This week's round up of WoW-related posts on our sister site Massively covers many different angles of the MMO universe dominated by World of Warcraft. You can click on the links below or subscribe to a special WoW-only Massively feed.

Five MMOs better than World of Warcraft No fooling. Blizzard's World of Warcraft is a great game, a hugely influential game, maybe even the best game ever written by anyone, ever. Throughout history. But now that we've GOT WoW, well, what's next? Age of Conan? Warhammer? Spellborn? Maybe.

THQ thinks WoW has probably peaked Apparently THQ executive Jack Sorenson is pretty sure that World of Warcraft has hit its peak. He goes on to admit that there will likely still be millions of people playing WoW in a couple of years, but says that its subscriber count will have diminished.

Jerks, brats, and griefers can be curbed with good design According to Bill Fulton, some of the most over-looked aspects of online game development today are design mechanisms to discourage players from acting like jerks. Rather than merely acquiescing to the reality that in any large game communities, there are just going to be a given number of dickwads, Fulton suggests ...

Is WoW a hotbed of political activity? Earlier this week, USA Today published a lifestyle article that made the claim that the population of World of Warcraft has gotten swept up in the political fervor of the day. According to one frequent WoW-player quoted prominently in the article ...

Upcoming MMO movies (and why they'll suck) Dorothy Parker once said "The only 'ism' Hollywood believes in is plagiarism." While not technically plagiarism, the practice of mining popular properties of other media is a time-honored mainstay in Hollywood. Why invent a new franchise when you can adapt one that already exists?

Study finds game violence soothes the savage breast Middlesex University has released their finding on a study conducted to explore the effects of game violence on players. At the British Psychological Society's Annual Conference in Dublin, the study claims that playing WoW actually helps players relax, rather than fuels anger or violent tendencies.

The Gaming Iconoclast: The Road Less Taken Unless you've studiously avoided the forums and fan sites for a particular game (wait, hold on a second... you're here already), you've probably heard endless variations on "the best" build or style for a class of character. "So-and-so should be race X, and spec Y, and wield Z."

Lawsuit claims IGE dug too greedily and too deep Out of sunny Florida comes a storm ready to rain on the parade of gold sellers everywhere. Gold seller IGE has found itself sinking deeper into a stack of complaints thanks to one concerned gamer.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Features, Humor