World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
August 3, 2007 | 1 Comment
I quit World of Warcraft a couple years ago, but I still find the game and it’s world fascinating. This is why I was interested to hear the announcements of the expansion titled: Wrath of the Lich King. The following is what has been announced so far about this expansion:
- The continent of Northrend added to the world of Azeroth. Northrend is about the size of Outland.
- New Content for WoW players level 68 and up.
- The WoW Level cap increased from 70 to 80.
- An array of new abilities and talents introduced.
- A new “Hero” class added - the Death Knight; this class will need to be unlocked through certain criteria before it becomes available.
- New Profession: Inscriptions - allowing you to permanently enhance spells and abilities.
- Siege Weapons and Destructable Buildings added to the PvP landscape, as well as a new Battleground.
- A plethora of new Dungeons, including 25-player Raid Dungeons and Heroic variants.
- An abundance of new quests, monsters, items, and recipes.
Tags: blizzard, blizzcon, death knight, hero, hero class, siege, siege weapons, warcraft, world of warcraft, wow
Starcraft 2 Announced!
May 21, 2007 | 2 Comments
Al threw me the heads up on Blizzard’s exciting announcement of Starcraft II. The home page of Blizzard says “Starcraft II: Hell, It’s About Time”.
It was nice that Blizzard chose to announce the game in Korea where Starcraft has remained one of the most significant games and cultural phenomenon’s. On that topic, check out Ctr-Alt-Del’s sweet comic.
Amazingly the announcement came with a surprising amount of game play footage. Below you can see the three part video footage IGN made available.
It appears that the three major races have returned: Protoss, Terran, and Zerg. At the moment all the footage and information centers around the Protoss race. Frankly, what they are showing is amazing. This looks to increase the number of controllable units, making for much more massive battles. Additionally, Blizzard is leveraging the 3D in interesting ways. Units can walk between the legs of others, showing off a more impressive sense of vertical scale.
This is the most exciting game announcement I could imagine. Now if we could only get a release date… I’m betting on Spring 2009.
Tags: blizzard, gameplay, protoss, rts, starcraft, starcraft 2, starcraft ii, strategy, terran, zerg. korea
World of Warcraft Burning Crusade
January 14, 2007 | 18 Comments
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade will be released on Tuesday January 16th. Unless you have pre-ordered, you probably won’t be able to get it, for awhile…
Here are just some of the features the expansion will bring:
- An increase in the level cap to 70
- >New spells and talents for each class
- Two new playable races: Blood Elves and Draenei
- The entire new continent of Outland
- Many new zones and high-level dungeons
- Hundreds of new monsters, quests, and items
- A new profession: Jewelcrafting
- Flying mounts in Outland
This coupled with Battlegrounds is almost enough to let me get sucked back into this highly addictive MMORPG. With Blizzard reporting approximately 8 million players in World of Warcraft, demand for this expansion will be entirely out of control. It seems as if there is no way Blizzard will be able to match the demand for this in the short term. Unless of course they do something fancy with digital delivery using Bittorrent, where the more people who want it the easier and faster it is to distribute…
On a quick side note… a World of Warcraft movie is confirmed as in the works. Legendary Pictures has acquired the rights to create a live action movie.
Tags: bittorrent, blizzard, blood elves, burning crusade, dranei, expansion, legendary pictures, mmo, mmorpg, movie, outland, world of warcraft, wow
World of Warcraft: Turtle Mounts and More!
December 9, 2006 | 132 Comments
There are a few unique items in World of Warcraft which can only be acquired through the new World of Warcraft Tradin Card Game. If you get one of these uber rare cards, you are presented with a scratch off area which will reveal a code. You can the redeem this code.
The code sets the item up to be received from Landro Longshot at the Booty Bay docks in Stranglethorn Vale. Very cool.
There are three items you may get:
- Landro Longshot (~$20)
- Thunderhead Hippogryph Hatchling (~$50)
- Saltwater Snapjaw (Turtle) Mount (shown) (~150)
If you fail to get one of these special items in a deck, you will get UDE points, which you can save up to buy any of these items:
- Tabard of the Frost (2,000 points ~$12)
- Fireworks Trinket (10,000 points ~$59)
- Ogre Disguise (25,000 points ~$150)
Tags: blizzard, card, cards, Hippogryph Hatchling, saltwater snapjaw, tabard of flame, tcg, trading cards, turtle mount, warcraft, world of warcraft, wow
Warcraft 3 No CD Hack
September 5, 2006 | 188 Comments
If you are anything like me, you bought Warcraft 3 many years ago and are completely fed up with having to have the CDs with you when you want to play, where you want to play. A group of friends and I play DotA every Thursday night, each of us has purchased at least one copy of the game, but we are lucky if more than one person remembers to bring their CDs. We then spend a great deal of time passing around a CD to (re)spawn games. I will suffer with this no more!
ElliotBack.com provides instructions and the hack download on his site. It appears he has been keeping up with patch versions, currently we are at 1.20e. This is an easy install and a must do for anyone playing Warcraft regularly. It works perfectly with both the original game and The Frozen Throne. There are no known problems running this on Battle.Net.
Update: On the 13th Blizzard fixed some things on BNet to prevent some some crappy script hacks. As a (intentional?) side effect the no cd crack was busted. However the brilliant Vadoff came up with a new solution. The hack is a bit more complicated and the site that hosts the download is crappy. Anyway, here’s the new one. Be sure to read the readme file.
Tags: blizzard, dota, frozen throne, hack, no cd, nocd, warcraft, warcraft 3
Lawsuit Defends World of Warcraft Strategy Guide from DMCA
March 29, 2006 | 7 Comments
Brian Kopp of Bronson Florida is selling The Ultimate World of Warcraft Leveling & Gold Guide and Blizzard isn’t happy about it. Blizzard forced Ebay to shut down his auctions claiming violation of DMCA.
Public Citizen is defending Kopp:
“Copyright laws are designed to promote creativity and innovation, not squelch it,” said Greg Beck, the Public Citizen attorney representing Kopp. “A video game is copyrightable just like a book, and just like a book you should be able to comment on it, create new works inspired by it, teach about it in classes, write newspaper articles about it and so on. It is this kind of innovation and open discussion that the copyright laws are supposed to foster. By claiming that mere publication of a how-to book about its game infringes its copyright, Blizzard has interpreted its intellectual property rights in a way that would prohibit legitimate commentary that is protected by the First Amendment.”
Tags: blizzard, brian kopp, copyright, dmca, first amendment, game, gold farming, guide, public citizen, strategy guide, video game, warcraft, world of warcraft, wow
World of Warcraft == Birth Control
January 6, 2006 | 6 Comments
Watching G4 X-Play TV on my new iPod, I was pointed at this great homemade World of Warcraft Ad.
My favorite part of the ad is when they flash up on the screen:
Long term use of World of Warcraft may result in bloating, rapid weight gain, and repeated use of the word “Goblin”. Also your girlfriend will probably have sex with someone else.
The ad does seem to be in direct contradiction to this take on high school girls and video games.
Tags: ad, advertisement, birth control, blizzard, funny, g4, game, games, goblin, humor, ipod, mmorpg, podcast, pregnancy, tv, video, video game, video games, videos, world of warcraft, wow, x-play, xplay