With the Scourge invasion in full swing, there are a lot of large, pyramidal structures hovering around Azeroth answering to the name of "necropolis." This has led to a certain amount of discussion in game and around the WoW Insider bullpen, as well as on the WoW Ladies community, on the topic of what you call more than one of them. Naturally, I had to go look it up.

And the answer is: necropoleis or necropoles. The first form comes from Greek, where the word originated (literal meaning: city of the dead), and is pronounced as if it were spelled "-ase." The second form comes to us through Latin (as most of our Greek-derived words do), and is traditionally pronounced by English speakers as if it were spelled "-ese" (although in Latin it would have been pronounced as "-ase" again). Necropolises is also perfectly acceptable as an English-native pluralization, so don't be too hard on your fellow adventurers who just want directions to the darn things.

There are a number of words that are not a reasonable plural of "necropolis." Foremost among them is "necropoli," which arises by mistaken analogy to words like "cactus." Although the -is ending in "necropolis" is pronounced more or less the same (depending on your dialect of English) as the -us ending in "cactus," it does not come from the same category of Latin words (third declension as opposed to second, if I'm not mistaken), and thus does not pluralize the same way. Just say no to "necropoli" -- kill that urge and fight the Scourge.

Edit: Yes, I know that languages evolve, and that M-W likes "necropoli." I still don't like it, though, mostly because it's based on a bad analogy. Now get off my lawn, you crazy kids!

Blizzard is once again expanding its World of Warcraft player base. July 25^th will mark the launch of Latin American Servers for Mexico, Chile, and Argentina. The expansion will be supported and sold in other countries in the future. New players can also purchase the Burning Crusade and 60 day prepaid game cards. A free trial is available at juegawarcraft.com.

The launch will be accompanied by celebratory events with Blizzard staff:

July 25
Blockbuster Pilares
Av. Universidad #697
Del Valle,

July 26-27
Plaza Satelite
Estado de Mexico,

This week, Sunday Morning Funnies includes ranting, crying, joking, and even some crazy old guys trying to fight each other.

1. Prepothteruth from Dark Legacy Comics talks about predictability and improbability that can creep into plots.
2. Extra Life speaks out against level 30 mounts, crying, I earned that thing!
3. Shakes and Fidget meet The Guardian. You even get a joke, an intermission, and some explanations (sort of).
4. You may have noticed that we've been talking about the Spore Creature Creator lately. While it isn't Warcraft-related in itself, many people have been using it to create sporelings similar to WoW characters! We even have a gallery. So, to celebrate, and pique your curiosity, I am including GU Comics' The Spore Creature Editor.
5. LFG's Richard is starting to go a little bit bonkers. No no, more than before. In fact, he even fancies that he has a destiny.
6. NoObz has a lovely father and son moment.
   
7. Ding!'s Kissybear is taking a walk on the Alliance side of things.
   
8. Teh Gladiators come upon an old, old arena match.
   
9. On The Adventures of Disgraph T. Dwarf, Shari begins ranting about the rampant use of the word "gay" by certain types of players.

Are you ready to cast your vote?

Frostshock is a Hungarian site that covers World of Warcraft -- they've done us the kindness of linking to us in the past, but usually my Hungarian is so rusty that we have no idea what they're talking about. This weekend, they posted an interview with SK-Gaming, the group that nabbed the world first of Kil'jaeden, and while normally we wouldn't be able to tell a másnap from a kezdték, the newly redesigned World of Raids has a translation up.

There's a lot of the usual stuff that you hear from guild after a big down, but there's a few new things in there, too -- apparently SK and other raiding sponsors are actually paying "premiums" for world first kills. Doesn't sound like a lot, but they do say they'll be able to do a meetup this summer thanks to their run in Sunwell, so that's a fairly substantial amount for playing a game. Both M'uru and Kil'jaeden are on their top 3 encounters in the expansion, along with Magtheridon, apparently. And the Sunwell "gates" system gets a pretty good review -- SK says it kept some guilds going even when they might have been burned out on the tougher fights.

All in all, an interesting interview. They dive into drama a bit when talking about the friction between SK and Nihilum, but mostly, they just stick to what it's like raiding as a professional guild in the Sunwell. It will definitely be interesting to see how these kinds of guilds react to the 10/25 man change in the expansion -- raiding has come a long way from the 40-man runs in vanilla WoW, and these guilds may have a lot more competition for the 10man world firsts.

(This video contains some heavy language, but only to keep in stride with the show that it is parodying, Trailer Park Boys. You've been warned.)

Trailer Park Boys fame has reached critical mass. Not only is the homegrown, low-budget mockumentary-style taking over the globe in real life, now wowstudios (Joe Ashe) has parodied it in World of Warcraft.

While I thought that he captured the feel of the series in his shots, I do have some complaints. I'm not sure why he showed voices transmitting in WoW, but it appears sloppy. In addition, I don't know if he was attempting focal depth, but the backgrounds just end up looking blurry. Criticism aside, I thought World of Trailer Park Boys was a funny and cute parody.

[Via Warcraftmovies.com]

Previously on Moviewatch ...

Blizzard has released the Russian World of Warcraft webpage over at their European site. I can't read a darn thing on it, so I'm forced to rely on other's translations of it, and some good old Google Translator action on the press release.

A couple interesting things. First, they'll be releasing the fully localized version of Russian WoW in a few months. The second interesting thing is that they're actually looking for some people fluent in Russian to work for them, and this is a good thing since the Russian version of the site isn't nearly as complete as other language's versions of the site. Finally, ignore the translator error given by Google: "Our list of frequently asked questions concerning the withdrawal of Russian version of World of Warcraft." There is no withdrawal, there will be a Russian WoW.

The Russian version of WoW was announced back on December 10th, 2007. It's good to see that Blizzard is continuing the localization of the game. Many international users are forced to either play on the plethora of European servers or come play on the United States servers. This can be a difficult thing, in that the distance between the realm server and the player's computer is so great that very large and unruly ping times often result. This is not a good thing if you're trying to have any sort of skillful game playing.

All and all a nice little present for our Russian friends.

This post on the official forums, like many others in languages that aren't English, got closed down. Why? Because it's a policy of Blizzard that they do not "offer foreign language support" on the forums (although, in looking through the Forums Guidelines, I can't see anything that officially says that). At any rate, the rule is no language but English on the official forums, and Timbal is sticking by that policy.

And it's not just Spanish-- I've seen this come up on the EU forums as well, when someone posts in French or German. Why is Blizzard so opposed to players posting in their native language? Of course, as Timbal says, not everyone can know every language, but Timbal knew enough Spanish to realize the original thread (called "server latino") was asking for new realms. And this is 2007-- is it too much to ask for one Blizzard forums employee that speaks Spanish, or in the EU, French or German? They may not know enough to actually answer the questions in that language, but they should know enough to police players who are speaking in that language, maybe in a special foreign language section of the forum.

Now, also according to forums policy (but also not listed in the "guidelines"), you're also not supposed to request new realms, so even if the thread was in English, it would have been closed anyway. And if someone speaking a foreign language is somehow being obscene, that doesn't belong on the forums either. But it's unfair for people who have legitimate questions or requests and want to posit them in their native language to be shut down by Blizzard automatically. Nine million people play this game, and it's very likely a large number of them don't speak English as their native language-- for Blizzard to completely ignore them on the forums is a poor decision.

Update: Our terrific commenters point out that there are French, Spanish, and German forums for the EU servers. But the fact remains that Blizzard closes, without second thought, any thread started in a foreign language on the US servers.

I love this-- reader David B sends us news that he was chatting with this Alliance guildies about what to call a group of Horde ("Hordies," of course, but read on), and they eventually came up with a list of collective nouns for the various player groups of Azeroth.

You know what collective nouns are-- like a gaggle of geese, or a swarm of bees. I've reprinted David's list below the jump, and I have to say, some of it is genius: "a blush of Blood Elves," "a den of rogues," and a "congregation of priests" are definitely my favorites. But there is some room for improvement-- "an annoyance of gnomes" is funny, but couldn't there be a better word for that? Maybe a "short stack"?

And there have got to be better things to call a group of Alliance and a group of Horde, so post your own ideas in the comments below. I have to say, though, "a murder of Murlocs" is just about perfect. Don't touch that one.

Elizabeth's post about getting the word "gay" out of the game got tons of feedback from you all (some comments more intelligent than others), and now a poster on WoW Ladies has another language sensitivity that I agree with. The word "rape" is used by some players in game for all kinds of things, and most of the time it's used without thought to what the word really means.

Personally I don't use it (not because I have a specific abhorrence of the word, although the act itself is pretty abhorrent), but every once in a while you'll hear things like "boy, our guild raped Hakkar last night," or "stupid elite Son of Arugal just came out of nowhere and raped me." The word for this kind of usage is actually "dysphemism," the opposite of euphemism, in which you specifically use a harsh word in the place of a more polite one.

And that's the problem-- just like "gay," it's not polite to use, not least of all because you may hardly know the person that reads it or their situation. In some cases, the word can be downright offensive. Fortunately, I don't know anyone (that I know of) who's experienced real-life rape or abuse, but especially in an MMO situation, there's no reason to use the harsher word, especially if, as Elizabeth said about "gay," it costs you respect (and possibly your account).

As the WoW Ladies contributor says, "realize there are a lot of women in guild, as well as a lot of married members and members with children. Realize that 1 in 6 women are raped in the US. Realize that each person in the guild is either female themselves, and/or has multiple loved ones and friends that are female. Realize that rape is a deeply traumatic experience, for the victim and their loved ones." Even if you're joking, or even if you didn't mean it that way, it's just not worth saying.

As I've said before, we have a rule in our guild prohibiting leet speak and excessive abbreviation in guild chat. That being said, I've thought a lot about the use of abbreviations in WoW and how they are affecting the language.

This might come from my days as an English teacher, but I think of the language as a fluid, breathing thing. The formality that people used when speaking 100 years ago doesn't exist now, and I doubt we would ever hear in game "pardon me, good sir, could you wait a moment?" instead of "one sec AFK" unless we were on an RP server or feeling particularly silly.

Yesterday Mulgrim on Khadgar sent a very nice letter to the Murlocs inviting them (pretty smoothly, I might add) to join the Horde and fight the evil Alliance. Nethaera (that Blue joker) made a joke that she couldn't wait to see a Murloc to English (and vice versa) translator.

So of course Dark Legion on Chogall posted one today. Through the magic of "an Orb of Deception, a dozen Thorium Widgets and 2 gnomish engineers," they have finally broken the linguistic gap between those speaking English and our fishy, gurgling friends. In the words of the great Murloc Chieftain, "Mmuuuuil gurrrlle meerwembo'l gurrugl im'chule weutinl, gurrrlle werlgnuglinl mutermil im'chule mutrrglee meerugrlle." You can even go the other way, too, so if you haven't yet memorized Murloc (the language apparently has the same name as the race), you could put that back in and it would tell you what the Chief said in English.

And I'm not sure about this (very not sure), but I bet we could even use this to figure out what the Murlocs are saying ingame! One question, though: Is "Aggugguauguguugh" spelled with six Us or seven?