Yesterday, the ESEA announced their plans for the ESEA Season 7 LAN Playoffs and Finals event. The event will be hosted in the player’s hotel this season, making the travel, taxi and shuttle issues of the past a non-factor. The playoffs will take place on November 19th-20th of 2010 and the finals will be on November 21st.

Below is the official release from ESEA which includes the hotel information and schedule:

With the regular season wrapping up and the hunt for the playoffs thickening, it’s finally time to release information about the ESEA S7 LAN Playoffs for the CS 1.6, CS: Source, and TF2 invite divisions.

Event Schedule:
Friday, November 19: 6 pm – 11 pm CST (CS 1.6 opening matches)
Saturday, November 20: 10 am – 11:00 pm (CS 1.6, CSS, & TF2)
Sunday, November 21: 10 am – 4 pm (CS 1.6, CSS, & TF2)

Venue Information:
Wyndham DFW Airport North Ballrooms
4441 W. John Carpenter Freeway
Irving, Texas 75063
972-929-8181

Hotel Information:
We have reserved a limited block of rooms at the Wyndham DFW Airport North, so competitors can stay at the same hotel as the competition. You can reserve your room at the discounted rate of $79.00 + tax per night by calling (972) 929-8181 and referencing the “ESEA” group starting Tuesday, October 26th. The rate includes a free 24 hour shuttle to and from the airport along with the other hotel amenities.

Home Viewer’s Information
With nearly $30,000 cash being given out to the winners, we want to make sure everyone at home can follow the action. As with all ESEA League matches, we will be hosting SpecTVs and live scorebots for each match along with complete box scores and statistics. ESEA News will of course be onsite providing expert analysis and coverage.

Stay tuned for more information!

More information about the event can be found here.

The days of buying used games may be over as courts have ruled in favor of software and game publishers in regards to the purchasing of used software and games at stores such as Gamestop or Blockbuster.

According to game publishers, sales of used games cheat the companies out of profiting on game sales, due to the fact that second hand sales do not contribute to their bottom line. Gamestop argues against this point by stating at 14 percent of new titles are bought with credit customers receive from trading in old games.

Cory Ledesma, creative director for wrestling games at THQ, stated in an interview:

We hope people understand that when the game’s bought used, we get cheated.

eBay responded with the following:

Two of the primary effects and public benefits of the first sale doctrine are increased access to, and affordability of, copyrighted works. Secondary markets encourage economic efficiency by creating opportunities for buyers and sellers to exchange copies of copyrighted works at mutually satisfactory price points.

Fortunately for companies such as eBay, Gamestop and local video stores that specialize in the sale of used video games and software, this decision has not yet been made into law and even the ruling itself may be over-ruled in the near future. Still, game developers have turned to digital downloads to combat this trend.

Should gamers continue to have the right to sell and purchase used games to 3rd party entities, or at garage sales?

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty patch 1.1.2 is now live! This patch features adjustments to protoss, terran, and zerg balance and several bug fixes. Be sure to check out the full patch notes below to learn all about the latest changes.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty – Patch 1.1.2

General

•    Players will no longer receive achievement toasts while their status is set to “Busy.”
•    The messaging when attempting to load a saved game or replay from a previous version has been clarified.
•    Adjusted the amount of points earned and lost by random team participants to properly reflect the strength of a player’s teammates.

Balance

PROTOSS

o    Buildings

•      Nexus life and shields increased from 750/750 to 1000/1000.

o    Void Ray

•      Damage level 1 increased from 5 to 6 (+4 armored).
•      Damage level 2 decreased from 10 (+15 armored) to 8 (+8 armored).
•      Flux Vanes speed upgrade bonus decreased from 1.125 to 0.703.

TERRAN

o    Buildings

•     Barracks requirement changed from Command Center to Supply Depot.
•     Supply Depot life increased from 350 to 400.

o    Medivac

•     Acceleration reduced from 2.315 to 2.25.
•     Speed reduced from 2.75 to 2.5.

o    Reaper

•     Nitro Packs speed upgrade now has a Factory Requirement.

o    Thor

•     Energy bar removed.
•     250mm Strike Cannons is now cooldown-based on a 50-second cooldown. Ability starts with cooldown available (useable immediately after upgrade is researched).

ZERG

o    Buildings

•      Hatchery life increased from 1250 to 1500.
•      Lair life increased from 1800 to 2000.
•      Spawning Pool life increased from 750 to 1000.
•      Spire life increased from 600 to 850.
•      Ultralisk Cavern life increased from 600 to 850.

o    Corruptor

•      Energy bar removed.
•      Corruption is now cooldown-based on a 45-second cooldown. Ability starts with cooldown expired (must wait for full 45-second cycle before usable).

o    Infestor

•      Fungal Growth now prevents Blink.

o    Roach

•      Range increased from 3 to 4.

Bug Fixes

•    Fixed an issue where players could not cast the Feedback spell on Point Defense Drones.
•    Fixed an issue where the Phoenix would continue to channel Graviton Beam after the target died.
•    Fixed an issue that would cause Larvae to spawn and be hidden behind Zerg eggs.
•    Fixed an issue where players were unable to navigate to the Single Player page or watch replays after canceling map downloads from the queue.
•    Fixed a desync that could occur on user-created maps with custom mod dependencies.

MLG DC Preview

Any opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of compLexity Gaming or its parent company.

by JP “moogle” McDaniel

Major League Gaming will host its second Starcraft 2 event this weekend in Washington D.C. where the best players in North America and fan favorites like White-Ra, Ret, and IdrA will be in attendance for the 64-man tournament. Myself and Sean ‘Day[9]’ Plott will be casting the event with some special guests possibly joining us on the stream. Who should you pay close attention to? I’ve got some players you should watch.

Greg ‘EG.IdrA’ Fields
You don’t really have to follow SC2 that closely to know who Fields is. As one of the few foreigners living in South Korea at the moment solely for SC2, IdrA will be the most skilled player at the event bar none. The other side of that coin is he plays Zerg and will be among competitors he has never played against in a tournament setting. Talking with him earlier this morning, he is worried that the unpredictable styles of Americans at the event might give him some trouble. Regardless, he still hopes to return to South Korea with a tournament under his belt.

Kyung ‘Dignitas.SeleCT’ Hyun Ryoo
A singer of Korean opera, Ryoo comes into this tournament with a fan base and the Terran race, but thats not to discredit him — he is a very strong SC2 player. Winning both the European and American Teamliquid.net Open, this should be a huge test of his skill.

Chris ‘LiquidHuK’ Loranger
Loranger ended up winning MLG Raleigh after a poor showing at IEM Cologne. Last weekend we saw him take third at IEM New York. How is he going to do this weekend? No one is really picking him to win the entire event right now, but Loranger shut everyone up at Raleigh and just might do it again in D.C.

Алксей ‘White-Ra’ Крупник
White-Ra was once one of the best foreigners and still is one of the most loved in the scene. Most recently, though, he took a major blow to his competitive career when he was married. In the past, his methods of training consisted of mass-gaming. With his wife reported to be limiting his play-time to three hours a day, he might not be in tip-top shape.

Jos ‘LiquidRet’ De Kroon
De Kroon is another questionable player at the event. He was once one of the best foreigner Zergs in SC1 but not too many people know how much time he has put into the game after joining TeamLiquid earlier this month. If he has practiced though, he has the potential to be a stand-out Zerg user at a time when not too many exist.

For a full list of competitors you can check out the MLGPro site.

Make sure to tune in this weekend as the stream will be going live at 5:00PM EDT at MLGPro.com and GotFrag.com and we’ll be back next week for the biggest event of the year, BlizzCon.

Game developer Valve has recently announced their plans to to release DotA 2, the sequel to DotA, a custom scenario for the real-time strategy video game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. Since 2005, Icefrog has lead the development of the original mod, however Valve has announced today that Icefrog will be leading the development team for DotA 2.

October 13, 2010 – Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced Dota 2, a massive sequel for one of the most played games in the world.

Coming to the PC & Mac in 2011, Dota 2 promises to take the unique blend of online RTS and RPG action that has made Dota popular with tens of millions of gamers and expand upon it in every way.

Although no further information has been released, a 2011 release date is expected. The first details on Dota 2 are available now via an exclusive on Gameinformer.com.

Patch 4.0.1 is bringing major changes to all WoW classes. It will be interesting to see how the new patch comes into play this weekend at MLG and at Blizzcon next weekend.

Below are the major changes to each class.

Death Knights 

Runes

The way in which runes regenerate has been changed. Rather than each rune type (Blood, Frost, Unholy) regenerating simultaneously, they now fill sequentially. For example, if you use two Blood runes, then the first rune will fill up before the second one starts to fill up. You essentially have three sets of runes filling every 10 seconds instead of six individual runes filling every 10 seconds. This allows the death knight rotation to be more forgiving, so that the player can take advantage of things like ability procs or respond to movement. This system makes it a little easier to get back on track without six separate runes now “out of sync” from the standard rotation.

You’re a Bloody Tank 

• The time has come to dedicate a death knight talent tree to tanking, and that is what is in store for the Blood tree. We felt that we could offer a more focused and polished tanking tree rather than having to scatter similar tools throughout the trees. This also allows us to really focus the other trees into more flavorful damage-dealing specializations.

Runic Empowerment 

• This mechanic allows for runes which were on cooldown to instantly activate, which prevents the rotation from becoming too predictable and boring.

Druids 

Eclipse 

• This is a new mechanic being added for Balance druids. The resource is managed through a new bar near the health and mana bars. As the druid casts Arcane spells, the bar moves towards the sun element until the druid achieves a Solar Eclipse, which buffs Nature damage. The goal is then to cast Nature spells, until the bar moves toward the moon element, which triggers a Lunar Eclipse and buffs Arcane damage. The gameplay becomes trying to quickly move the bar from one end to the other in order to maximize each Eclipse buff.

Hunters 

Focus 

• This is a new resource which has replaced mana. Hunters never felt like they should be casting mana-based spells, and having a resource that lasted for a long time and then was painfully gone didn’t lead to compelling gameplay.

Pets 

• Hunters can now use Call Pet to choose from among five different pets. They can swap out any of these five pets with other pets they have tamed by visiting a Stable Master. The Stable Master now allows the hunter to store twenty pets total. 
• Pet families have been updated. Each family can now provide unique buffs to parties or raids, so if a class buff is needed for a raid and that class isn’t represented in the group, chances are a hunter can provide a little assistance by calling out a specific pet.

Ammo 

• Ammo is no more. As a hunter, you’re just that good now. 
• Any quivers or pouches used to store ammo will automatically be converted into a bag of roughly equal value.

Paladins 

Holy Power 

• This is a new resource which works similarly to combo points. Paladins will generally want to build up Holy Power until it shines through with a bright yellow glowing effect. Once Holy Power has been built up, it can be consumed to augment existing abilities. For example, Word of Glory can be used to cast an instant-cast free heal. This gives paladins several options for how to spend their Holy Power, depending on the scenario.

Warlocks 

Soul Shards 

• As items, Soul Shards are going away entirely. 
• Any shard bags used to store Soul Shards will automatically be converted into a bag of roughly equal value. 
• Soul Shards are now a new resource for warlocks. Each warlock will have a total of three. These Soul Shards can be expended using a new spell, Soul Burn, which allows the warlock to augment the next spell cast. The augmentation effect will vary depending on which spell is used, and all warlock spells which can be empowered by Soul Burn will have a tooltip listing of the effect it grants. Soul Shards will no longer be necessary for summoning demons or casting any other spell typically used when out of combat.

Warriors 

Rage 

• Rage is being normalized so that its generation is no longer based on damage done by auto-attacks. Each auto-attack will provide a set amount of Rage, with off-hand weapons granting 50% of the rage main-hand weapons do. Haste will allow Rage to generate more rapidly by increasing attack speed. In addition, while taking damage, the amount of Rage generated will now be based on the warrior’s health rather than the opponent’s level. The essence of this change is to improve the scaling that occurs with warrior gear. With warriors balanced around the top tiers of items, we’ve found that the class tends to underperform more drastically than others in lower-quality items. These changes should correct that.

Yesterday we announced that the World Esports Masters tournament would be hosting their 2010 tournament at the Hangzhou Electronic Science and Technology University in Hangzhou, China, from November 3rd to the 7th.

Today, the organizers have announced the official prize distribution. Surprisingly, even with a $25,000 increase in the prize purse, it has been determined that the winning team will actually be receiving less money than last year. However, with this change, all teams will receieve $4,000 upon their arrival in China.

Prize Distribution

1st – $22,000
2nd – $11,000
3rd –  $8,500
4th –  $7,500
5th – $6,000
6th – $6,000
7th – $4,000
8th – $4,000