They say that the third time is the charm. We'll that definitely holds true for NCsoft's MMO, Guild Wars, as it celebrates its third anniversary. To show their gratitude to the players who support the game, a sweepstakes is going to take place with some delectable prizes. Find out the details in the full article.

Here's one example of a hellish PR nightmare: customers mobbing your company's forums, wielding pikes and pitchforks of utter hate messages. That's what's happening right now for Creative Labs when they tried to stop a modder from distributing custom driver, that greatly enhanced the performance of their sound cards with Vista. Read all about it in the full article.

One word that can really stir up excitement is the word "tournament." Incidentally, that's exactly what GGL Global Gaming will be holding for players of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Soulstorm. The prizes at stake are nothing to sneeze at, either. For more contest details, just check the full article after the jump.

Creative Labs' 16GB Zen V Plus is now available in the United States. This is surprising considering it has only been a week since the gadget was first released in Singapore. Still, it's good news if you're in the market for a good Portable Multimedia player.

The Zen V Plus supports AVI video, MP3, WAV, WMA and Audible audio formats, providing you with quite a bit of flexibility with regards to file formats. In addition to this, it comes with a 1.5 inch OLED screen giving you a decent size for viewing movies while on the go.

So far only the black-and-white color scheme is available in the U.S. market, and there is no word on when other color combinations will be made available. The 16 GB Zen V Plus is being sold for US$ 250, which is around the same price or cheaper than most products of the same functionality.

 

For the fortunate fans that managed to get their very own tickets to the BlizzCon event this August (we won't ask how...), there's much more than just Starcraft II goodies, souvenirs, and other delectable freebies that await you. Blizzard has just sent word of three competitions that are expected to take place at the event: the costume, character sound-alike, and dance contests. And in case you're wondering what's in it for the competitors, the site posted some rather tempting prizes for each event's first-prize winners:

• For the Dance Contest: One Dell XPS laptop with an approximate retail value of US$ 4,000.00, and a two-year subscription to Sponsor's World of Warcraft game service with an approximate retail value of US$ 300.00.
• For the Character Sound-Alike Contest: One Nvidia graphics card, one Logitech keyboard, one Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi sound card, and one gift certificate with approximate retail value of the prize package to be no less than US$ 1,500.00.
• For the Costume Contest: One Dell XPS laptop with an approximate retail value of US$ 4,000.00, and a two-year subscription to Sponsor's World of Warcraft game service with an approximate retail value of US$ 300.00.
  

Full application rules and details should be available at the BlizzCon site (read link). Just check back in case we pick up an update for these upcoming competitions.

 It was almost certain that, to play a game filled with a lot of water and freaky people in diving outfits, you'd need a powerful computer. BioShock (PC, Xbox 360) is getting a lot of buzz for both its PC and Xbox 360 incarnations. For folks who want to play the game on their PCs, however, be warned: you may need to upgrade your stuff.

2K Games recently revealed the PC requirements for Irrational Games' BioShock and, to put it simply, they're pretty hefty:

Operating Systems:

• Windows XP (with Service Pack 2) or
• Windows Vista

Minimum System Requirements:

• CPU: Pentium 4 2.4GHz Single Core processor
• System RAM: 1GB
• Video Card: Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 128MB RAM (NVIDIA 6600 or better/ATI X1300 or better, excluding ATI X1550).
• Sound Card: 100% direct X 9.0c compatible sound card
• Hard disc space: 8GB free space

Recommended System Requirements:

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo processor
• System RAM: 2GB
• Video card:
• DX9: Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 512MB RAM (NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT or better)
• DX10: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 or better
• Sound Card: Sound Blaster X-Fi series (Optimized for use with Creative Labs EAX ADVANCED HD 4.0 or EAX ADVANCED HD 5.0 compatible sound cards)

You'll also need an internet connection to register the game for play, but if you're reading this, then there's a good chance you won't have to worry about that. In any case, how does your current gaming rig compare? Will you upgrade your PC for BioShock, or will you pick up the Xbox 360 version instead?

 

The Guild Wars US$ 100,000 Tournament Series May Championship by NCsoft and ArenaNet has already kicked off leaving a lot of players excited. The prizes for the competition were recently announced which only served to pump up the competitors even more. Sponsors ATI Technology and Creative Labs have provided some pretty good stuff for those who manage to claw their way to the top of the tournament.

Guild versus Guild prizes:
1st place:

• ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT
• Permanent Gold Cape trim for guild
• 300 Tournament Reward Points

2nd place

• ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT
• Silver Cape trim for guild
• Tournament Reward Points

1v1 prizes:
1st Place:

• ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT
• 80 GB iPod
• 100 Tournament Reward Points

2nd Place:

• ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT
• 30 GB iPod
• Tournament Reward Points

The tournament has two different divisions: the Guild versus Guild (GvG) and one versus one (1v1). The matches last for a good 40 minutes and 15 minutes respectively. Winners will advance in the tournament which uses the Swiss style format in determining matches and advancement. Eventually the top teams of each division will be competing for the top spot in the respective divisions.

For more information, be sure to click on our read link which will send you over to the official Guild Wars page where the prizes are listed. Be sure to check back here for more news on Guild Wars.

We don't know exactly how hard Windows Vista works to make legacy programs compatible - we do know it's pretty darn hard - but that might not extend to hardware, and not because they don't have the juice or the megahurtz to handle it. Creative Labs has commented that Vista might not work for legacy titles that use its Sound Blaster Xi-Fi cards because, well, techno-jumbo:

The result of Microsoft’s removal of the hardware audio abstraction layer for Vista will confuse many gamers. Many people who have experimented with popular legacy games on the Vista beta release have been unable to experience multi-channel audio, with Creative and other sound cards, and even with motherboard audio. This is not something that a driver update can fix.

Hence, Creative is testing ALchemy - a free app that will bridge legacy audio with Windows Vista. It will convert the EAX or DirectSound 3D calls of these games into the OpenAL calls used by Vista, promising the same sound you've come to expect from the game as though it still were on XP. Hey, Fel Reavers are meant to be heard and not seen, after all - how 'ya supposed to run away from them if you can't hear them, and if you see them, it's too late?

The Via link below takes you to where you can download a beta version of ALchemy.

Creative Labs announced two new Sound Blaster cards that meet the audio demands of the most finicky gamer. In fact, the Sound Blaster X-Fi was named as the official sound card for the Grand Final of the World Cyber Games in Monza, Italy later this month.

The cards, which harness the power of the X-Fi chip, are available in two formats - one for PCs and the other for full-size gaming rigs. Both the Fatal1ty Professional Series (for serious PC gamers) and Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer (for small form factor or full-size PCs) delivers surround sound over stereo headphones for gaming, movies and music.

Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, winner of eleven world championships in five different games swears by the Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty soundcard. "When I'm competing I need the best performance and the most realistic sound from my equipment...there is nothing faster or better."

Creative Labs says once you go X-Fi, there’s no going back to conventional audio. Some available titles with X-Fi support include Battlefield 2142, Prey, Quake 4 and Doom 3.

Wow, it seems that Creative just keeps leaking out information about their rumored Zen releases in magazine ads! We posted an article a few days back about a 60G ZVM ad spotted in Maxim magazine, and now here's yet another Zen ad confirming its upcoming Zen Vision W media player but this time spotted in Popular Mechanics:

Apparently, the W in the Vision W stands for Widescreen, and quite a screen it is! The screen now measures 4.3", quite a bump up from the 3.7" that the current Zen Vision sports. And according to Popular Mechanics, we don't have to worry about viewing angles, and even hails ZVW as having "the best screen we've seen on a portable media player". As we see in the ad, the 30GB ZVW will have the same retail price as the current ZV ($399), and the 60GB will sell for $499.

Aside from the change in screen size and capacity, it seems like not much else has changed, except that the new player is thicker than the previous ones released by Creative Labs. Whaddya know, sometimes it actually DOES pay to read, especially if we're given updates on nifty gadgets such as the ZVW.