. In the tutorial, entitled Engaging The Enemy, you'll learn tactics on how to engage targets. To check out the feature, follow the link below.

Haven't pre-ordered Close Combat: First To Fight yet? The IMG Store is currently taking pre-orders for the game which is scheduled to ship late next week.

Close Combat: First to Fight Engage Tutorial

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In its continual battle against cheating, Blizzard has announced another round of account closures for Warcraft III players. Nearly 6,000 accounts have been permanently closed, as well as nearly 3,000 CD keys being either temporarily or permanently banned from ladder play.

From the announcement:

A number of additional accounts and CD keys have been tied to the use of a hack or cheat program while playing Warcraft III on Battle.net. In keeping with our aggressive stance against cheating, we have permanently closed 5,900 Warcraft III accounts. 2,300 of the Warcraft III CD keys used with the now-closed accounts have been banned from ladder play for one month, and 500 more have been banned from ladder play permanently. Repeat offenders risk having their CD keys disabled, which will result in the permanent removal of their copies of Warcraft III from Battle.net.

To read more about cheating in Blizzard games, follow the link to Battle.net below.

Battle.net

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IMG's Brad Custer is back again with another brilliant desktop. This week's desktop features Feral's upcoming game, Commandos Battle Pack.

Here's what Brad had to say about his latest desktop:

Since our preview last month of Commandos Battle Pack from Feral Interactive, the request for a desktop from this game has been in high demand. So, on my return to my weekly feature, I decided this was the perfect game to start with. I wanted to create a desktop that captured the feel of both games included in the pack. With the help of Feral Interactive and with some broadband access I was able to create this week's wallpaper.

IMG: Custer's Desktops

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The Warcraft III site at Battle.net has posted an announcement regarding the coverage of the upcoming Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne Ladder Season Two Tournament. To help reach out to a wider audience, Blizzard will be casting the coverage in three different languages.

Done in ShoutCast, English and German coverage will be provided by Gamesports.de. The third language, French, will be covered by NetG.

The IRC addresses for each ShoutCast can be found in the announcement. The coverage provided will be live.

Battle.net - WarCraft III: Ladder Season Two ShoutCast Coverage

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