To commemorate launch of the FREE Sandstorm Expansion, Global Agenda is available at 25% off now through August 19th, 2010, 10AM Pacific Time.
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Aquabats set release date, tour with Reel Big Fish
The Aquabats have announced that they’ll hit the road with Reel Big Fish for a tour in November. The bands will kick things off with a November 9th appearance at the Yo Gabba Gabba live show in West Valley City, Utah. Full dates and details are forthcoming.
As for the band’s new album, it will be released independently by the band on November 9th. A title has not yet been announced. The CD will come with a full color booklet and stickers and a digital version will be available on the band’s website.
The Aquabats last released Charge!! in 2005 on Nitro Records.
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John K. Samson to release ‘Provincial Road 222’ EP in September
Weakerthans frontman John K. Samson will release a new solo EP on September 21st titled Provincial Road 222. The collection will be available as a limited edition 7″ and digital download via Epitaph / ANTI- Records in North America and Grand Hotel Van Cleef in Europe. The European version arrives a few days earlier on the 17th of September. Provincial Road 222 features backing from the Correction Line Ensemble and is the second in John’s series of recordings exploring the roadways of Manitoba. The first release in this series was City Route 85.
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Global Agenda v1.36 Update Released
Global Agenda Version 1.36 has been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted.
Version 1.36 introduces significant modifications to the Agency-vs-Agency system, as well as a variety of cleanups and improvements to the previously released Sandstorm functionality.
Major Highlights
- Agency vs. Agency (AvA): Significant changes have been made to the Agency vs Agency gameplay to address player feedback. More information is below.
- Tokens: The daily limit on tokens has been increased from 2,000 to 6,000. The bank limit on tokens has been increased from 20,000 to 30,000.
- Consumables: Removed from PvP.
- Armor: Blue armor is now available for sale at the Mercenary vendor for tokens.
- PvP Matchmaking: Matchmaking on Mercenary PvP matches has been modified to ensure better class balance, both at start of match and when backfills occur.
- Raid Matchmaking: Raids now require at least one of each class. (Note: If you are making a pre-made team for a Raid, you must take this into account).
- Modifications: Unwanted mods may now be sold back to a vendor.
- Defense Raids: Team leaders may now not join the Raid queue if any member of their team is under Level 30. Raids now require at least one of each class on a team.
- Magmalance: Length of DoT has been reduced from 3s to 2s.
- Aftershock Launcher: Now increases Mechanical damage +25% (Previously it did not increase Mechanical damage, although the tooltip incorrectly read that it increased Mechanical damage +40%).
- Gammaburst Launcher: No longer does knockback. Reduces human target protections by 5% for 5 sec. It reduces mechanical protections by 20% for 5 sec.
- Hornet Drone: Health reduced by 25%. Damage reduced by 30%.
- Chat: All players are now limited on the rate at which they can add new entries into City, Looking for Group and Trade channels (previously limited only trial players). There are no restrictions for Local and Team chat channels. The Looking for Group and Trade channels are now defaulted to your All chat channel list.
- Personal Vandal Boost: Disabled in Open Zone.
- Map Cleanups: A large number of cleanups, bug fixes and map changes have been made to various levels in the game, especially the Sonoran Desert Open Zone, Special Ops PvE and Raid..
- Tooltips: A large number of tooltips have been improved.
- Login Screen: Updated to reflect the completion of Global Agenda: Sandstorm.
Server and Feature Availability
- The Global Agenda Servers are expected to be down on THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 2010 from approximately 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM US Eastern (15:00 to 19:00 GMT) while the patch is deployed. These times may change. Follow GAServerStatus on Twitter for up-to-date server availability information.
- The first weekend AvA Zones will open on SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 2010. The first weekday AvA Zones will open on MONDAY, AUGUST 16, 2010.
Agency vs Agency
- SEASON LENGTH: Seasons are now two weeks in duration.
- ZONE OPEN TIMES: For each major geographic region (Europe, North America, Pac-Rim), there will be one zone open on MONDAY through THURSDAY, and another zone open on SATURDAY and SUNDAY. Each zone will be open for 6 hours a day. For example, the “Weekday” North American zone will be open from 7:30 PM US Eastern to 1:30 AM US Eastern on Monday through Thursday. The European “Weekday” Zone will be open from 16:30 to 22:30 UK Time (17:30 to 23:30 CET) Monday through Thursday, with different zones open on Saturday/Sunday.
- HEX OPEN TIMES: Agencies will no longer choose when they are open for production (and thus for attack). Instead, each ZONE will be divided into six different segments. Each segment will be open for 1 hour of each zone open time. Segment 1 for the first hour, Segment 2 for the second hour, etc. By holding a hex in Segment 1 of the “Weekday” zone, you and everyone else will know that that hex will be open for production on Monday through Thursday during the first hour of your zone’s open time. Note that each segment will have a varying number of hexes in it, with the middle hours of each zone open time having more hexes open than the first and last hours. Maps will cluster rare resources to ensure some hexes are more valuable than others.
- REWARDS: XP and Credits will be rewarded under the same formula as Mercenary PvP. Players in a Strikeforce that successfully win an AvA mission will receive tokens for the win. The # of Tokens will be based on the level of facility that was attacked. (Tech III facilities will earn substantially more tokens for a victory than Tech 1 facilities, and hexes with no facility will not have a token reward). The way items are produced will remain the same as it is today (at least initially).
- WIN CONDITION: Agencies will still win based on Net Worth. Each Zone will have its own winners. (Meaning, there will be 6 sets of winners for each season — one for the Saturday/Sunday zone and one for Monday-Thursday zone in each of the 3 geographic regions). The Top 3 agencies in each zone will be rewarded. An Agency will be able to participate in multiple zones. However, they will only be allowed to have an HQ in one zone.
- ALLIANCES: Alliances are removed from the AvA gameplay. You can still form alliances and use alliance chat, but there is no other impact on AvA.
- BIDS: Bids remain blind, but you may now rebid every 15 seconds until bidding is closed.
- SOFT CAP ON PRODUCTION: Production declines as your agency owns more hexes. Most agencies will find that their production is maximized by staying between 9 and 15 hexes.
- LOCKDOWN TIMER: The lockdown time after a defensive victory has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. For Defense missions, the lockdown time has been reduced from 20 minutes to 2 minutes in the case of a defensive victory.
Constantines winding down?
Exclaim is speculating that the Constantines recent appearance at the Dawson City Music Festival this past July may have been the band’s last for the forseeable future. Frontman Bryan Webb played coy in a recent interview with CBC Radio 3, refusing to make any finalistic statments on the band’s future but admitting:
I think we’re just slowing down… We’re in our early 30s and we have some different priorities than we did ten years ago, personally any way. It’s time to focus on other things.
The band recently saw the departure of keyboardist / guitarist Will Kidman. The musician, who also performs as solo act Woolly Leaves, was sidelined due to an illness earlier in the year but left the group formally before their Dawson City performance. Guitarist / vocalist Steve Lambke continues to record and perform as his solo act Baby Eagle (they have a new record titled Dog Weather out on August 17th via You’ve Changed Records). Bryan Webb recently reloacted from Montreal to the band’s original home of Guelph, Ontario. He’s participating in the National Parks Project, which dispatches Canadian musicians to parkland in Canada to colalborate on new music. The frontman will be working with Sarah Harmer and Jim Guthrie at Haida Gwaii in northern British Columbia. Bassist Dallas Wehrle has started a band in Toronto called Deloro with members of One Hundred Dollars and Attack In Black.
The band’s last album was Kensington Heights in 2008.
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IfYouMakeIt posts Glocca Morra and Greek Favourites split
DIY clearing house IfYouMakeIt has posted the new split release from Glocca Morra and the Greek Favourites. You can download Songs In the Key of Ayyyyyy here.
The split is due out physically September 1st and follows The Working Bones, A Health Decline by Glocca Morra and the Grounded EP by the Greek Favourites, which you can stream at their Punknews band page.
Source Continue reading IfYouMakeIt posts Glocca Morra and Greek Favourites split
QuakeCon 2010 Steam Sale Starts Now
Can’t make it to Texas for QuakeCon this year? Or maybe you’re already there, playing in the largest LAN event in North America. Either way, you can take part in the partying and fun with four days of huge sales on id and Bethesda games on Steam. Come back each day for a different deal, or just go ahead and pick up the QuakeCon Pack for about 75% off all currently available id and Bethesda games.
The QuakeCon 2010 Steam Sale kicks off today with 66% off The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion® Game of the Year Edition. Also at 66% off is the The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion® Game of the Year Edition Deluxe, which includes Knights of the Nine and the Shivering Isles expansions plus Fighter’s Stronghold Expansion, Spell Tome Treasures, Vile Lair, Mehrune’s Razor and much more.
Don’t forget to come back tomorrow for another great deal. Offers change at 9am Pacific Time.
Punknews Podcast for the week of August 10, 2010
Another week, another exciting edition of the Punknews podcast! For this super-sized episode, I was joined by news editor Adam White, managing editor Ben Conoley and copy editor Jesse Raub for a raucous roundtable discussion that included our thoughts on the unfortunate death of a man at the Warped Tour in Kansas City, the Descendents’ upcoming trip to Australia, Weezer signing to Epitaph and Yellowcard to Hopeless, as well as the madness and uncertainty behind Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley being attacked in a bar in Japan.
Not only that, but on this week’s show we’re premiering brand new music from Restorations, Bars of Gold and City of Ships. That’s right, if you’ve heard any of these songs before, you’re either in the band or you know someone who knows someone. THAT’S how new they are!
You can click Read More to stream and/or download the show, or subscribe via RSS or iTunes. Don’t forget to give us your feedback in the comments section or via e-mail.
Source Continue reading Punknews Podcast for the week of August 10, 2010
Now in Beta: Tabbed chat and browser improvements
Steam’s browser and chat windows are now grouped as tabs! You can manage multiple chats and web pages each in a single window in our latest Beta.
We’ve also been making some improvements to Steam’s browser performance and stability, with the biggest gains on the Mac in particular. Flash video playback is now faster and more stable here, and the browser now loads cached content quickly. The video below shows a before and after comparison of our store’s home page loading in the released Steam client and our latest Beta. The comparison is fair, in that both versions of the client had the same amount of time after start up to “settle,” and both had the page content in their local cache. What was once molasses is now a normal web page in a normal-speed web browser. Yay!
You can give these improvements a whirl in the latest Beta by visiting Steam client Settings or Preferences and opting into the Beta Update offered there. And as always, do share your feedback on the Steam Forums.
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Against Me!: “High Pressure Low” (live on Fuel TV’s The Daily Habit)
Against Me! recently stopped by the stage/indoor halfpipe at Fuel TV’s The Daily Habit to perform “High Pressure Low,” a track from their recent full-length White Crosses.
The band will head to Canada next month for a tour with The Flatliners and Young Livers.
Source Continue reading Against Me!: “High Pressure Low” (live on Fuel TV’s The Daily Habit)
Jason Navarro (The Suicide Machines) responds to Dan Lukacinsky’s comments
Suicide Machines vocalist Jason Navarro was recently contacted by Punknews, for a statement in response to founding guitarist Dan Lukacinsky’s comments regarding the beloved band’s reunion shows, of which Lucacinsky is not participating. Navarro stated:
“I just want to have fun! So if you want to hear a bunch of songs off of Destruction [By Definition] and Battle Hymns that we never got to play, come on out and have fun! Sing along! Throwing mud is not my style.
Thanks, Jason”
The band is gearing up for a headlining spot at this year’s The Fest 9 in Gainesville, FL. Hellmouth guitarist Justin Malek has been performing live with the Suicide Machines in Lukacinsky’s place on their recent gigs, and will assumingly continue to do so at The Fest.
Source Continue reading Jason Navarro (The Suicide Machines) responds to Dan Lukacinsky’s comments
The Measure (SA) detail ‘Notes,’ post new song
![The Measure [SA]](https://www.punknews.org/images/bands/features/themeasuresa.jpg)
New Brunswick, NJ’s The Measure (SA) have detailed their upcoming full-length for No Idea Records. The record is titled Notes and it’s due out October 5, 2010, and will be the group’s first full-length since 2006’s Historical Fiction, though they’ve released a fair amount of EPs, 7-inches and collections since then, including a split with New Bruises just last month.
The opening track from Notes, “Be Yours,” is streaming at the band’s MySpace page. The Measure will be touring down to The Fest 9 in Gainesville, FL over Halloween weekend; those dates are expected to be announced soon.
Source Continue reading The Measure (SA) detail ‘Notes,’ post new song
Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.® 2 now available for Pre-Purchase with Bonus Offer
Pre-purchase Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.® 2 before launch and receive a FREE copy of Blazing Angels® 2!
Source Continue reading Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.® 2 now available for Pre-Purchase with Bonus Offer