I’ve got a bunch of beta access keys to give away.

If you are interested, simply post below. Not a registered user? Well that’s easy enough to fix here.

Once you get your key, head over to

http://beta.battlefield-heroes.com/

and follow the steps listed to get set up.

This is one of the last phases of beta and your charecter will not be deleted once the game goes public.

You are welcome to join us almost nightly on Teamspeak @ ts.frag706.org

Screen shots and videos here.

According to Mediacom’s latest conference call, they are going to be rolling out Docsis 3.0 to 50% of the market by end of year. What does this mean? A hell of a lot more bandwidth. The conference states they are already testing 100mbit downloads to some employee homes. No doubt this is to keep up with Cablevision who recently released 101mbit service. No news on the Charter front, but they are rumored to already be offering 50mbit service in some areas. Knology is way (way) behind as I believe their fastest residential speed “edge” is currently still under 10mbit.

Great news, but what’s the catch? Well Docsis 3.0 is even less tolerant to problems such as line noise than the current Docis 2.0. Basically, if you live in a Mediacom area where your service is already bad, things could possibly get worse for you.

Some of you already swear off Mediacom, but, just to show you what they are capable of when you are in an area that works, here is my speed test:

You can read more about the upgrade here.

NCSX and Play-Asia are now taking pre-orders for the import fighter BlazBlue. While this game isn’t going to be stealing any thunder from SF4 of KoF12, it will be good to get some Guilty Gear style action in HD. Hori is also releasing some themed joysticks for BlazBlue. Of course the 360 users will be getting the inferior joystick compared to the PS3. Not that it matters though, if you don’t have a NTSC/J 360 you’ll have to play it on PS3 anyway.

Play-Asia:

BlazBlue PS3 $68.90 | Hori wireless BlazBlue Fighting stick PS3 $119.99

BlazBlue 360 $68.90 | Hori wired BlazBlue Fighting stick 360 $99.99

NCSX: 

BlazBlue PS3 $65.90 | Hori wireless BlazBlue Fighting stick PS3 $139.99

BlazBlue 360 $65.90 | Hori wired BlazBlue Fighting stick 360 $99.99

Finally, after much delay, we are live!

Starting things off, we would like to thank Tim, Joe, Garret, and everyone else at Play N Trade, who are on board to help us promote and grow an awesome gaming community.

Our goal is to make it easier for you to network with other gamers in the Columbus area, by keeping everyone informed of meet-ups, events, and tournaments. We’ll also cover other news relevant to gaming in our area, as well as deals, the occasional how-to rant, and obscurity.

We can’t do it by our self, and will rely on everyone to let us know what’s going on. Don’t hesitate to email us at the address under the logo above if you have any news/info/event plans/comments.

About the layout– You’ll currently see a Street Fighter-ish theme. This is not to say that we are all about fighting games. The theme will change at different times, usually in relation to whatever the closest big game is to launching.  We also have some other features for the site planned that aren’t ready just yet.

There are a couple of minor bugs with the site we currently know about.

• The flash cloud on the right column will not display with IE + Flash 10
• There are spaces between the columns on the right in IE7

These issues will be fixed soon. Please let us know if you find anything else.

Lastly, because we are pairing with businesses such as PnT, I must ask that all users keep things civil.

That’s it. Welcome to the site.

Let’s hope you did it at a large retail chain.

The local Play N Trade says that the original plan from Mad Catz was to create 9000 joysticks for the first shipment. That got cut down to 1900. This means that smaller retailers (like Play N Trade) won’t get any of them until the second shipment.

That includes preorders.

Expect the prices on ebay to be stupid. If you don’t have to have the joystick immediately, preorder a joystick from the second shipment. It’ll most likely save you some money.