Posts with tag blizzard-store

The picture it says it all... If there was any doubt in the popularity of the new items, this is all you need. For virtual items to be going so fast and furious is unheard of. But here we have it. The most that WoW.com has seen is the number reach around 70,000. It could be more or less when you get in-line to buy one.

Edit at 4:45 p.m. EDT: It's now above 80,000, which is nearly 10 times OVER 9000.

Edit at 7:30 p.m. EDT: The queue is now above 140,000.

Coverage of the new purchasable in-game mount and pet today:

• Initial Blizzard Store Discovery
• Mount available to be purchased
• Poll: Selling the Celestial Steed is...

WoW.com will be giving away a few Celestial Steeds and Lil' XTs soon. Stay tuned and keep an eye out for the post!

Originally previewed at BlizzCon 2009, the new collectible n00bz figures are now in the Blizzard online store. These are small, customizable action figures that are available in either a blank version or in a variety of pre-painted models from murlocs to ghouls and even Ragnaros himself. Blizzard has said they'll slowly be releasing more of these little guys as time goes on and has already offered a limited-edition n00b this past BlizzCon of Raynor from StarCraft.

So, check out the n00bz and send us your pictures of them in strange places, or grab some blank n00bz and paint up your own. If you're looking for some ideas, here is a gallery of some custom n00bz that were on display at BlizzCon this past year.

• World of Warcraft EPEEN: New from Blizzard, the Equipment Potency EquivalencE Number system!
• WoW Armory Tuskarr Invasion: Folks checking out the armory may have noticed their characters transformed to tuskarr, their achievements reported as 'cheesed,' and a whole lot of gear ninjaed and summarily vendored
• Battle.net Matchmaking Service: Battle.net decides to play eHarmony and place lonely gamers with suitable partners
• Battle.net Neural Interface: New from the Blizzard Store, the Neural Interface promises a lifelike gaming experience
• Blizzard Mobile Games: Up for 2010 from Blizzard Mobile Games are Blackthorne 2: Thorne Harder, and Queen's Quest!
• Diablo Gamer Blanket and Body Pillow: Wave goodbye to the cold as best as you can while swaddled in this Diablo 'gamer blanket!'
• Diablo Deckard Cain GPS System: Now you can listen to Deckard drone while you drive!

• El's Extreme Anglin': El reports on the latest Cataclysm feature: Aquariums!
• MMO-Champion/Paragon/Premonition: MMO-Champion breaks the news that Paragon will be moving to US servers come Cataclysm and merging with the US Guild Premonition. Sponsored by AXE!
• Nihilum: Nihilum breaks some rules and brings us screens and video from the Cataclysm alpha
• Wowhead: Wowhead, er, TACOhead brings news of a new in-game item, the Hellfire Kickin' Taco Supreme!
• Tankspot: Tankspot announces their change to Farmspot
• Warcraft Pets: Breanni fills us in on some new non-combat pet... er... features coming out in Cataclysm
• World of Raids: World of Raids reports on the new Observation Deck and Spectate features coming in Cataclysm
• The Guild: The Guild proudly announces its new foray into the world of animation!
• Curse.com: Curse.com fills us in on Cataclysm -- exclusively available for the IPad
• WoW.com: And of course, there's us. Our day was filled with takeover after takeover, from Twilight to Muscle March to Saturn Six -- we've decided to return to WoW news. For now...

We first mentioned the upcoming plushies a few weeks ago. The Wind Rider Cub and Gryphon Hatchling are two stuffed animals that will inevitably steal the hearts of women and children. And big, manly WoW bloggers who didn't even cry at the beginning of UP! Nope, not one single tear.

That being said, we thought we'd point out that the plushies are currently available in the Blizzard Store. There's no word on what the availability is going to be like, so I highly recommend that you trot over immediately and pick up your new best friend. However, the site does say they're only available or a limited time. So really, hurry.

Don't worry about us -- we've placed our order. I certainly wasn't sitting here spamming Refresh while I waited for them to become available. Nope, not at all.

My wife and daughter love their Murky and Kwurky murloc plush dolls that I got for them during last year's BlizzCon. In hindsight, I really should've gotten a Lurky plush for myself. I mean, you gotta admit, those suckers are cute! Blizzard apparently knows it, too, and they're about to release two new plushies soon with the added bonus of including a code for an in-game pet! Those wyvern cub and gryphon hatchling models have been in the game files for a while now, but we've only just found out about where to get them.

Blizzard has already hinted at this kind of merchandising, noting when the Blizzard pet store was announced that plushies with codes for in-game pets would be introduced soon. I'm likely to pick up a plush wyvern or two to join our murloc brood, and I'll get the added bonus of getting an in-game pet for myself (take that, Lurky!). Do you plan to pick up a plushie, either for its real or pixel cuteness? Which one interests you? It's highly likely that Blizzard will introduce more plushies in the future -- what other stuff do you think they'll come up with? Plush Deathwing, maybe? A plushie Yogg Saron might not sell too well, I think. Future plushies should expectedly have equivalent in-game pets, so the possibilities are pretty exciting...

This is brilliant. Two new plush pets are coming soon to the Blizzard Store: The Wind Rider Cub and the Gryphon Hatchling. As adorable as these toys are, they have one more thing which will make them a mandatory purchase for any pet collector. They include a code for a version of them in-game.

We don't know when they are hitting the store or how much they will be. But there are several of us who will be checking frequently to find out, so we'll let you know when we do. Well, we might order ours first.

Well, they started giving away pets for having an authenticator, so I guess it's about time I went ahead and put one on my account. I've had the app on my iPhone for a while, actually, but I never really saw the point in attaching it to my account, especially since it seemed like just more hassle, and who knows what kinds of errors could pop up. And honestly, I haven't worried much about hackers -- I use a secure browser, I don't click on unknown links. But I know, I know, it's safer, and with the cute Corehound Pup out, I might as well go ahead and attach it.

And you might as well, too. Blizzard's Store was flooded with people looking for authenticators yesterday, but things have slowed down a bit, and they've even got a brand new design with the Corehound Pup right on there. The price, as usual, is $6.50 with free shipping. If you've got an iPhone or an iPod touch, you can get the app free from iTunes, and we're told that it's coming to other platforms at some point in the future (guess when: "soon"). Even if you don't want to apply the Authenticator for whatever reason, just think of it as an almost-half-price pet.

You lucky European ducks may just have finally gotten that one thing you can hold over the heads of those Americans with their superiority complexes. The official online Blizzard store is now offering, exclusively for Europe, a set of Frostmourne-themed merchandise. Enclosed in a special box, the set contains one Frostmourne hilt keychain and one insulated metal mug with Frostmourne's runic engravings on one side.

Steely-eyed readers may notice that the keychain is the same one as, or at least identical to, the one that came in your BlizzCon '09 goody bag. Of course, this one is "made of rhodium, a rare metal offering even higher quality than silver." The mug, on the other hand, is a never-before-seen piece of merch.

The set is, of course, limited edition, so if you want to make this the perfect gift for the burgeoning death knight in your family, you'd best act quickly. Then again, I don't think they like warmth very much. Maybe an insulated mug isn't the best gift idea. I'm thinking -- hear me out -- macaroni necktie.

In an unexpected and strange twist in Blizzard's latest microtransaction saga, the Pandaren Monk vanity pet has apparently sold out on the Blizzard pet store. A mere week after the in-game pets were announced for sale on Blizzard's new pet store, the Pandaren Monk can no longer be purchased on US realms (as of this writing, it is still available on the Blizzard EU and Blizzard KR stores).

That the Pandaren Monk would sell out comes as a surprise because, well, it's a virtual item. It's like Agent Smith. It never runs out. Unless, of course, Blizzard designed it that way, in which case there must have been a massive failure of communication somewhere down the line because it doesn't say anything about the Pandaren Monk being a limited item anywhere. It's also notable that Blizzard had committed to donating 50% of all proceeds from Pandaren Monk sales to the Make-a-Wish Foundation all the way through December 31. If the Pandaren Monk were to disappear, it should at least be expected to last until the end of 2009, right?

We think this is an inventory error, where some number had to be inserted into the Blizzard Store's inventory management system, like some number "over 9000". Likely this will be easily corrected, and when it is, we'll update this post accordingly.

UPDATE 11:30am ET: Blizzard is looking into the matter, which should assuage most people's fears that the item is indeed sold out.

UPDATE 2:00pm ET: The Pandaren Monk is now back in stock and available for purchase! It was just a glitch in the Matrix, people. Nothing to see here.

Thanks to Papa Shok for the tip.

The guys over at The Instance podcast got a chance to talk to Blizzard's Tom Chilton about the recent decision to sell in-game noncombat pets for real money, and the interview is now up in the latest episode on their site. He talks first about the pets' development, and it sounds like they designed the pets thinking they'd be sold on a real-money store eventually. He says the price point was "arrived at by trying to figure out what it would have to be to make sense for us to spend time working on it." And he mentions the TCG and their loot prizes -- he says those were meant to be a bonus, and they ended up being a roundabout way for players to buy pets anyway, so Blizzard decided to go with this more direct plan.

He doesn't say much about the future, but he does say that Blizzard is planning on doing some "pet and plushie" deals, where you'll be able to buy a plushie from the Blizzard store, and get an in-game pet with it. For the game specifically, he mentions the guild transfer service that's coming (we heard about that back at BlizzCon -- you'll be able to server transfer an entire guild rather than do it account-by-account), but otherwise he tells players that the pet store is just a "side project" -- right now, it's not taking away from development at all, and if it does grow, Chilton says Blizzard would hire more people rather than using current developers. We'll have to see what happens in the future.

One of the hottest topics in the past week was Blizzard's foray into the microtransactions game. By announcing the Blizzard pet store, World of Warcraft had officially come on par with other MMOs and online games that sold in-game items for real world money. Our informal survey showed that views on the move were officially split... a good third of our readers would buy the pet, another third didn't plan to, while another full third thought that our world was coming to an end. Well, the World of Warcraft, at least.

At any rate, it looks like the Pet Store is here to stay. Besides, Blizzard has already been hawking in-game services for real money, so it's not as if these vanity pets are any different. I personally don't find anything wrong with these pets, and seeing the number of diminutive liches and kung fu pandas showing up all over Azeroth, it really seems like a lot of other people don't, either.

Blizzard states that these items, similar to the TCG loot cards, are "purely cosmetic and just for fun." They say that they'd be loathe to introduce things that are "detrimental to the game and (detracts) from the gameplay experience for players who choose not to use the service." So that probably means no epic weapons or anything of the sort.

How far does that go, though? Are heirloom items considered detrimental to the game? How about buying levels? Premades? I personally wouldn't mind paying a fair price to skip the painful leveling process (an attitude that might admittedly change during the Cataclysm). What's do you think is next for Blizzard? Armor dyes, perhaps? Vanity outfits such as the complete Brewfest set or gag items such as those found on the TCG? Titles? Now that the microtransactions gate has been opened, how far do you think Blizzard will go?

Well Blizzard has finally done it. After charging only for out-of-game services like faction changes and character customization, with the release of in-game pets on the Blizzard store, they've finally moved on to selling virtual items for real money. And there's a word, dirty in the mouths of some, that's floating around that some of you may not have heard or understood before: microtransactions. We wouldn't blame you -- some of our own staff didn't even know what they were just a little while ago. But with the decision to sell in-game items for straight cash, Blizzard has entered the fascinating and treacherous world of microtransactions. And if you're going to follow them off into this world, you might as well at least know what they're all about.

And so, we're here to help. Whether you've never heard of microtransactions before, you're convinced that they're the devil and that Blizzard has grown too greedy for their own good, or you can't wait to open up your wallet and get a Pandaren Monk to follow you around, let's take a second and look at the history of the microtransaction model, what it means that Blizzard made this decision, and what might happen to the game in the future.

This year's BlizzCon 2009 is just a tad over two weeks away, running August 21st and 22nd. We're expecting lots of big announcements this year, and the WoW.com staff is preparing to cover the event from top to bottom. One nice thing about this year is that we won't be waiting in line for any of our merchandise, at least anything that has to do with the current games.

Everything is available for the next 48 hours to be purchased through the Blizzard Store. If you have a ticket, the original ticket buyer with the Battle.net account must go into the store and order the items. If you don't have a ticket or are not the holder of the Battle.net account which purchased the ticket, you're probably going to have a hard time seeing them, so we've made a gallery of the item listing for your enjoyment.

While there's a few things that are unique to BlizzCon in the store, there's nothing really amazing, in my opinion. What I really want is a poster or shirt of the next expansion, and I'm not surprised it isn't in there. So maybe there'll be a little line-standing time after all (assuming they announce it, of course).

If the gallery images are too small, click the "High Res" button located in the upper right-hand corner of the image page and they'll appear at their normal size.

Lovely Black Dress also has a nice listing of some of the items, including a collage.