Na'vi/Night Elf Hunter

I’ve just read an interesting article detailing 5 similarities between James Cameron’s Avatar and the World of Warcraft.

If you play WoW, I think you’ll agree he has a point…

Modern Warfare 2 Logo

Just a quick note to post some information about how to correctly set up port forwarding on your router/gateway for the PS3 (and I believe also the XBOX360) version of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Basically, the game requires port 3074 UDP to be forwarded to your router. There is no need for assigning it as the DMZ, or for forwarding TCP port 80. Don’t do this!

The reason for having an incoming port opened for the game is so the game is able to host matches. On the PS3, every multiplayer game is hosted by one of the players within the same game. You can tell if it’s you if you check the score screen and see that you are the one with the highest connection rating (4 green bars). If there are lots of people with 4 bars, then congratulations, you’re either the host, or at least connected to an excellent one!

Most people will notice the game works fine without any port forwarding. This is either because you have UPnP enabled on your network, or you have no port forwarding configured. The game will use UPnP to automatically set up port forwarding for this port to your PS3, and will appear as “NAT Type 2″ in a PS3 connection test, or “Open” in game. If you are able to check your UPnP ports, you will discover an open 3074 UDP port directed at your PS3 with the name “DemonwarePortMapping“. This is correct, and you should leave it alone, unless the IP address it shows doesn’t match your PS3.

If you have a “NAT Type 3″, it means you need to manually set up port forwarding for 3074 UDP to your PS3, which will then change the in-game NAT status to “Open” and allow you to host games.

Setting up port forwarding varies between different routers, which is why it is best to get your manual out and simply enable UPnP yourself. However, for some people UPnP isn’t an option, because they are the type of person to open “sexylady.pif” in a spam message and not expect to get a virus. They’re stupid, and can’t be trusted. Some worms and back-doors use UPnP to allow incoming connections without the user’s knowledge, and hence can be considered a risk.

If you can’t, or don’t want to enable UPnP, you will have to sort out port forwarding yourself. Most routers have a web-interface to do this, and is pretty straight-forward once you see it in front of you. Feel free to use portforward.com to find out how to configure your router for this task, but the site lists the wrong ports for Modern Warfare 2, so ensure you use just UDP 3074.

If you can’t find your router, simply click these links and see what happens:

• http://192.168.0.1
• http://192.168.1.1
• http://192.168.10.1
• http://192.168.100.1

Hopefully one of those will pop up with your router’s administration site. If not, you need to look into this in more detail, or use whatever configuration tool that is provided by your router’s manufacturer.

So remember: port 3074 UDP only, or use UPnP. Do not use DMZ!

I know there are still a lot of hits to the page dispite the fact that it was out of date and incorrect, and there may be some people who still use the figures to project base damage between the two abilities, but I thought it wasn’t fair on the community to keep it here.

If you have a dire need to use the formulas that were previously on the page, send me a message or post a comment and I’ll give you access to the page through a registered account.

Thanks everyone, and I’m sorry it has been here for so long with such incorrect formulas!

Xbox 360 New Dashboard

Microsoft released last week the date they plan to release their new dashboard update.

This update comes after the Xbox Live downtime that was scheduled earlier this month, and is due to bring a much-awaited speedier service from the user interface on the dashboard and within games.

Some of the new features include:

• New 3D avatars
• Community changes for IM, video chat and photo sharing
• New 3D slide interface for the dashboard

The scheduled date for this new dashboard was released within Xbox Insider last week and announced the date as the 14th of November.

*UPDATE*

I just read that this date was announced as incorrect and is actually the 19th of November.

Almost everything is now in a floating window which lets you see more, do more, and most importantly… spend turns faster!

I took a screen shot to show off the new floating windows:

Excellent work Xaroth! Keep it coming!

It’s still in progress but the most stable version is at: http://www.codesleuth.co.uk/pq-tools/dressing-room/
The in-dev version is at: http://www.codesleuth.co.uk/pq-tools/dressing-room/new/

Enjoy!

As a side note, I was listening to the Blizzcast last week that discussed some stuff about WotLK and the new sets that are to be introduced. Finally, they’ve realised that different people want different looks:

Something that I am excited to talk about is that the PvP armor will be different from the PvE armor entirely in looks and colors this time.

(source: Blizzcast 3 Transcript)

With only 34K Honor sitting on my character, and a list totalling to more than 120K Honor of things I need to buy, I’m probably going to lose a bit of sleep until the 26th (Europe patch day)!

It’s now nearly 4 months after the Gladiator gear was moved from arena vendors to honor vendors, which coincided with the release of season 3, and now Blizzard have announced that season 4 will do the same, bringing Merciless Gladiator gear to those very same vendors. More information on WoW Insider.

The start date of season 4 is expected to be just after the release of the 2.4 patch.

Take the second item in that post: “The team must have at least one player that has played in 20% or more of the total games for that team”. When a team is sold off or transferred to a completely new set of players, none of the players would ever meet this requirement until they play at least 25% more of the current team’s number of games played. So a team with 1000 games played would need a player to get through 250 games before the season closes to qualify. Since some teams have thousands of games played, I very much doubt a lot of these teams in question will meet the requirements, and hope that none ever will.

Well done Blizzard! Finally, a way to stop these gold/item/team buyers from getting what they wanted