Play Blade And Soul in Taiwan Server with English Patch

Last month, Blade And Soul for North America and Europe has been released. If you live in the SEA region and have tried playing in the NA server, you should notice a very high latency delay. This may seem okay to some casual gamers, but for those hardcore gamers or those who really want to immerse themselves to the dynamic world and gameplay of Blade And Soul, you may want to migrate to the Taiwan server as early as possible to avoid the regrets of realizing that the game is actually unplayable with high latency delay in the end-game levels, PvP, and content. 

The English Patch is called Project Izanami (credits go to its developers and contributors). It has been around for about a year now helping many players worldwide. The newer version contains direct ported English pack from the NA server, and various audio packs to choose from.

I will provide the simplified instructions for installation here (or you can visit the link above):

1. Visit their website and register for an NCSOFT Taiwan account. (tip: use Google Translate)
2. Download and patch the Blade And Soul Taiwan client
3. Go to this Google Drive and download BladeAndSoulTWLauncher.*.ZIP and unzip its contents in a folder somewhere accessible later
4. In the same drive, download EnglishPack.*.ZIP and unzip its contents in another folder
5. Navigate to the SoundPacks folder and download SoundPack_English.*.ZIP and unzip its contents in another folder
6. Run BladeAndSoulTWLauncher.exe inside the BladeAndSoulTWLauncher.* folder
7. Select the English Pack by browsing the Replace.bat file inside the EnglishPack folder
8. Select the Sound Pack by browsing the Replace.bat file inside the SoundPack folder
9. If it prompts you to check for patch updates, select Automatic update
10. Under the Settings tab, set the location for the Launcher.exe by selecting the NCLauncherS.exe inside your NCSOFT launcher folder
11. Set the directory for the Game.exe by selecting the Client.exe file inside your Blade and Soul Taiwan game folder
12. Check if the directories for the English Pack and the Sound Pack are set (same as step 7 & 8)
13. Under the Controls tab, apply the English Pack and the Sound Pack by clicking the Apply buttons for each
14. Click the loli girl to launch the game
15. Optional: you can test your ping by using this Blade And Soul ping tool

While the patch does not fully translate all the statements due to live announcements, content, events, and occassionally bugged NPC dialogues, It does its job about 95% of the time and for all you will ever need. They do have automatic updating features though, so be sure to update your patcher and client regularly. 

If you liked the project and have found it helpful, you can check them out and also contribute to their work to further improve the translations.

Team Secret Accepts ESL One Manila Invite

Team Secret has finally accepted their invites to ESL One Manila following ESL's announcement about format changes. 

hooray esl changed their format guys

— EternaLEnVy (@EternaLEnVy1991) February 11, 2016

After working closely with ESL we are happy to announce our participation in ESL One Manila https://t.co/CkcG7CUHwe pic.twitter.com/BnQqlpYdGu

— Team Secret (@teamsecret) February 11, 2016

About a month ago, following Team Evil Geniuses' announcement stating their decision to decline the invitation to ESL One Manila tournament, Team Secret has also decided to reject the invitation. Many speculations have been noted regarding their decisions; some crediting the practicality of traveling just for a $115,000 first prize playing on an unforgiving single elimination bracket format. The risk of being upset and eliminated in the first round that may guarantee losing their momentum and mentality coming into the Shanghai Majors just a few weeks after is just too much.

Turned down the invite to ESL Manila. I'm sure an awesome team will take our place and it will be a great tournament regardless. Cu at Major

— Peter Dager (@Peterpandam) January 19, 2016

Consequently, ESL announced a decisive change of their match format for the Manila LAN event. This is a rare decision made by ESL since most if not all of their previous ESL One DOTA LANs have always been a single elimination format. Perhaps the enthusiasm of the fans following the 2-day sold out of tickets online only to find their favorite teams not attending has pushed ESL to make the decision to change their formats. 

Together with Team Liquid and EHOME, they will be the last of the three invited teams to join other five teams in a set of intense matches with a total of $250,000 prize pool on the line.


Team Secret roster:

1. Jacky “EternalEnvy” Lmao
2. Omar “w33” Aliwi
3. Rasmus “MiSeRy” Filipsen
4. Clement “Puppey” Ivanov
5. Johan “pieliedie” Åström

ESL One Manila participating teams:

     Team Secret
     Team Liquid
     EHOME
     SEA qualified team
     SEA qualified team
     Philippines qualified team
     America qualified team
     Europe qualified team

The ESL One Manila 2016 LAN tournament will take place on the 23rd and 24th of April at the Mall of Asia Arena in Manila, Philippines.

LoLPH Champion Sale: Feb 16-22

League of Legends PH is happy to tell their fans that there is going to be a Champion Sale! Ten Champions are going to be 50% off during the week of Feb 16-22, 2016. Last week's sale was for Vel'Koz, Yasuo, Zac, Xerath, Yorick, Twitch, Shaco, Veigar, Zilean and Nunu.

The Champions which are included in the six-day sale are Gnar, Zyra, Ziggs, Vladimir, Vayne, Pantheon, Urgot, Akali, Udyr and Ryze. The sale was officially announced last February 09, 2016 at LoLPH's official website. The fans of League are expected to be grabbing this opportunity to purchase their favorite Champions at a low cost.

SHANGHAI MAJOR - DOTA 2

The Shanghai Major teams are complete. Sixteen teams were invited. Eight teams were 

pre-selected and the other eight were invited by winning the qualifiers. The America's qualifier winners are Team Archon and compLexity. The Europe Qualifiers winners are Team Liquid and Team Spirit. The Southeast Asia Qualifier winners are Fnatic and MVP Phoenix. And the China Qualifier winners are LGD and Newbee.

Sunday saw the conclusion of five days of epic Dota in the MarsTV Dota League. Ten of the world's top teams went head-to-head for their chance to grab a slice of the $275,000 prize pool, and offered us a real glance of how teams view the competitive meta following the recent introduction of 6.86.

In Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, the absolute lowest strata of the community is occupied by cheaters. No matter the game, we all know the pain of going up against an obvious cheater: that person who makes the lives of other players a misery, and griefs them just for kicks. This isn't like being at the whim of some hacker who shows off by messing with the game—you're at the mercy of the weasels who bought or subscribed to their script to "win."

It is that shared hatred of cheaters that Valve taps into with Overwatch, its new crowdsourced anti-cheating tool. Overwatch, which lets experienced players like myself ban other players, works so well because we know what it's like to be on the receiving end of a wall-hacking charlatan. We know that a competitive match ofCS:GO is on average a 45-minute commitment, and we know that abandoning it will result in punishment from teammates and game alike. We know that if we can keep CS:GO free of cheaters, the game—and the community—will be all the better for it.

2 February 2016 

Tech Review

HTC ONE M9 - GOLD ON SILVER

      Since last year I've been wanting the new phone released by HTC. The phone looks like its predecessor but there are several enhancements to it. It enhance both software and hardware specification.

  

            The phone looks stylish and at the same time it comes with elegance, but iPhone users doesn't seem to be attracted to it once viewed. Some says that there's a lot of common mistake that HTC did on it. just like on the camera, they improved the megapixels but because of it, M9 is hard to process to those detail at small amount of time. but I'm not really concern with it.

           Soon enough, new flagship phone from HTC will come out. Rumors says that it will be released on march as it compete with Samsung Galaxy S7 and iPhone 7.

Specification:

(gsmarena.com)

NETWORK	Technology	GSM / CDMA / HSPA / EVDO / LTE

LAUNCH	Announced	2015, March
	Status	Available. Released 2015, March

BODY	Dimensions	144.6 x 69.7 x 9.6 mm (5.69 x 2.74 x 0.38 in)
	Weight	157 g (5.54 oz)
	SIM	Nano-SIM

DISPLAY	Type	Super LCD3 capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
	Size	5.0 inches (~68.4% screen-to-body ratio)
	Resolution	1080 x 1920 pixels (~441 ppi pixel density)
	Multitouch	Yes
	Protection	Corning Gorilla Glass 3
		- HTC Sense UI 7.0

PLATFORM	OS	Android OS, v5.0 (Lollipop), v5.1 (Lollipop), planned upgrade to v6.0 (Marshmallow)
	Chipset	Qualcomm MSM8994 Snapdragon 810
	CPU	Quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 & Quad-core 2 GHz Cortex-A57
	GPU	Adreno 430

MEMORY	Card slot	microSD, up to 200 GB
	Internal	32 GB, 3 GB RAM

CAMERA	Primary	20 MP, f/2.2, 28mm, autofocus, dual-LED (dual tone) flash, check quality
	Features	1/2.4" sensor size, 1.2 µm pixel size, geo-tagging, touch focus, face/smile detection, HDR, panorama
	Video	2160p@30fps, 1080p@60fps, 720p@120fps, HDR, stereo sound rec., check quality
	Secondary	4 MP, f/2.0, 27mm, 1/3" sensor size, 2µm pixel size, 1080p@30fps, HDR

SOUND	Alert types	Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones
	Loudspeaker	Yes, with stereo speakers
	3.5mm jack	Yes

COMMS	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, hotspot
	Bluetooth	v4.1, A2DP, apt-X
	GPS	Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS
	NFC	Yes
	Infrared port	Yes
	Radio	Stereo FM radio with RDS
	USB	microUSB v2.0 (MHL 3.0 TV-out), USB Host

FEATURES	Sensors	Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass
	Messaging	SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email
	Browser	HTML5
	Java	No
		- Fast battery charging: 60% in 30 min (Quick Charge 2.0) - Google Drive (100 GB cloud storage) - Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic - XviD/MP4/H.264/WMV player - MP3/eAAC+/WMA/WAV/FLAC player - Document editor - Photo/video editor

BATTERY		Non-removable Li-Po 2840 mAh battery
	Stand-by	Up to 391 h (2G) / Up to 402 h (3G)
	Talk time	Up to 25 h 20 min (2G) / Up to 21 h 50 min (3G)

MISC	Colors	Gunmetal Gray, Amber Gold, Silver/Rose gold, Gold/Pink, Pink
	Price group	9/10

TESTS	Performance	Basemark OS II: 1526 / Basemark OS II 2.0: 1365 Basemark X: 19848
	Display	Contrast ratio: 1221:1 (nominal), 2.334 (sunlight)
	Camera	Photo / Video
	Loudspeaker	Voice 65dB / Noise 64dB / Ring 76dB
	Audio quality	Noise -94.8dB / Crosstalk -93.7dB
	Battery life	Endurance rating 62h