Posts with tag Toys

Just like last year, Blizzard has made certain BlizzCon-exclusive items available for preorder by BlizzCon 2011 ticketholders. There are almost 100 pieces of merchandise available this year, from designer toys to poker sets to calendars to Starcraft 2 Mega Bloks sets, and they're ready to be viewed (and purchased) right this very moment! Check out the presale on the Blizzard Store, but keep in mind that you won't be able to see the new merchandise unless you're logged into a Battle.net account with a BlizzCon ticket (or virtual ticket) attached to it.

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This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

World of Warcraft is a huge world filled with many things. One thing that sets it apart from other MMOs for me is the amount of toys and RP items that exist in the game. I claim to have all of them, and I'm pretty sure I have at least 95% of them. I love them all. The day patch 4.1 came out, I dug up the Ancient Amber from archaeology, and I loved it. On the same day, Blizzard also fixed the Gnomish Gravity Well, which is my new favorite engineering item. I have so many toys, I can't pick which one I like the most.

There are even toys that can be combined, like Orb of the Sin'dorei and Kalytha's Haunted Locket (which turns you into a female blood elf, even if you're a male) -- and what about Burgy Blackheart's Handsome Hat combined with Ethereal Oil for a super-ghostly form?

Do you have a bunch of toys like myself? Do you have an Arcanite Ripper that you shred whenever your raid is having an AFK break? Or maybe a Foam Sword Rack to break out a fight? A Super-Simian Sphere to go bananas with? Share your favorite toys and what you like to do with them. They make the game unique, and it's time people express their love for them! (Not to mention ... I might find one that I missed!)

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The Spawn got her Wind Rider Cub on Friday and it has since been slept with, rained on and taken for a ride with Barbie. His name is now Lionel and he has become good friends with Murky the Murloc. Together they embark on great adventures and battle the nefarious deeds of the Darth Vader Happy Meal toy. (Don't get me started on the fact that McDonalds believes that Star Wars is for boys and iCarly is for girls. Seriously.)

Have you shown us your plushies yet? We have some really great entries already, but yours could be even better. You have until midnight, March 10th to send us your photos of your Plushie in the Wild and/or Plushie in Captivity. WoWTCGLoot.com has generously provided the loot codes for the prizes.

All of the contest details are after the break.

I love Jepetto Joybuzz. He doesn't sell anything terribly useful, just silly ol' toys that you can goof around with. Dolls to place in creepy locations, trains to piss off your raid, paper airplanes, that whole deal. I love when he gets new toys on the PTR, so his latest additions made my heart soar. His new offerings are:

• Tiny Blue Ragdoll
• Blue Clockwork Rocket Bot
• Blue Crashin' Thrashin' Racer Controller

Are you noticing a trend? None of these toys are 100% new, they're azure (because I said blue too many times) recolors of previous toys. Toys that are inaccessible now. The green ragdoll is still around, but the Rocket Bot and the Racer Controller are both re-released toys that were only available during Winters Veil in 2007 and 2008. Players that acquired them the year they were released get to keep their Feats of Strength, but now everyone can join in on the fun and play with them. It's probably strange that I'm so excited about these, but come on. They're toys! Toys within a bigger toy, even!

Toy Fair started up in New York City yesterday, and as you might expect, there's some nice shiny new Warcraft toys coming out to the event too. Specifically, our friends over at UGO got an exclusive shot of DC Direct's new Lich King.

If you're going to feel a bit nostalgic about the poor guy once Patch 3.3 is past and Cataclysm is upon us, I have to say this statue looks like a pretty good way of remembering him. All the iconic details are there, although from this picture, I have to admit Frostmourne looks a bit... small. Of course, that could be because Arthas is in full hulking out threat display there. Overall, it looks a pretty awe inspiring piece, and hopefully we'll be able to get a closer look at it soon.

There's more toys to come as well, including these intriguing shots straight from the show, which showcase, among other things, Sylvanas, a worgen, a goblin, and a paladin in Judgement armor.

World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players and fans, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music, fan fiction – and yes, (War)crafts. Share your stuff by tipping us off via our tips line (attention: World of WarCrafts).

World of WarCrafts has been gathering up tips and news on creative endeavors from players in all sorts of media. For a sun-drenched holiday weekend, though, we couldn't think of anything better than everyone's favorite: a Murbean. These cuties come courtesy of Amythys of Sisters of Elune.

"I've been making these little plush Murlocs for a while now (I call them Murbeans), mostly for my own amusement, but two have gone to friends as well," Amythys wrote. "Since I photographed them recently for my new guild's amusement, I wanted to share them here too."

One more shot of the little guys after the fold.

Toys inside a game. Just how good can things get? I'm a huge fan of toys, you see, so when there's an opportunity to exercise this little obsession, I indulge in it. So when I heard about the toy shop in Dalaran, I was absolutely thrilled. I got myself the Train Set (well, actually, my wife gave me the money to buy it), and proceeded to disrupt every raid I could. Of course, when the train destroyer comes to town, I'm picking one up, too, just to be able to make my own train wreck.

What other toys would you like to see in-game? I mean, Upper Deck's next expansion, the Blood of Gladiators, has a bunch of new stuff for us to play with. Foam swords and a sandbox spectral tiger (just in case you never lucked out or could afford the real one). I particularly like the ball I use to play fetch with my pets. There's just a lot of room to be silly and playful, I can't imagine Blizzard or the clever guys at Upper Deck running out of ideas. What do you think should be next? Gnome boxing balloons? Throwing pies? I dunno. You guys can probably get more creative.

Cabinetsanchez over on LJ has documented something that I saw in action yesterday while running a few instances -- while it's a ton of fun to run my Crashin' Thrashin Racer around (I'm undefeated since I picked up the achievement the first day I got the toy, by the way), players have found a few extra ways to make the Racers work for them. Yesterday, I saw one of my group members using the Racer a few times to scout the instance ahead and see what pulled with what, and as CS says, it worked great: while the Racer will aggro enemies, they won't tag on to the rest of the group -- they'll just reset after they destroy the little car.

CS also says that the Racer takes no falling damage, so you can send it exploring off of cliffs and platforms, and he says that though the car is considered level 60, its aggro range is pretty small (I can attest to this, as we were driving it pretty close to enemies yesterday without it registering on their radar). And he's got an even more devious use (some might say this is an exploit): bosses aggroed by the racer will sometimes despawn after they conquer it for up to 30 seconds or so. That seems like a hotfix waiting to happen, but I haven't personally tried it, so it may not be as useful as it sounds.

The downside of this is that the Racer was meant to be a fun item, and if it really does lead to behavior that Blizzard considers exploiting, they might have to think twice about including great items like this in the future. We'll have to see what their ruling on this is, but hopefully no matter what happens (I'm guessing a quick hotfix, maybe even shrinking the range of the Racer's controller), this won't prevent Blizzard from giving us more fun toys later on.

I love toys. And because I play The World of Warcraft, I specially love the action figures that DC Direct has been churning out. The Series 2 action figures have just been recently released and I'm looking forward to picking up a couple when they finally hit our shores. The great thing about the action figures is that they actually tie in to lore, making appearances in the Chris Metzen-approved and supposedly canon WoW comic books.

Out of all the comic book characters and available action figures, I've taken quite a liking to the spunky Valeera Sanguinar. Sure, it's weird that she fights in the Arenas alongside a Night Elf Druid and the thinly-disguised Human Varian Wrynn, but she's pretty cool despite being stuck in outdated Bloodfang Armor. I picked up the action figure some time back, and even though I have a few quibbles about the toy, I'm looking forward to getting more, particularly Vindicator Marrad and his Hammer of the Naaru. My thoughts on the action figure and close-ups of Valeera Sanguinar in the gallery.

Toy News International reports that the World of Warcraft action figures from DC Direct are coming in the last quarter of this year. I love my toys and I love WoW so this comes as great news, particularly with the new selection of figures -- a Blood Elf Paladin named Quin'thalan Sunfire (hell yeah!); Tamuura, a Draenei Mage; an Undead Rogue called Skeeve Sorrowblade; and a Human Priest, Sister Benedron, who can probably cure your allergies. As with previous World of Warcraft action figures from DC direct, the sculpts are mostly based on existing armor sets that players might recognize.

Tamuura sports the Tier 6 raid set Tempest Regalia, while Sister Benedron is depicted in Tier 5 Avatar gear with exaggerated shoulder wings; Skeeve Sorrowblade appears to be wearing a highly-detailed version of Deathmantle, the Rogue Tier 5 set; and Quin'thalan Sunfire looks... well, he looks like he's a generic Silvermoon City guard whom you ask for directions. It's a bit disappointing, personally, although I guess it's cool to have a Silvermoon City guard. It would be kind of like having a named Stormtrooper or something. Historically, DC Direct's action figures have appeared in the World of Warcraft comic, so expect one or more of these new figures to make an appearance in the Chris Metzen-approved canon comic series.

More pictures after the jump. So clickety-click, toy lovers (and uh, WoW fans)...

Amanda M. had a tiny mention of this in her big Engineering post earlier, but I felt it deserved another mention. Our friend Boubouille at MMO Champion has discovered that there are new toy models coming for Engineers in 2.3: a rocket chicken (yes, really), a paper gyrocopter and a paper zepplin, and this crazy model above, a dragon kite.

Now, I don't mean to rain on Engineers' parades-- they definitely deserve all the love they're getting, and I can't wait to see all the cool stuff they're making out there on the realms. But here's the thing: wasn't the whole problem with Engineering that they were stuck making toys instead of useful items? The Epic Mount is awesome, but is anyone else surprised to see that an "Engineering revamp" includes papercraft toys? This is just more Mechanical Squirrels, which is what Engineers were disappointed with in the first place.

An unweighted Companion Cube would be hilarious (Portal has my game of the year vote right now, until I get to check out Mass Effect). But I thought the whole point of beefing up Engineering was to get past these pets. Will letting them do some papercraft really bring the profession up to speed?

Update: Or maybe they're not all for Engineers. The Rocket Chicken certain seems like Engineering, but there's speculation floating around, according to our illustrious commenter Kyle, that these are rewards from the new Upper Deck loot cards.

We play this game called World of Warcraft, and naturally it's about war, various sorts of fighting and skirmishing and so on. Most activities are involved in this fighting in one way or another, even if indirectly.

But we also know that some things in the game have absolutely no effect on your fighting skills whatsoever, and yet these are some of the items in highest demand. Non-combat pets, unique mounts, cute outfits, and so on.

So now imagine that you get hired for Blizzard just to design more of these non-combat items. What kinds of items would you create? What would you make players do in order to get them? What do you think they would add to the game that isn't already there?

As if somehow sensing that there might be some meager amount of money in my pocket left over from the holidays, DC has released the proofs for the next series of World of Warcraft figures for us all to covet and add to our Wish Lists! Pictured from left to right are:

• Human Warrior - Archilon Shadowheart
• Night Elf Druid - Broll Bearmantle
• Troll Priest - Zabra Hexx

Additionally, the site lists a Gnome Warrior named Sprocket Gyrospring as being part of this next set of figures. Sadly, I couldn't find an image of him out there as yet. I suppose he's either lost somewhere behind all that Druid gear, or the Troll made some Gnome stew.

In any event, these fantastic new figures are set to go on sale on February 20th, 2008. Luckily, this gives me more than enough time to clear off some shelf room in my office for them -- and Illidan!

[via Action-Figures]