With Deathwing’s shadow looming over Azeroth and the mortal realms of Sanctuary steeling for war against the forces of Diablo, the World of Warcraft Annual Pass has arrived to offer WoW subscribers a chance to participate in both apocalyptic conflicts… without breaking the bank. For a limited time only, players who make a 12-month subscription commitment to World of Warcraft through the WoW Annual Pass will receive the following epic rewards:

* Diablo III FREE – Download the digital version via Battle.net for free when the game launches early next year. This is the full game, not a trial edition.
* Tyrael’s Charger WoW Flying Mount – Ride for the Archangel of Justice on all current and future characters on a single World of Warcraft account. Tyrael’s Charger will arrive via in-game mail with the upcoming launch of patch 4.3.
* Access to the Next WoW Expansion Beta Test – Get a guaranteed spot in the beta test for the next World of Warcraft expansion (at a time to be announced in the future).

You can pay for the WoW Annual Pass on a monthly basis at $14.99 per month or according to the billing plan of your choice. To participate, you must be 18 or older, have a valid credit card, and have registered a full version of World of Warcraft on or before October 18, 2011.

The NVIDIA GPU based video cards came out of testing as very clear winners in this game. Performance was exceptional, and they support the texture transcoding on the GPU feature by way of NVIDIA's CUDA technology. All three NVIDIA video cards were capable of playing RAGE at 2560x1600 with 8X AA, 16X AF, Large Texture Cache, and GPU Transcode enabled. The GTX 580, GTX 570, and GTX 560 Ti all put in very close performances due to the 60FPS performance cap in RAGE.

The AMD video cards we used in this evaluation performed well. The HD 6970 was playable at 2560x1600 with 8X AA and 16X AF, same as the NVIDIA video cards. Performance was lower than the much less expensive GeForce GTX 560 Ti, but it was playable. The Radeon HD 6950 and HD 6870 were playable in RAGE at 2560x1600 and 4X AA.

Overall, the experiences provided by the AMD Radeon HD 6970, HD 6950, and HD 6870 were comparable to those provided by the NVIDIA video cards. The GeForce card had an edge thanks to CUDA-based GPU texture transcoding, but it wasn't that big of a deal. After a few minutes in any given environment, the texture pop-in issue fades to being a minor annoyance with the AMD video cards installed.

The blurry textures on many (if not most) surfaces, however, can't be helped by GPU transcoding, or anisotropic texture filtering, or even selecting Large for the Texture Cache option. The PC version of Rage shipped with the same texture assets as the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions, in spite of the fact that texture memory is not limited as much with modern video cards as it is on gaming consoles. The only way that particular issue can be fixed is through a (presumably very large) high-resolution texture pack.

Tortured by Belltower agents and with his augmentations disabled, Adam Jensen must escape from a freighter destined for an unknown location. Jensen uncovers a new layer of conspiracy, befriends new allies, and fights ruthless enemies to discover what was happening in the shadows during the events of DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION!

“We are thrilled to bring DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION - The Missing Link to fans,” said David Anfossi, producer of DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION at Eidos-Montreal. “This unique DLC provides an enhanced DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION experience with deeper insight into the conspiracy, visual improvements, new characters and enemies, and a twist on gameplay elements.”

DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION - The Missing Link is available at a cost of 1200 Microsoft Points via the Xbox LIVE® Marketplace (XBLM) for Xbox 360, and $14.99 on the PlayStation®Network and Windows PC platforms. Providing an average of four to six hours of compelling gameplay, players will be able to earn ten new achievements/trophies and 250 Xbox Gamerscore points. Players must own DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION in order to download and play DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION – The Missing Link.