So I was out working on heroic Steam Vaults with some friends last night. Like usual Hydromancer Thespia was being a pain, and we wiped a couple of times. On one of the death walks back, fellow guildie Agate and I meet up with another group of ghosts running over to Coilfang Reservoir. Nothing new there.

Except Agate noticed a couple of guys running behind him. After a bit of moving around he confirmed that they were in fact on auto-follow.

"Hahaha, look at this, these two guys are following me. Should I have some fun?" he asks over vent.

If you have been to Honor Hold recently, you may have observed a strange flying creature circling the alchemists' tower. Insatiably curious, cunningly perceptive adventurers everywhere may well wonder: What in the world is that thing doing there?

Lebowski, the resident engineering trainer, teaches his classes not too far from there. "One of my students pointed to it and asked me what it was," He told Mysterious Mysteries earlier this afternoon, "and this gave me the perfect opportunity to unveil my latest invention, the Telesupernaturaspectroscope! It may seem like a mere [Ornate Spyglass], but I have fitted it with a [Super-snapper FX] and a coating of [Ghost Dye], thus allowing us to capture images of spectral creatures while observing from a safe distance!"

The Telesupernaturaspectrograph Lebowski took is quite chilling indeed. "You can see here," he tells us, "the Unexplainable Freaky Owl -- or 'UFO' as I call it -- is not only blue, but it seems to have gaping holes in its wings! Yet it flies! I suspect the alchemists are up to something!"

We questioned Alchemist Gribble and Magus Zabraxis inside the alchemists tower as to what they think about this strange UFO flying about their tower. Miss Zabraxis replied that she didn't know about freaky owls but offered to show us her latest experiment, while Mr. Gribble stated, "It is the obvious result of conditions and circumstances which brought about its existence! Now go away and come back when you're ready to learn Extremely Advanced Alchemy!" Rorelien, the night elven Herbalist Trainer was seen to be lurking suspiciously in the background, but she declined to comment.

Have you spotted any strange or inexplicable items or creatures in your journeys around Outland? Have you any theories as to what they're there for?

I'm sure we've all done it from time to time -- trying to get somewhere new, you've encountered heavy resistance from the locals and died a terrible death. Refusing to give up, you've run back to your corpse and continued on, until you're caught and killed again. Perhaps you thought you'd be smart and run to the spirit healer in your destination zone, far off from where you died, only to tragically see that you've been sent back to the location of the spirit healer closest to your corpse.

This does make traveling through areas high above your level quite the challenge -- as I'm sure they were intended to be. Die, run back, rez a bit further down the road -- then simply wash, rinse, and repeat until you've reached your final destination. However, over at Mania's Arcana, Mania provides us with two tricks that will allow you to do the majority of your traveling as a ghost. The trick? If you die on one continent and then spirit rez in the other (yes, you can ride boats and zepplins as a ghost!), you'll be allowed to rez right where you want to. And, perhaps more conveniently, if you run as a ghost to wherever you wish, disconnect, reconnect, and then try to spirit rez, you'll be allowed to.

Now, both of these little tricks smack of overlooked bugs, as the intended behavior of the game client is clear. But at present it is a working strategy in-game that can be used to more quickly move you from point A to point B.

Listings for Starcraft: Ghost are up on the web sites of mega-retailers Best Buy (thanks, Gazoo) and Toys "R" Us (thanks, Rich) -- do a search on either site for "Starcraft" to see them. As most of you probably know, SC:G was announced as a planned console title in 2002, but "indefinitely postponed" in 2006. It was to be a first-person shooter set in the Starcraft universe, with a Terran Ghost as the main character. Do these listings mean tomorrow's announcement is going to be the long-awaited continuance of Ghost?

When I had only seen it on the Best Buy site, I was thinking not: the versions listed are for PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Gamecube, all last-gen systems. If Blizz was working on a new console game, wouldn't they do it for new consoles? But then I was reminded that if this is in fact SC:G, it has been in development for a very long time, and what are now last-gen consoles would have been current during most of its development history. And then I saw it on a second retailer's site, Toys "R" Us; this is far from proof, but it is more suggestive.

The release date according to BB is 6/15/07, while TRU has it as 8/15/08. That's a pretty large discrepancy, but what is more interesting to me is the closeness of the date. Blizz never announces a project that close to shipping. Then again, there's a first for everything, and they've certainly had long enough to make this game. TRU has the game at $49.99, but BB has it at a strange $47.49. Sam said he worked for BB and never saw games priced like that...hm. And Mike says that the listing has been on BB ever since the game was announced, and the odd pricing means that pre-orders are not currently being accepted. Anyway, what do you guys think? And can you find listings for this on any other sites? Has the TRU listing been there a while as well?