Blizzplanet has a humorous article online about the symptoms...and consequences of WoW addiction. And we're not talking the usual consequences here, like loss of friends, poor eyesight, getting fired from your job...no, some of these folk have created a sort of Darwin awards category for WoW addicts.

Like the surprising number of people who have left a pizza in the oven, only to forget about it in the midst of a WoW session & almost asphyxiate from the smoke (this is apparently now officially known as a "WoW Pizza"). Or kid who almost burned down his parent's house when his TV shorted out & caught fire a few feet behind him but he couldn't hear it for the WoW blasting out of his headphones. Even Blizzard employees apparently aren't safe, as they apparently have a bad habit of letting pastries explode in microwaves wile engrossed in their own game.

If you guys are like me, I know you've done some stupid stuff while playing MMO's. I once managed to spill an entire bowl of boiling-hot soup all over my keyboard while in the midst of a temple fight in Uldaman, rendering it immidiately useless and almost scarring my crotch for life. Fess up; what's the dumbest thing WoW ever made you do?

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Virtual selves, Odds and ends

I'm always hesitant to post links to the various gold-making guides on the net, simply because manyt of them are on questionable sites, seem to lean towards straight-ahead farming, or if they are legitimate (i.e. don't advocate exploits or other shady behavior), still aren't really all that useful to the everyday player who wants to make gold legitimately as they play the game, not neccessarily to the exclusion of everything else. I have found a couple, however, that I think are pretty handy.

For beginning players, this guide posted recently over at societyofgamers is something I would have really liked to read when I was just starting out in WoW. It's very basic, and isn't anything a seasoned player wouldn't be able to tell you, but for newcomers to the game, it gives the basics of the major professions, the auction house, and other scources of income & gives a few helpful tips about each.

For more seasoned players, another handy guide is Cthulhu's Gold Making Guide, posted over at Allakhazam. It's semi-Horde-centric (that's a hyphen-hat-trick, by the way), but it has some really useful tips for specific areas & quests that will allow you to rack up some loot. I used this one a lot when I was leveling my first character.

Have any of you come across any useful guides or perhaps written your own? I'd ask readers to send in their tips, but nobody ever wants to give away their gold-making secrets. Lousy capitalism....

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Tips, How-tos, Odds and ends

There has been buzz on the forums & in-game for the last day or so about a new Role Play server and, more notably, a new Role Play-PvP server opening either today or tomorrow. I say notably because this will be the first new RP-PvP realm since the opening of Lightninghoof back in the fall, I believe it was.

There has been no announcement yet on the official WoW homepage, but there is a thread regarding the issue on the official Blizzard forums, and the response from the boys in blue when asked if & when the new servers were coming was that "They are currently scheduled for tomorrow (Wed), but that may slip to Thursday". I'd say that sounds like confirmation to me.

I'm an RP-PvP kind of guy, so this is exciting news for me. I'll be rolling Horde on the as-yet unnamed new realm, anyone else planning to?

Filed under: Realm News, Realm Status, Odds and ends, Blizzard, News items

I really hope I never get this bored...

Then again, your options do get pretty limited once you reach level 60; the same raids & dungeon crawls over & over, the endless grinding for reputation. Or you can do what this guy did, and just say to hell with it all & declare war on the Argent Dawn. And he photoblogged the whole thing over at notaddicted.com.

Yes, I guess it can be pretty annoying to other players when quest NPC's & the like are killed...especially by members of your own faction. But after all, that 'at war' tab IS there for a reason, is it not? It would be a shame to let it just go unused forever...or not.

In any case, it's something I would never do or never hope to encounter, but it does make for some funny reading over your cornflakes....

Filed under: Fan stuff, Virtual selves, Odds and ends

As you have all probably noticed, and as we've been reporting, there has been a mysterious increase in the amount of server downtime lately, with official "maintenances": being scheduled with little notice & players becoming incresingly more disgruntled as visions of outages from months past creep back into their brains like carrion worms...

I guess it was only a matter of time before the ubiquitous "SERVER OUTAGES CAUSE MASS CHAOS" news posts started to creep up, and Gamespot is one of the first major sites to renew the scrutiny.

Apparently, the official story from Blizzard is that server upgrades in June, undertaken to increase stability, have in fact done the exact opposite, and let loose some more ghosts in the machine. There is an official thread on the subject over at the Blizzard forums as well, with plenty of rabid responses to the boys in blue. 

Have you all noticed the recent increase in downtime? Has it affected your playtime? Does it seem as bad as it was before? Chime in...

Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, News items

No, I didn't come up with the clever Domino's Pizza analogy, but in the latest Weekly WoW over at Video Game Generation, they claim that the possibility of a pick-up group successfully completing a 45-minute Strat run is about as guaranteed as that old pizza gimmick that went the way of the dodo.

The focus this time is on the Dungeon 2 armor sets, the problems with them, and basically the lack of fitting items for the casual endgamer. I'm probably more on the casual side of the player fence myself (at least compared to some), and as I'm just entering the endgame again with my latest character, I have to say I have been a bit frustrated at the sheer amount of grinding & raiding that I will have to endure to procure the gear that I've been eying. Then again, I don't expect Blizzard to just hand it to me, either...

In any case, there are a lot of good points raised in the article, so check it out...

Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Instances, Quests

With all the parodies & ridiculous movies people crank out using WoW, it's almost rare to see someone trying to make an actual fantasy short for a change. This is a well-made little flick that gets bonus points from me for paying homage to The Sword & the Sorceror, possibly the coolest movie of my childhood...

Filed under: Machinima, Fan stuff, Odds and ends

In the next step in their plan for world domination, INQ7.net reports today that the Philippines is the latest market being targeted by Vivendi/Universal for expansion of the WoW franchise.

Gerry Castro, vice president of Asian Media Development Group, the company that handles Vivendi/U's lisences in the Philippines, says "Yes, the game will be in the Philippines soon; that we've been planning to bring this game to the country; that we have looked to several IDCs that will host the game"

AMDG is currently seeking partners to assist in hosting, supporting, and maintaining the game within the country, and claims that a "massive plan" is underway to bring WoW to the Philippines with a vengeance. No word on whether players from any other parts of the world will be able to access the Philippino servers, but seeing as it will be a self-contained entity of sorts, it seems unlikely> In any case, chalk up one more X on the big world map for Blizzard...

Even though we've heard Blizzard announce time & again that there will be no World of Warcraft for the XBox 360 or any other consoles, a new job listing on Blizzard's website for a Senior Producer position, with one of the requirements listed as having "a proven track record in producing high-quality console games", has some gamers hopeful again that WoW may indeed surface on one of their favorite consoles.

The ad also specifies that the idea candidate must have "recently shipped at least one AAA game in a producer role for one of these console platforms: Xbox, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, or GameCube.", so apparently they're looking to cast a wide net, whatever their plans might be.

Personally, I'm not much of a console gamer, but I still can't imagine any way WoW could truly ever work on a console, at least without the addition of a mouse & keyboard; there's simply too much typing to do. Perhaps there's a way to accomplish this that I don't know about, but I just can't see one being able to have the true WoW experience in a console setting. Then again, what do I know?

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, News items

The official Blizzard World of Warcraft site has a new look today, as they have finally switched over to their new template, as they announced earlier. The new design looks to be a huge improvement over the old one, but that's less a testimony to the designer's skills than to the fact that their previous website was simply one of the worst professional video game websites I've ever seen...

I guess it wasn't the design of it really, as much as the fact that the darn thing just never seemed to work. It seems (on my end, anyway) like every time the game servers have any trouble, the website goes down as well...which is the first place most people are going to go if the game servers are down. Oh well, let's hope the new website is more reliable.

What do you guys prefer? New or old?

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, News items