STOP EVERYTHING! Blizzard has just announced that World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will be released on December 7, just in time for the holidays. → Read More
Blizzcon, the two-day Blizzard extravaganza, takes place on October 22-23 this year. Expect plenty of Cataclysm news, maybe even the announcement of a release date. Fun! But, small problem: getting to Anaheim, Calif. Maybe if you live in Southern California you can make a fun road trip of it, but flying 3,000 miles across the country isn’t exactly a spur-of-the-moment decision to take. In any event, SteelSeries (along with J!nx, BradyGames, and Cryptozoic) have got you covered.
Well, if you win a big contest, that is. → Read More
There will be a Collector’s Edition of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. You probably could have guessed that, but it’s nice to see it in writing. It will cost $79.99 when it’s released. But what’s inside? → Read More
Scapegaming, the company that had set up and was running a private World of Warcraft server until Blizzard’s lawyers went after ‘em, now has to cough up some $88M in damages. There’s no question that Scapegaming had it coming to them, but $88M? Man alive! → Read More
Online gamers received quite the scare last week when Blizzard announced it would require message board posters to use their real names. This was to be done in order to fight the scourge of online anonymity. The Internet freaked out, of course, so much so that Blizzard eventually changed its mind. I mention this up to not open old wounds, but to take the time to remind you of this: there are other MMOs in the world besides World of Warcraft. In fact, I’ve been playing one such MMO, the outer space-themed Eve Online (developed by Iceland’s CCP Games), for several days now. Come, let us enter a world (universe, really) of spaceships, cross-galaxy pirate raids, and Astronomical Units! → Read More
In loving memory of the greatest message board thread in the history of the Internet: the nearly 2,500 page monster discussing the now-rescinded plan to use real names on the Blizzard message board. May the server it’s hosted on be donated to the Library of Congress. → Read More
Well, well, well. Blizzard has announced that real names WILL NOT be required to post on the official forums after all. Your level one alt is safe! → Read More
If Blizzard wanted to spark a discussion, well, job done. The company’s plan to bring Real ID to its message boards has done nothing if not freak people out. Do keep freaking out. → Read More
Let’s get one thing straight: Blizzard is totally in the right here. You’ll recall that they announced yesterday that the era of anonymous commenting on their message boards will come to an end with the release of StarCraft II. Note that all of your current posts on their message board will forever remain under your character’s name. (Don’t worry, Fernando Zorres, your secret is safe with me.) It’s only when the new system kicks into gear—the World of Warcraft forum won’t change over to the new system until Cataclysm comes out—that you’ll have to “worry.” But really, what are you worried about? → Read More
Kudos to Blizzard for putting an end to Anonymous Cowards everywhere. Well, at least on their own official forums. Starting with the release of StarCraft II in a few weeks, Blizzard WILL DEMAND~! you use your real name to participate in the forums. Oh sure, you’ll also be able to have your in-game character’s name displayed alongside your real name, but don’t let that fool you: accountability has finally reached the world of message boards. → Read More
Blizzard has begun the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm private beta. What luck, I was not one of those chosen to participate in the beta—at least not yet! You can find out if you’re in the beta by going to battle.net and managing your games. If you see Cataclysm waiting for you, have at it! → Read More
When in doubt, write about World of Warcraft. Jinx, the geek-friendly online store, has three new t-shirts that may be of interest to you. Unfortunately, they’re Europe-only, so you’ll have to get your guild-mate from Liverpool to send ‘em to you. → Read More
Yup, humanity has peaked. This is the Sound Blaster World of Warcraft Tap Chat, um, thing. You use it to tap to chat while playing the game. → Read More
The latest issue of Edge magazine has a fun little article abbot South Korea’s obsession with StarCraft. One of the issues the article brings up is: what happens to the game when Blizzard releases StarCraft II next month? Nobody knows! (My guess is that StarCraft will be around forever, no matter how many sequels Blizzard develops.) Along the same lines, kinda, Blizzard plans to give free copies of StarCraft II to Korean gamers who have an active World of Warcraft account. → Read More
You can now monitor your World of Warcraft auctions using your iPhone (or iPod touch). A new version of Blizzard’s Armory App now gives users the ability to tap into the game’s Auction House, wherein gamers can keep tabs on their sales of copper stacks and see how much Spellweave is going for. → Read More
This photo allegedly shows the World of Warcraft login screen running on an iPad thanks to a service called Gaikai. Gaikai, from the looks of it, works like OnLive or OTOY in that it runs the game on their hardware, then streams it to you over the Internet. Sure it does… → Read More
Waiting for the World of Warcraft movie? Prepare to keep waiting. A recent interview revealed that the movie is still in the super early stages of pre-production. They’re still going over the story at meetings, still trying to figure out how to adapt the entire Warcraft universe to the big screen. Movies take a long time to create. → Read More
Yup, Blizzard is selling World of Warcraft mounts now. Two of them have just gone live on their little online store there, Celestial Steed and Lil’XT. The former is $25 and the latter is $10. → Read More
Well this is a strange one. I just received in the mail (that’s “real” mail, not e-mail) an official letter from the National Association of Secretaries of State encouraging me to take advantage of all these fancy ways of keeping up-to-date with voting information. The letter took great pains to stress that the program, which includes e-mail and SMS alerts, doesn’t use any tax dollars. You know, because spending tax dollars on encouraging people to vote is PURE EVIL. This country, I swear. So, how to pay for such fancy programs? By stuffing the envelope with ads and coupons—much better than unbiased tax dollars! Chief among these ads is this one for World of Warcraft. Remember, kids: a vote for Garrosh Hellscream is a vote for tyranny! → Read More
Look what just showed up in my inbox! No details were mentioned, dates or anything like that, but I did submit my Battle.net account to the giant database in the sky. ¡Muy emocionante! → Read More
San Francisco, CA
