PLAYXPERT announced in an official press release that their new line of in-game "widgets," uncannily named PLAYXPERT (oh the horror!), for the avid PC LAN and MMO gamer. These little management tools sit inside your game, offering a semi-transparent feature so that they don't obscure your field of view, but still allow you to view content streamed right through.

 

The universal instant messaging and chat system (with VoIP support) is compatible with Xfire, Yahoo!, AOL, ICQ, and MSN engines for IMing or chatting. But the PLAYXPERT platform is especially helpful for World of Warcraft players, since the initial release will come with special features for the successful Blizzard MMORPG. Future support for other popular games will soon be supported through add-on releases to the platform.

Other widgets include the Armory widget, Thottbot Widget, WoWWiki widget, and a WoWhead widget. A Google widget will also be provided so that any game can find key information online without having to ALT-TAB out of the game and launch a browser. Utilizing an in-game overlay technology, the widgets actually are rendered through DirectX (with OpenGL support coming soon) and not through the Windows GUI.

Aimed specifically for the techie, geeky and even hardware enthusiast gamers, other future widgets will include real-time hardware diagnostics. Game stat tracking, clan and team management, in-game music access along with other additional community features are also slated to come soon.

And of course, budding coders can even add their own widgets to the platform without having to tackle the difficulties in coding overlay engines. PLAYXPERT has already published a full application programming interface (API) for the platform so widget coders can get started on their own custom additions to their gameplay experiences.

The latest patch notes aren't up yet on the World of Warcraft website (they still show the ones for PTR Patch 2.0.10, by the way), so here's Drysc to the rescue. He's just posted the current live notes for PTR Patch 2.0.12 on the official WoW forums and, well, here they are:

Mac

• Improved memory usage and stability under Mac OS X 10.4.9 using multi-threaded OpenGL

Bug Fixes

• Attempting to turn in a guild charter with a signature from a player that formed his own guild will no longer result in an inappropriate error message.
• Using the customer support "Auto-Unstuck" will now trigger the one-hour cooldown on the player's hearthstone.

Arenas

• Players will no longer be able to see their opponents in the Combat Log of an Arena match-up before the game starts.

Battlegrounds

• Eye of the Storm: Players should no longer be able to exit the bubble before the match starts.

Mechanar

• The gate at the top of the elevator in Mechanar will now remain open while attempting the gauntlet and after Pathaleon the Calculator is killed.

Caverns of Time: Old Hillsbrad

• The Escape from Durnholde event will no longer break during the church part of the encounter.
• Various localization fixes have been applied.

These patch notes will be on the official website soon.

 

The Public Test Realms for patch 2.0.7 are now up and running, and those who wish to participate in testing the changes can do so by copying characters and downloading the PTR client. You can do both through the Account Management page at worldofwarcraft.com. The Test Realm Forums are also ready to receive any bug reports and issues that you stumble upon in the patch.

The patch notes for patch 2.0.7 have also been released over at the official WoW website. One of the key changes is that the amount of haste granted by a point of haste rating has now been increased by about 50%. Mac users also get a little something, with new stability improvements in Multi-Threaded OpenGL support on future OS X releases.

The whole Argent Dawn scam issue has also been addressed in this patch. With 2.0.7, players can no longer send gift-wrapped packages via COD. This should fill a lot of people with heaps upon heaps of dashdwhsd.

For the full patch notes, click on the read link below.

Graphics cards help to make your gaming experiences so much better. You probably wouldn't be able to see the grandeur of Azeroth or the details on the pretty gun you're holding without a powerful card.

If you're a hardcore gamer who really wants to see everything a game has to offer, you may have picked up one of the GeForce 8800 series cards from NVIDIA to augment your gameplay. If that's the case, then this little bit of news is for you.

NVIDIA recently released the latest version of their ForceWare drivers for the GeForce 8800 types. ForceWare Release 95 v97.44 fixes some issues present in games like EverQuest II and Splinter Cell: Double Agent. This release also removes the option for temperature monitoring and overclocking of the GPU, placing it inside NVIDIA nTune 5.05 instead.

In any case, we've listed the highlights of their release below. GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS users should feel free to visit the sourced link to download the latest drivers for themselves, as well as grab a copy of the release notes and installation guide provided by their site. Enjoy!

Release Highlights:

• Supports GeForce 8800 GTX and GeForce 8800 GTS GPUs.
• Game and application compatibility fixes. For more information on this driver, please view the Release Notes.
• New PureVideo technology features allows GeForce 8800 GTX/GTS to achieve a score of 128 in the HQV video quality benchmark:
• Improved inverse telecine algorithms (2:2 and 3:2 Pull-down Correction) for standard and high definition content.
• Improved spatial-temporal de-interlacing algorithm (for standard and high definition content).
  

• Includes the new NVIDIA Control Panel. Please visit the NVIDIA Control Panel website for more information.
• Microsoft DirectX 9.0c and OpenGL 2.1 support.