PlayStation Network hacked!!

                For this blog entry, I’m going to be talking about the recent incident that happened to Sony to their PlayStation Network. What I mean is that there was an accident to the PlayStation Network and PS3 gamers cannot sign in which means gamers can’t play any game online.

                This horrible event happened on April 20 2011 at approximately 3:00 am in the morning. When gamers tried to sign in, it said “An error has occurred, you have been signed out of PlayStation Network”. When I woke up on the 21^st, it showed that message and I kept on trying to sign in but it wouldn’t let me. First I thought that my internet was bad so I disconnected and reconnected it to make it a bit faster. Even after I did that it didn’t work so I decided to see what was going on. The first thing I did was that I went to the PlayStation website. There was nothing wrong so I tried to sign in into the PlayStation Network through there. There was when I found out what was going on, or so I thought. When I pressed sign in, it appeared a message saying that the PlayStation Network was undergoing maintenance. Now that I knew what was going on, I waited for several hours because maintenance just takes a couple hours. After waiting, I tried again and the same message appeared on the PS3 and on the website. Now there was something wrong because maintenance doesn’t take so long. I started to search through Google of what was going on and I found many sources that all said that the network was hacked. My reaction to this was amazed as well as sad. I was amazed because Sony is such a big company with very well built products and software and people were able to hack the PlayStation Network which is a huge network from Sony. The reason why I was sad and still am is because I haven’t been able to play online which makes my day very boring.

                After two days or so, Sony announced that they were hacked from an outside party which means it was several people joined together to hack the network. After they announced that, I tried to sign in through the PS3 again but instead of the error message, it showed that it was under maintenance. When I read this, I predicted that they got the software back but are checking if anything is damaged. Later, Sony posted another update message which was that they have the software back but are rebuilding it to prevent further damages or hackers. After everything announced, people are creating rumors or ideas of how the hackers were able to hack the network. One idea, which is the hardest one to understand if you don’t know much about computers, is that he hackers are sending small bits of information to the network and the network in return, has to send a bigger message than the one it received. So the hackers sent lots of information so the network in return had to send lots of information which are bigger than it received so the network crashed. The second idea they created, which is the most reasonable one is that a game called Portal 2 just came out and it can connect to a PC so possibly, the hackers sent a virus through the PC game of Portal 2, it goes into the PS3 game of Portal 2, which got into the PlayStation Network so it shut it down. All these al rumors and ideas but it isn’t confirmed how they hacked this massive network.

They haven’t announced when they are going to put the network back up and running, but it has been a week already that it has been down. Like I am a PS3 gamer, I have been waiting patiently for a long time and I hope Sony gets the network back up and running soon. I really want to play online games again.

Black Ops map pack 2: Escalation

                For this blog entry, I’m going to be talking about the rumor that is going on that there will be a new DLC, Down Loadable Content, pack for Call of Duty Black Ops. It is called Escalation and is said to come out on May 3^rd 2011 for Xbox 360. PlayStation 3 and PC are yet to be announced, if this is true. The new DLC pack is supposed to contain the same amount of maps as First Strike, four new online maps and one new zombie map. I am especially looking forward to the zombie map. Hopefully they make it better than Ascension or as good as Ascension but we shall see.

                One of the maps seems to be in a zoo because on the poster, it says “SEIZE THE ZOO”. My thought about this map will be, first of all, in a zoo and probably there will be animals that if you get close to them, they will hurt you or kill you. Looking at the picture, it looks like there will be a tiger because on the sign it shows a tiger and the man with two guns looks like it will be a bloody map.

                Another map seems to be in a hotel because it says “TAKE THE HOTEL”. My thought about this is that, hopefully, the map will be big and you will be able to move around a lot, maybe go up some stories and enter hotel rooms. Another thing I hope to see is that the man is breaking in to what seems like a window so maybe if you go to the top floor, you can repel down and break through a window like the man in the picture. This looks like it will be a map like Kowloon, where you get do something special in the map. For example, in Kowloon, you can repel on a line and get to one area to another very quick. Maybe the repelling from the roof and breaking into a window will be the special thing.

                The next map seems to be in an airport because if you zoom into the picture and look at the rectangular sign, it says “Airport Crystal City”, and the map is called “SECURE THE CONVOY”. I don’t have many suggestions for this map but I will suspect that it will be big. Maybe there will be a plane that you can get into like in Modern Warfare 2 on the map Terminal. Another suggestion that I have is that players can ride on the airport cars. What I’m referring to is those small cars which drag the entire luggage to get to the plane it needs to go on. This seems like a map that not many people will like and it won’t be as popular as the other three.

                The final online map seems to be in a camp during the winter and the map is called “RAID THE STOCKPILE”. This map looks like the map Discovery, with huts around the map and maybe you can go into them. But other than that there isn’t much to say about it. This map could be one of those maps that people will not like.

                The next map is the zombie map which seems to be that type of game mode because there is a bloody hand and it says “SURVIVE CALL OF THE DEAD”. Although it says that, the map will probably be called Survive and Treyarch must have put in Call of the Dead just to get people’s attention. The picture of the hand doesn’t give much about what the map is going to be like. My hopes are that it will be better than or as good as the last zombie map Ascension which was released in the First Strike DLC. Hopefully Treyarch will take out the gas zombies like they did in Ascension. When coming to the monkeys, I might have a debate about that because the monkeys can be distracted by throwing a grenade. The monkeys can also die when you throw a Gersh device and that helps a lot when defending the perk machine you are protecting. The negative side about monkeys is that they are hard to kill and they steal perks which are very helpful. So I am to the conclusion that Treyarch will put in the monkeys again, put in the dogs instead of monkeys, or put in a new type of animal to make the map better. Out of the other 4 maps, I am really looking forward to playing on the new zombie map and see how good it will turn out to be.

                To recap, Escalation the new DLC map pack is rumored to be coming out on May 3^rd 2011 for Xbox live first, and PlayStation 3 and PC are yet to be announced.  If you are a PS3 lover, like me, then you must be pretty mad because we PS3 gamers have to wait longer and Treyarch already did this to us when they released First Strike. I hope this map pack will come out and will be better than First Strike

UPDATE: I have been writing this blog entry for several days and when I just finished I got news about the Escalation map pack. Treyarch has just announced that this map pack WILL come out and on the same date as the rumor. Now we just have to wait until it is released and enjoy more online maps!

Ascension map walk through

                For this blog entry I will be talking about the zombie map Ascension from a bird’s eye view and talk about the different places. To me, it seems a lot of my class mates don’t know about this map so I think I will be helping them from my own free will. To explain this map, I will be using the maps below (and yes I did make these maps on my own, I did not copy it from Google).

The area where we always start at is in the centrifuge room which is the circle with the red circle inside. In that room, we have two doors we can go through, one on the bottom and one on top. There is also a teddy bear which, if you activate all three, you hear a song. Let’s say we went through the top door. When we go through it, we can go left or right (or up or down in our case because we are looking from on top). We will go left (down in our case) so we will appear in the area where there is the orange pentagon. If we continue left, we can go through another door which leads us into the area with a lander location and another teddy bear. That’s all for that area of the map so we will go back to the top door and go right (up in our case). When we go up, we will find a turret which we can use but I never use it because turrets will eventually do nothing in the high rounds. If we continue through the path, we will find a door to our right or another area to our left. Let’s go left first because this area is very good to get to high rounds and it’s the area I always stay in to get far. When you are camping in this area when you play, you got to watch out for zombies coming for the balcony on top (which you can see on the map, which is a small area) and zombies coming from the little room where the pentagon figure is in. This area has a lander location also so if you’re getting crowded, you can use the lander and escape. Let’s continue through the door to our right before we continued to the lander area. When we follow the path, we can go into the building or continue forward and go through a door into another area. Let’s go through the door ahead because in the other map (which I will talk about soon), one of the areas will appear in the building area which is the path we aren’t going through right now. Past the door, we can go up some stairs but we won’t because in the other map, it will tie into those stair cases. When we continue down the path, we will find another turret and a big door (silver door on the map). This door is opened by using all the landers at least once and then you launch the rocket. Let’s say it is open. When we go in, we go through a small alley like way and in that new room there is the pack-a-punch machine which is so useful in the high rounds. That is all for the first map. Now we will go to the next map which is the inside of the building and this is where it gets more complicated.

                The map of inside the building will start in the centrifuge room which you can kind of see the red circle which is cut off on the bottom left. The door that we go through is the bottom door that I said there was in the beginning of the second paragraph. This area is pretty small and it’s not a good idea to be there when there are a lot of zombies. Let’s continue up the stairs which is marked with a grey arrow. If we see in the key, I say to follow the same colored arrow to continue up the stair case. I also put what floor the area is to make it easier to follow. So we follow the grey arrow and we are now in the area which is marked 1 ½ floor and has a red pentagon figure. This is also a small area and is bad to be there when many zombies are walking around. We continue up the stair case labeled with a brown arrow and it leads us into the 2^nd floor which is the room where we didn’t go through (if you remembered I said we won’t go through an area because the second map would appear in that area) and now we are here. Let’s continue up the stairs with the blue arrow and we will be in another small room. Then we go up another stair case with a yellow arrow which will lead us to the 3^rd floor. This room is where you turn on the power which will get the map in color and is where you can launch the rocket AFTER you use all the landers at least once. We continue through a door and go down some stairs and there will be a hole in the wall. If you jump through it, you will appear right outside the building which I said we wouldn’t go into at first. Let’s go right and not jump through the hole to finish the map. This room has a place where you can go out and it goes through a stair case which ties with the stair case I talked about that is in the area close to the pack-a-punch room. We won’t go through there and continue through another stair case which we can see in the map which leads into the room with the green pentagon icon. We continue through another path and we will appear in the last lander area. This place is also where the last teddy bear is to activate the song.

                These are all the areas of the map Ascension. I hope this guide helps to get around the map when you play and this map works for a PS3 gamer, a Xbox 360 gamer, a PC gamer or a Wii gamer. This was all for this long blog entry.