Posts with tag signup

The chances to head off to BlizzCon are coming fast nowadays -- Nvidia is the latest company in on the race, as they're offering up an all expenses paid trip to Anaheim in August for the winner and a guest to experience Blizzard's big show. To enter, they say you have to buy a qualifying Nvidia card, and then use the promo code inside the package to enter. Which might make you think, as we did, that it's a pretty lousy deal -- you have to buy a new graphics card just for a chance to win? But their official rules say "no purchase necessary," So we did the work for you: if you want to enter without buying a card, you have to send a letter or postcard to "NVIDIA "BlizzCon 2009" Sweepstakes – Entries by Mail (USA & Canada), NVIDIA Corporation, 2701 San Tomas Expressway, Santa Clara, CA 95050, U.S.A," and include your full name, your email address, mailing addresses, your telephone number, and "a short paragraph (100 to 250 words), written or typed in English, stating why you like or have an interest in the 'World of Warcraft' game or Nvidia or its products."

Not exactly a lot of fun, but then again, it's cheaper than buying a new graphics card, and their rules say that mail-in entries have the same chance at winning that the coupon codes do. We're behind you, readers -- we hope you win.

And if you do make it to BlizzCon, keep an eye out for WoW.com -- we're gonna have a nice big shindig on Thursday night (location still TBA, but soon!), and we'd love for you to be there.

WoWPals.net is a brand new social networking site targeted at you WoW players that just got a nice bit of coverage over on VentureBeat's GamesBeat site. Social networking is taking off just as much as World of Warcraft lately, and so there's a whole slew of companies trying to step up and become the de facto social service for gamers, from GamerDNA and Rupture to wowtwitter and even our own little enterprise. WoWPals isn't too different -- it's run by a few gamers based in Israel, and is currently in alpha, and hoping for a beta by the end of the year. You register to the site with your first character, and after a short wait for an activation email, you can jump in and find friends by guild or server, or punch in your location and search around that way. Once you're friends, there's not much more to do but chat and message each other, but what more do you need, really?

Personally, I think WoW already covers the bases of a social network (though in the past I've said I would like to have the option to see more about players than the characters, and these sites can certainly fill that need), so all of these end up being either extraneous -- do I really need another Twitter just for my characters? -- or just plain unnecessary: maybe I don't want my friends to know exactly what I did in game last night.

So no, I personally haven't been sold on any of these sites yet (though I do like reading through the player blogs here on WoW.com, and I'm not just saying that because I work here). I'm active ingame, and I'm active on various social networks, and keeping the two separate is fine by me. But if you are looking for even more ways to find new friends in World of Warcraft, maybe you can meet some new pals with WoWPals, too.

Want to hit up Blizzcon but don't want to shell out for the ticket? Our contact at the World Series of Videogames sends along a note that they're sending one lucky guild to Blizzard big event in Anaheim, California. The catch? They'll be picking one lucky 3v3 team at random from all of the teams that attend their next event in Dallas, Texas on July 5-8.

Yeah, it's kind of a big hoop to jump through (especially when you can just pay $100 now to get your own ticket anyway). But then again, tickets are going fast (I got mine the other day), and if you're planning on going to the event in Dallas anyway, it's a nice bonus. Interesting that they're giving it away to a lucky 3v3 guild-- maybe they need more of them to fill out the brackets? If you're interested, register an account on the WSVG site, sign up for the event when you're logged in, and then you've actually got to show up to the event to be eligible.

We'll keep you updated on more giveaways as they come along-- WoWWiki has already given away a couple of tickets to their own contributors, and we're sure there will be a few more in different places in the days to come.