MSNBC asked Ken Levine, creator of last year's underwater masterpiece, Bioshock, to list his five favorite games of all-time, and right there on the list, between Civ IV and Heroes of Might and Magic 2, is our favorite MMORPG. Yup, the World of Warcraft makes it into the top five of all-time, according to the guy that created the city that Andrew Ryan created.

Of course, instead of saying he enjoyed the game for its endless replayability, its pitch-perfect reward system, or its effective graphics and design style, he compares his love of Blizzard's game to alcoholism, and calls it his "always-reliable secret shame." Next time you talk about World of Warcraft in the media, Mr. Levine, would you kindly try praising the game instead of your addiction to it?

[Via Joystiq]

A couple of sight gags have popped up on the forums over the past few days, and all of them are pretty darn funny.

First off, Mankrik (the character, not the NPC) recently raised a ticket with the GM about an Environmental problem. No, not glitching graphics or missing shaders-- he was worried about tuna overfishing, specifically in the Barrens. A GM even answered him, though he said it's nothing to worry about. Conspiracy? Click the picture above to see the whole, hilarious thing (and thanks to Zeph for sending this one along to us).

And after the jump, a couple of different players used WoW as a canvas to paint their favorite new game, Bioshock. It's my favorite shooter/RPG/Objectivist commentary on the 360-- at least until Halo 3 comes out. Click the link below to see some Big Daddies and Little Sisters, WoW-style.

It's a fact that the majority of what we do in World of Warcraft is kill things. Nearly all the supplementary activities we engage in, from shopping to crafting, are all basically to help us improve the effectiveness of our violent capabilities. Many players have noted that if WoW were at all real, then nearly every one of our characters would be considered a genocidal maniac for all the people and creatures we have killed, and yet we view ourselves as heroes.

The idea is, of course, that most of the lives we take are really evil anyway, so we're actually doing the real good guys a favor. We kill tons of demons, ghosts, zombies, dragonkin, giants, and rabid beasts -- even most of the humanoids we kill are bandits or wicked cultists of one sort or another. This way we do lots of killing, but still feel as though we are heroes.

There are some situations in the game, however, that turn things around for us, in which our character is not the hero. While there are some higher-level instances such as the Black Morass, or the new Caverns of Time: Stratholme, in which one could argue either way whether what we're doing is good or evil, most of situations in which you are clearly the bad guy, as far as I am aware, have to do with the undead, and to a lesser extent the blood elves as well. Of course, you can argue that in general, undead are just misunderstood, and the blood elves are just tragically misled, but as in the case of quests in Hillsbrad that ask you to go slaughter human farmers, or help develop a new plague, there's really no denying that your character is doing something "morally wrong."