News Blips: Blizzard News, Game Critics Awards Best of E3, Discounted Halo: Reach, and More

Blizzard copies us twofold with their "use your real name when commenting" move and their writing contest, though admittedly, we're not too big on fan fiction that involves our staff's likeness.

News Blips:

Blizzard plans to display players' real names on the Battle.net forums and kicks off their 2010 Global Writing Contest. First, using the new Real ID feature and beginning with Starcraft 2, Blizzard intends to display the first, last, and optionally the primary in-game character name of people who post on the official forums in order to promote civility (hey, like Bitmob!). Second, you might want to dust off that old Diablo/Starcraft/Warcraft fan-fiction masterpiece hidden away on your computer and submit it to the company. The grand-prize winner picks up a trip to Blizzard's Irvine, CA, headquarters to meet the writing staff and a special keepsake. Just make sure you clean up any furry love scenes since that could set you up for disqualification.

Game Critics Awards recently released the list of winners of the Best of the Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3) 2010. The award for best of show goes to none other than the Nintendo 3DS, while id Software's Rage won the most awards (three), including Best Console Game and Best Action Game. You can check out the site for a complete list of winners, but it's much less interesting than our E3 Non-Award Awards.

Online electronics retailer NewEgg offers (the yet to be released) Halo: Reach for $44.99. The latest installment of Bungie's intergalactic shooter is still a ways off from store shelves, but that isn't stopping NewEgg from selling it as a preorder and at $15 off the original price. Screw the usual extra costumes or weapons -- 15 bucks off is definitely the best preorder bonus I've ever seen.

Microsoft teases its upcoming Xbox Live Arcade browser application update, Destination Arcade. Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb says that this update will provide users with recommendations of new games from friends as well as make it easier to navigate the current 250-plus Arcade titles. Microsoft plans to release Destination Arcade on July 14, and hopefully they'll use that time to think of a more interesting name.

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