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 or anything.

Some highlights from the podcast:

• The Death Knight was one of three Hero Classes that were seriously considered. The other two biggies were Necromancer (a “range caster”) and Rune Mancer (“melee type”)

• The well-received Northrend was one of the first new, non-Azeroth areas developed by Blizzard

And other stuff!

via the always great Eurogamer

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.

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.

But never would I play the game for extended periods of time with little to no food and going on two hours sleep. That kid we mentioned yesterday? Turns out he didn’t pass out after a 15-hour WoW bender, no.

He played the game for nearly 24 hours in a row. (Also, the kid’s from Sweden, not the Netherlands.) Apparently he suffered an epileptic fit.

In summary: if you want to play WoW, or whatever game, for hours on end, for the love of God take a break every once in a while and be sure to eat and drink, preferably something healthy as per your body’s needs.

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.

The kid, a boy (no surprise there), had played Wrath of the Lich King for 15 straight hours at the weekend. On top of getting only two hours sleep the previous night, the boy barely ate anything at all. Not smart. As such, the boy’s parents are warning everyone: don’t let this happen to you or your child.

Never you mind that millions of people were playing the game for as long, if not longer, with no ill effects. For example, I played the game on Saturday from around 10:00 a.m. until around midnight, a solid 14 hours. Sad, yes. The difference is that I stopped around lunchtime and had a delicious meal of sushi and water. I may live a sedentary lifestyle, especially now as I race toward level 80, but there’s no reason to gorge on chips and other junk food while doing so.

In conclusion, don’t forget to eat and sleep; in-game food and water won’t sustain you, the person behind the keyboard.

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.

Best Buy has the Eee PC 900A—that’s the most basic one—for a full $20 cheaper than you’ll find anywhere else. So, for $280 you get the 8.9-inch display netbook with 4GB flash storage (that’s 4GB storage and not memory, mind you).

Unrelated: Seven hours till Wrath of the Lich King!

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!

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.

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.

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.

The following are requirements for Windows machines with Mac specs after the jump. You have a month to prepare for the Lich King, nerds.

PC System Requirements

OS: Windows XP (Service Pack 3), Windows Vista (Service Pack 1)

Processor:
Minimum: Intel Pentium 4 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlon XP 1500+

Recommended: Dual-core processor, such as the Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 X2

Memory:
Minimum: 512 MB RAM (1GB for Vista users)

Recommended: 1 GB RAM (2 GB for Vista users)

Video:
Minimum: 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transform and Lighting with 32 MB VRAM
Such as an ATI Radeon 7200 or NVIDIA GeForce 2 class card or better

Recommended: 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM
Such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT class card or better

Sound: DirectX-compatible sound card or motherboard sound capability

Mac System Requirements

OS: Mac OS X 10.4.11 or newer

Processor:
Minimum: PowerPC G5 1.6 GHz or Intel Core Duo processor

Recommended: Intel 1.8GHz processor or better

Memory:
Minimum: 1 GB RAM

Recommended: 2 GB RAM

Video:
Minimum: 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transform and Lighting with 64 MB VRAM
Such as an ATI Radeon 9600 or NVIDIA GeForce Ti 4600 class card or better

Recommended: 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM
Such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA 7600 class card or better

All Platforms

Controls: A keyboard and mouse are required. Input devices other than a mouse and keyboard are not supported.

Connectivity: You must have an active broadband Internet connection to play.

Mouse: Multi-button mouse with scroll wheel recommended.

Hard Drive Space: 15 GB free hard drive space

WoW Forums

World of Warcraft players, prepare to take November 13 off from work or school, for that’s the day that Wrath of the Lich King goes on sale. The $40 price tag is about what I expected.

We’ve covered the game here and there, mainly some of the bigger features (because we all know the level of minutia we could get into when talking WoW), but this is it.

And if the game itself isn’t enough for you, there’s a $70 collector’s edition that includes a 208-page art book, an in-game pet, a behind-the-scenes DVD, the soundtrack on CD, a mouse pad, and some exclusive trading cards.

I can’t say how happy this announcement just made me, especially since I wasn’t expecting to see the game until at least the Springtime.

Despite being some four years old, the userbase of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft continues to grow, if only at a so-so rate. One of the game’s lead designers said as much at the Games Convention, allaying fears (well, message board banter) that maybe, just maybe, interest in the game had peaked.

The game had some 10 million subscribers as of last January.

Now, that may not be completely indicative of how many people actively play the game—I keep paying for my account but seldom actually play—but that doesn’t much matter to Blizzard. As long as you’re paying your $15 a month, Blizzard’s as happy as an Orc in Orgrimmar.

And who knows what’ll happen when Wrath of the Lich King comes out. I imagine there will be folks who buy it, install it, and play for like an hour then let the account continue to collect dust. That’s my plan.

This is the opening cinematic to World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, the upcoming expansion pack that will ruin countless lives. (I’d say it would ruin mine, but you can’t ruin *nothing* so hah.)

Like every Blizzard-created cinematic, it’s really, really good.

via Kotaku

Damn you Blizzard. I’m still struggling to get to 70 (I’m 65 and have a life) and now you pull THIS on me? You’re just evil. Seems Blizzard has unveiled a preview of the second World of Warcraft expansion: Wrath of the Lich King! WLK brings a lot of crazy new features that will put Burning Crusade to shame. You’ll now be able to hit level 80 (god help us), play as a Death Knight, quest as a Hero, craft spells, fully-customize characters, and a lot more.

Basically, it’s another 6 months you can kiss goodbye, as well as another $40. I’d love to say I’m excited, but I’m not 70 yet. Until then, you can drool to your heart’s content by clicking the link below.

Official Site