"Lake Wintergrasp -- World of Warcraft's first dedicated PVP zone -- has been singled out as the subject of criticism from scads of testers, so there's a good chance this is the first step toward fine-tuning that experience.

We'll have further discussion on premades in the Lich King beta on next week's Legendary Thread, after we've had some time to put them through the paces. Enjoy what's sure to be a PVP-filled weekend, beta testers. Everyone else: your time is coming soon enough."

Blizzard released the intro to their upcoming World of Warcraft expansion - Wrath of the Lich King. No release date has been announced so far. Blizzard is building up hype as usual while working hard on the new content for us ex and present WoW junkies.

""Looks like after a barrage of folks whacking Blizzard servers, taking them offline several times, all the tickets for the upcoming BlizzCon expo have been sold. Blizzard is holding the event on October 10th and 11th at the Anaheim Convention Center (in Anaheim, CA). Tickets were $100 dollars a piece and there is no word on how many were sold.

What we do know for sure is that we have been offered two press passes for the event and will bring you the latest coverage from the expo as it unfo..."

"What other medium makes such engagement and connectivity possible? In the last few years, our industry has taken great steps to embrace the most recent trends in Web development. From game applications on social networks to free-to-play games that are downloadable or browser-based, these games are evolving – much like the web – to incorporate more and more user interaction.


I think it’s fair to say that videogames, at some level, have social elements in their DNA. From traditional games..."

"“Eventually, our plans are for the Achievement system to become an account-based system,” [lead “World of Warcraft” designer Jeff Kaplan] explained.

When the new Blizzard Accounts are active, a player’s ‘WoW’ points can be added to an overall score dubbed an account holder’s “Blizzard Level.” “It’s basically a gamerscore,” Kaplan said, when I made reference to Xbox Live’s Achievement system. “For now the points are just a ‘WoW’ character score. As we graduate to that Blizzard Account syste..."

"Have you been considering free-to-play for World of Warcraft, and if you did, what would the Blizzard way of free-to-play look like?

PS: I don’t envision us changing the business model for World of Warcraft. It’s been working really well in each of the markets.

The game has been designed in such a way to where we determined the business model to wrap that around what the game experience was. Given that we’re not looking to significantly modify the overall gameplay experience, which is I..."

"An Australian man was arrested recently after he convinced a 15-year-old girl he met while playing World of WarCraft to run away from home to be with him. He even paid for the trip. How sweet.

The 31-year-old Anthony Taylor formed a relationship with the less-than-half-his-age girl, which eventually led to sexual messages and phone calls. The girl’s father found out about the relationship and threatened to kill Anthony, so Anthony did what any self-respecting pedophile would do — he sent ..."

"It took just 10 days for video game maker Funcom Inc. to sell 400,000 copies of its newest title, Age of Conan, last month, making it one of the year's most successful debuts.

But for now, you can't play it on popular living-room consoles like Sony's PlayStation 3, Microsoft's Xbox 360, or Nintendo Wii. Age of Conan is available only on desktop computers that use Microsoft's Windows operating system. PC gamers say its success helps debunk a popular belief: That console games have crushed t..."

"deathknight.info has posted screens from the alpha test for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, revealing the first info on a potential new achievement system for the massively successful MMO.

The posted screens reveal that typing /achievements into the game's console opens up an achievements menu, complete with early achievements which have point values attached to them.

First impressions point towards a system similar to Deeds in Lord of the Rings Online, and the Tome of Knowle..."

"Dan Loton, a Psychology graduate from Victoria University, conducted an honours research project to find out if video game addiction was related to social skills and self-esteem.

"From a clinical point of view, an addiction is a mental illness with very serious consequences," he said.

"In this context, we need to ask whether gaming is responsible for causing people’s lives to fall apart in the same way we see with gambling, alcohol or drug addiction."

Mr Loton's study found that o..."

"Shawn Fanning, best known as the founder of pioneering file-sharing service Napster, has finally earned some money.

Electronic Arts said tonight it had acquired his latest company, ThreeSF, and its video-game service Rupture. A person familiar with the deal said EA had paid roughly $30 million.

Shawn Fanning, best known as the founder of pioneering file-sharing service Napster, has finally earned some money.

Electronic Arts said tonight it had acquired his latest company, ThreeSF, an..."

"Police say Jones drove to Boise from Birmingham, Alabama, and picked the teen around 7 a.m. on May 28th.

The pair was found at 9:30 a.m. Pacific Time today and are in the custody of the Franklin County Sheriff's Office in Washington state.

Authorities say Julian appears to be in good physical condition.

Boise Police detectives have contacted the teen's family who are relieved to know she's been found and is unharmed."

"Here's the skinny, the lowdown, the 411 etc on the death knight choice.

First off, it fits in with Northrend extremely well for obvious reasons.

Second off, many people tend to have this strange belief that adding a new class is simple, easy as pie, and a cakewalk all on a Sunday afternoon, but it's not. There is a lot of work that goes into it and many considerations for how it will work, how it will work with other classes, how the lore ties in, how quests and npcs also can tie in to ..."

"One exciting new feature in Wrath of the Lich King is that all raid content will be available as either a 10- or 25-person dungeon with completely independent progression paths. Both the 10- and 25-person versions will be the same dungeon; the look, layout, and design of the dungeon will remain the same. However, each will be adjusted, tuned, and balanced for its respective player size.

In Wrath of the Lich King, players can expect both 10- and 25-person raid progression paths to get incre..."

""That's actually something we talk about every expansion," Brack admitted when asked about top-end visuals. "I'm positive we'll talk about it next expansion."

"A lot of people continued to play with the original client, because it was faster, or they preferred it, or were just used to it or whatever," the producer said, adding a note of caution. "And so for me as a game developer, the idea that we would spend so much time and energy on something and have people go, 'meh, that's not really ..."

""

"Although World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King is yet to see an official release date, sometimes we're lucky enough to find some tidbits here and there to know what to expect. This latest reveal comes from Gen Con 2007.

These pictures taken during the convention reveal three separate quests in Wrath of the Lich King. The quests are "If Valgarde Falls," "Rescuing the Rescuers," and "Prisoners of Wyrmskull." You can click on the images below for their descriptions.

One of the picture..."

"The videogame industry has been one of the hardest hit, with over ten million World of Warcraft addicts alone. That's ten million people chasing the dragon, in the hopes they can kill it and score some epic loot. To peer inside the mind of an addict is to peer into the void, where all the concerns that you and I take for granted – having shelter, food, clothes, and a steady supply of money from our whores – no longer matters. All that matters is the drug. All that matters is the next fix.

..."

"Whatever else negative you can say about Uwe Boll, one thing you can’t criticize him on is his strong love for video games. I mean, there may be over 200,000 signatures on an online petition asking that he stop making movies, but he clearly loves the gamer market, and at least goes into each project hoping to make good films for that fanboy community.

Right? Right?!?

the folks over at Blizzard wonder the same thing, since they practically laughed Boll out of their offices when he approa..."

"For our part, this all seems like a bit of a stretch on the part of the article's author. While in-game terrorist tactics with biological weapons do reflect their real life counter-parts in many ways (e.g. hitting big population centers, focusing on travel hubs to maximize spread, etc.), we're not sure what sort of insights this sort of comparison could glean for people who are already experts on the topic. Moreover, when the most prominent group of pan-MMO cyber-terrorists are motivated by "..."

"Blizzard has announced that the most popular MMORPG in the world, World of Warcraft, has reached yet another landmark - 10 million subscribers. The game now has 2 million subscribers in Europe, over 2.5 million in North America, and approximately 5.5 million in Asia."

"World of Warcraft commercials are highlighted by the likes of William Shatner, Mr. T, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and now Verne Troyer, who are keen to convey their chosen avatar to the viewer while waxing lyrical about their respective strengths."

"The unsuspecting moose immediately obeyed its territorial instincts and focused its attack toward the boy’s frightened sister. Immediately obeying his own gaming instincts, young Hans recalled that taunting was always a good way to successfully draw a monster away from a weak in-game ally in World of Warcraft."

""1/10 MMORPG Players Develop Physical Relationships With Others"


And no, I don’t mean other people period, I mean with their actual in-game friends, although that would be hilariously pathetic =D . The thought of a Tauren and Orc getting it on though is absolutely disgusting. Sure, I’ve gotten a lap dance in Goldshire before, but we were both human and she needed the gold for college or a mount or something…

Anyways, Nottingham Trent University has done a research study which reveals ..."