15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about at 15minutesoffame (at) wowinsider (dot) com.

When I received a news tip from from Rainnajax of US Uldaman-H about being an "older female gamer," I admit that I rolled my eyes. Please, not another one who thinks having two X chromosomes makes her the most special snowflake ... Not another one who thinks being over 30 years old qualifies her as one of the Ancients ... When I read her entire email, though, I realized Rainnajax's experience was actually intriguing – but not for the reasons she thought.

While Rainnajax may perceive herself as something still a little unusual among WoW players, I see her as the type of player who's becoming the new norm. She's less remarkable for being female or "older" – or even for belonging to a well known gay and bi-friendly guild -- than she is for being among the new wave of players who'd never imagined themselves playing a video game ... until they tried WoW. MMORPGs are no longer the province of a single type of player anymore. Rainnajax is here as an example of today's new-to-gaming, non-gender- or age-specific player.

In more international WoW news, Curse's foray into the realm of WoW database sites, WOWDB, is now available in Simplified Chinese, joining Allakhazam among the major database sites that offer the language. In addition, Curse's announcement post also hints at additional features coming to WOWDB "soon," which seems like it may be a direct answer to Wowhead's recent extensive features upgrade.

WOWDB has already been accused of copying Wowhead in the past (and, to be fair, opposite accusations have been made). Of course, Wowhead doesn't yet have a Simplified Chinese language option, so in this case, it seems WoWDB has come out ahead. We'll be eager to see if these new options coming to WOWDB make it stand out from the pack.

Well, this was certainly unexpected. Allakhazam, one of the WoW database sites that has been around the longest, has undergone a complete revamp. There are all sorts of new features, including:

• User-editable pages
• Tagging
• Profiles, with 3D model viewer and upgrade searching

Not to mention a re-skin which makes it look much more up-to-date. That's not all – they're currently running a contest, wherein every contribution to their wiki, forum, or comments, for the entire month of June, has a chance to win one of the following:

• One of 72 60-day game cards
• One of three Wii Galaxy bundles
• Grand prize: a gamer-friendly laptop

So go forth, and make Allakhazam a more complete site. Overall, I like the redesign; it makes Allakhazam feel much more relevant, and helps answer the quest of what's going to differentiate it from sister sites Wowhead and Thottbot. I'll still probably go to Wowhead most of the time, but that's just me.

You'll want to be a bit more cautious when looking up information on the game today. World of Raids reports that an unknown ad banner appearing on Wowhead, Thottbot, and Allakhazam has an embedded keylogger trojan. You don't even need to click on the banner, apparently, simply mousing over it will be enough. Wowhead says that all they know for sure is that it originates from "ad.yieldmanager.com", and will produce a redirect to "xpantivirus.com." They're working at isolating it.

The issue is known, and all parties involved are tracking it down, so it should hopefully be resolved soon. In the meantime, if you're looking for a quick way to protect yourself, I would follow the recommendation of World of Raids, and try out the Firefox web browser and the No Script extension. As long as you keep the scripts blocked, it should prevent the banner in question from forcing itself on you. This should also provide you with some protection if you accidentally click on the wrong link elsewhere, such as on the WoW general forums.

Edit: Apparently, the virus in question is not an actual keylogger, but it still does a number on your system, which is reason enough to try to avoid it.

You may remember that earlier this summer, when Affinity Media purchased Wowhead (to add to their acquisitions of Thottbot and Allakhazam), we were able to interview Affinity Media CEO John Maffei, and he told us, in a very roundabout way, that Affinity and IGE had supposedly parted ways-- Affinity and its content sites were, he said, no longer associated with the company that sold gold in World of Warcraft. However, if you read the comments on that interview, you may have doubted what Maffei told us, and now, thanks to legal documents surfacing because of a legal action against IGE, it appears you were exactly right: Affinity and IGE are (or were, according to Affinity Media) still two peas in the same pod (see Update).

I know for certain right now that some of you commenters are preparing the "aww geez, not this again" (NSFW) macro to post, and I don't blame you. You're exactly right; this is boring business stuff, not new news about the Sunwell, and anyone paying attention back during the Wowhead acquisition knew that the two companies were still connected anyway. If this isn't news you to, fine-- I don't mean to reopen Pandora's Box, we just want to make sure we do due diligence in covering this issue.

Yet another celebrity has confessed to being a WoW player. Curt Schilling, the pitcher whose famous game 6 stand against the Yankees in 2004 helped lead the Red Sox to their first World Series championship in eons, plays Hordeside on Malfurion.

In an interview with Allakhazam, Schilling outed Wyndwraith, his 70 orc hunter, and Ngruk, his tauren shaman. He describes himself as a hardcore raider who loves questing. He plays WoW from hotel rooms when he's on the road, and he has recently struggled with the hardcore vs. casual conundrum. Schilling also talks about his own gaming companies, Everquest memories, and the (non) stigma of video games in today's world.

It's always nice to see a well-known, successful person that plays WoW admit it to the public. It helps break down the stereotype that gamers are all basement-dwelling virgins. One question for Mr. Schilling -- do you still have your epic [Bloody Sock]?

[Thanks for the tip, Calaf!]

How many times a day do we all search Thottbot, Allakhazam, WoWWiki, Wowhead and others? It gets old really fast to type in the address or go dig it out of bookmarks every time right? About 50 of you are right now thinking, "geez ya noob, like thottbot is my homepage!"

Before you get all huffy and start chargin' your fireball, realize that there is a better way to look-up those [ACME Pauldrons of the Whale]. Think of them as WoW UI add-ons for Firefox. What? That's right, IRL WoW add-ons for your Firefox browser. Check out these search plug-ins that you may get some use out of if you look up things like a banshee. By the way, I've heard that Lady Sylvanas can Google stuff like nobody's business, but that is unconfirmed as of this writing.

Firefox search plug-ins for WoW
-WoW Armory (both US and EU versions)
-Allakhazam Quests
-Allakhazam Items
-Allakhazam Mobs
-Curse gaming add-ons
-WoW Official forums
-WoWWiki
-Wowhead
-Wowdirectory

The links to all of these search engines are at Mozilla's "mycroft" website, which lets users build their own search plug-ins for their favorite sites. For any of the search plug-ins, simply click the name of the site you wish to install, and Firefox does the rest.

Our very own search plug-in
Also, I am proud to introduce the official WoW Insider Firefox search plugin that you can now download for your WoW Insider perusing pleasure (without having to type the address or leave your browser). Please use this plug-in responsibly, no members of the Burning Legion are allowed to use this search. Enjoy

You've done all that work to get your gear, and now you've got to show it off, right? Get a forum signature that shows you're a real hardcore player-- get a player profile. Here's three sites that let you do it for free.

• CTProfiles.net is from the makers of CTmod, and they have a pretty nice interface that will let you put any gear you want in there. They even let you put in different gear profiles for the same character (to show off your fire resist or PVP set, assuming it differs from the stuff you wear all the time). Their interface is good, but none of it is automatic-- you'll have to choose your gear piece by piece as you put it in.
• Allakhazam has a very nice profile listing over on their site that's much more automated-- you create an account, and then install a mod called WoWReader that pulls all of your info out of the game for you. It'll even let you connect up to your guild and server, and they'll calculate all your crit percentages for you from your gear and stats. The only problem is that, like CTprofiles, there's no way to show your PVP rank at all, which means if you want to do that you'll have to go to...
  
• WoW Guru, which has the most complicated profile format out of these three. After you install their addon, they'll show off everything from your Lifetime HKs to your "Expected Peak Rank" (based on your honor rate), and even a little graph that charts your progress so far. Unfortunately, players are commenting that WoW Guru can be kind of buggy (not surprising, considering everything they're pulling together), but they definitely offer the most detailed profile we've ever seen.

Any experience using these? Or do you know of a great profile creator you can recommend?

Update: A few people are also praising RPG Outfitter in the comments, so that's an option, too.