Posts with tag london

Blizzard has released some launch night video from the Wrath of the Lich King release over on their EU site, and it looks like things were pretty crazy across the pond. There were costumes aplenty, and there were crowds in London, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands. Plus, the video even has a nice appearance by the man/demon himself, as you can see above.

Unfortunately, the US site hasn't posted any such video yet, so while you can definitely read here on this site about all of the crowds and chaos that went down on this side of the world, there's no video to compare. My guess is that while the EU folks were definitely excited, over there it was more contained to the big events and the big cities, while over here in the US even small towns had lines outside the gaming stores.

But it was definitely a night to remember for WoW fans, no matter where you were.

[via WorldofWar]

This story is really only tangentially related to our game, but we'll mention it anyway: a London teacher has been accused of sending sexually-related text messages to a 14-year-old student that she contacted while they were playing World of Warcraft together. Apparently the woman met up with the student in Azeroth, and then was able to somehow get his phone number from him. Later, the boy's father discovered explicit text messages from her on his son's phone, and she now faces jailtime as a result.

Of course, this says nothing at all about World of Warcraft -- there are man, many ways of communication on the Internet, and the game happens to be just one of them (and shame on the Escapist for even suggesting this is an argument against games in education -- the fault here lies with the teacher, not the game). You should be cautious about who your children are corresponding with no matter where they are or what they're doing, and in fact, this boy's father was.

Kraylessa is, I'd guess, an anomaly-- she lives in the United States, but has actually obtained an EU copy of the game and rerolled on EU servers. She says she loves it-- her nationality is a topic of conversation, no one's been xenophobic, and while the lag isn't great, it's just about as bad as it was when she played cross-continent servers (she's living on the East Coast).

I'm not sure how well I'd do playing on an EU realm-- while I'm sure the people are great (hi, EU readers!), it seems like I'd have even less chances to raid (with my schedule being so off), and as ocannie points out in the comments over on Kraylessa's post, customer service would be an interesting experience if anything ever went wrong. It would definitely be interesting to see the cultural differences, however, and it would make it a completely different game to be "the outsider" in Azeroth. Right now, the vast majority of my guildies are American (and quite a few of them are from St. Louis, my hometown), and it would definitely be a different experience to play entirely with people from the other side of the world.

Have any of you played on realms in a different country before? Did it make Azeroth a lot more like actually visiting another place, or weren't there too many differences? Would you recommend it or not? I don't know if I'm curious enough to try it now (since I'm good and situated on a server where I am now), but if I had the chance to start a new game on another region's servers, I might give it a shot.

At the end of March, the Times issued an 8-page supplement along with a demo of World of Warcraft. Aside from getting me wondering how many Londoners are now trying out the game, it brought along a fantastic article by Caitlin Moran. You'll want to read the article to understand the image accompanying this posting.

In "My life as a bearded dwarf", we're given a humorous and insightful view into what can drag a mild-mannered reporter and mother of two into the world's biggest online game. Okay, maybe mild-mannered is pushing it. This is the same Caitlin Moran who started off into the world of music journalism at 16, wished an entire band dead in an album review, and who's spent time hanging out with Robbie Williams and writing on how cocaine has been responsible for some great albums. Yes, I owe my knowledge of these facts to the mighty Wikipedia.

While her choice of character names (Scottbaio) leaves much to be desired, I'm left wondering how long it'll be before I actually see a Thrusthammer Orcbash on a realm near me.

How did you get into World of Warcraft? When was it that you realized that you had been entirely sucked in, and the 20 minutes you THOUGHT you were going to spend turned into 2 or 3 hours?

Thanks a million to Dave for the submission!