You’re Blizzard. You develop a little game called Word of Warcraft. You move into a new office building—a sign of your importance—and want to commemorate said action. You hire the dudes responsible for the Lord of the Rings special effects, and tell them, “Make us a big statue of an Orc on his mount, looking sinister.” And they do.
World of Warcraft
by Nicholas Deleon on March 16, 2009
by Nicholas Deleon on March 15, 2009
So here’s a weird question for y’all: what happens when you die? More specifically, what happens to the “online version” of you? Will your World of Warcraft guild hold a funeral for you, one that’s promptly invaded by a bunch of rival faction jerks? Will there be a Facebook “We miss you, man” group? Does anyone in your life have the password to you Gmail account, should you need to contact your contacts? “Remember Bill? Yeah, he doesn’t live here anymore.”
by Nicholas Deleon on March 12, 2009
From the frivolous lawsuit department: The folks behind Worlds.com are looking to sue the likes of World of Warcraft and Second Life for infringing on one of their longstanding patents that covers “virtual worlds” or somesuch. While that may seem pretty ludicrous, keep in mind that a similar lawsuits, against City of Heroes‘ NCSoft, was filed in a plaintiff-friendly district in Texas. Best case scenario for the Worlds.com folks is that Activision Blizzard and Co. have to license “virtual worlds” as an already-patented concept from them, which would means serious money.
by Nicholas Deleon on March 6, 2009
Spend some time in any of the great World of Warcraft capitals—Stormwind City, Ironforge, Orgrimmar, etc.—and you’ll soon see this message flood the Trade Channel: “Need gold fast? You visit somesite.com, we have best gold prices on Internet!” To some players, myself included, it’s nothing more than noisy spam. “Shut up, jerkface, I’m trying to find mats for this enchant I read about on Thottbot.” But while you and I, honest players just looking to whittle away a few hours, may see these unsolicited advertisements as nothing more than mere nuisances, the people behind them—gold farmers—see them as pure profit. Minus the human costs, of course.
by Nicholas Deleon on February 28, 2009
“World of Warcraft is the crack cocaine of the computer gaming world. Some people can’t drag themselves away and will play it till they drop.” This chilling warning comes from the Swedish Youth Care Foundation, which swooped into action after a 15-year-old boy “collapsed” (says The Sun, which is quite sensational) after playing the game for 24 hours straight.
by Nicholas Deleon on February 25, 2009
What good is that Optimus keyboard without World of Warcraft? None good, I say, which is why it brings me great joy to see this homebrew WoW layout. It was created by one of the blokes at an Optimus Keyboard message board—message boards are the new salons—and is primarily for Warlocks.
by Nicholas Deleon on February 11, 2009
Next time your spouse (or other nosy family member) tries to convince you that you’re wasting your time playing World of Warcraft, simply tell them that you’re training to be a better citizen. That’s what a university professor’s research suggests, at least. And if this research is good enough for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then it’s good enough for us.
by Nicholas Deleon on February 2, 2009
Blizzard released one of its infrequent podcasts (or, “blizzcasts”) at the weekend wherein several people involved with the creation of Wrath of the Lich King discussed the game, its development, the reception to it, etc. The podcast is only about 40 minutes long, so it’s not like it’s a huge time commitment.
by Nicholas Deleon on December 23, 2008
Blizzard’s World of Warcraft now has 11.5 million subscribers. Assuming each subscriber pays $15 per month, that’s approximately $172.5 million per month in raw revenue. That’s quite a bit of coin.
by Nicholas Deleon on December 19, 2008
The thing about reviewing mice is that you’re actually looking at two separate entities. Yes, you’re looking at the mouse itself, the hardware, but you’re also simultaneously taking into account the software that powers it, the drivers. A mouse without adequate drivers might as well not exist.
by Nicholas Deleon on December 17, 2008
An update to the ongoing Steelseries Word of Warcraft saga. As you know, there’s no Mac drivers for the mouse thus far, but one of our readers, Jim Krenz, pointed me in the direction of ControllerMate, a $15 application/driver/thing that lets you use the mouse as intended. I bought it late last night, and after about an hour of trying to figure out how to use it, got the mouse up and running.
The above video shows off the neat but useless ability to change the LEDs of the mouse.
A full, proper review is on the way. Give one or two more days with the mouse before I give y’all my final report.
by Nicholas Deleon on December 16, 2008
Attention, Mac World of Warcraft players. You may want to consider holding off on buying that SteelSeries MMO mouse till January, since that’s when the company plans to the release Mac drivers, as I just learned. Without those drivers, those 15 buttons are useless. Well, like three of them work when using SteerMouse, a fancy third-party Mac mouse driver, but that’s not exactly ideal.
I have the mouse sitting on my desk right now, but without Mac drivers I have to use my underpowered MacBook just to try it out under Windows.
by Nicholas Deleon on December 15, 2008
Just a heads up to my fellow World of Warcraft players, especially those of you who use a Mac. You know that SteelSeries MMO Gaming Mouse that came out a few days ago? It doesn’t ship with Mac drivers, meaning that you’re not able to use all 15 buttons as intended. (That’s even when using fancy, multi-button mouse drivers like SteerMouse.)
In other words, the mouse isn’t nearly as useful to Mac users right now as it is to Windows users. (Windows users can download the drivers from Steelseries’ Web site.) Mac drivers are said to be on the way, but we’re looking at around one month from the mouse’s release till the drivers are released.
Meanwhile, I have to install Wow on my Bootbamped MacBook just to be able to use it properly for the review I’m working on. Shouldn’t be more than a few days till that “drops,” though.
by Nicholas Deleon on November 25, 2008
Well look at that, most gamers who are “addicted” to gaming aren’t addicted at all. That’s the conclusion of the first clinic set up to help gaming addicts get off the smack, Amsterdam’s Smith & Jones Center . One problem: 90 percent of the people who are labeled addicted are merely socially weird.
by Matt Burns on November 21, 2008
Well Ozzy, it looks like you have finally sold all the way out. After an amazing rock career you slumped to a reality show star and now this, pimping World of Warcraft. Oh well, it is kind of amusing.
by Nicholas Deleon on November 20, 2008
As if there was any doubt, Blizzard sold an awful lot of copies of Wrath of the Lich King last week. In fact, it sold more than 2.8 million copies of the game within the first 24 hours of its release. That’s what told us, at least. The previous expansion, The Burning Crusade sold 2.4 million in its first 24 hours.
Ever since then, people have been playing the game non-stop, sometimes to the detriment of their health. I, for example, was able to level my new Death Knight, named Medfresno in honor of washed up comedian Colin Quinn, from level 55 to 65 less than 48 hours total. That’s pretty hardcore (read: pathetic), if I do say so myself.
WotLK makes it hard to play other games I’ve bought recently, like Fable II and the new Call of Duty.
by Nicholas Deleon on November 18, 2008
Americans had a saying in the 1840s: “54-40 or fight!” It referred to the Oregon Country-Canada border dispute we had with the British. Americans, feeling that their nation deserved to be a continental nation, were willing to go to war against the British, again, in order secure a few more swaths of land, and all the gold and glory that goes along with that.
I have a similar saying: “70 by Sunday.” It refers to my superhuman (read: sorry) effort to reach level 70 in World of Warcraft by Sunday, November 23. (I want to hit 80 by Christmas.) According to Titan Panel, I’ve played the game for 1 day, 20 hours (44 hours total) since Friday evening. You figure 10+ hours on Saturday and Sunday and you get an idea of the sheer trauma I’ve put my body through.
by Nicholas Deleon on November 17, 2008
Oh, kids. If you’re going to play your shiny new Death Knight for 15 hours in a row, you’d better make sure to prepare yourself, mentally and physically, for the experience. A 15-year-old in the Netherlands didn’t, and he ended up in the hospital.
by Nicholas Deleon on November 13, 2008
Blizzard released Wrath of the Lich King last night at midnight, and while I didn’t do a live UStream.tv stream of the installation—chill out, WoW Insider—I’m now prepared to give y’all a quick “here’s what’s up” of sorts.
Thankfully, the game ships on a DVD. No more “please insert disc 87” nonsense when installing. So that’s good.
by Nicholas Deleon on November 12, 2008
Whoa. Head thee to your local 7-Eleven right now (if you can) to check if it’s selling Wrath of the Lich King before it’s official launch at midnight tonight. (I’ll be at home watching Charlie Rose on PBS at that hour.) I know, it’s not like it’s a week ahead of schedule or anything, but still worth checking out on your lunch break if you’re not doing anything else.
Also, when did 7-Eleven start selling games? I haven’t been to one since maybe around 2003, so I had no idea this was going on. A Slurpee and Xbox game under the same roof? Next thing you know, cats and dogs will be doing stuff, together! Happily!
Update Also, duh, you won’t be able to do WotLK stuff till Blizzard flips the switch, which I’m guessing will happen at midnight tonight. I just found this out a few minutes ago, after having successfully installed the game. Nine hours to go!
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