Above: Nicholas and Dave talking about World of Warcraft in the CrunchGear chat room. I threw in some stuff about EverQuest to try to be funny and they ignored me.

Nerds [CrunchGear.com]

World of Warcraft was originally released in 2004, and is currently the most popular MMO in the world. With local servers in Europe and Asia, odds are you’ve either played WoW, know someone who has, or are at least aware that there is a game called WoW available. Since the game was originally published, there’s been two expansions released, The Burning Crusade in 2007, and then Wrath of the Lich King in 2008. Since then, Blizzard has continued to release free content updates featuring new dungeons, and pvp areas, however there hasn’t been a major update in almost a year.

WoW is starting to run into the same problem faced by games like Everquest, and Asheron’s Call. The people who were going to buy the game bought it, leveled up their characters, and are maybe getting a little bored. You can only level a character up so many times before you start to find it repetitive, and while raiding and PVP is fun, finding a group can be difficult, and pvp can be frustrating for some.

So why is Cataclsym the only direction for WoW to go? Because Azeroth has gone stale. Unless they want to end up like the Ultima Online’s and Everquest’s out there, they have to revamp it. So how do they do it? They either release World of Warcraft 2, or they do something like Cataclysm: create a world altering event, that is going to make people want to start over, to create a character just to experience the new content and art. And maybe get some of those people who left for other MMO’s to come back into the fold.

What’s even better is, World of Warcraft evolves. From the most popular user written modifications, to the way the starting areas for a character works, Blizzard is always paying attention to what people really like. 2008’s Wrath of the Lich King featured a very dynamic and scripted starting area for the new death knight character, and people loved that fact that they could quickly pass through the initial ten levels, get some skills and gear, and jump into the more interesting content. Blizzard has stated that the Cataclysm expansion will have that same content with the two new races available to players, the goblins and worgens. Again, listening to the players is one of the best things they can do, because it will make people feel like they are actually making a difference in how the world is evolving and developing.

I’ve been playing World of Warcraft since it was released. Frankly, I’ve grown a bit bored with it, but the new Cataclysm expansion (at least what we’ve seen of it) has rekindled my excitement. I sure I’ll be pre-ordering it and standing out in the cold to pick up my copy at midnight.

While I haven’t logged into World of Warcraft since, I don’t know, February (for the Valentines Day things), a new expansion should bring me back into the fold. Most fans know that Blizzard trademarked the name “Cataclysm,” and that’s what we expect the name of the next expansion to be. But now! Now, friends, wow.com’s sources have pretty much confirmed two new races for the expansion. Say hello, probably, to the Worgen (Alliance) and the Goblin (Horde).

Now, as an on-again, off-again member of the Alliance, I’m obligated to roll Worgen, which is just fine with me; it’s about time Alliance gets a “cool” looking race. Conversely, you couldn’t pay me to roll a Goblin, even if i I were a card-carrying member of the Horde.

In any event, Blizzon is next week, and I’d assume Blizzard will reveal a bit more on Cataclysm. I might just have to buy the Web stream now. (If I had put any thought into this, I might have convinced TechCrunch to fly me out to Anaheim for the show itself. Oh, well!)

And yeah, I expect to be knee deep in wowwiki for the next few hours.

This is a new trailer for Mega Man 2.5D, a new version of the classic Mega Man currently in the works. It’s being built by designer Peter Sjostrand and looks like 15 pounds of amazing.

Revel in the video and here’s a 720p still.

Okay, this is one of the better “gadgets” I’ve yet seen. It’s called the WoWPod, and it’s a self-sufficient tiny room for World of Warcraft players. Easy-to-reach food and water, built-in toilet, no annoying people distracting you, etc. It’s probably the closest thing to Heaven that a certain section of our society will ever encounter.

First, some background. The WoWPod was engineered (see what I did there?) by three Wow-playing MIT students. They decided to put their real world talents to good use, in the interest of furthering their Azeroth careers. Um, that’s it.

And, if it’s not already obvious, the whole purpose of the WoWPod is to provide the perfect environment needed to safely spend 18 hours per day grinding and/or raiding. (When I used to play a lot, I used to enjoy grinding. It gave me time to think and listen to Opie and Anthony.)

And the neatest part, clearly, is that, somehow, while in-game, you can make real world food:

When hungry, the gamer selects a food item (’Crunchy Spider Surprise’, ‘Beer Basted Ribs’, etc.) and a seasoning pack. By scanning in the food items, the video game physically adjusts a hot plate to cook the item for the correct amount of time. The virtual character then jubilantly announces the status of the meal to both the gamer and the other individuals playing online: “Vorcon’s meal is about to be done!” “Better eat the ribs while they’re hot!” etc.

That, I don’t think I have to tell you, rules.

via Boing Boing

“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.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen studies claiming the game to be “addictive,” and there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence out there of people who played the game to the detriment of the professional or social life; I used to play the game as soon as I get home from class, real life friends be damned! But to compare it to crack cocaine, a drug that destroys people’s lives? (Your life isn’t destroyed merely because you spend a lot of time in Azeroth. Granted, your priorities may be out of wack, but you’re not stooping to the level of Tyronne Biggums!)

I don’t know, friends, just take a break every once in a while. You’ll be better for it; having Tier 7 gear doesn’t pay the bills.

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.

As you can see, many (all? I’ve never played as a Warlock) of the icons from the game’s action bar are somewhere on the keyboard—I recognize a few spells on the left-hand side.

And you’d have to admit that this is merely an aesthetic mod, since when you’re playing the game it’s not like you’re staring at the keyboard. Nope, your eyes are fixated on the monitor, looking at damage meters and the like.

Still, fun, I guess. That’s the Internet’s raison d’etre: pointless, but fun stuff.

via OLED-DISPLAY.NET

When I was a kid, Pac Man was big. There were backpacks, lunchboxes, and even Pac Man board games. I remember one Christmas in particular when we were fascinated by the game even though none of the kids I played with were old enough to go into arcades – we must have been five or six – and none of us had really actually touched the game. We were enamored of the concept.

That love fell apart when one December evening they had some sort of Pac Man musical special. I don’t remember what it was about but it was something like a live-action Pac Man variety show and it was probably called Pac Man Fever. It was abysmal and turned me off of Pac Man forever. Basically it was a bunch of grown-ups running around ruining my vision of the game as a pure object.

This video is like that.

Hopefully the above video will do the same for millions of wannabe WoW players out there. This is the most awkward news report I’ve ever seen – I can’t even tell if it aired because it looks like the reporter filmed it in her living room with a Powershot – but this is like watching your uncle at a rave. If we learned anything it’s that you shouldn’t invite your MMORPGing boyfriend on camera.

By using ultra-fine polymer fibers, military researchers have been able to regrow damaged or missing organs and limbs. They will announce their findings officially next month at the 26th Army Science Conference in Florida.

One example given by John Parmentola, a director of research and lab management, involved a man who lost the entire tip of his finger while starting up a model airplane.

“That has been completely regrown . . . the nail, the bone, the tissue,” he said.

“There is one example of a young girl who . . . was born without a sex organ, and that was regrown,” he said.

The polymers act as a trellis for new cells which climb up and through the fine scaffolding. Once the organ is regrown, the scaffold is absorbed into the body and disappears.

The process cannot yet regrow complex organs like hearts but it can create skin, bone, and nails. In 2006, nanoscaffolding was used to regrow burned skin and it was discovered that skin cells will “sort themselves” into the right arrangement if given a proper foothold. Work is also being done to use the methods to repair nerve damage and spinal injuries.

Man also doesn’t lose virginity until age 30 when it’s with a strange, small woman he paid $50 in a park. In his memoirs, written in vi, he calls her a love gnome.

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.

The three biggest new features are the level 80 cap (increased from 70), the continent of Northrend and the Dark Knight, the game’s first Hero class. Northrend can’t be accessed till you’re level 68. Once you’re there you’ll probably run into some high-level, really powerful stuff, like bows that shoot witches instead of arrows. While the game’s packaging and general marketing campaign may have suggested that Nortrend is some icy dump, that’s only partially true; it’s not icy everywhere. There’s a good ol’ fashioned fjord there that’s filled with giants. Presumably you’ll fight the Lich King or his brother somewhere on the continent.

Now, Death Knights. Blizzard says they’re meant to be both tanks and DPS damage dealers, not unlike Fury Warriors. DKs can’t use shields, though, so there’s that. You can only create a DK—any race can be a DK—on a server where you have a level 55+ character.

Also, DKs are pure evil. Their starting area is one of the flying fortress things that were all over the place during the zombie invasion from a few weeks ago. You’re right about a small village where your first few quests involve you killing completely innocent villagers in cold blood and stealing their horses for funsies. You also kill hard working miners, only in there to put food on the table for their families, and turn them into Scourge zombies. It’s the most fun starting zone of them all. That may be because you start at level 55 and have more abilities at the outset than “run in fear” and “swing piece-of-garbage axe.” You’re able to do some damage as soon as you log in.

Double also, but DKs look amazing. (How many of you play just to get cool-looking gear?) My character, Medfresno, looks fantastic, even though she’s wearing the WoW equivalent of Wal-Mart clothes.

As to the other stuff in the expansion—the new professions, PVP areas, etc.—I have no idea. I suspect I’ll have more I that, including unhinged rants, as I come across them.

Heads up, World of Warcraft players. There’s a few of you out there.

Not only does the game come out at midnight tomorrow—I’ll probably pick it up over the weekend—but that crazy SteelSeries keyboard comes out tomorrow, too. (The SteelSeries mouse doesn’t come out till the end of the year.)

The keyboard, which has several game-specific keys, costs $70.

CNN’s Jessica Yellin is the guinea pig, appearing virtually with Blitzer.

Read more…

After months of watching from the sidelines, Sony seems to have come out with a winner in the console wars with this LittleBigPlanet. Aside from amazingly detailed gameplay, you can program your own minigames into the game like this odd mechano-Gradius that looks like a puppet show.

What would it take to get me to buy a PS3? More games like this and some sort of franchise like GoW that is compelling and deep enough to warrant spending $500 on the console and another few hundred on games. What say you all?

via BBG

I know at least some of you are looking forward to the release of Wrath of the Lich King in just a few weeks. Please be advised that Blizzard is holding some sort of launch extravaganza at four locations in the U.S.: the Best Buy at 529 5th Ave. in New York; the Fry’s at 3370 E. La Palma Ave. in Anaheim; the GameStop at 151 Powell St. in San Francisco; and the GameStop at 10000 Research Blvd. in Austin.

Game devs and execs will be on hand at these stores to sign copies of the game.

Blizzard also says the numerous other stores around the country (and world for that matter) will be open at midnight.

Now, will I be waiting on line to buy the game at midnight? Absolutely not—I’m more than happy to wait for the UPS guy to bring it to my door after ordering it on Amazon. Though I wouldn’t mind seeing a bunch of cosplayers live and in person.

Pay close attention to this video, citizens of Azeroth! It shows just how divisive this presidential campaign has been: Human against Dwarf, Tauren against Orc. It’s madness. And this, in a time when all of us should be focused on eliminating the Scourge.

But seriously, folks, it’s a fun video that will definitely be appreciated by World of Warcraft fans. That McCain has a stamina of 100 is pretty genius.

There’s nothing wrong with playing World of Warcraft occasionally. It’s when you start to picture yourself—not your character, but you yourself—as The Defender of Azeroth or some nonsense that we have a problem.

Take the recent Zombie Infestation. In order to goad players into hating the Lich King (he’s the main antagonist in Wrath of the Lich King) and wanting to “invade” Northend (the continent that debuts in the expansion pack), Blizzard devised this in-game event wherein zombies are running all over the place, infecting you and yours with some disease that turns everyone into zombies.

I hated every minute of it. I couldn’t check my auctions because all the auctioneers were infected or dead; I couldn’t train because, again, all the trainers were dead; I can’t run through Elwynn Forest because the zombies had taken over. And no, that didn’t “get me pumped” to want to fight the Lich King, but sure as hell did encourage me to log off for several days out of frustration.

Massively disagrees. The guy there bought into the “invasion” angle hook, line and sinker. Let me tell you something: the WCW/ECW invasion of WWE back in 2001 was more believable. As a casual player, I have zero interest in defending Azeroth from the Scourge or anyone else for that matter. I’m there to kill a few minutes before I go to bed, that’s all. Spare me the superfluous nonsense.

My own gripes aside, the event does speak to the larger issue of MMOs. Developers would do well to “spice up” the atmosphere of their MMO. It’s one thing to tout your game as having a living, breathing world, but if the world, outside of the players themselves, is static—the same thing happens every single day—players may well become bored. Then they’d log off, perhaps for good.

I love everything about this little robot. Oh my god, how can you not?
[via MAKE: Blog]
By the way, if you ever have to resize an animated gif in a hurry, this is great.

• 2-3 Terabytes of photos are being uploaded to the site every day
• They have just over one petabyte of photo storage
• They serve over 15 billion photo images per day
• Photo traffic now peaks at over 300,000 images served per second

Kind of puts things into perspective, right? I remember I was pumped when I got my 100,000th visitor to my mp3 blog, Robosexual. A year of my own traffic, tripled in a single second by Facebook. Nick at Roughtype notes,

“I did a quick scan of the 10 billion photos and found that 3 billion of them included an image of beer, in keg, can, bottle, or pitcher form, 1.5 billion included an image of a bra, and 675 million included both beer and a bra.”

I’m… I’m just so proud!

Blizzard named yesterday’s gigantic World of Warcraft patch “Echoes of Doom.” How prescient.

Right, so Blizzard “dropped” patch 3.0.2 yesterday. Servers were done for a good 24 hours while the company’s elves did their magic. The full patch notes, as always, are available online. Among other things, Stormwind now has a harbor and my Hunter, Fredfresno, has a new hair cut; hints of the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King abound. Life is grand, in a horribly depressing sort of way.

But my God in Heaven, after four years of running this game, Blizzard still has a hell of a time keeping everything up to speed on patch day. Servers went up and down; character lists were incomplete (“hey, didn’t I have two alts on this server?”); and the lag, once you were able to log in, was marked. Call pet, wait four minutes, feed pet, wait three minutes, log out and read an old copy of Proust you’re so annoyed.

General chat was filled with people (for a change) expressing their frustration. You know, “This patch sucks,” “F-ck Blizzard,” “We’re trapped in Shatt.” The gold farmers had even stayed home. That’s defcon right there.

Right now, a little before 1:00pm EDT, the game (several servers) seems to be running better. It’s just weird to see Blizzard still have such a hard time not completely shanking it on patch day.