#rather than a million launch week patches just to get the game to work | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

aion-rsa · 4 years ago

Text

Days Gone Director Boldly Blames Cheap Gamers For Canceled Sequel

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

In an interview posted on David Jaffe’s YouTube channel, Days Gone writer/co-director John Garvin (who has since left developer Bend Studios over what was implied to be personality differences) suggested that part of the reason why the game will reportedly not be getting a sequel is that not enough people bought it at full price.

“I do have an opinion on something that your audience may find of interest, and it might piss some of them off,” said Garvin. “If you love a game, buy it at f-cking full price. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen gamers say ‘yeah, I got that on sale, I got it through PS Plus, whatever.”

It’s an opinion that has indeed pissed many people off not only because it bizarrely insults those who played Days Gone but because it highlights several problems in the video game industry that some say help justify Garvin’s opinion at a time when we’re led to believe that increased access to games is in direct contrast to the act that’s still the lifeblood of the industry: buying a game at full price right away and in great numbers.

So rather than roll our eyes at the sight of another games industry member shoot themselves in the foot, let’s take some time to break down the many reasons why Garvin has identified many issues that plague the modern game industry in a particularly bad way

You Can’t Compare Days Gone to God of War

In one of the interview’s strangest moments, Garvin seems to suggest that Days Gone somehow deserved God of War’s success.

“It’s like, God of War got whatever number millions of sales at launch and, you know, Days Gone didn’t,” Garvin says. “ Just speaking for me personally as a developer – I don’t work for Sony – I don’t know what the numbers are.”

Besides clearly admitting that he’s not working with complete data (which makes that argument kind of hard to stand by), Garvin seems to believe that you can cleanly compare God of War and Days Gone on the basis of them being Triple-A PlayStation games.

Simply put, you can’t. God of War was part of an established franchise, Days Gone was not. God of War received nearly universal praise upon its release, Days Gone did not. Both share some elements of that PlayStation Triple-A open-world design structure, but given that Days Gone launched when Spider-Man and God of War were already on the shelves and doing very well in nearly every respect, similarities between those titles (however passing) may have actually hurt the game rather than help it.

Garvin has since noted that he’s simply pointing out that a game making more money helps its franchise prospects, which is true in a way that can’t really be argued against but ignores the fact that even apparently equal games aren’t really equal and success should never be treated as anything close to a given during development or after a title’s release.

It’s Hard to Know if You Love a Game Before Buying It At Full Price

The idea of buying a game at the full price doesn’t necessarily mean buying it at launch, but at a time when video game sales come fast and furious, the implication of that suggestion seems to be that you should buy a game as soon as possible in order to support it.

It’s an idea you sometimes hear from an unreleased product’s biggest fans who have bought into the idea of the product’s existence so completely that they’re willing to spend money on it and vocally support it even before they’ve played it. That’s also a mentality that has contributed to calls to stop pre-ordering games and other tech products simply because there have been too many instances of them not quite being ready for primetime and strangely “punishing” their biggest supporters out of the gate by making them put up with various technical problems.

With its own array of technical problems that hindered many people’s ability to play and enjoy the game at launch (and the weeks that followed), Days Gone certainly fit into that “buyer beware” category. The game got better after updates, but those updates came closer to a time when it was easier to find the game at some kind of discount.

As for the argument that those who download the game on PlayStation Plus or similar services should somehow go and buy the game after already downloading it, the practical fact of the matter is that you’re going to have a hard time convincing a substantial number of people to ever do that. If anything, this is a big part of the reason why larger demos and trials need to be worked back into the pre-release culture.

Days Gone Was Already Elevated by Word of Mouth and Fan Support

It’s especially strange that Garvin seems to be going after late arrivals and a perceived lack of fan support given that Days Gone clearly benefited from both of those things in a way that should be encouraging rather than worrisome.

When Days Gone received mixed initial reviews, fans countered with a kind of “anti-review bombing” campaign that elevated the title’s user scores across nearly every aggregate website. They kept the game’s word of mouth strong enough to ensure it remained in the conversation by the time that updates and patches addressed many of the title’s biggest technical issues.

Instead of blaming those who eventually came around to Days Gone for not buying it right away, it’s strange that Garvin isn’t praising the process of how those fans helped convince people to give the game a shot eventually and perhaps saved it from a potentially disastrous debut. Word of mouth is a powerful tool, and Days Gone should be an example of the strength of that process and not a condemnation of the circumstances that lead to it.

At the very least, it’s an especially odd time to attack the foundation of the word of mouth process given that some of those who heard about Days Gone through it will soon have a second chance to buy the game at full price when it’s released for PC. That just makes it easier to buy into the idea that Garvin is maybe feeling a little bitter at the moment.

The $70 Game is Going to Make it Harder for People to Invest in Full Price Titles

As PlayStation’s top executives join the push for $70 Triple-A games, it must be said that deciding to support a game at full price is going to be more difficult for more people once the price of games goes up.

While it’s “only” a $10 price increase compared to the recent industry standard, the $70 game comes at a time when free-to-play titles filled with microtransactions and those aforementioned issues with many full-price games at launch make it harder than ever to simply buy a full-price game right away and not really worry about it. Meanwhile, subscription services are allowing us to play new games without having to depend on actually buying new games right away quite as often.

As more studios appear to suggest that the clearest solution to increased game development costs is to increase the price of games, Garvin’s statements should serve as a warning of the divide that could create and how now is the time to explore modern possibilities to find modern solutions.

Not Every Game Deserves a Sequel

Would Days Gone have gotten a sequel if more people bought it at full price? Probably, but the idea that fans somehow did something wrong by not supporting the game at full price implies that major games are all somehow inherently deserving of a sequel.

At a time when it often feels like we’re drowning in video game sequels, it’s easy to forget that sequels are not a sure thing. We’ve seen games get sequels that didn’t deserve them and games that deserved sequels not get them, but there are times when we’ve got to remember that a game not getting a sequel is just the way it goes.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Days Gone had its fans who clearly enjoyed their time with the game, but it was also an incredibly expensive title that seemingly underperformed both critically and commercially. If Days Gone’s shortcomings mean that developer Bend Studio doesn’t get the chance to try a new idea, that will be a shame, but it’s a problem that says more about how the industry has become too reliant on instant blockbuster successes than the idea that those who play a game at any point under any legal circumstances contribute to its downfall in any meaningful way.

The post Days Gone Director Boldly Blames Cheap Gamers For Canceled Sequel appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2QGXkew

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

0 notes

freevbucksgenerator834agami-blog · 5 years ago

Text

How to give v bucks on fortnite

â€ŽFortnite On The AppÂ Store

Fortnite refers to a videogame series, set in a post-apocalyptic, zombie-infested planet. Here's the point: Each normal Fortnite packs accessible for obtain ideal now are technically Founder's Packs. So what are the patch notes referring to when they say non foundersâ€? Could this be referring to Save the Globe soon going full cost-free-to-play? Epic Games did not quickly respond for comment. We believed Fortnite Season 7 would be the game's lone big announcement this month, but Epic Games is outdoing itself. The firm has announced Fortnite Inventive, a new mode that seems to have spawned from the experimental Playgrounds function that was in testing a when ago.

Thanks to its free of charge-to-play strategy, several Fortnite Battle Royale items require V-Bucks, the currency in the game. You can obtain V-Bucks with True Globe money, but lots of earn V-Bucks rather of mitigating by means of microtransactions. While it really is limited, there are a handful of approaches to earn free V-Bucks in the game. That's a grand total of five,600 V-bucks for a comprehensive set. Which would take about 5 months worth of logging in everyday to the PvE game. However, if you can earn using the other solutions pointed out above. You can cut down your wait instances by a important margin, and you can have the set in less than a week.

youtube

As over 20,000 V-Bucks have already been spent, it remains to be seen whether or not the user will obtain any of his dollars back as though the buy wasn't intended, several things are likely to have been purchased utilizing the funds. Fortnite Creative is a brand new way to knowledge the globe of Fortnite, accessible on six December. Style games, race around the island, battle your close friends in new methods and build your dream Fortnite. It's all taking place on your personal private island where every thing you make is saved.

Day-to-day quests are one of the greatest strategies to earn V-Bucks in Fortnite, as Epic Games allows, at least for now, customers to commit the v-Bucks accumulated in any game mode, such as Battle Royale. The Battle Royale portion of Fortnite runs in seasons, with Season eight scheduled to start soon. These generally final for around ten weeks, and involve tons of themed events primarily based on the summer time, winter, autumn, and spring, as nicely as holidays like Halloween and Easter.

This title is based on Fortnite (now renamed Fortnite Save the Globe), a third-person cooperative, base-defense game. In 2017, developer Epic Games took this notion and spun it out into a separate, free-to-play battle royale game for Pc, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One particular. I agree. Children should be monitored when playing Fortnite. I by no means played it just before but I saw the trailer, it looks protected when watched below supervision.

These web sites are right after one particular of two issues. They want to hack your Fortnite account, or they want to trick you into signing up for gives that produce funds for them. Either way, you aren't going to get free V-Bucks. You might finish up paying for an offer you or paying to attempt to get your account back. Fortnite Battle Royale has additional storms than Scotland in February. There is one in every single game in reality, and you will want to remain out of them. You don't necessarily have to have to panic if you get caught in a storm but, as a rule, you'll want to prevent the dark clouds.

We developed hundreds of banners with dozens of gameplay videos and home web page takeovers across quite a few campaigns in seven various languages. Leveraging Epic Games' partnerships with live stream influencers into the actual digital inventive helped Fortnite Battle Royale grow to be a smashing success. Use the Fortnite Battle Royale Hack to get limitless v bucks. Get the best weapons on the game without the need of spending any income! It works for Xbox A single, PlayStation 4, Mobile and Computer.

Fortnite is famously readily available on every single key platform, such as PS4, Xbox One particular, Switch, Pc, Mac, iOS and Android. So far, Apex Legends is playable only on Computer (through the EA Origin launcher), PS4 and Xbox One, so Switch and mobile fans are out of luck for now. By April, Blevins passed 5M Twitch followers. And that exact same month, Fortnite: Battle Royale launched for iPhone and iPad, rapidly adding millions of players to the game's community.

The virtual currency for the video game, named " V-Bucks ," can be made use of to buy in-game cosmetic things. Epic has refrained from commenting specifically about the case to Dot Esports. The corporation only emphasized the only way to earn V-Bucks is either getting them or earning some in Save the Planet or Battle Royale. Following in the footsteps of titles like the hit PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds , Fortnite's Battle Royale mode presents an action-survival practical experience in which 100 players are placed on a massive battlefield for the sole purpose of survival.

These are all of the reputable approaches that are presently known for escalating your tally of V-Bucks. Any person promising you a more rapidly shortcut is attempting to trick you into either passing more than your account data, or simply farming your enthusiasm for clicks. A single-time bonuses - Fortnite: Save the Planet has many tasks that provide a one particular-time bonus. These rewards are wonderful if you have to have an influx of V-bucks ASAP. Nonetheless, remember that you can no longer rely on these as soon as you run out of these tasks.

Jump into Fortnite Battle Royale and head to the Battle Pass tab. Use these shiny V-Bucks and boom, the spoils of victory await. Need to have Far more elmm.info fortnite v bucks generator and skins V-Bucks? Get some from the Shop tab. Mini figures, large collection! The Fortnite Battle Royale Collection capabilities pocket-sized 2" figures best for creating a genuine-life locker of all your favored characters. From no-skins to fan favorites, the Battle Royale Collection goes deep.

Our Upgraded Process hack tool is able to allocate indefinite Fortnite V Bucks Hack to your account entirely no cost and promptly. When you log in to the core Fortnite game you'll be offered rotating missions from the Day-to-day Quest program. After you've completed each one particular, you'll get your cost-free V-Bucks and you are going to be in a position to devote them on items for the Battle Royale mode.

0 notes

randomationmedia · 7 years ago

Video

youtube

It's already been 10 years since I first created the Randomation Pictures YouTube channel. I feel the need to share this story because it’s cathartic for me.

I remember how excited I was at age 11 when I first began using Pivot Stickfigure Animator during 2006. Going from sketching stickmen in notebooks to making them come to life on the screen ignited a passion that would eventually carry me into game development. I wanted to be just like the “famous” animators on YouTube. I wanted to create the same kind of fluid and funny scenarios that would draw in hundreds of thousands of viewers and propel me into the spotlight of this rapidly growing platform for sharing videos.

As time went on, I managed to animate a number of videos of gradually increasing quality, but nothing spectacular. I also dabbled in game development with early versions of Game Maker, but didn't achieve much as I struggled to wrap my head around the process of designing software.

Eventually my passion for animation transformed into passion for game development. This was accompanied by decreasing motivation and an inability to finish any videos worth watching. During 2012 I started using the Unity engine for the first time, enthralled by the opportunity to create interactive 3D worlds of my own creation. Now the goal was to create a successful indie game published on a platform like Steam.

After learning the basics of Unity, I embarked on a journey to create an open world stunt-driving game not unlike Burnout Paradise (the game most responsible for inspiring me to develop). With my lack of foresight in how to build stable software that isn't drenched in technical debt and the degree of inexperience required to believe the idea was even feasible in the first place, it's easy to see how that turned out.

The project was dead in the water and I didn't know what I was going to do next, or if I even wanted to do anything. That was until someone showed interest in purchasing the vehicle physics of the project. Despite the code being objectively awful, the core driving physics were very satisfying to interact with and were robust in how they reacted to environmental geometry. Out of all of the things I can do, I feel that game physics has always been the skill I'm most adept with and is the only aspect of game development I still actually enjoy working with.

The situation of seeing value in my vehicle physics led me to strip down the project and sell it as Randomation Vehicle Physics on the Unity Asset Store. This was my first source of income ever, and having anywhere from $300 to almost $1000 coming in each month as an 18-year-old still living at home was incredible. My will to develop was in full force again, but now I chose to dial things back a bit in terms of ambition and create a 2D platformer that would become Waffles (And Then Some).

The game was originally going to be based on an unfinished Game Maker project of mine that was about running across trains and shooting. The characters in this new project were going to be small and square, and the movement mechanics felt unintentionally similar to Super Meat Boy. However, the levels and theme were still unique enough to differentiate it. That is, until the level design started to feel boring and I had to redirect it. For whatever reason I decided to make the main character a waffle and make the theme about breakfast (old YouTube videos and LittleBigPlanet levels have reflected a strange affinity for this theme). Now the game was about a square-shaped food character that could sprint and wall-jump through punishingly difficult levels. To my chagrin, the Steam Greenlight comments were exactly what I expected them to be.

I chose not to publish the game on Steam because I didn't think it was worth selling anymore by the time it was greenlit out of the blue some 7 months after I originally posted it there. I also managed to get somewhat burnt out again by the time I finished it despite its relative simplicity.

Shortly after Waffles (And Then Some) was finished I began working on a kart racer known as The Fastest Meal of the Day. Mario Kart 8 came out shortly before that and inspired me to make a kart racer with the same caliber of graphics, but with the mechanics of Crash Team Racing. That might have been too ambitious (spoiler: it was). The same kind of development process followed, with the same kind of results as before. Grandiose ideas and world-building that will never come to fruition with nothing but an undercooked project and some work-in-progress videos to show for it.

I released the unfinished build and called it a day while feeling burnt-out yet again. However, I still had work to do as Unity 5 was around the corner and I knew I would have to update my vehicle physics for it. The problem with this is that the new version of Unity broke the behavior of wheel colliders from Unity 4 projects, so my vehicle physics could not function correctly in it.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do about this, until I started experimenting with making rigidbodies levitate in a balanced way using only raycasts and pure additions of force. I figured out how to do this by adding not just a basic floating force (upward constant), but by limiting this force with dampening (subtracting current velocity of point where force is applied on rigidbody). With this I had a crude model for vehicle suspensions, and thus a stable floating rigidbody. With that I knew I could write my own wheel and suspension models without the use of Unity's wheel colliders.

Over the course of a few months I developed Randomation Vehicle Physics 2.0 and launched it just a week or two after Unity 5 launched. It was a relative hit and I was over the moon “raking in” anywhere from $1000 to $1700 a month and still living at home. This was the peak of my happiness, fulfillment, and confidence out of my whole body of work over the past decade. The feeling of having that much disposable income at my fingertips and having people praise and find value in my work was overwhelming in the best of ways. Queue overzealous amiibo collecting.

With my reborn zest (I was feeling very doubtful and anxious before releasing RVP 2) I started working on the kart racer project from scratch again. The old code was abysmal (the main kart script was 3 or 4 thousand lines long and handled everything from physics to particles and audio) and the physics were not too good, even though they looked great on video. I chose to take an approach where the rotation of the karts is completely controlled by scripting and not the physics engine, leading to much more consistent behavior along with suspension based on RVP 2. I continued to work on it while occasionally stumbling over the aesthetic direction of the project and taking a month-long break to make Stickman Catapult 3D.

The good feelings ended a few months later when someone let me know RVP 2 was being “shared.” My heart sank as I tried to have the project taken down, only to see it reuploaded to another torrent site. Today I understand piracy as a legitimate way to see if software actually does what it claims to do in a world rife with early-access shovelware and DRM'd pre-order day-one DLC hotfix-patch-that-makes-things-worse culture. I also understand piracy is not truly theft because nothing is being stolen, just copied, and people who pirate might never purchase the asset anyways. At the time, however, I took it very personally and saw it as disrespecting my terms. It didn't help reading forums of people thanking each other for sharing it rather than thanking me for creating it in the first place, but I digress. I should have been grateful that something I made was valuable enough for people to take the “risk” of pirating in the first place.

Rather quickly, the butthurt brought on by piracy led to depression. I have had periodic bouts of depression prior to this, but the subsequent one was bad. Combined with my complete lack of a social life thanks to not bothering to keep in touch with high school friends, my obsession with game development hinging my entire self worth on my projects, and family issues I don't need to talk about, I was the most depressed I have ever been. RVP 2 was grossing less as well, but I don't believe this was directly correlated with the piracy. Sooner or later it had to slow down regardless of sharing.

I continued to work on The Fastest Meal of the Day even though it felt like a death march. I still consider it to be the hardest thing I have ever done. Making the characters was one of the last things I did through a tedious process of model, texture, rig, and animate. Verne and Castper were already put together from other prototype projects, but I still had 6 characters to create from scratch. Each one only took a few days but at that point I was waist-deep in a many months-long habit of spending most of my time every day working on the game.

I knew I wasn't going to sell the game. I knew it was only going to have 8 characters, 1 track, 1 mode, and no multiplayer, but I was ridiculously attached to the idea of creating some kind of polished 3D game that I can confidently show the world. All I did when I was done was throw it up on IndieDB and call it a day. I had already let go of the idea of publishing a successful game by myself and getting to be on the level of someone like the developers of Undertale or Stardew Valley. Someone who made a game mostly by theirself and gets to see thousands (millions?) of fans take in the virtual world you crafted and fill up forums discussing the characters, story, and game mechanics.

I still feel a pang in my chest when I read about how a game similar to those two is being ported to a new platform to be experienced by a new audience. I have had to work through feelings of envy and annoyance in order to try and feel happy for them. I am not entitled to success just because I put in a lot of effort, especially when my efforts have been so misguided. Trying to learn modeling, rigging, animation, texturing, foley, music composition, and programming mean nothing if I still haven't been able to produce a game worth selling. It’s just not-invented-here syndrome turned up to 11.

After finishing The Fastest Meal of the Day, I figured I should at least apply for game developer jobs. Surely having a game like that in my portfolio and being able to point to everything but the font and say, “I made that,” would be enough to land me a job at a studio that uses Unity? Not if my resume has no job experience or degree to speak of and I have no industry connections.

Depressed, burnt-out, and living at home with no degree and with no visible way to break into the game industry despite my hard work, I started applying for the same kind of jobs most 21-year-olds are qualified for. I found myself working full-time in retail and feeling mostly okay about it, because at least I was interacting with people on a regular basis, getting paid, and not “having” to develop games every day. I was at a point where getting to sit at home developing games all day seemed like hell, even though just a few years earlier in high school that is all I could dream about.

For at least several months I had absolutely no desire to develop anything. I truly believed I had put the nail in the coffin on the career of software engineering in general, not just games. I was content working in retail for almost 2 months and realized I don't want to do it for very long. (Who'da thunk it?) I chose to go to college full-time in pursuit of a bachelor's degree in computer science because I was beginning to warm up to the idea of programming again, but not so much game development.

Even with my hesitance toward game development I decided to start working on a mobile game in my free time, a basic multiplayer game where you play as a penguin and try to bump other penguins off of an ice berg. The game is still unfinished to this day and has been in development for about a year. School is not the only thing getting in the way of developing it. The other factors are my motivation and planning what exactly my free time should go into. The game and the process of realizing it just don't entice me. I don't really want to model everything, record sound effects, and write the music. I don't want to collaborate with someone either because I have a very clear idea of how those things should be, and I can't afford to pay people who would be able to do the jobs well. I haven't looked at the code in a while which makes it harder to work on that aspect and there is no monetary incentive because I was planning on making it free.

School has been eating up my savings from RVP and I need to work on things that make money. I'm considering going back into the asset business, maybe developing a kart racer kit or something else. Developing assets is not so hard, because they are essentially unfinished games. I may even pursue contract work if I have to. Plus, if I'm going to go into a more traditional software engineering role, I need to learn frameworks and work on projects that don't depend on Unity.

The only way I would pursue a career in game development is if I could work in my preferred role as a gameplay programmer at a company that doesn't depend on unpaid crunch time, doesn't lay off employees after a game ships, and offers decent benefits. As far as I'm concerned, that job does not exist, or is the kind of job that's immediately filled internally by someone in the network of connections.

I just want to get paid to write software and have a healthy work-life balance. This is not a defeatist attitude, but a realistic one. The dream I sought after in the game industry is so difficult to obtain that I would not even enjoy it after putting in the work to get there. It was and is an unhealthy obsession that I still struggle with, where even today I feel uncomfortable if I don't have some vague game idea bouncing around in my head that I want to work on at an unspecified time in the future.

One thing that stuck out to me while reflecting is the fact Randomation Vehicle Physics is the most successful thing I've ever made, and that's because it provides real value to other people. It was a catalyst for other aspiring developers' dreams of making some kind of driving game, or maybe just a product that can enhance a professional team's workflow. Either way, it helped other people much more than my own “selfish” projects have, which only served to express my own ideas. Developing assets from here on out makes the most sense because it requires less work than developing full games, is more likely to earn money, and can help others develop the games they want to make.

I am now 22 and look forward to finishing school in a few years and have mostly overcome my depression. Closing myself off from the world in pursuit of an attachment to a grandiose fantasy is no way to live. I wonder where I'll be in 2027.

#decade #10 years #randomation #story #my life #depression #game development #indie

1 note · View note

genovera942vbucks-blog · 6 years ago

Text

VBUCKS Dreams and Wishes

'Fortnite' Is The Main Competition In The World As This A Premium Experience That's Free

If you love playing Fortnite on your own mobile or COMPUTER, know that your ideas will make it easier that you become the most out of this game. Excitingly, Epic has too created Party Assist that, when enabled ahead of a complement, will allow daily or weekly Problem to be completed with the help of everyone in your person. In Year 8, daily quests will be automatically collected along with the reward will be presented if they are made. Check out the full Fortnite: Battle Royale Season 8 patch see below. You can visit Epic's website to make certain what's new to the Creative and Recover the World modes.

Fortnite is both a great example and the modern victim. Since Fortnite's meteoric rise, there are multiple YouTube videos go as ads to pitch Fortnite players easy avatarsbymas.com ways to have free V-Bucks. (V-Bucks are Fortnite's premium in-game currency, that permits them purchase limited-edition skins, items with systems.) Search free V-Bucks” in YouTube's search bar, and more than 4.3 million results will populate.

You can subscribe to the Movement Royale game mode free of charge. However, if you want to join the promotion mode you will have to purchase the Fortnite activity also in this people next help yourself to acquire V Bucks by completing daily quests, completing Storm Shield Defence Missions, completing quests throughout the game where you are rewarded with V-Bucks, Missions give out tiny amounts of V bucks and V Bucks could also become got from the game store.

Fortnite is currently unrivalled in terms of popularity due to the incessant updates made out there through Epic Games to keep the tough experience fresh for the large customer base. However, Epic have remained wanting to cater to more casual players in their latest update, that says produced controversy in the Fortnite community, by eliminating the siphon mechanic that was widely loved.

The Fortnite Cut is built for players who cannot afford to pay real change just to engage in this contest. However, if you think that this hack is not a good thing with the sport then this cheat is not for you, although you can still get fortnite v-bucks at the authorized store. In fact, if you buy v-Bucks legally you are and sustaining the Fortnite es Development Band to revise several game features.

Like the personal in Foot, The Fort is beyond Fortnite's different types, offering gamers their actual individual Part near form a everlasting construction. Epic has chose to believe the objective clients to woo, rather than just ban them, right behind deciding which the modification of the playoffs signal is versus Fortnite's Conclusion Consumer License Arrangement as well as Copyright Act. Actually while, we could see Fortnite getting a recreation that people can very bad numerous hrs in as a result of fluid gameplay, a good co-op element and many to do in play.

Certainly, Fortnite contains no single gameplay practice, or ‘compulsion loops', that make that something else to, or more ‘addictive' than, new action movie games. That more how the game combines many different aspects - nice visuals, good point mechanics, an interesting building component, fun emotes, with quantities of service and profit from YouTubers - in one package, which is free to download.

21 New Age Technique To VBUCKS

There are a variety of reasons why Apex offers that when other competitive games don't, and it's tough to see other activities like Fortnite won't copy other in the formula soon. First, this requires extreme perfection and competence to put aside someone without that person take at least another before two of wiggle place to squeeze away an flight. To process that easy to disengage, heal up, and find a new slope of confrontation. The subclass abilities only add to that strategic push-pull, while extremely audible gunshots ensure that you're never prudent to sit on both hands and rob idly as a team could be move up to ruin your trip to a moment's notice.

youtube

But "Fortnite's" big success is a stark contrast for the primary up for in which Sweeney used for Potomac Computer Approach (the unique title for the friendship that will later became Epic Competition) with 1991. Called "ZZT," customers purchased to match by e-mail a catch to Sweeney's parents' building in Maryland and expecting him to help letters a version on the activity back to them on the computer disk.

Fortnite Battle Royale's primary note from some other battle royale games is the building system, that originated on the original Fortnite survival game. Nearly all items in the atmosphere can be eliminated and picked for products (wood, rock, with steel), that could therefore be used to build defense of border durabilities, such as walls, ramps, bottoms, and roofs, which might be used to support pass through the plot, safeguard the participant from gunfire, or reduce advance of some other participants. Weaker items can be destroyed within a little hits, but could be constructed quickly, while stronger models could survive more punishment, but take longer to build.

Fortnite was at first launched into September 2017, but it really began as a four-player cooperative survival game put on a postapocalyptic Earth. Players must make pound and secure themselves against marauding zombies. Later within the year, though, the playoffs developer, Epic, took in the enormous hit of PC title PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG), which pits 100 players against one another in a last-man-standing battle. PUBG was very much influenced by the Hunger Games novels also with the Western movie Battle Royale , and this went over 30m copies worldwide. Duly inspired , Epic decided to launch a new description of Fortnite featuring quite similar gameplay. Hence, Fortnite: Battle Royale.

Free of charge: The Fortnite v-bucks cut is released for everyone, no hidden fee leave behind. The official Twitter account for Fortnite posted: We're aware some persons are acquiring an error information when trying to purchase Vbucks or the release is suspended. As of today you have top 7 ways mentioned above to gain free v jumps in fortnite game. However We still think many in the gamers will try to use a free v bucks generator from dozens of deceptive websites. Which are promoting them as a marketing method to deceive the users of fortnite game.

Figure 3: Data proves the estimated revenue volume in platform compared between Fortnite and PUBG games in the period of August 2017 — June 2018, based on the Edison Trends dataset. Although Fortnite Battle Royale is free to download, if you're playing with Xbox One you will have to cover Xbox Live Gold to have fun online. Yet, if you're performing at PlayStation 4 you don't need to pay for PS And so as to play, so you really could participate in for free.

In additional Fortnite news, the sport Week 5 Challenges leaked before. They are not live yet, so you can get working on the Week 4 Challenges in the meantime. Well, it's free, it's fun and it has a very silly, offbeat awareness of humour. While PUGB has an important, realistic visual style, Fortnite: Battle Royale has extremely intense, almost cartoon-like graphics as well as charges of incredible items with dresses, like as space costumes and dinosaur outfits.

Over the past couple of days, accusations have lived swirling about the internet, asserting to Fortnite builder and publisher Epic stole the design representing a skin throughout it is struggle royale game from the fan singer then their creative character design. That really sucks, but there's still hope. If you can wait, Epic Games (Fortnite's authors) have claim that Save the World (the Function we choose) will become free a bit during 2018.

VBUCKS Strategies Revealed

Fortnite: Battle Royale Season 8, Week 6 need to activate the morning of Thursday, April 4. Fortnite does suggest cross-platform play among most platforms, which you could opt-in to inside sport settings menu. One notable exception have been the PS4 type of Fortnite, which allows played nice with the Xbox Single also Replace reports of the entertainment since it launched. But Sony is eventually trying to change to like months of fan backlash.

Fortnite” is open, but over 68 percent of players make in-game purchases — like pickaxes, dance steps, with group to personalize the personalities — with the common player that becomes purchases has spent $84.67, according to a 2018 survey with the financial help company Lendedu. Fortnite, currently the only Battle-Royale game in a playable disorder is free-to-play. There is no compensation to attain mechanics currently present in the game and also the designers say it's going to be that way, that in the planet of another triple-A titles, having questionable micro-transactions is refreshing, to say the least.

Now i am committed to giving you only frank and legit approach that can earn people a good unlimited sum of fortnite free v jumps. Within it is current form, Fortnite Creative enables players to create their own maps using a variety of in-game factors with stuff. These developments can be limited to destinations where players engage in their own usage of confrontation royale, or they can be crafted into individual sports, like coin group with end runs.

Play Fortnite Battle Royale on the go! Same gameplay, same place, same weekly updates. Fortnite V8.20 offers a new limited time mode featuring rising lava, as well as new foraged items like health-regenerating banana, coconut, and spray. Despite their dynamism and relaxed style, Fortnite is a very technical video ready and needs many hours in the curb to control that certainly. The construction of buildings is not simple which is the incentive that does not have the rival, the PUBG, for what makes it more difficult.

Fortnite: Battle Royale is currently free to download on PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android. Epic Sports say not observed on the Fortnite V-bucks money laundering scheme. Safety experts, such as Sixgill's Preminger, don't believe the guests is doing sufficient to moderate illegal activities with the game. Fortnite Battle Royale is a Third Person Shooter with its own unique twist.

The spotlight of type 7.10 is the introduction of the 14 Era of Fortnite” season event. The event features original and restoring LTMs. Large team modes switch every two days, while small staff modes switch every 24 hours. So if you are considering earning v bucks rather generating them over spammy generator's, Then understand the lower mentioned system that can easily get you free v responsibilities in fortnite save the world game mode.

0 notes

caron517gaming-blog · 6 years ago

Text

My Main VBUCKS Lesson

'My Child Spent £150 On Fortnite'

Fortnite is one of the most popular activity in state, with an estimated 12m+ active monthly players. Fortnite policies and credit aren't being marketed widely on top darknet marketplaces, from what I found. They're on Ebay They're on They're on Selly. How much money is anybody getting off this? Hackers I met with say everywhere from $50 to $900 a week, depending on what good your software exists and the amount time you have. V-Bucks can be earned in Fortnite by completing daily in-game challenges or bought online.

As mentioned before, all issues contributing Fortnite's success are intertwined. Here's a sum up in one word: A free-to-play game that's easy to understand and is great joy to perform along with friends. That here is the reason why Fortnite completely puffed up. Fortnite Battle Royale's setting is smart with unusual, with a storybook quality. PUBG was originally a big hit with the PC gaming crowd, eventually migrating to a specific console platform with a $30 price. Fortnite Battle Royale is free.

Demands the basis game Fortnite on COMPUTER in order to performance. Those people who are not very professional and do not know how to maintain your fortnite account stable with safe need to look at following factors to know your security online. Unlike another v-bucks generator our Fortnite generator is suitable with Opportunities, Linux, Android, iOS, and can be used happening many means including smartphones, tablets, iPhones, ipads, with ordinary desktop computers. Thus, this last a different tradition in which everyone can make use of our generator tool.

3 Guilt Free VBUCKS Tips

Fortnite gift certificate is a pre-paid card. The credit card contains signs for a pair sum of V-Bucks. Fortnite is far from the first or single competition to carry out that place going on. Last year, Naked Security reported that many free-to-play activity in mobile means were actually being pursued and used in the same make with fraudulent credit card purchases of virtual currency to be resold on third-party markets at a lower price.

Epic is launching X-Ray Llamas to Fortnite's Save the planet mode therefore which persons may distinguish the contents just before they accept. Epic Games continues to support Fortnite with various large substance with switch almost with a constant basis. Update 8.10 created new bats with points for the activity, but since it seems, they have other significant improvements in the pipeline as well.

A Concealed Treasure object is reaching quickly” to Fortnite, according to the latest in-game News message. Clean the isle for hidden loot using the new Buried Treasure thing,” the note reads. Type ‘Fort' in the search prevent with click on on Fortnite: Battle Royale as it seems in the suggestions box on the correct. Fortnite © 2018 Epic Games, Inc. Epic, Epic Games, Unreal, Unreal Engine, and Fortnite are enrolled hallmarks of Epic Games, Inc. from the STATES (Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Away.) and away.

When Fortnite: Battle Royale developed, the similarities between the two became wasted about public. Chang Han Kim, CEO of PUBG Corporation, slammed Epic for "replicating" the game with endangered to take further action. The matter was confused by the fact that PUBG uses Epic Games' Unreal Engine. The PaySafeCard is great payment choice for gamers who don't have a PayPal credit or credit card available to buy V-Bucks. They change easily between different currencies and are undertaken by virtually many games, including Fortnite.

It's a very predictable thing to happen, but this fact is worth celebration anyway - Fortnite Battle Royale PvP for 100 players is finally ported to iOS, and Machine mobile systems with most PC version features entered. That release confirms, to mobile devices can be used as gaming consoles of full respect. The leaks put new gas to the already heavy flames of speculation that Epic Sports take one thing good designed for the upcoming winter term in Fortnite, which many state estimated may contain snowy terrain.

Fortnite is a up for that goes through a lot of frequent updates. Week-by-week you can presume to refer to patches which both squash problems or am little trade to gameplay that help the overall game encounter. The sim is the chief one among many were likely to control with expectations. And forthwith let's encounter the customization panel with educate what is there for us. We can assure you that the Fortnite V Bucks Cut or Cell say almost nothing to do in this part of the game.

youtube

Epic keeps Fortnite Battle Royale feeling fresh with interesting timed affairs with extra methods. Personalization and development, rather than the game itself, is the cause of monetization. You can find Timed Missions with 25-40 V-Buck rewards. Track current Timed Missions in Fortnite here. Developer Epic Games has revealed detailed information about the Fortnite World Cup 2019 Players who consider they can be crowned the best Fortnite: Battle Royale participant from the world will be able to compete regarding a total prize consortium of $30 million distributed across a Solo and Duos tournament.

There will a new Fortnite Battle Pass, giving people entry to further Term 8 skins and Flavor 8 emotes - offered people and then put in the time with sweat to next unlock them, of course. That and worth highlighting the importance of personal Fortnite's PVE component, Save The planet. That pretty pricey at $39.99, but it often goes on seasonal deal regarding a $19.99 so ensure people continue an eye out.

Fortnite seasons tend to live a complete of 10 weeks. For the standard Epic Games website, that states the Movement Occur and Time 6 may determine by Thursday night, December 6. While it may be disappointing to some participants to Fortnite isn't currently free to play, know that you're at least getting some further content on top of early access for the money. In a daze chance of consequences, Apex Story came back. See its statement in February, the sport has a very similar narrative to Fortnite. It quickly gathered a huge audience, hitting 50 million players just 28 time once the idea took place off.

Past six seasons here training Epic games released Fortnite in July 2017. Those who are not very technical and do not know how to keep your fortnite account safe and secure need to study following points to know your security online. At the BRITISH Safer Internet Centre, we regularly deliver online safety training meeting to pupils, parents and instructor. Recently we have noticed an expansion number of young folks talking about the game ‘Fortnite'. In this blog we are doing assistance to parents about Fortnite, glaring by what the action remains also many of the things being aware of.

1 ‘To help pick up any desired number of Fortnite V Bucks Hack free so click right here at ‘Get Fortnite V Bucks” Button below, you will make free what specifically you are looking for. The first Fortnite World Cup is determined to throw in 2019 , and will as well become offered to non-pro players, though there will be a certification process to ensure that only very top can compete. Gameplay will centre in alone and dual play.

Fortnite: Battle Royale Season 8, Week 5 happens today officially live along with it yet another batch of regular obstacle to sink the pirate land into. Avast me hearties, 'tis time to make Battle Celebrities next levels up the Campaign Pass. Complete 55 weekly obstacles and you'll uncover the surprise Discovery Outfit. Fortnite Battle Royale is available by Microsoft Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS and Samsung Android devices while But the World is presented in PROCESSOR and consoles platforms.

Where To Start With VBUCKS

To perform Fortnite to its broad potential, you don't really need a very good PC. The biggest advantage Epic Games cover with Fortnite is the cartoon art way they selected, that does not require a great deal of hardware even though it provides a good overall experience. Fortnite players are ended through community media scammers who are using websites claiming to offer free in-game currency, known as V-Bucks, to take over considerations and appropriate personal data.

Investigators from Malwarebytes showed in April that scammers are developing data-stealing malware as well as cryptocurrency-stealing malicious value in targeted strikes against Fortnite gamers. For 4K contest with Fortnite and other activities, however, something with a little more processing strength is recommended. Such as the i7-9700K or at least the i5-9600K would be a solid option regarding a higher-performing rig.

Now that Fortnite is a total sensation vbucks generate fortnite many dishonest players are trying to take advantage of participants that need to get some new in-game gear. There are dozens of unofficial sites, youtube tapes, and put up in social media to agreement free V-Bucks. It's likely that every single one of these are fake. Casual gaming aside, Fortnite is a fundamental question. New products can cause controversy if they don't secure the authorization on the community the ones who show in a un-sportsperson-like approach can be the subject of online opprobrium - even when they stop in-game records in the process.

According to Epic, it will "play as a free item for you to state in the in-game Fortnite store" once you get performed the game. Whether this as basic as put in the request on the call is uncertain, but it looks pretty straightforward each respect. The schedule is to ensure all the required DLLs are present to the treatment you want. With Fortnite, this could happen many; the position is to allow Epic Games' own tools do the work.

How To Get Free V Dollars In Fortnite? This is the problem which suddenly being increased by the many Fortnite Game Participants. The logic is because; with V Bucks, you can easily access all the articles in Fortnite game. Along with main quest line you also get side quests in fortnite to finish, The magnitude v bucks will be reduced and they could go away faster. So if you find a side quest which is awarding you v bucks then try to end that on the same day.

The stolen cards are used to buy V-bucks, the personal currency in Fortnite. Typically, V-bucks are obtained to buy in-game outfits, weapons, emotes and other things in-game. For Fortnite and Epic Games, V-bucks have been a huge revenue course, with over $3 billion net profit for Epic Sports in 2018. Fortnite gives everyone being up until stupid times in the morning. I've not been this way with a game while Black Ops.

0 notes

rickhorrow · 6 years ago

Text

Rick Horrow’s 10 to Watch : Week of Februrary 18th

MAYORS EDITION

MLB in 2019 will "commemorate the 150th anniversary of professional organized baseball with a season-long series of uniform features and content integrations across its league-run media platforms." According to Sports Business Journal, the league's celebration will begin on Opening Day in late March with "special cap patches worn by every player." The cap application has "never been done to celebrate a major anniversary in baseball, but it will be similar to special postseason patches worn on the side of player caps." There also will be a "uniform patch worn all season on the right sleeve of player jerseys." Those sleeve patches "recall similar ones used to celebrate baseball's 100th anniversary" in 1969 and 125th in 1994. MLB also is planning an "extensive series of anniversary-driven multimedia content commemorations of great moments in baseball history that will run on MLB Network, MLB.com and the league's official social media channels.” It truly is a celebratory year, as the NFL is also celebrating its 100th anniversary and other key milestones of sport also unfold, which we will document throughout the year.

Overtime banks $23 million from Carmelo Anthony, Victor Oladipo, Spark Capital, and others. According to Hashtag Sports, the digital sports media startup focused on high-school athletes has raised $23 million in Series B funding. Venture-capital firm Spark Capital led the round, which brings the two-year-old company to $33.5 million raised to date. Others participating include MSG Networks and NBA players Victor Oladipo and Carmelo Anthony. With the latest funding, Overtime has a valuation of around $100 million. The company launched with short-form content centered on high-school basketball stars, and over the past year has expanded its coverage to include soccer, football, esports, and women’s basketball. Overtime also is looking to launch live in-person events and activations and is eyeing international expansion. People continue investing in Overtime because they’ve smartly monetized through branded-content deals and nascent ecommerce and merchandise business, and look to be a rising star in the youth sports digital media space.

U.S. Club Soccer and LaLiga North America have announced an expansion of their technical partnership first signed in August, 2015. The long-term extension continues a valuable relationship in youth soccer that has provided various coaching education resources to the American game, directly educating thousands of coaches and impacting even more players. It also points to LaLiga North America’s commitment to growing soccer in the U.S. LaLiga North America is a joint venture between LaLiga and Relevent Sports, which serves as the exclusive representation of LaLiga in the U.S. and Canada for all business and development activities. The operation supports the league’s growth in the U.S. and Canada through consumer-related activities including youth academies, development of youth soccer coaches, marketing agreements, consumer activations, exhibition matches, a coaching education series, and plans to have an official LaLiga Santander match played in the U.S. In 2019 and beyond, the two organizations plan to increase their Players First commitment by creating additional coaching development opportunities, extending LaLiga scouting to U.S. Club Soccer members, and offering exclusive benefits to Players First-licensed clubs and others.

The Sports Turf Managers Association (STMA), the non-profit association comprising 2,700 men and women professionals overseeing sports fields worldwide and critical to athletes’ safety, received outstanding participation at its 30th annual Conference and Exhibition in Phoenix. Visit Phoenix confirmed the community received over $3 million from total estimated direct expenditures from conference participants including event attendees, exhibitors, and organizers. The Phoenix Convention Center housed more than 2,300 participants including 1,400 sports turf leaders and 900 exhibitors from 14 countries for four days of industry education, networking events, and product demonstrations. The event was highlighted by a volunteer rebuild of Lindo Park baseball field, two “Seminar On-Wheels” tours of Phoenix area sports complexes, SAFE fundraisers, and the STMA Awards Reception and Banquet. SAFE, the association’s charitable foundation, raised nearly $41,000 through a bowling competition, live and silent auctions, raffles, and a golf tournament at Grand Canyon University Golf Course. Proceeds benefit educational programs, scholarships and grants enriching communities through safe, sustainable sports and recreation fields.

NASCAR goes all in on media advertising and teams up with Barstool Sports. With an aging fan base and no consistent uptick in ratings, NASCAR needs a serious revamp. To deal with this, NASCAR is launching an ad campaign for nearly 20 TV markets throughout the United States and has struck a digital partnership with Barstool Sports. According to Sports Business Daily, NASCAR is set to spend between $10 million-$20 million for this advertising campaign set to run throughout 2019 with a new technique of advertisements to be shown during non-NASCAR related programming. NASCAR is planning to launch locally themed ads on local Fox and NBC affiliates in NASCAR markets such as Atlanta, Charlotte, Kansas City, and Orlando/Daytona and such cities as Cleveland, Milwaukee, Raleigh, and Tampa where NASCAR doesn’t yet race. NASCARS’ overall marketing goal will be to tell the stories of its drivers and accompanying teams in hopes of bringing in new fans to the sports while retaining its core fan base.

The Alliance of American Football league is underway and the ratings show that it’s an early hit. The AAF debuted on February 9 on CBS. Surprisingly, according to Yahoo Sports, the new football league was able to pull off better television overnight ratings than a Houston Rockets vs. Oklahoma City Thunder NBA matchup and generally received positive reviews during its opening week. Although the early 2.1 overnight rating beat out the NBA numbers, there was certainly more curiosity about the AAF than a regular-season NBA game. In the past other startup football leagues such as the USFL and XFL performed well at the beginning before excitement quickly fizzled. The challenge for the AAF will be to keep the good times rolling as ratings will be harder to come by when the games are on CBS Sports Network and not CBS in primetime. Ultimately, compelling football will be what keeps fans engaged long term. The AAF will also be competing with the other new football league, the XFL, which is set to launch some time during 2020. The AAF will have to outperform other new football leagues in addition to well-established sports institutions such as the NBA and MLB during the spring and summer months.

Sports entities raise the bar on stylish celebrations of Black History Month. CBS Sports Network celebrates Black History Month with the premiere of “Althea & Arthur,” a documentary highlighting the legacies of Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe on February 18. The documentary is narrated by Tony Award winning actress Phylicia Rashad and chronicles the impact Gibson and Ashe made to the world of tennis and in advancing civil rights in America during a time of racism and segregation. In Phoenix, The Arizona Republic notes the Suns’ Mikal Bridges, Josh Jackson, Kelly Oubre, and Richaun Holmes have "each worn themed sneakers in February" to celebrate Black History Month. The shoes will be made "available for purchase at the end of the month with the proceeds benefiting Elevate Phoenix, a local non-profit that works with youth." The Suns "commissioned designers to create the custom sneakers, but the players had a say in the theme.”

The PGA Tour continues to drive philanthropy. Last week, insurance firm Burns & Wilcox launched its signature philanthropic initiative Champions & Charities with brand ambassadors Webb Simpson and Jimmy Walker. The company will give a minimum of $50,000 to the charity of the golfers' choice. And the just-completed PGA Tour Genesis Open "will get a big upgrade" beginning in 2020, according to sources, in no small part because of its affiliation with Tiger Woods’ foundation. According to ESPN, the event held at Riviera Country Club and run by Woods' foundation will receive “elevated status,” which means it will have a significantly higher purse – growing to $9.3 million, as well as offer a three-year PGA Tour exemption to the winner (up from two years), and have an invitational field" of 120 players rather than 144. The best thing that Woods could do to boost its prominence? Win the event.

As the 2019 NASCAR season opens at Daytona, Dale Earnhardt Jr. volunteered on a chainsaw crew as they "cleaned up debris from Hurricane Michael" in Panama City, Florida. According to the Charlotte Observer, Earnhardt "joined a crew from Team Rubicon, the non-profit group of veterans that teams with first responders.” Likewise, NASCAR driver Kurt Busch will "pay for and give away 100 tickets" for each Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race this season to military members and veterans. The giveaway is in "partnership with the Veterans Tickets Foundation." NASCAR continues to be a team player and major contributor off the racetrack as well as working hard to keep sports fans’ focus on its racing circuit, state of the art facilities likeD, and high profile drivers.

USA BMX, Mongoose team up For STEM education initiative. USA BMX has signed a deal with the Mongoose bicycle brand to bring science, math, engineering and technology training to U.S. schools in a joint program that is projected to reach 225,000 students in 2019. Additionally, according to Sports Business Journal, Mongoose has hired nine-time USA BMX amateur national champion and USA BMX Foundation Marketing Coordinator Justin Posey as a sponsored rider and education ambassador. Interestingly, the Mongoose bicycle brand is owned by Pacific Cycle, a division of Montreal-based Dorel Industries.

#10 #10towatch

0 notes

asfeedin · 5 years ago

Text

The Hubble Space Telescope just turned 30, and it’s working better than ever

Hubble zooms in for an up-close look at star assembly in one of the galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. (NASA, ESA and STScI/)

On April 24, 1990, the Space Shuttle Discovery blasted off from Florida with an instrument that would forever divide astronomy into two eras: the time before space telescopes, and the time after.

From its perch above Earth’s fuzzy atmosphere, the Hubble Space Telescope has spent three decades peering into the darkness, indiscriminately collecting whatever stray light beams found their way to its giant mirror. From local moons, to distant planets, exploding stars, and far off galaxies, the world’s first and best-known space telescope has snapped images of them all, producing a voluminous gallery topping 1.4 million observations. Now NASA is celebrating the 30th anniversary of Hubble’s launch with one more picture—and it’s a doozy.

Taken earlier this year specifically to commemorate the observatory’s milestone, the image captures stars being constructed from gas swirling in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy circling our own that can be seen in the skies of the southern hemisphere. The blazing young stars in the center each outweigh our sun by a factor of ten, and the blue cloud (colors indicate different gas types) represents detritus expelled from one star.

“It just reminds us of the beauty of our universe, and the ongoing activity,” says Jennifer Wiseman, a NASA astrophysicist and the senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope.

It’s hard to overstate—or even state—how deeply Hubble has transformed astronomy with its eagle eye. Free from the blurring effects of Earth’s atmosphere, the telescope can do the equivalent of spotting clouds of fireflies in Tokyo from Washington D.C., or seeing an individual human hair from a mile away. Ground-based telescopes struggle to reach a tenth of that precision.

And the telescope has used that vision to observe the universe near and far. Astronomers have used Hubble to discover possible geysers of water on Europa, take videos of auroras on Jupiter, snap pictures of exoplanets around other suns, watch stars and gas whip around black holes, and clock the expansion of the universe. “It’s rewritten the textbook in every area you care to look,” says Mark Clampin, NASA’s Director of the Sciences and Exploration Directorate.

It’s a remarkable legacy, especially considering that the wunderkind observatory started off its career in ignominious failure.

A nearly eight-foot mirror lies at the heart of the spacecraft, expertly ground to exquisite smoothness. But tragically, it’s the wrong shape. During manufacturing, engineers measured its curvature with two different tools, one older manual instrument and a newer laser-based device. The first indicated that the mirror was flawed while the second suggested it had the right form, and rather than investigate the disagreement the team chose to believe the high-tech doohickey. “If you’re over budget and behind schedule and people are mad at you, there’s a temptation to talk yourself into an answer you like,” said astronaut Kathryn Sullivan during a lecture at the Symphony Space performing arts center in New York City on Dec. 3, 2019.

The one-millimeter “spherical aberration,” as the flaw came to be called, was imperceptible to the human eye, but it wrecked Hubble’s vision. NASA knew immediately that it had a problem when their shiny new space telescope, the product of decades of planning and $4.7 billion at the time of launch, returned pictures with sharp centers but blurry halos. Astronomers ran to mathematics textbooks to find techniques to correct their data and make the best of a bad situation, while the mission became a national laughingstock. A young Jay Leno once joked on late night that the government should “shoot down” Hubble and “put the thing out of its misery.”

But NASA had another idea. Mission planners had entwined the telescope’s design with that of the Space Shuttle program, making the machine serviceable by astronauts. After three years of scrambling, the engineers designed a second mirror that could correct the aberration of the first like a pair of glasses, and a team of astronauts (including Sullivan) launched to slot it into place. The astronauts also installed a new infrared camera, starting a tradition of upgrading Hubble’s components that would span five missions. “That has left us with a new observatory every time they have visited,” Wiseman says.

So even as Hubble aged, many of its parts have gotten facelifts. Clampin says that the mirrors, supports, and many electronics boxes are original, but the solar panels, batteries, instruments, reaction wheels (for pointing), and computers have all been upgraded—some as recently as 2009. The Space Shuttle program has since ended so Hubble now flies beyond our reach. But if the telescope could somehow return to Earth, it would actually weigh 3,000 pounds more than it did at launch.

The astronomical community has put all that hardware to good use. Hubble beams down about 19 gigabytes of data every week—the equivalent of six hours of HD Netflix binging. Data from the telescope has led to more than 17,000 journal articles, with more than 1,000 publications last year. Researchers compete fiercely for access to the machine with roughly 90% of proposals being rejected.

Amongst the essentially innumerable scientific highlights, Wiseman and Clampin both single out two fields that Hubble has particularly revolutionized: exoplanet science and cosmology.

When Hubble launched, five years before the first exoplanet was discovered through indirect means, astronomers debated whether the telescope would be able spot them directly, Clampin recalls. It’s seen a few, mostly hot young worlds still glowing from the heat of formation, but Hubble’s real success lies in capturing light filtering through exoplanet atmospheres as they pass in front of their star. This technique, which didn’t even exist when engineers built Hubble, has since been employed to discover liquid water and perhaps even clouds on alien worlds. “If you asked anybody 30 years ago if they thought that was possible,” Clampin says, “they’d have thought you were nuts.”

But Hubble’s greatest superpower may be its ability to peer into past, because of the way the speed of light yolks distance to time. The telescope’s deep field research program has stared longer and longer at dark patches of space, zooming into tiny spots of sky to resolve the thousands of galaxies each contains. Light from the farthest galaxies took billions of years to reach us, and with intense squinting Hubble has been able to see galaxies that existed a few hundred million years after the big bang. The universe back then, at just a few percent of its current age, was a hot mess. “As you look further and further back in time, you can see more and more violence,” Clampin says. “You don’t have galaxy-looking galaxies anymore. They’re all train wrecks,” tearing through each other at high speeds.

Cosmologists have long understood that getting from the smooth soup produced by the big bang to today’s lumpy universe of stars and planets involved a lot of growing up. But Hubble has been able to produce direct images showing exactly how galaxies have matured over the eons, helping researchers measure the age of the universe and discover the expanding influence of dark energy. It’s the difference between assuming your friend must have had some wild college years, and then getting access to their photo library. “That’s been something Hubble has really helped us understand,” Wiseman says. “How the universe has changed and progressed over time to being the life-friendly place that we enjoy, at least on one planet.”

As astronomers move into the fourth decade of the space telescope era, they look forward to a host of new discoveries from instruments young and old. After its 2009 servicing, Hubble remains at the top of its scientific game, and Wiseman expects that it may live to see its 40th anniversary.

Soon joining Hubble in the sky, possibly even next year, will be the highly anticipated James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which will complement Hubble’s abilities with more reflecting area to collect light and an ability to see a wider variety of infrared colors. Astronomers expect the JWST will detect new elements in exoplanet atmospheres (including, just maybe, cocktails indicative of alien life), as well as even younger galaxies.

Looking farther ahead, the launch of the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFISRT) in the middle of the decade could let cosmologists study the distant past more broadly. “Think of the Hubble deep fields as at little thumbnails,” Clampin says. “WFIRST will give you the full HD TV view of these regions.”

These up and coming space telescopes will build on Hubble’s legacy, but they will also be products of it. Clampin, who has been deeply involved in the assembly of the JWST, says that engineers now insist on getting identical mirror measurements from at least two different tools as to not repeat Hubble’s mistake. They’ve even had to ask companies to build them custom devices just for that purpose.

As NASA’s growing fleet of space telescopes continues to expand our view of the universe, one unforgettable motto of the Hubble era will undoubtedly live on: Measure twice, launch once.

Source link

Tags: 30, Hubble, space, telescope, turned, working

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2KxS3Qh via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress #Asfeed.in #asfeed #asfeedin #asfeed blog

0 notes

scootoaster · 5 years ago

Text

The Hubble Space Telescope just turned 30, and it’s working better than ever

Hubble zooms in for an up-close look at star assembly in one of the galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. (NASA, ESA and STScI/)

On April 24, 1990, the Space Shuttle Discovery blasted off from Florida with an instrument that would forever divide astronomy into two eras: the time before space telescopes, and the time after.

“It just reminds us of the beauty of our universe, and the ongoing activity,” says Jennifer Wiseman, a NASA astrophysicist and the senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope.

And the telescope has used that vision to observe the universe near and far. Astronomers have used Hubble to discover possible geysers of water on Europa, take videos of auroras on Jupiter, snap pictures of exoplanets around other suns, watch stars and gas whip around black holes, and clock the expansion of the universe. “It's rewritten the textbook in every area you care to look,” says Mark Clampin, NASA’s Director of the Sciences and Exploration Directorate.

It’s a remarkable legacy, especially considering that the wunderkind observatory started off its career in ignominious failure.

Amongst the essentially innumerable scientific highlights, Wiseman and Clampin both single out two fields that Hubble has particularly revolutionized: exoplanet science and cosmology.

As NASA’s growing fleet of space telescopes continues to expand our view of the universe, one unforgettable motto of the Hubble era will undoubtedly live on: Measure twice, launch once.

0 notes

dippedanddripped · 5 years ago

Link

GAMING

Sep 26, 2019By

Emily Engle

Professional gaming has taken the world by storm over the past couple of years. Colleges are offering scholarships to aspiring esports stars, and dedicated esports stadiums are popping up all over the world. The recent Fortnite World Cup awarded $30 million USD in total prize money, and both the Olympics and ESPN have now sanctioned esports. According to Newzoo’s 2019 Global Esports Market Report, YouTube and Twitch audiences for esports were larger than the viewership of HBO, Netflix and ESPN combined in 2018. In short, esports are beginning to look and feel a lot like a traditional sports — and with that comes big sponsorship money pouring in.

Everyone from automaker Nissan to rapper Offset wants a piece of the esports pie, but it’s sportswear brands that stand to make the greatest profit and, subsequently, are making the biggest waves. Companies like adidas and Nike have been quietly beginning to work alongside various esports teams, but adidas Originals made headlines when it signed a partnership with professional Fortnite player Tyler Blevins, better known as Ninja, marking the brand’s first endorsement deal with an individual esports player. “We are exploring what we might have to offer gamers to enhance game performance, or even possibly bring them closer to the gameplay itself,” adidas Originals said in a statement to HYPEBEAST.

Thanks in part to free streaming platforms like Twitch, which brings in 15 million daily viewers alone, esports stars like Ninja have managed to stand out among millions of players based on personality and appearance. After garnering an audience of around 14.6 million followers on Twitch, Ninja recently signed a deal with Microsoft, promising to exclusively stream his gameplay on Twitch’s competitor platform Mixer, where he amassed over 1.5 million subscribers and two million follows in just two weeks. Earlier this year, Fortnite creator Epic Games announced that its platform has more than 250 million registered accounts — that’s two-thirds the size of the US population. “In my mind [esports are] no different than any other sport or craft. You gotta put the time in to it if you love it and want to truly be one of the best,” Ninja tells HYPEBEAST.

On social media, Ninja commands an Instagram following of around 14.7 million individuals and growing, surpassing famous NBA players of the same age like Tristan Thompson by millions. “What I’ve found is that esports fans are just as passionate about their teams as traditional sports fans,” says designer Maxwell Osbourne of streetwear label Public School. “It’s amazing to see how they look up to their favorite players the same way NBA fans idolize LeBron James or Steph Curry.”

“[I'd] rather be the first brand looking at esports than the twelfth brand looking at basketball.”

Esports do differ from traditional sports in at least one key way, however. Anyone with access to a computer and the internet can play, making it easier for those outside of the professional industry to understand and invest in the movement. “We’re seeing the smartest, most forward-thinking investors and organizations in sports lean into the movement, says Blake Lawrence, CEO of athlete marketing platform opendorse. “With their support, the ceiling is pretty high.

Among the list of esports admirers outside of the industry is rapper Offset, who’s known to play games like Call of Duty and NBA 2K to unwind outside of the public eye. Last month, the Atlanta rapper even claimed a stake in the industry by announcing his personal investment in popular esports team FaZe Clan, a monetary move he made because he believes in the players themselves. “The actual players, they’re like rock stars,” he says. “They’ve got great followings, they influence kids, and that’s what I do. It was just organic. These guys are cool.” In addition to Offset, Drake, Sean Combs and even Michael Jordan joined the list of many celebrities who invested in esports last year.

In addition to relatability, esports stars garner a desirable audience made up of 79% millennials — a demographic brands are eager to get their hands on. “For any company trying to reach the Gen Z and millennial-minded audience, streaming and esports is an enormous opportunity,” says Robert Cross, director, media and activation of Nissan North America, who also confirmed partnerships with Faze Clan and Call of Duty team OpTic Gaming earlier this year. “It’s just a massive audience of the hardest to reach demographic of young men, and they’re spending hours immersed in gaming,” echoes K-Swiss President Barney Waters. “The viewership of these big tournaments is bigger than the NBA Finals, and look at the time, money and energy that sneaker brands are spending there.”

Another draw for big brands looking to invest in esports is the potential to land the next big collaborator. “While certain market analysts would say YEEZYs have had little impact on adidas’ bottom line, it’s obvious the hype created by Kanye‘s involvement has stretched well beyond the sneaker, impacting the adidas’ brand perception and helping sales across the board,” says Lawrence. “I think Ninja [partnering with adidas Originals] could have a similar impact with this generation of esports fans.”

Along the same lines as sneaker releases like with YEEZYs, esports teams have begun experimenting with streetwear-esque product drops. Fortnite and Call of Duty team FaZe Clan offers its fans frequent merchandise drops that sell out almost instantly. The team recently hosted a pop-up at Stadium Goods NYC, which FaZe Clan Creative Director Erik Marino reports attracted hundreds of fans lining up days before the event and thousands flooding the space the day of. “NYPD had to shut down the event, but only after agreeing to extend a bit — as long as they could get pics with our pros to show their kids,” recalls Marino. “I’ve never seen lines like this in streetwear.” New York Excelsior had a similar experience when hosting its first pop-up shop, which released multiple collaborations between the professional Overwatch team and brands like UNDEFEATED, Nike, Champion, Levi’s and New Era.

“Esports fans are hungry for more streetwear apparel that looks great, but also serves a functional need for their daily lifestyle as gamers”

The demand for esports related merchandise is clearly alive and well, however brands are still discovering what it is esports fans and athletes are actually looking for. Most would imagine esports to be a sedentary and immobile activity, but it turns out players at all levels are seeking a healthy mix of comfort, style and performance apparel and gear. “Everybody loves to look good, but we also want to be comfortable and able to get into the game,” says Ninja. “Esports fans are hungry for more streetwear apparel that looks great, but also serves a functional need for their daily lifestyle as gamers,” echoes Osbourne.

Brands like Public School and esports organization Andbox are leading the charge when it comes to performance apparel for esports players. The two brands recently collaborated on a collection of performance windbreakers, fleeces, lounge pants, jerseys and T-shirts, featuring design details that can enhance a player’s game. “The hoodies from our first Andbox collection have nylon patches on the back of the sleeves to decrease drag and friction when someone is moving a computer mouse across the table,” explains Osbourne. “Features like that are essential for this community.”

ANDBOX

K-Swiss also tested out performance gear for esports players with its One Tap Esports Shoe designed in collaboration with multi-game esports team Immortals. For the iconic sportswear brand, the decision to not only invest in but to create product within the esports space stemmed from equal parts brand alignment strategy and pure interest. Waters says that beyond jumping on the chance to have the “first-mover advantage” in the emerging field, he has a vested interest, “in anything progressive, as a counter-weight to K-Swiss’ perception as a heritage brand,” noting that because sportswear brands are always looking for performance-inspired product design, he’d “rather be the first brand looking at esports than the twelfth brand looking at basketball.”

Performance gear fills one void in the esports apparel realm, but Co-Founder of Culture Group Michael Patent and his team noticed an even larger gap when it comes to overall esports team identity. Football players have kits, basketball players have jerseys, but esports players were lacking a way to communicate team identity to each other and to fans. As a result of this realization, Culture Group drove a partnership between Riot Games and Nike China to create a cultural identity for League of Legends players through lifestyle apparel.

K-SWISS

Patent sees the ongoing need for esports team identity as an open invitation for someone within the space to create a new brand that will dominate, similar to to the beginnings of today’s heritage sportswear brands. “Take brands like Billabong and Vans for example, which emanated from skate and surf, he explains. “We will see a global apparel brand emerge from an esports specific organization.”

“Esports teams and athletes have suffered from a lack of brand identity and cultural resonance,” he continues. “If you look back into the ‘80s and ‘90s at iconic brands and campaigns like ‘Bo Knows’ in ’89, the launch of the Jordan Brand in ’84, or the impact of Team USA’s basketball jersey in 1992, you see the role that brands have played in driving a cultural conversation. The same will happen in esports.”

“It will only be a matter of time until we see luxury brands enter esports.”

As for the future of sportswear and esports’ relationship, experts predict it will only continue to expand. “This is all early adoption still; I feel the market will continue to grow and the best of the best will rise to the top,” says Marino. But in order to find success as a brand entering the esports space, Ninja notes that, “the challenge will always be finding individuals that really fit the spirit of your brand,” and that brands will really need to “focus their time and energy on folks who can truly build and engage a community.”

Public School and Andbox’s collection marked one of the first crossovers between luxury streetwear and esports apparel, and Marino notes that he doesn’t see higher-end designers shying away from the industry anytime soon. “It’s not just heritage sportswear brands [like Nike or K-Swiss] that have an interest in collaborating with the esports space,” he says. “More independent designers and higher-end streetwear brands are also reaching out to FaZe Clan.” The team has previously worked on a project with Siberia Hills, and Marino has confirmed with us a FaZe Clan x Warren Lotas project dropping this fall, as well as a collaboration with Kappa on the way. “It will only be a matter of time until we see luxury brands enter esports,” echoes Patent.

Just like any company in the apparel space, though, Marino wants to drive home that “there will be teams, organizations and players that excel in building their brands, and there will be those that don’t.” He continues to detail what factors play into the success of a brand in a new space, stating that, “the success of any particular esports team, organization or player in relation to apparel is still dependent on organic growth in building a fan base and brand strategy.” From a player’s perspective, Ninja adds that he hopes that as brands enter the space, they will do so “with gamers, instead of making a weak attempt at ‘targeting’ the community.”

Authenticity will be key to capturing the hearts and wallets of the gaming community because as Ninja notes, “gaming is a massive community full of passionate people both at the competitive and hobbyist levels, but too often they don’t get to see folks like us represented in the mainstream culture.” The community needs an authentic, inclusive voice in the apparel space, and the esports star is hopeful that his collaboration with adidas Originals will be a step in the right direction. As Ninja himself says, “It’s not just about Ninja, or even just about gaming—whether you’re a gamer, running back, soccer player, musician, doctor, or entrepreneur, we’re telling the story of the grind, the thousands of hours of work that it takes to chase and catch your wave. Nothing happens overnight.”

#esports #faze clan #public school #kswiss #adidas #riot games #ninja #streetwear blog #fashion blog #andbox #gaming

0 notes

reneeacaseyfl · 5 years ago

Text

World of Warcraft: Rise of Azshara review — showers players with fun after a long dry spell

World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment’s massively multiplayer RPG, spent most of this spring in a deep content drought. Rise of Azshara, one of the most-ambitious content patches ever in the game, seeks to drown players in new content.

The patch offers two new significant zones of content with new reputations, types of encounters, islands, the reintroduction of flying, an uplift to the crafting system that includes new leveling and crafted items, and a host of other changes big and small.

Two weeks after its initial launch, on July 9, Blizzard released a new eight-boss raid dungeon, Azshara’s Eternal Palace; and an eight-boss, five-player “megadungeon,” Operation: Mechagon, something that hasn’t been seen since the days of Return to Karazhan.

Since that time I’ve reached exalted reputation with both factions and regained the ability to fly; experienced every piece of new content the zones had to offer; completed the raid dungeon on Normal and Heroic difficulty; completed the new megadungeon on normal and hard mode; done all PvP battlegrounds and open-world competition; done the new Heroic-difficulty Warfront; completed the new islands; maxed out new crafting skills; gotten to Heart of Azeroth level 58, and picked up major and minor traits along the way; and generally spent far too much time playing, like a pig in the newly-rejuvenated mud.

Overall, Rise of Azshara is just what Warcraft needed: a long-overdue shot in the arm of new and novel content. While not perfect, it presents happy players with so many options that in some cases, it feels like going from starving to becoming overstuffed with things to do.

Above: Mechagon is one of two new zones.

Image Credit: Blizzard

What you’ll like

New zones and content unfold as you go

A nice extension to World of Warcraft’s storyline leads you into two new zones: Nazjatar, the until-recently-underwater home of the evil Naga snake-people empire, and the island of Mechagon, home to mecha-gnomes and the Rustbolt Resistance. In each, the more you do, the more there is to do. Unlock reputation with the Resistance and more quests open up; loot rare items and you’ll have things you can craft and, more importantly, things you can do. In Nazjatar, you’ll build experience with your chosen bodyguard, and as you do, more quests and storyline will open to you.

Even with this careful approach, the Rise of Azshara patch has an overwhelming amount of content. This unfolding-style reveal of new things to do makes that deluge exciting and challenging, instead of overwhelming, and Blizzard’s design does it with subtlety and grace.

New group content for PvE players

The Eternal Palace raid and Operation: Mechagon megadungeon are two of the best instances Blizzard has ever created. Both do an exceptional job of making the environment part of the encounter; while there are still plenty of boss battles that (sometimes literally) trap you in a flat arena, most involve tricksy bits of technology that use your surroundings to put you in peril or just make the fights more immersive.

In Operation: Mechagon, the five-player, eight-boss megadungeon, you’ll climb through trash piles and fight battling robots in an area that includes BattleBots-style hammers and saws that come up from the floor. In the Eternal Palace raid, an underwater boss is (finally!) extraordinarily well-designed, with the Blackwater Behemoth using platforms and jetstreams and the need for breath and healing to challenge your group. Za’qul offers three “phases” existing simultaneously on a single platform, forcing players to hop from one phase to the next and back again to defeat the bad guy.

Both instances are incredibly enjoyable, and the difficulty seems well-tuned. Eternal Palace is a bit easier than Battle for Dazar’alor, at least on Normal and Heroic difficulties, but poses a good challenge for groups, particularly in Mythic. Operation: Mechagon is difficult, but not impossible, on its basic Mythic difficulty; and Hard Mode offers some terrific challenges based on your group’s ability to handle mechanics, not just the power of your gear.

Above: The new Heart of Azeroth.

Image Credit: Blizzard

The new Azerite essences system

Azerite armor disappointed players in Battle for Azeroth. It was the successor to the incredibly fun legendary weapon system in Legion, and it didn’t fulfill its promise. Instead, players had to work over and over again in new levels of gear to earn the same traits they had in the last tier.

The new system uses interchangeable “essences” on players’ Heart of Azeroth neckpieces, each with multiple ranks, and it’s been a hoot. Not only does leveling up those essences require nearly every type of gameplay, giving players a million things to do to progress, but they’re balanced well enough that they feel slightly overpowered (yay!) and offer some real options to players swapping between different types of content.

The system isn’t perfect, and new essences are hopefully coming along as we slurp up all this delicious new gameplay, but it’s a huge improvement and works smoothly.

Professions and pets and achievements and mounts

Rise of Azshara’s meat lies in how much there is to do in nearly every aspect of the game. Professions got 25 new skill levels and a pile of new recipes, earned in a wide variety of places. New pets and mounts and rare spawns and achievements and hidden tricks to obtain them are stuffed into this patch. New islands and PvP battles and even new types of daily quest mechanics added to the variety.

This content update pony performs more than just a few tricks. It gives players an overwhelming, wonderful pile of things to do. In an ideal world, this is what every patch would feel like.

What you won’t like

Welcome back, grindy content

Rather than time-gate some of this content goodness — a system that generally frustrates the most committed players — Blizzard returned to a more-grindy system this time around. While unlocking some content does require time, whether it’s to increase the experience of your bodyguards in Nazjatar or your reputation with the factions in both zones, much of it can be ground out a little at a time if you want to … which means many players did.

Surprise quests sometimes lead to missing out

Rise of Azshara doesn’t hold your hand. Breadcrumbs quests almost don’t exist, so knowing where to go and what to do can be a challenge. Some content isn’t identified anywhere, so either careful scrutiny of third-party guides or random activity, such as kill every neutral mob in a zone, turn out to be your options for finding everything. The Secret-Finding Discord has been working overtime on this patch.

Sometimes that’s really fun, and makes the zones feel more alive. Killing neutral Algon creatures gives you two mana pearls you can use to upgrade Benthic gear, and eventually spawns a rare monster? Charming a critter in the open world and dragging it to another mob can net you a pet or activate a rare? Neat!

But sometimes it results in missing out on major parts of the content. The most egregious example was Chromie’s “Alternate Timeline” in Mechagon. This fun questline sent you into an alternate future for the zone, where you did a couple of quests and got to see the island in a new light. It was a blast.

But if you didn’t read any guides and didn’t get lucky with the drop for a set of plans for an item that would let you return, you soon discovered that while other players could return to the Alternate Timeline day after day, doing additional quests that got them additional reputation, you had literally no way to return or to correct the problem until Chromie herself returned, days later.

Above: Queen Azshara.

Image Credit: Blizzard

Faction imbalance continues to get worse in PvP and PvE content

While Horde and Alliance populations are roughly equal overall in World of Warcraft, the percentage of players taking advantage of end-game content (raids, PvP battlegrounds, open world PvP content, high-end Mythic Plus dungeon runs) is overwhelmingly imbalanced. Horde outnumber Alliance on leaderboards for Mythic raids and dungeons more than 6:1, a problem that only worsens as players swap factions after having difficulty finding guilds and groups.

Rise of Azshara included some truly fun open-world PvP encounters, which form the core of new PvP currency systems. The Battle for Nazjatar was supposed to pit Alliance and Horde players against each other for control of the zone and currency rewards, for example. Instead, the imbalance was so extreme that either Horde won the battle over and over again as raids formed in zones to capture those objectives, pulling people in from multiple shards; or faced no competition at all, because there were so many of them that they ended up in shards of their own, with not a single Alliance player in sight.

Eventually, the event was changed so that it wouldn’t even spawn if the shard was imbalanced, instead presenting a much less-rewarding PvE option. The Mechagon Fight Club treasure chest was similarly removed from an achievement altogether.

Overwhelming high-end faction imbalance makes Rise of Azshara less fun for both factions in PvP, and for Alliance players who struggle to find groups in high-end PvE dungeons and raids.

Bye bye, bag space

Everything takes up bag space now. PvP currency. Things to summon other things. Things that are clearly quest items. Parts that combine into other quest items or essences. Even with a full slate of 32-slot bags, it requires daily inventory maintenance, which is not fun gameplay.

Conclusion

This is the patch that Warcraft should have received several months ago. There were signs that at least some of the content was planned to go out earlier; the in-game “new things to do” screen enticed players to join Heroic Warfronts weeks before they were actually available, for example, before it was quietly changed.

That said, Rise of Azshara and Season 3 present an amazing amount of options for current, new, and returning characters, and most of them engage you and offer some surprising fun. The grindy bits aren’t too horrible, and as you progress through the zones, you unlock additional things to do. The raid and the megadungeon are well designed, the Heroic Warfront certainly feels a ton more fun than the standard setup, and while the crafting system needs a significant balance pass, the new systems are generally fun and rewarding.

Judged on its own merits, this is one of the best patches the game has ever seen. In the overall context, however, it feels not-to-little but a-lot-too-late. Battle for Azeroth needs more love that patches like Rise of Azshara provide.

Score: 95/100

Credit: Source link

The post World of Warcraft: Rise of Azshara review — showers players with fun after a long dry spell appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/world-of-warcraft-rise-of-azshara-review-showers-players-with-fun-after-a-long-dry-spell/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=world-of-warcraft-rise-of-azshara-review-showers-players-with-fun-after-a-long-dry-spell from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186524026287

0 notes

velmaemyers88 · 5 years ago

Text

World of Warcraft: Rise of Azshara review — showers players with fun after a long dry spell

Above: Mechagon is one of two new zones.

Image Credit: Blizzard

What you’ll like

New zones and content unfold as you go

New group content for PvE players

Above: The new Heart of Azeroth.

Image Credit: Blizzard

The new Azerite essences system

The system isn’t perfect, and new essences are hopefully coming along as we slurp up all this delicious new gameplay, but it’s a huge improvement and works smoothly.

Professions and pets and achievements and mounts

This content update pony performs more than just a few tricks. It gives players an overwhelming, wonderful pile of things to do. In an ideal world, this is what every patch would feel like.

What you won’t like

Welcome back, grindy content

Surprise quests sometimes lead to missing out

Above: Queen Azshara.

Image Credit: Blizzard

Faction imbalance continues to get worse in PvP and PvE content

Overwhelming high-end faction imbalance makes Rise of Azshara less fun for both factions in PvP, and for Alliance players who struggle to find groups in high-end PvE dungeons and raids.

Bye bye, bag space

Conclusion

Score: 95/100

Credit: Source link

The post World of Warcraft: Rise of Azshara review — showers players with fun after a long dry spell appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

0 notes

weeklyreviewer · 5 years ago

Text

World of Warcraft: Rise of Azshara review — showers players with fun after a long dry spell

Above: Mechagon is one of two new zones.

Image Credit: Blizzard

What you’ll like

New zones and content unfold as you go

New group content for PvE players

Above: The new Heart of Azeroth.

Image Credit: Blizzard

The new Azerite essences system

The system isn’t perfect, and new essences are hopefully coming along as we slurp up all this delicious new gameplay, but it’s a huge improvement and works smoothly.

Professions and pets and achievements and mounts

This content update pony performs more than just a few tricks. It gives players an overwhelming, wonderful pile of things to do. In an ideal world, this is what every patch would feel like.

What you won’t like

Welcome back, grindy content

Surprise quests sometimes lead to missing out

Above: Queen Azshara.

Image Credit: Blizzard

Faction imbalance continues to get worse in PvP and PvE content

Overwhelming high-end faction imbalance makes Rise of Azshara less fun for both factions in PvP, and for Alliance players who struggle to find groups in high-end PvE dungeons and raids.

Bye bye, bag space

Conclusion

Score: 95/100

Credit: Source link

The post World of Warcraft: Rise of Azshara review — showers players with fun after a long dry spell appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

0 notes

talldarknsexy · 6 years ago

Text

Sudan: Cycling the Sahara

Crossing the border to Sudan was a huge relief. Everything was even less developed. And I waited in the immigration building with the one other tourist and the squeaking fan rotating slowly overhead. Susan's ATMs do not connect with the outside world and so, the only option is to bring hard currency in US dollars. Not having Sudanese pounds yet, and having to pay a registration fee, the government official had his friend lead me to the black market money changer in order to get 50:1 as opposed to the 25:1 that the banks offer as it is an artificially controlled currency. I rode into Sudan and was able to breathe so much easier. Ethiopia has about 100 million people as opposed to Sudan's 13 million (in a larger land mass.) At the first roadside opportunity, I pulled over and had some goat meat at a local restaurant. After about 20 minutes, I'd realized that there was no crowd around me, no beggars, and no children staring at me. It was serene. For about 2 hours I laid there on one of their benches. I was listening to a podcast on my phone pressed against my ear when I noticed people started to take notice and act unusual. Eventually, an English speaker, probably police came up and asked me "Camera?!" It took me a minute to understand what he was asking and convinced him no, I wasn't filming, just listening to audio and he was appeased. But nonetheless, I realized there was an oppressive backwards reason why I felt so free here. Anyways, I set off and getting into sunset was eagerly looking for a place to camp. In the distance I spotted something unusual. I couldn't tell if it was a cycletourist, two motorcycles, or a fucking donkey and a wheelbarrow. Anyways, it turned out to be Alex and Merlin, two British lads on a tandem whom I'd been following on their journey, training local medical workers on optical medical devices. This was their first long bike trip. They flagged down a truck for water and we camped in the bush off the road. I had a few days riding to the capital of Khartoum. Lots of desert, but in the south there's plenty more agriculture. The Sudanese are incredible friendly and helpful. They'll invite you for tea and meals and won't let you pay. And if here, unlike much of Africa, you're in need of something like directions or advice, they'll actually help you without looking for something in return. Because of a collapsing currency, everything was also incredibly cheap. Meals were usually 50-60c though we're typically just bean paste and flatbread. Petrol is cheaper than bottled water and costs something like 50c/gallon (12c/L) And a hotel could be something like $3-$5. In Wad Madani I paid $6 and had a suite with king sized bed, air con, refrigerator, and kitchen. In Khartoum, I reached the youth hostel and to camp there was $1. I Had a few days to kill and so went to the pool, changed more dollars, and visited Ahmed, a Syrian guy I'd met a few days prior. I got a taxi to his town and met up with his friends. Some were Sudanese, but most were Syrian or Yemenite. Sudan has since welcomed refugees from various crises. We had dinner, went to a shisha bar, and chatted, largely through google translate voice. They were good fun and very generous hosts. It got late though and they wouldn't let me take a taxi back so I crashed at their place. It was fairly basic and I'm used to that, but on my own terms and with a mosquito net or tent, neither of which I had. They'd all gotten malaria at least once, so I didn't get much sleep. Up all night in a room with 5 other guys, I realized I was having a sober sleepover with 5 ~25 yr old (presumable) virgins. Something I hadn't experienced in probably 15 years. Gracious for their generosity and friendship, but realizing maybe it was time to start thinking past Sudan. Indeed, even bringing up the idea of girls or women to guys here sent them into giggles. But the more mature ones like to ask you if you fancy Sudanese woman. I have no fucking idea I tell them... I've never seen more than their eyes, let alone talked to one! On Friday in Kharthoum I went to see the Sufi dancers. It's a tradition that has been going on for centuries influenced by the Ottoman Empire, but with its own distinct Sudanese practices. The Sufis burn frankincense, sing, chant, dance, and some will spin on axis until they fall down in order to achieve a vertigo of feeling closer to God. As this is a popular tourist attraction, it attracted all the tourists in Khartoum. About 15 to be exact... It was high season after all. Some I'd met there lived there for work though, and to get back to the city I shared a taxi with 3 Scandinavian embassy workers. It was interesting to hear some very informed intelligent outside, but inside perspectives on the Sudanese Government as well as those of surrounding countries. Also, them being embassy employees, had a stash of contraband alcohol. We brought some pizza up to their rooftop and I ate and sipped champagne with tall, attractive, whiter-than-white, Scandinavian folks. A bizarre, albeit enjoyable experience that was highly unexpected. On the walk back I met three American cyclists just on the street. It was probably 10pm, but they were headed to camp at the same hostel. They'd gotten Sudanese visas at home and it had cost them almost $250 as opposed to the $70 I'd paid. The next day I set off as I was looking to meet up with Will and Wendy, an older cyclist couple of rode with briefly in East Africa. I was now entering the Bayuda desert. A very desolate section of the Sahara that strays from the Nile. Here things were a bit more remote and I carried quite a bit more water and food. Some stretches were flat, hot, and unstimulating. Others passed through varied terrain with desert scrub or picturesque dunes. I'd listen to music or podcasts, but frankly after a few days, the Bayuda was quite mind numbing. I ended the third day riding into the sunset with Pink Floyd's Time playing as I watched the road continuously slip below the shimmering horizon. I felt like time indeed was standing still, and with the visual in front of me, could easily understand how people saw mirages. Only for me, my hallucinations were of eating Chipotle. Specifically a double wrapped chicken burrito: spanish rice, pinto, fried veggies, lettuce, salsa, corn, cheese, and sour cream. I spent days riding 10km/hr into the wind with occasional stops for water or fowl, a bean paste served with flatbread. In fact, this was about the only food I ever encountered on the road. And getting diarrhea one stretch, with only fowl as sustenance was like pouring gasoline on the fire. Somebody's idea of a cruel fucking joke. I had a solid day playing carnival games with a squat toilet and fertilizing patches of the desert, but soon enough I was fine. People in Sudan are incredibly welcoming. There's endless offers for chai, conversation, and selfies. And one day I was invited over by two Bedouin goat herders who were cooking lunch not too far from the road. It was an interesting exchange as they were both about my age, but didn't know a word of english. We cooked and ate and laughed at whatever and the younger one crashed trying to ride my bicycle. After a few days, I crossed back onto the main highway where there were more villages as it was on the Nile. There was one in particular that stuck out. On the side of the road, there were three kids and one launched a rock past me. This was rather unexpected and annoying so I stopped and hurled one back. Just in this one village, this reoccurred five times. The PTSD from Ethiopia finally kicked in on the last and I exploded, sprinting after a series of kids and sending rocks flying. These were isolated to just this one area, but for a few days still served to shatter the comfort and trust I'd had. This was usual for Ethiopia but very bizarre for Sudan given the authoritarian government/police/education. I was told later that a child's punishment for such activity was 20 lashings by camel hide. I did finally catch up with Will and Wendy in the town of Dongola. Maps.me brought me to their hotel or so I thought. It was a very nice building, but with no sign. I asked a teenager standing "Lord Hotel?" He gave me one of those Indian headbob answers and followed me over to help me get my bike through the gate. Upon rounding a corner, the un-burka'd woman's look on her shocked face was enough to assure me was in the wrongg place. Someone pointed me around the corner to a very obviously signed guesthouse. I spent a day off the bike with Wendy, Will, and Tomás, a cyclist headed south. I had tea, falafel, and chicken with them and spent a good time finishing the book Quondam that Alex and Merlin had given me. It was about an Irish guy who rode down Africa in 1980. It was an incredible journey and had been fascinating to travel through the same places in a now much different world, and on paved roads. I then passed the book on to Tomás as he was also Irish, the same age, traveling the same course, and meeting his girlfriend in the same place. It was another two days riding before I caught up with Will and Wendy again and we both stayed at a nice guesthouse along the Nile. The owner came by and offered me to join him and some workers for food. "Eat much" he insisted, "the night is now longer than day." The north was filled with interesting desert terrain. You could camp almost anywhere and it was mind boggling to stare out in one direction and know that there was absolutely no humanity for hundreds of miles. After another two days of this I reached the town of Wadi Halfa where Wendy and Will had arrived. I had a change of heart though and decided to take a longer ferry than they were planning. I was kinda burnt out and it went across lake Nasser to Egypt and cut out 3 days of windy desert riding with only one shop. Again, I wasn't originally planning on it, but I happened to arrive to the port just an hour before the ferry set off for the week. There was plenty of hoops to jump through. I bought the ticket from one line, luggage with another, another line for a form, another for customs, immigration, security, etc. This isn't too different from any other port of entry or airport, but in Sudan it's complicated by a foreign passport which almost everyone blankly stares at upside down. They'll invariably ask me my name, nationality, and details anyways, which will be transcribed to Arabic script. We took off as the sun set. The ferry was packed with some 200 Sudanese guys all headed to Egypt for work or trade. The young ones were eager to chat and I was invited down below for dinner as well We chatted, the older men prayed, and the janitor heaved out the buckets of trash off the stern. The good-intentioned holy man approached me later and introduced me to the way of Islam. I had a few questions on fate, marriage, and theology. But he was more interested in giving me examples on hand washing and how God determines on decision day whether you live or die- this I assured him was also represented in Judeo-Christian practices. And when I respectfully told him that I was in no way planning on converting to Islam, but wanted to know what takeaway was most important to be a better person... He told me to be Muslim. It was an interesting atmosphere- mostly all young men looking for better prospects in a different land. I had enjoyed my time in Sudan, the desert was pristine, the people unbelievably friendly, and the bean fowl was plentiful. But after 3 weeks, and less than $2 worth of hard currency left, I too was ready for a change and looking for new prospects as we made port the next day in Aswan.

0 notes

hinesbjerrum8-blog · 6 years ago

Text

A Warning For All Realm Royale Players

This is the year of battle royale games, and Cyanide & Happiness are seeking to get in on the action with Rapture Rejects. Beyond the most significant battle royale games in full release, there are a number of that are currently playable even though Realm Royale Download in development, with official launches planned for later this year. Fans can anticipate far more updates in the future as Hi-Rez appear to move Realm Royale out of the alpha phase, and head toward anything that will be released on PS4 and Xbox A single. Website can unlock the Liteshow skin and Battle Pass upgrades with today's shop update. The hit battle royale game stopped working at 9.06am UK time on Wednesday, June 27 - leaving players rather bored and confused. It is the very same story for Realm Royale on Nintendo Switch. Paladins is on that console, so success on Pc realm royale download will most likely mean a port to Nintendo's device as well. Even so, Switch ports have historically come later than those to PS4 or Xbox 1, so it'll most likely be a while just before we hear about a single. Fortnite Mobile is described as the complete Battle Royale experience with no compromises. If you have played Fortnite, then the fundamentals of Realm Royale will appear familiar to you. Instead of the Battle Bus, you begin realm royale download off in a zeppelin and skydive down onto the map. There is chests on the ground containing loot and a creeping fog that continually shrinks the map. You can queue up as solo, duo, or groups. Free to play MOBA Battlerite slipped the bonds of Early Access in 2017 and developer Stunlock Studios is now preparing for future updates, which contains a battle royale mode On a map 30 occasions bigger where i can downlaod realm royale than its current arenas, 20 players will clash duke it out employing Battlerite's cast of heroes. Battlerite Royale will be playable solo or in duos, and is planned to arrive this summer time. Realm Royale is a single of the most current games to dive into the massively successful Battle Royale genre. According to the firm, Fortnite Battle Royale became the largest free of charge-to-play console game of all time in terms of income and monthly active customers. Even though a lot of BR games and modes are being made how to download realm royale in response to PUBG's massive accomplishment, some have been in the works considering that just before Battlegrounds was even announced. Islands of Nyne, a initial-person only battle royale game, was crowdfunded on Kickstarter prior to PUBGs arrival. Coming as a surprise to absolutely nobody, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is the greatest Computer game of 2018. No doubt you have heard of it, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds - or PUBG for short - is a Battle Royale-style multiplayer shooter, in that you happen to be plonked on an island and pitted against one one more realm royale download in a fight to the death. Final man (or last team) standing wins. It's easy, effortless adequate to choose up and play with close friends, and provides nail-biting experiences no other game has brought to the table ahead of. Realm Royale was also an additional battle royale game that was offered to play at the Mixer booth. They have been holding a tournament where the player who gets very first spot would win their selection of an Xbox One Realm Royale Download or a PS4. Regrettably, we didn't win, but we did get a chance to play the game. The graphics strongly resembled Fortnite. Nevertheless, it had a a lot more medieval really feel, and there was no develop mode. Realm Royale is at the moment free-to-play, so fans don't have to worry about spending cash on joining the exciting. Battlefield five has also been rumoured, like Get in touch Realm Royale download with of Duty 4 Black Ops, to go up against Fortnite and PUBG with its personal Battle Royale mode. Realm Royale is in Early Access Alpha. UPDATE One particular: Following a period of server downtime, the new Realm Royale update and patch notes have been set reside. Fortnite's Battle Royale mode has confirmed to be quite well-liked, attracting more than ten million players in much less than two weeks. Naturally the battle royale genre is trending at the moment but helping Fornite's lead to is the fact that the game seems to play effectively on just about something. Even so, there will be those of you with older hardware looking to upgrade to enable high good quality visuals and our benchmarks must be handy right here. Maelstrom takes the battle royale notion and ships it to sea, where 15 players compete to be the last ship sailing in this fantasy naval combat game. Pick from humans, orcs, and dwarves, each Realm Royale Download with their own style of ship, and beware huge sea monsters who will sink you if you stray as well extended in the dead seas about the perimeter of the map's secure zone.

0 notes

rubbishwalks · 7 years ago

Text

#LitterWatch2017: Week 52

What a year it’s been for Off the Ground! We ran our first major campaign, Love Chippenham, which saw us launch the Residential Bin Scheme, design a ChippenGo game to show a different side of Chippenham, create bespoke posters for local businesses, put chalk trails in local parks, and encourage residents to adopt their own patch to keep clean. One of our fantastic volunteers also started Refill Chippenham, getting a number of local businesses on board to help cut down to single-use plastic bottles; pop by any of the participating companies to refill your reusable water bottle. In addition to all this, we also ran a handful of community clean ups and I’ve kept the blog and social media going while working to get my own business off the ground.

Ticking along in the background has been #LitterWatch2017, a science experiment to show that litter doesn’t just disappear. It’s been an eye-opening project.

My original hypothesis was proven more or less wrong: I fully expected the paper products to turn into a mess, the cardboard to break into pieces, and the plastic to potentially break into smaller pieces as well. However, with the exception of a few items, everything stayed put. Keep reading to find out what happened.

Water bottle: The label on the water bottle was blown off after a few months, but the bottle itself remains; it’s just a little dented from the few times the board toppled over in high winds. If you caught yesterday’s blog post, you’ll know that we have found nearly 80 different types of water bottle in Chippenham. What makes this so frustrating is that there’s a fairly simple solution to significantly help reduce the amount of single-use drinks packaging: encourage people to carry reusable bottles, and start a deposit scheme.

Sandwich Wrapper: This paper-like product proceeded to shrink in the rain and sun throughout the year, but has been unchanged for the past several months. The food may be fast to disappear, but the packaging isn’t.

Fry Container: This cardboard carton for McDonald’s chips was a bonus piece I collected in late December last year. It was bright red when the experiment started, but has almost turned completely white over the year. Besides fading in the sun and some damage from the nail holding the carton in place, it’s still hanging in there.

Napkin: This is the only piece on the board that was deliberately removed as it had broken into too many smaller pieces to safely stay put. It still took nearly seven weeks for it to break down to such an extent.

Coffee Cup: One of my bugbears: at 2.5 billion a year in the UK alone, the sheer number of disposable coffee cups that get tossed away is simply staggering. These products cannot be easily recycled, and they tend to turn into two pieces of litter if thrown from a car. This particular cup has swollen in the rain, grown a coat of mould, and looks rather battered from a combination of sun and gravity (i.e. the board falling over) … but it shows no signs of disintegrating. The plastic lid is starting to crack a bit, but whether that’s due to becoming more brittle in the sun or gravity, I’m not sure. Either way, it highlights the problem of plastic getting into the environment: one piece can easily become many.

Crisp Packet: This item did disappear, or, more precisely, went missing in action. It was blown off the board in a storm, never to be seen in my garden again (apologies to neighbours for this accidental litter). However, before it vanished, it was proving to be more or less indestructible: the only damage was cosmetic, caused by fading in the sun. In addition to glass bottles, plastic bottles, and aluminium cans, this is one item I would like to see some type of return scheme for. Send in 10 crisp packets, get 50p off your next shop perhaps?

Cigarette butts: When it comes to litter, size doesn’t matter: cigarette butts are the most littered item in the world, with approximately 4.5 TRILLION getting dropped. Cigarette filters are made from cellulose acetate, a type of plastic, and reportedly can take anywhere from 18 months to 10 years to break down. While the paper filter and tobacco did wilt in the rain and weather, the filters themselves look brand new, indicating that 10 years is probably more accurate.

Cigarette Carton (without cellophane): The cardboard carton without its layer of protective plastic swelled and opened up in the rain, but other than being a little soggy, looks like it will be with me a little longer.

Cigarette Carton (with cellophane): There has been absolutely no change to the outer cellophane wrapper, and, much like the naked carton, the inner cardboard has swollen. The lid has fallen off at the hinge, leading to even more pieces of rubbish. This is another item I would love to see some type of return scheme for; return your old carton and get 5p off your next packet of smokes?

Tobacco Pouch: This item hasn’t really changed at all, perhaps faded a bit in the sun. It, and all of the smoking paraphernalia listed here, are incredibly common litter. Unlike many of the other products, it’s very clear who interventions need to be designed for: how to reach smokers and convince them that these products should be disposed of properly?

Carrier Bag: Since the introduction of the plastic bag fee, the number of carrier bags used in the UK has decreased. This is great, but it could be even lower: simply having a reusable bag that fits in a pocket or handbag, or can be left in the car to be used when needed, saves money and reduces plastic. This particular carrier bag shows no changes since it was put outside a year ago, except perhaps a light coating of mould.

Drinks Container: This is made of three items that usually break into their component parts when tossed from a car: cup, lid, and straw. As the cup swelled in the rain, the lid and straw had to be added to the board separately. Much like the coffee cup, the drinks cup grew some mould and got battered when the board fell over, but it’s still intact and holds water when it rains. The plastic lid and straw are more or less unchanged.

Standard Balloons: I put two rubber balloons on the board at the beginning of the year and while they have undergone a transformation of sorts, they are still present and accounted for. The first change to occur was that the material weakened, causing the body of the balloon to detach from the neck, yielding two pieces of litter for the price of one. The balloons then faded and shrivelled in the sun, changing texture to become quite hard.

“Biodegradable” balloon: The white square is a dove balloon I purchased online. It is advertised as safe for the environment and an alternative to dove releases. [Releasing both balloons and doves should be avoided at all costs!] However, besides gaining a coating of mould, it has not changed at all this year, and is a good reminder that things that are advertised as biodegradable often aren’t, or at least do not degrade in the amount of time people attribute to biodegradable items. Also, biodegradable does not equal invisible: litter sends a message that it’s okay to drop more, regardless of what something is made from.

Receipt: There is often a snowdrift of receipts around ATMs, and I think much like napkins and cigarette butts, there is the feeling that they will break down very quickly. Even I expected this receipt to eventually turn to mush. However, it is actually coated with something so that although the text is no longer readable due to fading in the sun, the receipt itself is still in pretty good condition.

Aluminium Can: Although they can be easily recycled, aluminium cans are very common litter: over the past three years, we have found nearly 4000. They definitely need to be included in a deposit scheme, along with plastic and glass bottles, if we want to have any hope of meaningfully reducing litter and increasing recycling rates. This particular can is faded from the sun and battered by gravity, but otherwise unchanged.

Sweet Wrapper: The purple glow of Cadbury is an incredibly common litter find, and their “easy tear” top adds to the rubbish. Of course, it’s not just Cadbury: Haribo, Maoam, and other makers of sweets and treats all have packaging that is usually found when on a rubbish walk. The wrapper and the easy-open top have faded throughout the year, but are otherwise unchanged.

Takeaway Container (Cardboard): I would love to see takeaway shops label or brand their containers so we can see where they are coming from. This particular container is made from stiffened paper or cardboard, and is something you might expect to break down more than it has this year. I certainly wasn’t expecting to still be more or less in the right shape. Like many of the other pieces, it’s grown a bit mouldy but is still going strong.

Takeaway Container (Polystyrene): This container got cracked when the board got knocked over during high winds, but shows absolutely no signs of changing. Consider throwing a few pieces of Tupperware in the car to use instead of taking one of these.

Plastic Bottle (with wrapper): In the sports drink category, Lucozade is the undisputed king. Unlike water bottles, it almost always has a label, and indeed, it’s this label that makes Lucozade a difficult item to recycle. This one has faded a bit, but remains more or less unchanged.

Sandwich Carton: This combination of plastic and cardboard is very common, especially within a 5-minute walk of local shops. This piece has faded considerably throughout the year, but is still present and accounted for.

Glass Bottle: Despite my initial thoughts that the paper label may come off, the glass bottle is relatively unchanged. The red has just faded a little and I can expect the bottle to be with me for the next one million years or so. Time for a deposit scheme perhaps?

Overall, gravity did more damage to the litter than just being outside. If you are planning to do your own LitterWatch experiment, I would recommend that items are either placed directly on the ground, or on a board that can be left horizontal. Badgers visit my back garden so I wanted to keep the litter away from them, but being on the ground will more introduce microorganisms to the rubbish as well, which may cause greater disintegration than my litter experienced this year.

Wondering what’s next for this rubbish? I am going to continue with LitterWatch2018, which will be a monthly check-in to see how the litter is getting on. Check out the photos below to compare Day 1 to now.

And what’s next for the blog in general? The big background project in 2018 will be diving into the statistics we collect after each clean up to show that litter counts. At the beginning of each week I’ll post a brand and ask that readers keep an eye out for it and report how many littered items they see. You’re also welcome to take a guess about how many items from a particular brand we found in Chippenham in 2017. So pop by tomorrow as I kick off Litter Counts with our very first brand. Here’s a hint: it’s red and white and littered all over.

In the meantime, have a very happy and safe New Year’s Eve!

#LitterWatch2017 #LitterWatch2018

0 notes