Posted 02/12/10 at 04:00:00 PM by David Murphy

Don't burn your credit cards or start sending recruit-a-friend notices to everyone in your address book: World of Warcraft is not going open-source. You will still have to pay a monthly fee of $14.99 for the privilege of stomping your virtual friends and NPCs into corpse dust, and you will not be permitted to split WoW off into a side project that grants anyone with your name a free pass to level 80 (and/or a fixed "I win!" button). Blizzard isn't stupid.

WoW might not be going open-source, but the company behind it is using the 1-2-3 trick of the open-source world to encourage increased adoption and interest in its core piece of software. In what I believe is a first for the genre, you'll soon be able to access in-game mechanics from a separate Web or mobile app. You might not be able to run your daily quests off of your iPhone, but for WoW enthusiasts looking to make a tidy profit throughout their adventures in Azeroth, Blizzard's mobile access should give you up-to-the-minute information for your business profiteering.

So how does this exactly work?

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Posted 02/05/10 at 03:02:49 AM by Nathan Grayson

We – as in, this particular blogger – don’t actually play World of Warcraft anymore, but we still have something of a personal stake the Lich King’s passing. Arthas’ fall – or his whiplash-inducing plunge, really – in Warcraft III still remains one of our favorite gaming stories, so it’s a bit surreal to just wake up one morning and find out that someone offed the old cold king. We always figured we’d get to close the book on what we started when we yanked Frostmourne from the ice all those years ago, preferably in some form of RTS. 

Even so, congratulations are in order. A guild by the name of “Blood Legion” did the deed, earning the title of “Kingslayer,” along with a World First achievement and – hopefully – a single night off from their assuredly rigorous raiding schedule.  This, of course, also means that Blizzard’s officially run out of drops of Lich King content to drip-feed players. Until the run-up to Cataclysm kicks-off, don’t count on any new content or real estate for the biggest MMO on the block.

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There are plenty – perhaps too many – fish in the MMOcean, and even the hardest of hardcore WoW players should now be able to find time in their schedules to sample them. Or, we guess you could go outside or take a vacation or something, but we hear that murdering 30 boars and stealing their innards is actually frowned upon out there. Best to stick with what you know, after all.

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Posted 12/22/09 at 02:34:06 AM by Nathan Grayson

Gotta say, it’s a bit ironic that a blood-soaked week of virtual warfare – during which, more than twelve million casualties met their abrupt, though most assuredly excruciating ends – is the perfect template for videogame immortality. But hey, when happenstance writes my jokes for me, who am I to complain? And so it is with Valve’s Team Fortress 2.

As you’re probably already aware, last week saw Valve launch its latest update for the now two year-old Team Fortress 2. Which, in videogame years, roughly equates to dead. And a half. At the very least, you’d expect the public eye – easily distracted as it is -- to have wandered elsewhere by now, leaving Valve’s wacky shooter to the vultures and tumbleweeds of the world. But it hasn’t. War, as with each of TF2’s other updates, grabbed all kinds of attention – even as newer games like Modern Warfare 2 watched jealously from the outside.

So, why hasn’t interest in Team Fortress 2 faded over the years? Well, I can’t uncover the entire recipe for Valve’s incredibly intricate immortality potion, but I can outline one of its major ingredients: presentation. When Valve gives TF2 a tune-up, it does so with style. While other developers are content to toss their DLC out into the cold, harsh world with little more than a press release to keep it warm, Valve rolls out the proverbial red carpet with comics, videos, week-long Advent Calendar-style reveals, and – most recently – in-game competitions.

Continue reading after the break!

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Posted 12/04/09 at 02:52:25 AM by Nathan Grayson

If a speed run is the videogame equivalent of a 100 meter dash, then a WoW character by the name of “Little Gray” just won the Tour De France. On foot.

The character – given virtual life by a Taiwanese power-player – completed 5,906 quests, killed 390,895 creatures, and raided 405 dungeons en route to unlocking all 986 of WoW’s achievements, effectively 100% clearing the game.

Well, mostly. Little Gray hasn’t quite bagged the elusive “B.B. King” event-based achievement, but a glitched PVP achievement still brings his grand total up to 986.

According to WoW Armory, Mr. Gray hasn’t logged-in since November 23. We wish we could say he’s finally hung up his tier 9 pauldrons and moved on to some other game, but – having spent far more time with the game than we’d like to admit long before achievements turned its addiction factor up to 11 – we imagine he’s simply started an alt.

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Posted 11/05/09 at 02:34:15 AM by Nathan Grayson

Wow. Just wow. We already fork over $15 per month to play World of Warcraft, and Blizzard seriously expects us to drop more of our hard-earned cash on a couple of… Good Lord. They’re adorable. Here’s all our money, as well as a winning lottery ticket and our collection of first edition Charizards.

Lucky for our credit histories, though, only two pets are on sale at the moment. First up, there’s the Pandaren Monk, which – in addition to warming the cockles of our hearts – brightens the days of sick children. From now until December 31, half the proceeds from each $10 Pandaren purchase will go to the Make-a-Wish-Foundation.

Lil’ K.T., the Littlest Lich, on the other hand, isn’t so charitable. Perhaps that’s because he’s the spitting image of his pop, the evil Kel’Thuzad. Apparently, he’s even been known to “randomly wreak icy havoc on critters who dare to cross his path.” But look at that face. Omnipotence and iron-fisted dominion over all existence notwithstanding, all Lil’ K.T. really wants is love.

So, readers, Pandaren Monk or Lil’ K.T. – which is it gonna be? 

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Posted 10/13/09 at 10:24:18 PM by Nathan Grayson

Are we in the midst of a videogame movie that might just be – dare we say it – worth looking forward to? Well, let’s see: first, the Dark Knight’s producer signed on, then Spiderman director Sam Raimi swung onto the set, and now, “Saving Private Ryan”/"The Patriot" screenwriter Robert Rodat’s attempting to prove to us that “WarCraft” won’t turn out to be a superhero movie, among other things.

"I've never made a video game movie, but my approach would be to work with the best character writer I can find, which in this case is Robert Rodat, and tell a great character story within the fantastic environment of the world of WarCraft, while staying true to their mythology,” said director Sam Raimi.

Wait. You mean, in order to craft a quality videogame movie, you need to hire talented people? Doh! We knew everyone else was doing something wrong. 

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Posted 09/02/09 at 12:35:49 AM by Nathan Grayson

In what’s starting to look like an annual occurrence, it’s time for another tiny morsel of info on Blizzard’s next massively multiplayer magnum opus. Blizzard’s Paul Sams spoke with Wired about the <insert adjective describing the game here once we actually know something about it> MMO, explaining that the game is unique enough to avoid stepping on WoW’s toes.

“I think the (new MMO) is going to be significantly differentiated enough,” Sams said. “Such that, you’re not going to feel like they’re one and the same resulting in that you have to pick or choose.”

“If the bad thing that happens to us is that they leave WoW and go to this other thing of Blizzard’s, then we’ll work through that pain,” he added.   

Shockingly, we’d actually be pretty alright with knowing the “pain” of having one of our multi-million dollar MMOs cannibalize subscribers from our other multi-million dollar MMO. But then, that’s just us. 

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Posted 08/21/09 at 03:24:44 AM by Nathan Grayson

In this day and age -- where print’s allegedly on the verge of casting off its mortal coil -- the announcement of a new magazine is a bit of an oddity. But then, we’re talking about World of Warcraft here, the brand that once had us a friend eying a bottle of Mtn Dew with something akin to legitimate interest. It’s with that rationale, then, that Future Publishing’s launching a World of Warcraft magazine.

 The quarterly publication will “cover all aspects” of WoW, and will be stitched together by an all-star editorial team comprised of people like former Official Xbox Magazine Senior Editor Dan Amrich and industry vet Julian Rignall.

Interested yet? If so, a subscription will run you $39.95 per year, or you can strap in for the long haul and drop $69.95 on two years. But hey, the magazine’s nice and glossy, and ad-free to boot! Gotta pay a little extra for class.

And remember, don’t be too rough on the new publication. It was born and bred under Future’s roof, so that makes it MPC’s big, green, chainmail-clad sister or something. Go easy on the gal, or we might have to rough you up a bit.   

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