Achievements can be obtained in a number of ways: play-through progression, extreme behavior (level 60 Hardcore character), and absurd shenanigans (play without any armor on). The point of achievements is they unlock components for your banner, which is a visual representation of all you've done in the game. PVP might reward you with quests. Pennant might get longer through play-through progression. Base of banner gets larger through playing Hardcore. You can easily teleport to friends by clicking on their banner.
Stone of Recall is an endless use item that lets you get back to town from the wilderness, which leaves a blue portal behind so that only you can go back to where you were before you started the teleport. The Cauldron of Jordan allows you to sell items right out of your bag from wherever you are. The Cube of the Nephalem allows you to break items down wherever you are so that you can craft items later on back in town.
The Mystic is where you go to enhance your items; take any item you have and add an enhancement to it such as gold find or magic find. Enhancements are actually random in Diablo III, so you can apply the same enhancement and have the chance to have it be better the second time you try. The Mystic can be leveled-up to be more powerful. The Jeweler can combine gems into one, socket gems, remove gems (use extra experience gem till you reach level cap and then remove it after you don't need experience anymore), and add sockets to items. The Blacksmith can forge and craft items for you, plus make legendary and unique set item recipes that you find within the game. The different crafters are shared across your account, so your Barbarian might get the Blacksmith leveled to five, and then when you start a Demon Hunter they'll be able to access that level five Blacksmith without having to level them up themselves.
New PVP mode is Team Deathmatch - ten-minute games between two teams of four and there will be no skill swapping during the game. You will use your PVE character for Team Deathmatch games.
Auction House decided upon because loot is a big part of the game, item drops are randomized, there are low odds for any given item, and trading is the best way to find items and improve your character. It's convenient, secure, and easy, plus you can trade items using gold or real money. Items, gold, and components can be sold - almost anything. Participate for free in real-money auctions as you'll have a small number of free listings every week. If your item sells you can output that money to a Paypal account or put it directly into your e-balance so you can put more items on the Auction House or use the money to buy a real-money item that you personally want. Auction House getting a smart search and advanced search so that you can search for the exact stats you're looking for.
2011年10月24日星期一
2011年9月13日星期二
Marc by Marc Jacobs weaves retail magic as Betsey Johnson throws out the rule book
Like many a show at New York Fashion Week, inspiration for Marc by Marc Jacobs' S/S 2012 line seems to be firmly rooted in the past.
This time, it's back to the heady streets of Eighties New York - basketball boots, sun visors, jumpsuits and anoraks - via the 1950s for a splash of bathing suit creativity.
Retro T-shirts with a bubble-like font firmly stated the current era - though Grandpa-esque vinyl visors, in transparent green, red and blue did a good job of confusing the issue.
Continuing a theme that has been running throughout 2011, Mr Jacobs' more affordable label was chock-full of colour-blocking. Solid bursts of bright hues contrasted with a black detail or an off-set accessory.
Hi-top baseball boots in bright red and cartoon-like cube handbags contrasted with more feminine features such as the peplum-like flurry of detail on a black and coral pink strapless cocktail dress with a sweetheart neckline.
A range of swimsuits looked stunning without being overtly sexy - mini peplum wings on the hips lending a touch of shape to the halter neck designs, while one striped number looked as it if may have been inspired by Victorian English beach life.
Simple, bold fabric designs - red, blue and white stripes and a neon tropical bird on a black background - broke up some simple blocks of colour.
Animal patterns have also been spotted at Carolina Herrera and Victoria Beckham's shows, cementing their place in many a wardrobe next spring and summer.
Mr Jacobs, 48, is currently amid the centre of a storm of speculation over his potential new job at Christian Dior. He reportedly demanded a $10million salary from the French design house which has been left without a creative figurehead since John Galliano's shock departure in February.
Dior or not, if there's one thing we - and Mr Jacobs - can be certain of, it is that the accessible, non-intimidating, youthful designs of his Marc line will fly off the shelves come next year.
From one New York fashion demi-god to another, last night also saw Betsey Johnson's runway show.
Pink hair extensions aside, the eccentric and consistently colourful designer, 69, lived up to her signature design style of playful non-conformity.
A diverse mixture of models and mismatching ensembles saw riotous patterns of red roses with leopard print and skin tight dresses that left nothing of the female form to the imagination.
Where Marc by Marc Jacobs trod safely, Ms Johnson threw out the rulebook, her new collection mixing metallic shining blue and pink Eighties-style puff mini-dresses with black leather hot pants, loud floral prints with chunky silver jewellery and chunky hot pink boots with lace-up sky-high heels.
There were floaty floral dresses - some going for the mullet-look, that is, mini skirts in front and long skirts at the back - and ruffled gold underwear on show.
It was fun, loud and not one for the faint-hearted - and we can see why the increasingly sartorially unpredictable pop star Nicki Minaj is a firm favourite.
This time, it's back to the heady streets of Eighties New York - basketball boots, sun visors, jumpsuits and anoraks - via the 1950s for a splash of bathing suit creativity.
Retro T-shirts with a bubble-like font firmly stated the current era - though Grandpa-esque vinyl visors, in transparent green, red and blue did a good job of confusing the issue.
Continuing a theme that has been running throughout 2011, Mr Jacobs' more affordable label was chock-full of colour-blocking. Solid bursts of bright hues contrasted with a black detail or an off-set accessory.
Hi-top baseball boots in bright red and cartoon-like cube handbags contrasted with more feminine features such as the peplum-like flurry of detail on a black and coral pink strapless cocktail dress with a sweetheart neckline.
A range of swimsuits looked stunning without being overtly sexy - mini peplum wings on the hips lending a touch of shape to the halter neck designs, while one striped number looked as it if may have been inspired by Victorian English beach life.
Simple, bold fabric designs - red, blue and white stripes and a neon tropical bird on a black background - broke up some simple blocks of colour.
Animal patterns have also been spotted at Carolina Herrera and Victoria Beckham's shows, cementing their place in many a wardrobe next spring and summer.
Mr Jacobs, 48, is currently amid the centre of a storm of speculation over his potential new job at Christian Dior. He reportedly demanded a $10million salary from the French design house which has been left without a creative figurehead since John Galliano's shock departure in February.
Dior or not, if there's one thing we - and Mr Jacobs - can be certain of, it is that the accessible, non-intimidating, youthful designs of his Marc line will fly off the shelves come next year.
From one New York fashion demi-god to another, last night also saw Betsey Johnson's runway show.
Pink hair extensions aside, the eccentric and consistently colourful designer, 69, lived up to her signature design style of playful non-conformity.
A diverse mixture of models and mismatching ensembles saw riotous patterns of red roses with leopard print and skin tight dresses that left nothing of the female form to the imagination.
Where Marc by Marc Jacobs trod safely, Ms Johnson threw out the rulebook, her new collection mixing metallic shining blue and pink Eighties-style puff mini-dresses with black leather hot pants, loud floral prints with chunky silver jewellery and chunky hot pink boots with lace-up sky-high heels.
There were floaty floral dresses - some going for the mullet-look, that is, mini skirts in front and long skirts at the back - and ruffled gold underwear on show.
It was fun, loud and not one for the faint-hearted - and we can see why the increasingly sartorially unpredictable pop star Nicki Minaj is a firm favourite.
2011年9月7日星期三
Illusionist finds his great escape
IT'S no exaggeration to say magic changed Paul Cosentino's life. As a young child, he was shy, not very popular and educationally a slow developer. "I didn't read my first word until I was in grade three," says the magician/escape artist/illusionist and runner-up in this year's Aus-tralia's Got Talent. "I cannot explain how terrible it was to be asked to read out loud. It was shocking. It really crushes you."
His mother, a school principal, took him to all kinds of experts, but nothing helped until, aged 12, he learnt his first coin trick. Suddenly, he wanted to know more.
There was a book in the house, an encyclopaedia of magic, but Cosentino wasn't quite up to reading it, even at 12, so his mother read it to him and as he became more and more entranced by the world of possibility it opened up, he realised he was going to have to start reading himself. "And from being this kid who couldn't speak or talk, I became by 16 somebody who was standing in front of people performing, and it was all because of magic," he says.
The bookshelves in Cosentino's workshop in a wing of his parents' house in Lysterfield are crammed with tomes on magic, illusions and escape artistry, as well as DVDs and videos, all of which he's devoured over the years. There are signed posters and photos on the walls from the likes of Penn and Teller, David Blaine and David Copperfield, all of whom he has met (mostly in Las Vegas). "When I first met them they were my heroes," he says. "It's weird to think there are kids now who might look at me in the same way."
If there are, he readily acknowledges it's all down to the Channel Seven talent show. He didn't win, but an estimated 4 million people (including regional and time-shifted audiences) saw his high-energy mix of Michael Jackson-style dance moves and magic.
"It's made a huge difference," says the 28-year-old on the eve of his first Melbourne theatre show, at the Athenaeum. "I'm not doing anything different to what I've been doing for the last 10 years, but suddenly people know I exist."
Grateful as he is for the exposure, he bemoans the fact that there's no infrastructure he can tap into to take his act to the next level. In fact, the only support network is the one he and his family have made. One brother, Adam, is his manager, another brother, John, is his trainer, and his father, a structural engineer, helps design the elaborate props, including the rig from which a heavily manacled Cosentino was dropped into five metres of water at the Melbourne Aquarium last February.
That stunt — in which he spent three minutes and 39 seconds under water — was a year in the planning, cost $25,000 of Cosentino's money and brought not a cent of direct income. "It was all about raising my profile," he says.
It did, however, bring him plenty of offers to repeat the stunt. He declined them all. "Just the natural high — you haven't had air for four minutes, then all this air goes rushing in — it's just exhilarating. I can never recapture that moment now. It's a one-off. For me it's lost its interest. You're not going to get on a motorbike to set the world record for a jump then say, 'I guess I'll do it again'. You've done it. I want to do a new stunt."
He does have another eye-catching stunt in mind, though.
In his studio-workshop — the space in fact houses an indoor swimming pool, its surface long since boarded over — there's a metal cage about the size of a small car. Inside it is a grid of 25-centimetre-long metal spikes, suspended upside down, attached to a rope that is itself attached to a winch. At the Athenaeum shows, Cosentino will be inside the box with the spikes suspended above his head. He'll be in a straitjacket, he'll be chained and the door to the cage will be locked. And then the rope will be set on fire. He will have three minutes to escape.
While Cosentino is confident he can stay on just the right side of danger, he says the risk is real. "There is an element of danger, and that's the whole reason you're doing it. If it's too safe, if it's 100 per cent sure, what's the point?"
Impressive as it sounds, the stunt he will perform at the Athenaeum will be the light version. What he's working up to in the full version is a Blaine-like public endurance test with a Houdini-style death-defying finale. He plans to spend 48 hours locked inside the cube, without food or toilet breaks, suspended in a public place. At the end of it, the rope will be set alight.
"I really don't know what that will do to me, whether the body will be cramped up, what effect the wind might have on burning rates. There's a lot we don't know yet."
Some people have asked him if he has a death wish, but he's adamant they're missing the point. "It's about pushing it to the limit where you know it's safe but you're walking that line," he says. "Doing legitimately dangerous escapes, that's when I feel most alive."
His mother, a school principal, took him to all kinds of experts, but nothing helped until, aged 12, he learnt his first coin trick. Suddenly, he wanted to know more.
There was a book in the house, an encyclopaedia of magic, but Cosentino wasn't quite up to reading it, even at 12, so his mother read it to him and as he became more and more entranced by the world of possibility it opened up, he realised he was going to have to start reading himself. "And from being this kid who couldn't speak or talk, I became by 16 somebody who was standing in front of people performing, and it was all because of magic," he says.
The bookshelves in Cosentino's workshop in a wing of his parents' house in Lysterfield are crammed with tomes on magic, illusions and escape artistry, as well as DVDs and videos, all of which he's devoured over the years. There are signed posters and photos on the walls from the likes of Penn and Teller, David Blaine and David Copperfield, all of whom he has met (mostly in Las Vegas). "When I first met them they were my heroes," he says. "It's weird to think there are kids now who might look at me in the same way."
If there are, he readily acknowledges it's all down to the Channel Seven talent show. He didn't win, but an estimated 4 million people (including regional and time-shifted audiences) saw his high-energy mix of Michael Jackson-style dance moves and magic.
"It's made a huge difference," says the 28-year-old on the eve of his first Melbourne theatre show, at the Athenaeum. "I'm not doing anything different to what I've been doing for the last 10 years, but suddenly people know I exist."
Grateful as he is for the exposure, he bemoans the fact that there's no infrastructure he can tap into to take his act to the next level. In fact, the only support network is the one he and his family have made. One brother, Adam, is his manager, another brother, John, is his trainer, and his father, a structural engineer, helps design the elaborate props, including the rig from which a heavily manacled Cosentino was dropped into five metres of water at the Melbourne Aquarium last February.
That stunt — in which he spent three minutes and 39 seconds under water — was a year in the planning, cost $25,000 of Cosentino's money and brought not a cent of direct income. "It was all about raising my profile," he says.
It did, however, bring him plenty of offers to repeat the stunt. He declined them all. "Just the natural high — you haven't had air for four minutes, then all this air goes rushing in — it's just exhilarating. I can never recapture that moment now. It's a one-off. For me it's lost its interest. You're not going to get on a motorbike to set the world record for a jump then say, 'I guess I'll do it again'. You've done it. I want to do a new stunt."
He does have another eye-catching stunt in mind, though.
In his studio-workshop — the space in fact houses an indoor swimming pool, its surface long since boarded over — there's a metal cage about the size of a small car. Inside it is a grid of 25-centimetre-long metal spikes, suspended upside down, attached to a rope that is itself attached to a winch. At the Athenaeum shows, Cosentino will be inside the box with the spikes suspended above his head. He'll be in a straitjacket, he'll be chained and the door to the cage will be locked. And then the rope will be set on fire. He will have three minutes to escape.
While Cosentino is confident he can stay on just the right side of danger, he says the risk is real. "There is an element of danger, and that's the whole reason you're doing it. If it's too safe, if it's 100 per cent sure, what's the point?"
Impressive as it sounds, the stunt he will perform at the Athenaeum will be the light version. What he's working up to in the full version is a Blaine-like public endurance test with a Houdini-style death-defying finale. He plans to spend 48 hours locked inside the cube, without food or toilet breaks, suspended in a public place. At the end of it, the rope will be set alight.
"I really don't know what that will do to me, whether the body will be cramped up, what effect the wind might have on burning rates. There's a lot we don't know yet."
Some people have asked him if he has a death wish, but he's adamant they're missing the point. "It's about pushing it to the limit where you know it's safe but you're walking that line," he says. "Doing legitimately dangerous escapes, that's when I feel most alive."
2011年6月26日星期日
Wiz Khalifa, Ice Cube, Lupe Fiasco Mix It Up At L.A.'s Powerhouse
LOS ANGELES — Radio station Power 106 held their annual sold-out Powerhouse concert at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California, on Saturday night, bringing together multiple generations of hip-hop stars, from West Coast OG Ice Cube to L.A.'s latest dance-craze instigators the Rej3ctz to a chart-topping visitor from out east, Wiz Khalifa.
The Rej3ctz opened the show with a high-energy performance and later danced onstage with the very colorful LMFAO as they performed "Shots." Sporting a white T-shirt and bright yellow cargo shorts, T-Pain took it up a couple notches with a string of his hits and left fans fully charged with DJ Khaled's "All I Do Is Win."
The evening had a couple of surprises on deck: 50 Cent joined Jeremih on their collabo "Down on Me," which Jeremih said was the first time they've ever performed the song together in concert. Compton's own DJ Quik gave loyal fans what they came for, and when Lupe Fiasco pulled young crooner Trey Songz onstage during his set, screaming concertgoers raised the decibels to new heights.
The Don Mega himself, Ice Cube, brought out his old N.W.A bandmate MC Ren on the song "Hello."
"It makes you feel good, being in the game as long as I have," Ice Cube told MTV News before the show. "I done went from new school to old school and still here. You can't do nothing but be humbled by the fact that so many rappers is gone. ... I'm still here after all this time."
Cube was also the most-anticipated act of the evening by fellow performers including the headliner, Wiz Khalifa.
"This is my first time performing at Powerhouse, my first time performing at an event this big, so I feel elated," Wiz told MTV News before his set. "I'm really excited about seeing Cube."
But Khalifa had another trick up his sleeve when it came to honoring L.A.'s hip-hop roots: He brought out his "High School" co-star Snoop Dogg for one last Powerhouse surprise, no doubt leaving 18,000 fans feeling like they got their money's worth.
The Rej3ctz opened the show with a high-energy performance and later danced onstage with the very colorful LMFAO as they performed "Shots." Sporting a white T-shirt and bright yellow cargo shorts, T-Pain took it up a couple notches with a string of his hits and left fans fully charged with DJ Khaled's "All I Do Is Win."
The evening had a couple of surprises on deck: 50 Cent joined Jeremih on their collabo "Down on Me," which Jeremih said was the first time they've ever performed the song together in concert. Compton's own DJ Quik gave loyal fans what they came for, and when Lupe Fiasco pulled young crooner Trey Songz onstage during his set, screaming concertgoers raised the decibels to new heights.
The Don Mega himself, Ice Cube, brought out his old N.W.A bandmate MC Ren on the song "Hello."
"It makes you feel good, being in the game as long as I have," Ice Cube told MTV News before the show. "I done went from new school to old school and still here. You can't do nothing but be humbled by the fact that so many rappers is gone. ... I'm still here after all this time."
Cube was also the most-anticipated act of the evening by fellow performers including the headliner, Wiz Khalifa.
"This is my first time performing at Powerhouse, my first time performing at an event this big, so I feel elated," Wiz told MTV News before his set. "I'm really excited about seeing Cube."
But Khalifa had another trick up his sleeve when it came to honoring L.A.'s hip-hop roots: He brought out his "High School" co-star Snoop Dogg for one last Powerhouse surprise, no doubt leaving 18,000 fans feeling like they got their money's worth.
2011年5月29日星期日
Cater to Core Gamers
Aunt Suzy loves Wii Bowling and Uncle Karl loves Wii Boxing, but where are the games for you, a person that enjoys more than causal fare? Nintendo definitely overlooked your existence with the Wii, but the rumor mill is churning out reports that the Big N is courting companies to develop more mature content on the system. The prospect of seeing Grand Theft Auto V in the same section as a Wii 2 Super Mario Bros. game would be the best of both worlds. And to further cater to us, the Wii 2/Project Cafe needs…
A Robust Online Component
The two best things that can be said about the Wii was that 1) Virtual Console proved unparalleled access to retro games and 2) it never took a hard hit, unlike PSN. Other than that, Nintendo’s online presence is a joke, Friend Codes and all. Nintendo needs to look at Xbox Live, which is the current gold standard, and try to emulate its success. There’s no shame in imitating, here.
This E3, Nintendo has an opportunity to win me (and millions of gamers) over. I hope that the House That Mario Built succeeds as I hate to think that a company that helped transformed me into a gamer in the mid-’80s is nothing more than a video game relic.
A Robust Online Component
The two best things that can be said about the Wii was that 1) Virtual Console proved unparalleled access to retro games and 2) it never took a hard hit, unlike PSN. Other than that, Nintendo’s online presence is a joke, Friend Codes and all. Nintendo needs to look at Xbox Live, which is the current gold standard, and try to emulate its success. There’s no shame in imitating, here.
This E3, Nintendo has an opportunity to win me (and millions of gamers) over. I hope that the House That Mario Built succeeds as I hate to think that a company that helped transformed me into a gamer in the mid-’80s is nothing more than a video game relic.
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