Techies ponder computers smarter than us

Move along if you're looking for gaming or Elder Scrolls news here, this ones just something that interested me. Yahoo! News have a small article up on a recent event in San Fracisco, dubbed "The Singularity Summit: AI and the Future of Humanity" where the thought of near-future computers being smarter than humans is exciting some people. Interestingly, some nerds also predict a date for this event: 2029. Amusingly, I'm pretty sure my computer is smarter than some of the folks I know, and ...

Thrashing to Oblivion

Straight from the Bethesda Blog, gstaff brings attention to a Ukrainian progressive rock band who have produced a cover of the Oblivion theme tune by Jeremy Soule. Personally I couldn't help but sit there giggling like a sissy girl through most of it (don't ask why), but check it out by going to their MySpace page. The page is savoury and, for once, does not contain pink text on a black background -- probably a first for MySpaz. ...

Two Worlds

Ever since returning from my long bank holiday weekend away on Monday I've had a stinky head cold followed by high temperatures. Confined to my bed for reasons other than being lazy (unlike usual) I've simply been watching films, series, and playing a game that made it's way to my door recently: Two Worlds. I hadn't heard anything about Two Worlds before a month ago when idle chatter on an IRC room I frequent sparked my interest. Heralded as a cross between Oblivion and the Gothic series, I b...

TenTonHammer interview Matt Frior

While Zenimax Online, sister company to Bethesda recently setup to focus on MMOG's, is not directly related to the Elder Scrolls series I think keeping on top of their plans might well be interesting to some (as it is interesting to me). Matt Frior has been in the lime-light a lot recently after it was announced he has been pulled in from MMO developers Mythic (Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer Online) to head Zenimax Online. This "pinging" interview with Matt focusing on the inception and direc...

Bethesda parent company branches into MMO territory

I found some intriguing news on my usual daily visit to Blues News; it turns out that ZeniMax, parent company of Bethesda, has opened a new MMO studio. What implications this might have for a future Elder Scrolls I don't know. Personally I find it highly unlikely that any future Elder Scrolls game, or Fallout 3, will be an MMO or even feature a multiplayer aspect. Bethesda have always been adamant that their focus is on "massively-single-player" games. Very interesting, none-the-less....

Folding@Home

Folding@Home is a project started by Stanford University to research the way proteins proteins fold and misfold. Yasgur, Bethsoft Forums moderator: This concerns a distributed computing project (along the lines of SETI) from Stanford University in the US that deals with research in proteins, and hopes to result in ways of finding solutions to diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and others. I've had this installed on my system for a couple of months now. It runs completely unattended, ha...

Holidays

Hi folks, Thought I'd leave a little note to let everyone know that I will be off to Spain early tomorrow morning for a much needed holiday. Hopefully no rain! I'm due back next Tuesday. The server has been a little rocky these past few days with several slow downs happening throughout the day. Hopefully the server will iron itself out because I'll likely not have any internet access while I am away. When I get back I have several improvements planned for the site, including: A new ...

Oblivion: Game of the Year edition announced

In all likelihood, as a visitor to this site, this news won't be of any help to you. However, topical as always, I'm here to tell you that Bethesda have announced their Game of the Year edition of Oblivion. The GOTY edition will contain the Shivering Isles expansion along with the Knights of the Nine content, on top of the original vanilla Oblivion content. Here's a snippet of excitement: July 9, 2007 (Rockville, MD) – Bethesda Softworks®, a ZeniMax Media company, announced today that it w...

Game Design class uses Morrowind at University of Florida

An email was written to Bethesda, and later posted on the official forums. Here's a piece: Dear Bethesda Softworks, My name is Dave Small and I am teaching a course at the University of Florida this summer on game design, which has 25 students enrolled. Along with the textbooks, the students are required to purchase a copy of Morrowind GOTY, as they will be using the TES Construction Set to implement their game ideas. Sounds fun! The forum thread is here. One of the professor's students ...

'Tamriel: Total War', a Rome: Total War Modification

A team of modders is making a modification for the game Rome: Total War, using the world of The Elder Scrolls. Tamriel: Total War (TTW). The purpose of this mod is to bring the world from The Elder Scrolls game series into good, old RTW. Our aim is to create different, realistic and fun experience. We believe that balance, fun game play and realism can be matched together very well and we will do everything that we can to satisfy our fans. We will focus on Tamriel (the continent actually k...

New Community Manager

A couple of days ago Bethesda hired a new Community Manager. What does that mean you ask? My name is Matt Grandstaff. Yesterday I started as the community manager for Bethesda Softworks. Basically I'm going to be working with you guys and help communicate your thoughts, ideas, criticisms, etc with the folks at the office, while becoming an active member of this community. You'll see me in these boards, as well as other fan communities for Bethesda games. I really look forward to talkin...

Interview with Le Driver, owner of The Elder Scrolls Traveler

Le Driver over at The Elder Scrolls Traveler recently contacted me in regards to answering a few questions for the weekly blogspot he writes. Naturally instead of just answering the questions normally I went off on a huge 3,000 word tangent about plenty of things. If you're really bored or enjoy reading my dull ramblins then go check out the interview, otherwise go check out the rest of Le Driver's blog! Here's a snippet so you can see how boring I am. TESSource was created under it's init...

PS3 vs XBox360 Comparison

Game Trailers have a number of videos with split-screen comparisons of Oblivion on the XBox 360 and the PS3. Unfortunately they're a bit small and, ergo, it's a bit hard to point out major differences (or I just have rubbish eye sight). You can view these comparisons in the Game Trailers video archive for Oblivion....

Shivering Isles Beta Patch Released

Update! Read these two posts: 1,2 ---------------- Bethesda has released the Shivering Isles Beta Patch 1.2. It will work for all language versions worldwide, except those downloaded from Direct2Drive. The patch fixes (well, to summarize it) a bug which appears after +- 150 hours of playing with Shivering Isles, which made items disappear when you dropped them. If you want details take a look at this page. You should only use this patch if you have the Shivering Isles expansion of cour...

Bethesda's New Customer Care Strategy (April Fool's day)

2 April edit: This, of course, was an April Fool's day prank. Still, it was a funny article. From now on I'll post serious news! Original message below. An interesting article popped up at Planet Elder Scrolls, about Bethesda's 'Enhanced Consumer Interaction'. Apparently they are visiting people (and modders) who are having problems with getting the official mods to work on their computer. And then they... Er... Give them a hug. Some snippets: "I spent months perfecting my mod," said di...

London Eye in Oblivion

While doing a Google Image search for Oblivion piccies today I came across an interesting picture: The London Eye in Oblivion. Now, I've never seen this before but then again I don't keep very up-to-date with some of the crazy things the Oblivion community tries to do. This picture is compliments of a satanic blogger (see: all bloggers are satanic, which includes myself, due to their ability to warp my mind into reading the entire blog and wasting my entire afternoon on non-sensical informati...

Shivering Isles Q&A at Atomic Gamer

Atomic Gamer have snatched Bruce Nesmith away from the Bethesda studios for a short while to talk about the upcoming expansion for Oblivion; Shivering Isles. Here's a snippet:

Jeff: Is Sheogorath going to be playing some sick jokes here like he did in Oblivion?

Bruce: He's got a few tricks up his sleeves. Early on he forces you to experience the Mania and Dementia for yourself. After all, you need personal experience with these things if you are going to serve Sh...

Fan Interview and SI Trailer

There's been a fan interview at the ES forums. Also, a trailer for the Shivering Isles has been released. Enjoy!





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Shivering Isles Interviews and Previews

Yes, more of them. Sorry I haven't updated in a while but I figure most people are watching the official site anyway. Probably simplest to just do a list:

GameDaily Preview
Pro-G Preview

Interviews/Previews Galore

Yet more interviews and previews for Shivering Isles. Bethesda have added a ton of different interviews and previews to their respective interviews/previews pages. Can I be bothered to read them? Well, no. But I'm sure they're full of hyp-er, that is, useful information. Just an FYI!



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