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Blizzard has released a PR announcing that their MMORPG World of Warcraft has hit the 1.5 million mark in subscribers worldwide. Currently available in North America, Korea, and Europe, WoW has broken sales records in each theater, and can boast of having a combined number of 500,000 players on at the same time.

"All of us at Blizzard are extremely gratified and amazed at the international demand for World of Warcraft," said Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard Entertainment. "From region to region, we've seen a phenomenal level of enthusiasm for World of Warcraft, and we're absolutely thrilled people are enjoying the game so much."

PR - World of Warcraft Sets Milestone with 1.5 Million Subscribers Worldwide

Blizzard Entertainment

World of Warcraft

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Gaming portal Gamespy.com has posted a 5 page coverage of game developing legend, Will Wright's latest game demonstration. At the 2005 Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco last week, Wright gave his opinion on the future of game development, including a sneak peak at his latest game project. Wright is the man responsible for the Sims series of games, including SimCity and The Sims.

Continuing his legacy of life simulation games, Spore will begin at a single cell stage, ending up with a galactic society capable of faster than light travel. The player will get to decide what happens in the middle due to an adaptive engine that can simulate any type of creature the player chooses to create. Spore is Wright's response to the inevitable cost in man hours for next generation games. Rather than placing all the creative burden on programmers, Spore will give gamers a completely open world which can adapt to player's wishes.

From the feature:

Wright proceeded to add not two, but three legs to his creature. Then he let it loose. Now, suddenly, his creature could walk. And he did so -- he walked right out of the sea and onto the land. This incredible moment in the history of evolution was made even more remarkable by the technology behind it: the game had figured out, procedurally, how a creature would walk if it had three legs (it was a kind of lopsided gait, if you're curious, with three steps: left, right, then middle.) No 3D modeler created the creature, and no 3D animator was required to make it move around -- it was all created out of a gamer's whim and a computer program smart enough to make it work.

Gamespy: Will Wright Presents Spore... and a New Way to Think About Games.

After a brief one week hiatus, we return to Close Combat: First To Fight Friday with a new QuickTime movie plus three new screenshots from our friends at MacSoft. The game is currently scheduled to ship in April 2005.

In the QuickTime tutorial you'll learn how your team can provide covering fire. You'll also the use of smoke grenades, nightvision goggles, and more.

IMG Feature: Close Combat: First To Fight: Cover Tutorial

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MacCentral has updated its benchmarks of DOOM 3 which started shipping for the Mac this week. MacCentral now has detailed tables for the performance of Doom 3 on multiple graphics cards at varying levels of detail. The cards that have been tested so far include: ATI's Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition, Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Special Edition and Radeon 9600XT cards as well as Apple's Nvidia 6800 Ultra card.

From the updated performance review:

For comparison's sake, we kept the configuration the same as many of the authoritative benchmarks we've seen on the PC side of the fence, which, for the most part, are the default settings on high-end graphics cards: Graphics settings set to High Quality, and all advanced settings turned on except for Vertical Sync and Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing (FSAA), where noted. Anisotropic filtering was kept to its default setting of 8x for most tests.

Mac Doom 3 Benchmarks Revisited

id Software

Aspyr Media

DOOM 3

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The Worldwide Developers Conference 2005 is taking place June 6-10, and all ADC Student members are eligible to apply for a scholarship to participate in the WWDC 2005 Student Program. WWDC scholarship recipients enjoy a unique learning experience with full access to WWDC sessions and events, as well as exclusive student activities.

Submit your application today.
Don't miss this chance to become a Mac OS X Tiger technology expert and receive in-depth technical details and practical coding advice directly from Apple engineers. To apply for a WWDC 2005 Student Scholarship, get your résumé ready and complete the online application.

Don't delay, the scholarship application deadline is March 25. Visit the WWDC 2005 website and click on the "Apple for a Student Scholarship" link.

WWDC 2005

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As promised, Feral Interactive has posted an update demo for Commandos 3. The new version, 1.0.1, fixes an issue with NVIDIA graphics cards under Mac OS X 10.2. If you have Mac OS X 10.3 or later, you do not need to re-download the demo.

The updated demo is available for download from Macgamefiles.com.

Feral Interactive

Commandos Battle Pack

MGF: Commandos 3 Demo 1.0.1

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Skunk Studios has released a new sports title for OS X. Titled Tennis Titans, this offering uses Breakout-style mouse controls and seven different characters for those looking to hit a few volleys. Other features include four different courts, a tour map, and an unlockable exhibition mode. A second "un-tennis" game type involving the collecting of rings is also available.

A free trial version is available for download directly from Skunk Studios. Those interested in registering for the full version can do so for $19.95.

Skunk Studios - Tennis Titans

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