The Twin Peaks achievement "Cloud Nine" requires you to return or capture nine flags in a single battle. This is one of the hardest battleground PvP achievements (along with the Arathi Basin 2000-1990 luck achievement).
However, I found an exploit that bypasses the "in a single battle" part.
After the end of a battle keep the scoreboard open and wait the two minutes, until you get automatically ported out. If you caught some flags before, the counter will not reset. Just queue up for another Twin Peaks and you'll have the achievement in no-time.
High Definition Resolution, HDR, Lighting is the effect of light that's "too bright" for your monitor. A real life example; if you hold up a thin object to bright sunlight (Let's say a shoestring), the light seems to curve around it.
Additionally, shadowed areas are much darker with HDR.
While World of Warcraft support very limited and basic Bloom lighting (go to the Wetlands while the sun is setting), this mod enables the shader effects that the game is able to support, but Blizzard chose not to (either due to technical limitation, or because they just don't want to).
The download contains the dll file, a config file, and a readme file. The DLL file (d3d9.dll) is actually a modified Direct3D file. I believe that games that use the D3D API are designed to take advantage of a d3d9.dll file if it's present in the games folder instead of the one in the Windows directory. This DLL simply takes advantage of that, and enables bloom effects (amongst other effects) in any game that doesn't have native support for it.
Also inside the file is all of the defaults in-case you want to revert to the originals. Works best with DirectX9.
Failed to find a suitable display device. Exiting program.
I did the following 3 things: 1) Updated windows XP with service pack 2 (fresh computer, wasn't fully updated while I transferred wow to it) 2) Installed latest possible DirectX (this being 8.1, let's not go into why) 3) After the installation of above 2 softwares, upon initializing WoW I got the following message (instead of the threads title) "Hardware has changed. Restore defult settings" (something in the lines of it at least). I chose Yes. Upon doing so WoW started. I then exited the program and inserted my WTF and Interface folders into the World of Warcraft folder, restarted the program, and it still worked.
Does this slow down your WoW like addons do?
On older machines, it may. On any video card that's capable of displaying Bloom and HDR effects (anything newer than a 6800GT) should be able to display this without much of a performance hit. My machine is "above average", but i see absolutely 0 FPS drop.
This week Blizzard released a free to download starter edition of Starcraft 2.
Players that download the free starter edition have access to:
The first four missions of the StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty single-player campaign, including Mar Sara 1-3 and the choice to embark on Tychus’s first mission or Dr. Hansen’s first mission.
The first two Challenges: Tactical Command and Covert Ops.
Access to the terran race in Custom Games and Single-Player vs. AI.
Access to the following custom maps (map selection may rotate over time):
Xel’Naga Caverns
Shattered Temple
Discord IV
High Orbit
Pretty much you can play online with people on battle.net. It does however not allow you to setup any kind of friends list. People with the full game are able to play with starter edition players.
Sign up for a battle.net account to get starter!
