Filed under: WoW Insider Business

Every week, just at the start of the weekend, we catch up with the WoW Insider staff and ask them, "What are you playing this week?" -- otherwise known as: WRUP. Join us to see what we're up to in and out of game, and catch us in the comments to let us know what you're playing, too!

At my age, there's nothing I treasure more than spending time with my grandkids. But my overactive bladder has ... other ideas. It used to stop me in my tracks. Now, thanks to my little secret -- WRUP -- I can get back out there and start enjoying life again. What a terrific National Secretaries' Day gift!

And making eggs? What a hassle! First you need to get water! Then you need to turn on the stove, risking severe burns and structure fires! Isn't there an easier way? Now, there is -- WRUP! What aRe yoU Playing uses space-age technology to make cooking eggs a breeze. Makes a great graduation gift.

This commemorative WRUP is struck in 24-karat gold. You and your family can cherish the memory of what your favorite WoW Insider writers were playing on Feb. 11 and 12, 2012. What a great way to teach your children video gaming history. One or two WRUPs is not enough -- you're going to want to buy three, five, 10, or more. Because once this WRUP is minted, it will never be minted again. Makes a great Arbor Day gift!

If there's one company that's mastered the art of the promotional tie-in better than us here at WoW Insider, it's Blizzard. There are promotional WoW drinking cups. There are shirts. Plushies. And soon, there is even going to be a World of Warcraft Monopoly game. It left us asking the question: What's next?

So in addition to the usual What are you playing? question, that's precisely what I asked our columnists: What promotional tie-in will Blizzard come up with next?

Every week, just at the start of the weekend, we catch up with the WoW Insider staff and ask them, "What are you playing this week?" -- otherwise known as: WRUP. Join us to see what we're up to in and out of game, and catch us in the comments to let us know what you're playing, too!

Today is Feb. 3, 2012. That probably doesn't seem exciting now. But someday in the future -- probably somewhere around April 12, 2038 (give or take) -- the idea of revisiting Feb. 3, 2012, will be so exciting. A trip to the past! What pop culture relics would our future selves uncover (and then mock)?!

The idea of a non-self-aware Facebook will seem quaint. We'll be in disbelief that we still powered our cars on dead dinosaurs. And Lana Del Rey?! What fools we were.

There's one thing we can take solace in, though. No matter what aspect of 2012 those time travelers from 2038 see, nothing can be as ridiculous as that song I posted above with the dancing robot. Nothing. (OK, maybe Lady Gaga compares.)

Enough about the past and future. It's Feb. 3, 2012. And dammit, we're going to WRUP in the here and now. This week's bonus question: Who is your favorite in-game NPC?

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

In today's special edition of The Queue, I answer a ton of questions about WoW Insider's inner workings. Your regular World of Warcraft questions will return tomorrow!

kristen asked:

How does Wow Insider select writers and editors? Do they look for people with prominent blogs that can bring their own audience, or do they look for unique writing voice/style? Does WoW Insider go public with its need for new writers or editors, or is it an inside thing (no pun intended)?

Every week, just at the start of the weekend, we catch up with the WoW Insider staff and ask them, "What are you playing this week?" -- otherwise known as: WRUP. Join us to see what we're up to in and out of game, and catch us in the comments to let us know what you're playing, too!

Don't sit there sad and alone on yet another Friday night. Come on, give us a call and find out what the hottest WoW Insider writers are playing this weekend. Alex Ziebart, Adam Holisky, and more ... just waiting after the jump.

WRUP is $4.99 per minute. Please be 18 or older, or have your parents' permission. Or don't get your parents' permission. We'd actually prefer you don't, cause they'll probably just say no.

This week's bonus question: Do you still participate in in-game holidays? And do you participate in the Lunar Festival, in particular?

In a game where tools like the Raid Finder have democratized raiding, how does the mindset of players in top-echelon guilds pushing for world firsts differ from yours and mine? How much time do bleeding-edge guilds really put in? What tricks help them push past wipes and overcome raid challenges? How do they make up time and nudge past other guilds to claim world firsts? And why do other WoW players love to follow the action?

The whole sprawling scene plays out onscreen in the feature-length documentary Race to World First -- and you can watch it free right here at WoW Insider now through Feb. 3. (The film is also available at RacetoWorldFirst.com for a small fee.)

The Looking for Group Productions film, begun back in the day when clawing to a top spot on raiding progression charts was perhaps at its cut-throat peak, follows a handful of top-tier WoW guilds in their sprint to the top. Producers John Keating and Zachary Henderson conducted some of the early interviews for Race two years ago at BlizzCon 2010's WoW Insider reader meetup, including familiar faces like WI Editor Adam Holisky and GM/actress/huntress extraordinaire Michele Morrow.

Get a peek at this film for free while you can right here at WoW Insider. Who knows what in-game challenges you might feel up to tackling after seeing that much fiery motivation in action?

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Every week, just at the start of the weekend, we catch up with the WoW Insider staff and ask them, "What are you playing this week?" -- otherwise known as: WRUP. Join us to see what we're up to in and out of game, and catch us in the comments to let us know what you're playing, too!

Ladies and gentlemen, WoW Insider is not where I typically get political, but there's something that needs to be said. And if I'm going to say it anywhere, it's going to be on the rudderless ship of filler we've all come to know and love as WRUP.

As you may know, this past week, half the internet wound up blacking itself out in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), two anti-piracy bills that could have wide-reaching consequences in terms of what those of us who make a living as internet creatives do. The congressmen who support the bill barely know what the internet is and sound like sputtering children when they try to explain why SOPA and PIPA are good bills. They're not.

SOPA is dead for now, but its House sponsor promises to bring it back in February. PIPA, SOPA's sister bill in the U.S. Senate, is undergoing retooling after a massive nationwide protest Wednesday. We did good, but we haven't won. And because the bad guys have unlimited money and stand to make more of it by passing SOPA/PIPA, we may never win for good. They'll keep trying. We have to keep fighting.

Why should you care? There's this thing out there called fair use that lets us at WoW Insider use certain copyrighted material to bring joy to your life. Fair use is what lets us talk about and show you images from World of Warcraft without having to beg Blizzard's permission. Fair use is what lets me bring video clips like that of Duane above into your life. SOPA and PIPA would literally kill WRUP. SOPA would kill Duane.

OK, I've said my piece. I'll get down from the soap box and hand you back your WRUP. Watch that video of Duane over and over again until the bad taste of politics is out of your mouth. Today's bonus question is a fairly innocuous, SOPA-free one: How far have you progressed in the new Dragon Soul raid? Are you running hard modes? Working on 10-mans? Or just running the Raid Finder? The world needs to know.

Every week, just at the start of the weekend, we catch up with the WoW Insider staff and ask them, "What are you playing this week?" -- otherwise known as: WRUP. Join us to see what we're up to in and out of game, and catch us in the comments to let us know what you're playing, too!

Ladies and gentleman, there is a Twitter account I'd like you all to meet: @horse_ebooks. On its surface, it's nothing special -- just a Russian-owned Twitter spam account designed to sell (predictably) ebooks about horses. To appear as if it were a human, the account employs a comically bad algorithm that tweets seemingly random sentences fragments.

If @horse_ebooks is an attempt to pass a Turing test, it fails on every level. Little it says seems relevant to horses; nothing it says seems to make sense. It's short dispatches are internet-age poetry at its finest -- absurd works of art, all. It's my inspiration.

But that's not the only Twitter account I'd like to introduce you to. There's also the must-follow @WoWInsider. And @mikesacco. And @foxvanallen. And ... well, this kinda brings me to the week's bonus question that I asked our columnists: If there's one Twitter account you'd recommend everyone follow, what would it be?

Every week, just at the start of the weekend, we catch up with the WoW Insider staff and ask them, "What are you playing this week?" -- otherwise known as: WRUP. Join us to see what we're up to in and out of game, and catch us in the comments to let us know what you're playing, too!

Guys, I have terrible news. If we can't nail this week's What aRe yoU Playing -- and I mean really knock this thing out of the park -- they're going to close down the community center. There won't be any place for us kids to get off the street. We'll have to WRUP on a street corner next month. And I've spent enough time on street corners.

We have to practice, you guys. We need to bring our best game to the WRUP competition and show up those jerkstores from the other side of town and show them that we're the kings of ... knowing what we're playing.

So, hold on while I get out the Chaka Khan tapes so we can have a top-notch training montage where we WRUP poorly at first, but then get better at WRUP over time. While I'm putting on these leg warmers, why don't you go ahead and tell me what you're playing this weekend?

Every week, just at the start of the weekend, we catch up with the WoW Insider staff and ask them, "What are you playing this week?" -- otherwise known as: WRUP. Join us to see what we're up to in and out of game, and catch us in the comments to let us know what you're playing, too!

Ah, New Year's Eve -- a magical evening when you get annoyed by Ryan Seacrest for a few hours, watch some bands (who will be entirely irrelevant by 2013) perform, and suffer through an unsettling attempt by a stroke victim to accurately rattle off a countdown. And it's all followed up with a sad, post-midnight attempt to recreate the magic by watching Chicago celebrate the Central Time Zone's version of the New Year. Silly Chicago -- your New Year's doesn't count. Only New York's does.

But, of course, New Year's Eve is about more than just traditional network programming. New Year's Eve also affords us all the chance to make New Year's resolutions. That's what today's WRUP is all about -- New Year's resolutions. What's your New Year's resolution? And ... of course ... what are you playing?

Silversol: You cast symbiosis on a warlock. You get soul swap. They get symbiosis. Combat log divides by zero. Your computer gets sucked into a black hole.

Patch 4.3 went live on Nov. 29 to much rejoicing (well, from everyone barring a very unhappy legion of restoration druids smarting over the Wild Growth nerf), and Blizzard saw it, and said that it was good, and rested on Sunday, and then went back to nerfing everything on Monday.

Also, Skyrim was released around the middle of the month, and we didn't hear from several of our staffers for weeks.

@Druidis4fite The AH Fee structure is a regressive tax on the poor. #OccupyGregStreet
@Warcraft This movement doesn't seem to have a clear message. -- CM Lylirra

As with all BlizzCon-related months, October was jam-packed and probably the busiest month of 2011 for the site.

However, this bit of news belongs in a special category all its own: Hello and Goodbye. Dan O'Halloran, our fearless editor-in-chief and a mysterious figure who communicated largely through a series of lolcats, left to head up Tecca, and Alex Ziebart took the reins. Goodbye, farewell, and amen, Dan. By the way, the image you see above is Fox's response to Dan's email earlier this year about restarting the About the Bloggers series.

Curulan: Pigeon raid boss. I love it. GET ON THIS, BLIZZARD.

September was pretty much all patch 4.3, all the time. The PTR didn't actually go live until close to the end of the month, but we definitely made up for lost time when it did. Transmogrification thoughts still dominated the site's more idle discussion -- who doesn't love cool-looking gear? -- but art-related talk kicked into high gear once everyone saw the visual proc off the new rogue legendary. That would go on to provide one of December's better jokes.

Candida: Knitting Grandmas would be an awesome guild name.

Money, money, money, money. Money! August saw an avalanche of money and gold-related discussion as Blizzard announced that Diablo 3 would feature a real-money Auction House. Oh, and Blizzard registered Mists of Pandaria as a trademark, spurring an endless series of fights on what the hell was going on with that. And then it announced transmogrification and void storage, and we all forgot about pandas for a bit in the interest of farming old raids for some sweet-looking gear.

And holy mother of God, Drama Mamas was on a roll this month.

Merry Christmas to all those of you who celebrate! June 2011 was a pretty patch-oriented month. 4.2 was still on the PTR, and we slowly wound our way through the content there, writing as we went. As with patch 4.1, it was a late entrant in the month it debuted, so you'll see most of our commentary from the live servers in July.

Does WoW ever creep you out?
NoYou Read trade for more than 20 seconds and you can make a strong case against evolution.
CloakedDrifter The Goldshire inn on Moon Guard. *shudder*
MattKrotzer It creeps me out that one of the quest writers has such a fascination with poop, and making us sift through it.

This was a news-heavy month due to patch 4.1's dropping in late April and the quick arrival of patch 4.2 on the Public Test Realm. However, it was also a vibrant month for the arts scene, and WoW Archivist was en fuego in May. Did you know that Molten Core shipped with a third legendary? Don't lie.