Record company EMI Classics has announced the release of Video Games Live Volume One, a recording of the famous traveling orchestra (led by friend of WoW Insider Tommy Tallarico) that plays videogame music, including that of the Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo series. You may have seen the group last year at BlizzCon, this year at WWI, or (likely) this year again at BlizzCon, and they got rave reviews every time they played.

The recording was conducted by Tallarico, recorded at Abbey Road, and features the Slovak National Orchestra, The Crouch End Festival Chorus, and "the videogame pianist," Martin Leung. The CD will have eleven tracks (full tracklist after the jump), and will feature music from a slew of terrific videogame soundtracks, including our own Warcraft series (and Civ IV, which is probably the best music I've ever heard in a videogame, ever). EMI plans to release the CD in America on July 24th, and in Europe and the rest of the world on August 20th. It should be available for digital download right now in the UK, and an iTunes exclusive release will be available on the 20th.

Sounds like an amazing recording -- fans of Video Games Live will certainly enjoy it. You can see the full tracklist below.

The 28th episode of the WoW Insider Show included myself, blogger Amanda Dean, Druid columnist John Patricelli and Turpster in an hour of lively discussion on this week's hot topics. Stories covered included:

• The debate raged on over when, or even if, is it acceptable to go afk without notice?
  
• The latest rollbacks on the PTR for Warlocks and Shaman and why players shouldn't be ready to quit over temporary tests on that server Blizzard so cleverly dubbed the Test server.
• The effects of the Lifebloom nerf and how Blizzard may have not seen the results they were looking for.
• Amanda Dean talks about introducing her Mom (hi Amanda's Mom!) to WoW and how she is handling her first few levels in Azeroth
• Each participant on the show gave their personal opinion on what playable race they would choose if a new one were introduced to the game.

If you missed the show, there are plenty of ways for you to listen today including the Flash player on the WoW Radio site, free iTunes download or mp3 file. And you can listen in live every Saturday at 3:30p ET on WoW Radio.

[Listen] to this week's show.
[iTunes] Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.
[RSS] Get your favorite reader in on the fun.

Here's just a sample of what listeners are saying about our podcast (now in its 15th week, and going live on the air once again tomorrow afternoon at 3:30pm EST):

"Quite entertaining."

"It's probably the best WoW radio content out there right now."

"Highly recommended."

The WoW Insider Show is just like this great website you're visiting, only in audio form (and with a considerable dash of WoW Radio's Turpster, which will definitely add spice to any meal). If you haven't gotten a chance to listen live yet, please tune in tomorrow at 3:30pm EST over on WoW Radio-- not only can you hear our voices as we speak, but you can also join us on IRC and actually interact with the show as it goes down. We'll be chatting about the boy-meets-moose story, the WoW laptop (and whether it's worth it or not), Activision Blizzard, and both how to beat a warlock, and how to lose in Alterac Valley.

If you can't make it, no worries-- the show is also available to download on WoW Radio's site and on iTunes every single week. But if you can tune in tomorrow, we'd be thrilled to have you.

A big thanks to everyone that tuned into the very first episode of the WoW Insider Show-- lots of good times were had as WoW Radio's Turpster, and Dan O'Halloran and I discussed everything from whether it's OK for a guild leader to ninja a mount to whether we'll fly in Northrend before level 78 or not, all the way back to why gold farming might be OK. Actually, Dan stands alone on that last one-- you can listen to the show, right now, over on WoW Radio's homepage for it to find out exactly what happened. And it's also in iTunes-- here's the link for the iTunes Store if you've got iTunes installed.

Congratulations to listener Chris S for randomly winning the Murloc suit giveaway! Stay tuned for many more giveaways on the show. And if you have comments or suggestions for the show, our email address is theshow@wowinsider.com.

And the WoW Insider Show rolls on-- this coming Saturday, September 8th, at 3:30 pm EST, we'll have our second episode, and you'll be able to listen live over at WoW Radio just like last week. We'll cover everything that's happened in the World of Warcraft over the past week, as well as keep you entertained and give you exclusive insight on everything we write about here at WoW Insider.

So thanks everyone who listened in this week, and be sure to check us out on every Saturday, kicking off at 3:30pm EST.

If you're running WoW on a Mac and trying to listen to iTunes while playing, you've probably hit the same problem Timi over on Kirin Tor has: the controls ain't just workin' quite right.

Sure, crossrealm BGs are cool, but for a few people, ingame iTunes controls were an even more awaited feature. The dev team didn't get it exactly right, however-- Tigerclaw tries to explain why over on the forums, but I couldn't get much farther than "a Plan-B version was shipped using 'osascript'... to solve the blocking/deadlock issue" before I gave up and reached the same conclusion you probably will: Blizzard shipped something out that didn't work the way they wanted it to (that snickering you're hearing right now is people who played Hunters right after WoW's release, when the class wasn't even close to done).

Even if it isn't working right, however, it still seems to be working, as Timi finds a solution after a little tweaking. Tigerclaw, of course, promises the next major patch will bring relief (have we heard that before?), but if you want help, you can probably find it on the support forums. Meanwhile, Rollak offers us another program that does something even Blizzard hasn't done yet-- control iTunes while playing WoW in Windows. Pretty slick-- maybe that's the guy Blizz should hired to implement this feature next patch.

I find some of the interface changes included in patch 1.12 to be quite interesting, and they follow the recent trend of integrating popular addon features into the core UI.

Feature number one on my list is the new "floating combat text" functionality. You'll find options for it under the interface options menu (see right), and it mimics the Scrolling Combat Text addon, which shows combat information floating over your character. I've always found this to be a more convenient place to view information, but it can be too spammy at times. And, if you've never played with Scrolling Combat Text, I'd recommend giving it a try now that it can be enabled without downloading anything.

The look of the addition is dead-on, though it's a bit less customizable than the real thing, which allows you to select more precisely which messages you'd like to see, as well as customizing colors and fonts. This simplified interface may be more accessible to more users, however, as the number of options Scrolling Combat Text provided could be a bit daunting. However, I may end up sticking with the original, because I prefer to be able to resize the font used.

Of special interest to me as a healer is the new name plate functionality. If you aren't familiar with the phrase, name plates are the little health bars that show up over enemy and friendly NPCs when you hit the "V" key. In the past, name plates would only appear above hostile targets and NPCs. It's long been on my wish-list of features to have the ability to have name plates over friendly targets as well - for ease of seeing the health of players around me when either ungrouped or in a scattered raid, where you may not necessarily be near your own party. (Battlegrounds, anyone?)



Now, if you check your key bindings (see above), you will see a binding for showing name plates (for the existing functionality) as well as one that allows you to show friendly name plates or all name plates. Combined with the battlegrounds change that automatically groups players on joining, and my priest may have to respec holy and go back to trying to heal in battlegrounds.



Next up is a feature that came as a complete surprise to all of us - iTunes integration. This is a Mac-only feature, as, apparently, the Mac development team managed to get it working first. If you're running the Mac client, you'll see the above options at the bottom of the list of key bindings, allowing you to bind keys to basic iTunes functions.

The final feature addition, at least that I noticed, is the new auto self cast checkbox in the interface option. I've used a feature like this before - as part of CTMod, and probably other addons as well. With this option checked, if you do not have anyone targeted when you try to cast a friendly spell (a buff or heal spell, for example), it will automatically be cast on yourself. In some situations, and for some character classes, this can be very useful - allowing you to keep a hostile target selected while casting useful spells on yourself. But it can be difficult to get used to, especially for healing classes who frequently use little but friendly spells.