We had a ton of fun during our last Play MAG with Zipper event, so we’re doing it again on Friday, 16th July! This time we’ll be spending our entire session playing MAG‘s new DLC, “Interdiction”, and we’d love to see you there.

If you haven’t tried it out yet, the Interdiction expansion introduces a brand-new gametype, three new faction-neutral maps, the Heavy Improved armor set and new ribbons, medals and trophies. You can download it today from thePlayStation Store for €7.99/£6.29. It’s fun for everyone!

Here’s our Interdiction play schedule:

• Pacific: 2pm – 4pm
• Mountain: 3pm – 5pm
• Central: 4pm – 6pm
• Eastern: 5pm – 7pm
• Hawaii: 12pm (noon) – 2pm
• Alaska: 1pm – 3pm
• GMT: 9pm – 11pm

We’ll see you on the battlefield!

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Tomorrow is the day that MAG fans have been waiting for as our first major DLC, “Interdiction,” will be made available for purchase from the PlayStation Store for €7.99\£6.29.

If you missed our post detailing Interdiction a few weeks back, allow us to sum it up for you:

MAG Interdiction is a brand new game mode built for 128 players. In it, two rival attacking factions fight to gain control of three different command posts while using armoured convoys for every squad on the map (that’s right, 16 APCs onscreen at once!). To earn the victory, teams must capture and hold as many objectives as possible to increase their score while simultaneously decreasing their opponents’ score across three all-new “faction neutral” maps (Iron Creek Quarry, Lake Bayano Spur, and Sovot Motorway).

In addition to the new maps and gametype, Interdiction will also include the most powerful protection in the game, the “Heavy Improved” armour set, as well as a number of new in-game ribbons, medals and trophies. Here’s a reminder of what you can expect:

Ribbons

• Jump Start – Capture 2 Command Posts in a round of Interdiction
• Mowing the Grass – Get 10 kills with a vehicle turret in one round
• Dashed Hopes – Destroy 2 mines with gunfire in one round
• Cannonball Rally – Become an MVP (1st, 2nd, or 3rd) in a round of Interdiction

Medals

• Roadside Assistance – Capture 10 Interdiction control points over your career
• Landscape Architect – Get 50 kills with a vehicle turret over your career
• BOD – Destroy 20 mines with gunfire over your career
• Designated Driver – Earn 5 Interdiction MVPs over your career

Trophies

• King of the Hills (Bronze) – Earn the Roadside Assistance medal while playing Interdiction
• Red Ball Express (Silver) – Earn the Designated Driver medal while playing Interdiction
• Road Runner (Gold) – Capture 3 Interdiction control points in a single round

As a special “thank you” to everyone who’s playing MAG this week, we’re also bringing back our popular “Double XP” promotion over the weekend. That means that whether you purchase our new Interdiction DLC or not, you can expect to grab twice as much experience for your battlefield efforts starting Friday, June 25 (at 7:01am GMT\8:01am CET). Just be sure to finish any game you start in order to benefit from the additional XP, as folks who leave a game early won’t receive the bonus. Our Double XP Weekend ends on Sunday, June 27 at 11:59pm Pacific Time (6:59am GMT\7:59am CET).

Oh, and one final note: All MAG players will have to download a small “Interdiction Activation Patch” starting today. It’s only 4MB in size and prepares your copy of MAG to be compatible with the Interdiction game mode. Again, Interdiction itself can be downloaded from the PlayStation Store for €7.99\£6.29 and weighs in at 440MB.

Thanks to all our fans for keeping us going these past five months – see you on the Sovot!

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It’s been just over four and a half months since MAG released worldwide and 930,000 battles, 1.7 million players, and 1.1 billion kills later, the time to expand is now.

Zipper Interactive is proud to announce that the Interdiction expansion pack is coming to PlayStation Store on 23 June 2010 for €7.99.

Included is a brand new game mode called Interdiction. Built for up to 128 simultaneous players, Interdiction challenges two rival factions to attack and seize control of three command posts with the aid of several heavily-armed convoys on three brand new maps: Lake Bayano Spur, Sovot Motorway, and Iron Creek Quarry.

To make it even more interesting, we’ve made all three maps completely faction neutral, allowing all sides to play any map whenever they want. In addition, we’ve given every squad their own APC vehicle (that’s 16 APCs on the map at once!). To win, players must capture and hold as many objectives as possible to increase their score while concurrently depleting their enemy’s. In short, Interdiction mode equals crazy battlefield mayhem.

A new game type and three new maps isn’t all we’re packing either. As an extra bonus, we’re also adding the ultimate in MAG protection: our Heavy Improved armour set. Trust us when we say that it doesn’t matter if you’re Raven, Valor, or SVER; if you don the Heavy Improved armour consider yourself a walking tank.

Oh, and one other thing: to reward you for spending your hard-earned money on our new DLC, we’ll also be including a handful of brand new in-game medals, ribbons and trophies! What are they? Glad you asked!

Ribbons

• Jump Start – Capture two Command Posts in a round of Interdiction
• Mowing the Grass – Get 10 kills with a vehicle turret in one round
• Dashed Hopes – Destroy two mines with gunfire in one round
• Cannonball Rally – Become an MVP (1st, 2nd, or 3rd) in a round of Interdiction

Medals

• Roadside Assistance – Capture 10 Interdiction control points over your career
• Landscape Architect – Get 50 kills with a vehicle turret over your career
• BOD – Destroy 20 mines with gunfire over your career
• Designated Driver – Earn five Interdiction MVPs over your career

Trophies

• King of the Hills (Bronze) – Earn the Roadside Assistance medal while playing Interdiction
• Red Ball Express (Silver) – Earn the Designated Driver medal while playing Interdiction
• Road Runner (Gold) – Capture three Interdiction control points in a single round

So that’s the Interdiction Pack. Again, you can pick it up for €7.99 from 23 June, but don’t think that we’re stopping there – we still have a lot planned for MAG in the coming months.

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Though we’re still several weeks away from its release, we thought it prudent to give everyone a head’s up on what we’re working towards for our next MAG patch – and it’s a big one!

Slated for sometime next month, MAG v1.06 will add a number of requested new features to the game that should please fans regardless of their play style. Not only have we made it much harder to accidentally kill fellow teammates, for example, we’ve also expanded the Medical Kit’s functionality to give users total control over who they heal (allies or themselves), while updating the experience system that surrounds it. Other new goodies include improved vehicle handling and physics, new gun ports for APCs, weapon efficiency adjustments, credit cost changes, and updated medal and ribbon requirements.

Another nice addition is that we’re also giving users who are currently without access to PlayStation Stores the ability to get all previously-available DLC immediately in-game.

We’ve listed a number of planned fixes on our index below, but this by no means the complete list of changes coming with v1.06 next month. We’ll have additional details on the full list of updates in the coming weeks in addition to the awaited news regarding our next bit of DLC (which is our biggest yet!). In the meantime, enjoy what we have for you so far and stay tuned for more specifics as we get closer to the patch’s release.

MAG Patch v1.06
Available June 2010 | Size: TBD

Gameplay

• Player knife attacks no longer deal damage to members of own PMC.
• Headshot damage bonuses no longer apply to friendly fire.
• Changed rewards for the resuscitation of an incapacitated ally to 5XP for partial health revive, and 10XP for full heath revive.
• Added functionality to Medical Kit so that players can now heal themselves with L1 in addition to using R1 to heal or revive a teammate.
• All vehicle handling has been improved and been given more realistic physics.
• Added three gun ports to APCs of all factions.
• Slowed down the rate of fire for the APC’s primary gun, but increased bullet damage.
• Primary APC gun can now damage enemy APCs.

Weapons

• Adjusted damage for the AM50, Rollins LRRS, and AGVK sniper rifles vs. vehicles and emplaced turrets.
• Increased rate of fire for all pistols (Raven’s F57, SVER’s IZ-443, and Valor’s M9).
• Improved close-range effectiveness and decreased long-range effectiveness for all Pistols, Machine Pistols, SMGs and Shotguns.
• Made all LMG foregrips less effective at stabilizing fire.
• Made improved stability skills less effective at stabilizing fire for machine guns.
• Credit cost for Pistols has been changed to 0c from 100c.
• Credit cost for Machine Pistols has been changed to 200c from 300c.
• Credit cost for SMGs has been changed to 300c from 400c.
• Credit cost for Shotguns has been changed to 400c from 600c.
• Credit cost for Improved Rocket Launchers has been changed to 800c from 1000c.
• Credit cost for Smoke Grenades has been changed to 200c from 300c.
• Credit cost for Poison Gas Grenades has been changed to 500c from 600c.
• Credit cost for Explosives Detector has been changed to 300c from 600c.

Interface

• Adjusted requirements for most Medal Awards.
• Added progress bars to all Medal Awards.
• Changed vehicle icon visibility on the map to reflect its current status of visibility instead of its previous map state of “always seen.”
• Repaired display problem in the “Community” tab’s “Player Search” screen that improperly presented names with multiple non-alphabet characters.
• Statistics for “Enemy Vehicles Destroyed Assists” and “Enemy Turrets Destroyed Assists” are now correctly listed in proper category “Objectives.”

Graphics

• Fixed display problem with player’s left hand placement when using foregrip and bipod on the Raven Apex 100 light machine gun.
• Fixed issue that prevented repaired roadblocks from “shining” to indicate that they can be interacted with.

Technical

• Previously-released downloadable content (Fast Attack Gear Pack, Trooper Gear Pack, Raven’s Spyder Body Apparel, SVER’s Hazard Body Apparel, and Valor’s Bulldog Body Apparel) is now accessible to all users without PlayStation Store access.
• Patched problem that prevented users to save loadout with DLC weapons following a “Respec” action.
• Repaired issue that caused renamed PSN IDs to be incorrectly identified as its previous name when logging in.

Server

• Updated patching system to allow for faster download speeds when retrieving in-game updates.

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Happy New Year all! What better news for the New Year than to remind everyone that the MAG Beta Trial is now available for new users to download from the PlayStation Store. The game servers are also online, so for all those lucky folk who have already downloaded the new patch and data set you can jump in right away! We have seen a few connection issues today, which the team are working to resolve, so it’s possible you may experience some issues connecting to games for the time being. Full details are below in case you missed the original announcement:

With the release of MAG not far off now, I’m pleased to announce that following our successful series of Beta programs, Zipper and Sony Computer Entertainment will team up in January to bring you the final and 100% open PSN Beta!

This will be a global Beta allowing you to compete with players from all over the world, with access to the game’s 64-player ‘Sabotage’ and 256-player ‘Domination’ game modes. New Beta users will have access to the download on the PlayStation Store from January 4th onwards, with the Beta ending on January 11th at 07:59 GMT.

Now that you know when to get the MAG Beta, your path to playing it is a simple three-step process:

1. Log on to the PlayStation Store and download the MAG Beta file like you would any other freely-available PSN video or demo (37 MB)
2. Launch the MAG Beta program from your XMB to download a special patch that will restart MAG once the update has been received (another 38 MB)
3. After the reboot, the beta will reconnect and download the actual game data so that you can play (1.8 GB – 2.3 GB depending on your region)

Pre-existing MAG Beta trialists will be able to download the new Beta 5 update from 13:00 GMT tomorrow, December 22nd. This should give you plenty of time to get hold of the new data set before the trial begins in earnest on the Jan 4th, but the game servers won’t be operational until then.

I would like to thank the community for all their support of the game and wish you a merry Christmas and happy New Year!

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