Posts with tag best-buy

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Normally, when electronics retailer Best Buy chooses a new executive vice president and president for Best Buy Digital and Global Business Services, WoW Insider doesn't cover the event. Still, one little tidbit in the Best Buy press release announcing the promotion of Stephen Gillett caught our eagle eyes:

Gillett, an avid gamer, is widely considered one of the most innovative Guild Masters in World of Warcraft, the massive multi-player online role-playing game where millions of gamers enter a virtual world creating guilds, engaging socially, questing and celebrating achievements.

I'm not sure I've ever heard of the guild that Gillett leads, but it's probably a really awesome one. And I bet that Lisa Poisso will be grabbing him for a 15 Minutes of Fame column soon. Still, it's cool to see a press release actually treat World of Warcraft as something to be proud of, rather than a really embarrassing thing you have to hide from your date because you're afraid she'll think you're a nerd.

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Yes indeed, this Friday is none other than Black Friday, which means the deals will be aplenty, the crowds will be horrendous, and the holiday money drain will begin (of course, you could go with Buy Nothing Day, but that seems a little too grinchy to me -- why not go ahead and buy while the buying's good?). Fortunately, there are a few WoW deals floating around out there, in case you need to pick up a copy of the game for a loved one (or that Recruit-a-friend account you've been planning to make).

The regular WoW vanilla game (useful for leveling to 60, but if you want to go past that, you'll have to buy the expansions) is on sale in a few places for super cheap -- the Ladies of Leet saw it at Best Buy for just five bucks, and Gamestop's matching that price. Gamestop also will have the Battle Chest (with WoW and BC and a few other goodies) for $19.99, and Newegg has the same price if you don't want to fight the crowds. Unfortunately, there's no sign of Wrath on sale -- you'll still have to pony up the $40 if that's the one you want. But stay tuned in the comments -- if readers can find better prices on this stuff, we're sure you'll see them below. Good luck out there, happy deal finding.

This is one of the stranger World of Warcraft mentions out there -- WorldofWar.net spotted a posting on overclock.net that shows a Microsoft presentation to Best Buy employees mentioning our favorite game. Apparently WoW is a selling point for Windows 7, specifically when comparing the OS to Linux. If Best Buy wants to sell operating systems that play "the games your customers want (e.g. World of Warcraft)," then Windows is supposed to be the way to go.

Interesting. Then again, World of Warcraft is a big game, so you can't blame Microsoft for jumping on its popularity while trying to sell OSes. But it's a little misleading -- of course Blizzard has supported Apple's OS X on the disc from day one, and while they don't officially support running the game on Linux, it's certainly possible to do. If you really are going to buy a new OS, playing WoW might not be the best criteria to base your purchase choice on.

We've heard before about World of Warcraft strutting up the PC gaming market before, but could this game also be holding up the PC game accessories market? Seems that way for Steelseries -- they're the makers of the WoW mouse that we've mentioned (the one that might not be quite kosher with Blizzard's Terms of Service, use with caution). They've just recently inked a deal with Best Buy to carry some of their products (including the WoW mouse), and World of Warcraft played so much of a part in the deal that CEO Bruce Hawver credited Blizzard's MMO with creating his "high-quality gamers": "The way I used to pick up the phone after school, now, kids log into World of Warcraft and chat... Online gaming might cost $14 to $18 a month – less than a single movie visit for two people."

It does follow -- if WoW is one of the only reasons left for people to spend money on PC games, it does seem that it would be one of the only reasons for them to spend money on gaming accessories. High-end mice and keyboards use to be the domain of the FPS player -- guys like Fata1ity pimped their own lines and all the mice bragged about their resolution and ease of use. But the PC market has changed, and MMOs are the game of the day now -- everything is about squeezing function into as many buttons as possible and reaching this 11 million player group roaming around Azeroth. If Steelseries and other accessory manufacturers want to sell their products, they've got to try and sell them to us.

Whether you're attending the midnight release event at Best Buy in New York City or not, you might be interested in the fact that they've set up their own Twitter account to document the event. It looks like it's getting some use earlier than expected, too. It's currently a little after 3 PM in New York, and the first two attendees have already been waiting in line for at least two hours!

I think it's beyond cool that they took the time to set up this feed. Liveblogs are some of the funnest things to read on days like today, and Twitter is the perfect venue for it if you don't have your own dedicated site set up for something like that. And those early attendees? Okay, they're a little crazy, but I'll go ahead and give them props for it. Events like this don't happen every day, so you might as well make a story out of it. When The Burning Crusade launched, I walked three hours in a Wisconsin winter while it was snowing to pick up my copy. Was it insane? Yes. Was it fun? Yes! If you don't have a story to tell after an event like this, you missing half of the fun. Go out and make the best of today!

If you plan on following this feed and you're new to Twitter, don't forget to follow WoW Insider's very own twitter account where you'll see alerts and anecdotes from our team. You might also be interested in some silly fun and want to follow a few Warcraft characters as they tweet.

We've got our first Wrath of the Lich King deal to report, and unfortunately, it's less than impressive. Apparently, if you buy the expansion at Best Buy next week, you'll be able to pick up a strategy guide for the game at 25% off. It's not a great deal, especially since Amazon is offering the guide at 34% off, with or without the game (and since you're a WoW Insider reader, you likely won't need the guide anyway). But it is a deal, and it is for Wrath, so there you go. We'd love to have better deals for you (folks like me who buy Gears of War 2 at Circuit City this week are picking up free gift cards and such), but nothing yet.

There is good news, also, for people who are buying the expansion through Amazon -- apparently they're offering release-day delivery in some places, so even if you picked up the game at the online retailer, you could have it at exactly the same time (well, a few hours later, since there are midnight releases going around and shipped games usually don't show up until midmorning at least) as everybody else. That way, you won't miss a minute of the lag and frustration-inducing camping that will surely ensue just after launch.

If you hear about a deal or a special sale on Wrath next week, let us know. We've all spent way too much money on this game already -- every cent we can save is worth it.

Blizzplanet's got the deets on a Future Shop midnight launch going on in Canada (eh?), so plans of Wrath midnight launch events are starting to sneak out into the world. Blizzard will be doing their usual schtick in Los Angeles, and this time also in New York, San Franscisco, and Austin, where developers go out to stores to sign and say hi while people buy their game. Our good friends BRK and Mania are hosting an event in Orlando, Florida, and I'll be picking up my game at the Gamestop just south of Clark and Diversey in Chicago (and I'll probably invite you all out for a drink or two beforehand at a bar around here, if you're interested). We're also planning some more events around the country here at WoW Insider -- stay tuned for more information about when and where things are going down.

And if you've got information about a special midnight launch event going on around the country (or if, hint hint, you happen to work for a retailer and want to give us an inside scoop on what they've got planned, anonymity assured), please do drop a note on our tip line. The Burning Crusade launch was the biggest expansion launch of all time ever, and Wrath, with its return to Warcraft III lore and the increase in Blizzard's playerbase, is shaping up to be even bigger.

Hawkawkari of Khaz Modan sent us this one -- apparently somebody on the Best Buy Canada site is a little miffed about some expansion news, and it's showing up in their description text for the game. There's some QQ in there about siege vehicles ("1% chance to drop, bind on pickup"), a "hairstyling" profession for Blood Elves and Night Elves, and a special "Unbalance Game" power for Death Knights "on a one-patch time limit cooldown." Pretty funny.

I thought this was just a case of Best Buy cutting and pasting from another more informal site, but Google doesn't find the same text anywhere else, so this might actually be a disgruntled WoW player in their system writing out a fairly biased description. The text still says a release date hasn't been announced (and of course it has) so look for the text to change soon (just in case it does, the full text is after the jump). But wherever you are, disgruntled WoW player, thanks for the laugh.

As much as some Blizzard reps might have wanted to play coy on the official forums, the official World of Warcraft site leaked a link to Pre-order Wrath of the Lich King which will -- according to the page -- indeed come out on November 13, 2008. So while there has mysteriously been no big announcement on the Blizzard websites, this Pre-order page pretty much confirms what Wowhead and Thottbot unveiled earlier today.

Participating retailers include Amazon, Best Buy, Circuit City, and GameStop. Interestingly enough, all the official links except for Best Buy peg the official release at November 3, a date leaked out in earlier reports. GameStop words it as "ships in 11/03/08" which could mean that the games will reach retailers over a week before the official release date. [EDIT: Or yeah, it could be that they haven't updated their sites yet. Good morning!] The details include both normal and Collector's Edition versions of the game. The official Blizzard site has, as of this writing, now been updated to reflect the official release date with a splash page.

[UPDATE: GameStop has revised their release date to match the announced date of 11/13/08]

Alright, this is a question that's probably more important for those offshore than the people in the United States. When World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade were released, I had to call people in the U.S. to pick up our copies and send us our registration keys. I missed out on the Collector's Edition of the original one because of geographical limitations, but I'm fairly certain I would've camped out at Target or Best Buy the night before release in The Phantom Menace/ iPhone style just to get one.

I was in San Francisco a week or so before The Burning Crusade made its way to the shelves (blast you and your moving ship dates, Blizzard!), but fortunately made arrangements to get a Collector's Edition before I had to head back home. I'm more prepared now, banking on a few channels to get a couple of Collector's Editions of Wrath of the Lich King when it comes out later this year. With the game right now shaping up to be one of Blizzard's best ever, I'm curious as to where people plan to get their copy. Have you pre-ordered? Is there a store chain near you? Maybe you, like me, are geographically challenged and will have to (ab)use contacts abroad? What's your Wrath of the Lich King release date battle plan?

Hackers seem to be trying more and more ways to get legitimate accounts out of players hands and working to steal and farm more gold, but if you think they've had some sneaky schemes in the past, you ain't seen nothing yet. Our colleagues at Massively have a story that's both amazing and disturbing at the same time.

A lot of geeks found a digital photo frame under the tree this year. Seems like a good idea, I'm sure a lot of us have a pretty large collection of digital photographs stored on memory cards and flash drives that we just haven't quite gotten around to printing for display.

Unfortunately, certain frames sold at Best Buy, Target, Costco and Sam's Club come with an extra undocumented feature, in that they have a nasty little bug that's being dubbed Mocmex. The bug can burrow its way into your computer, latch itself in, and sniff out account information. It doesn't seem to affect Linux or Macs, at least not in its current form, but right now there doesn't seem to be a single manufacturer or frame type that's infected, so the origin of the bug hasn't been nailed down.

If you think you've got one of the infected picture frames, Massively recommends contacting the SANS institute and calling the store where the frame was purchased. You can check their story for the contact information.

The upside of this, I suppose, is that if the farmers are starting to branch into using peripherals to steal our accounts, they may be getting pretty desperate. The downside is, when we have people who practice safe web browsing and keep a clean computer getting bitten, like our Amanda Dean for example, we could be in some trouble. With any luck, all the major virus programs will have a cure for Mocmex and programs like it soon. In the meantime, it looks like we'll have to be extra careful about what we install on our computers, and make sure our anti-virus programs and firewalls are up to date.