This week's round up of WoW-related posts on our sister site Massively covers many different angles of the MMO universe dominated by World of Warcraft. You can click on the links below or subscribe to a special WoW-only Massively feed.
Are you an MMO fanboi? We all love massively multiplayer games. Otherwise we wouldn't be here reading this right now. But when does your love for a certain game become an unhealthy obsession? We're not talking about addiction, but we're talking about defending your favorite game regardless of the problems the game may have or what the game's developers might do to completely change the difficulty level.
Harvard looks to MMOs for online leadership styles While much has been said in recent weeks about raid leaders and whether the job necessitates being a jerk, nobody seems to dispute that the position engenders players with valuable leadership skills. In fact, according to a recent report by the Harvard Business Review...
The Gaming Iconoclast: Taking Sides What about you? Bastion of righteousness or purveyor of deceit? Some folks, to be certain, put a lot of thought into this, balancing role-play, game and class mechanics, racial traits, and a whole constellation of other factors.
Player vs. Everything: Analyzing the Wrath of the Lich King news explosion Wow. Or more accurately, World of Warcraft. It's all over the internet today in a big way. Blizzard released a ridiculous amount of information about their next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, and some of the changes they've announced are pretty major.
Over the past week, particularly in the last few days, the crisp Internet air has been abuzz with news from the upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Fear you're out of the loop? Here's a quick round-up of all the information being released, along with analysis and opinion.
Don't forget to keep checking back, as this page will be updated as information becomes available:
Dungeons and raids
An analysis on Arthas as a ten-manned event, including its impact on the 25-man raiding structure, as well an exploration of its consistency with the lore.
Did you know that all expansion raids will have a 10-man setting, as well as a 25-man?
The Nexus has been announced on the official site as one of the new dungeons.
Zones, factions, and relevant lore
Alex has written an excellent overview of the Grizzly Hills, a soon-to-be zone for low to mid-seventies. With old factions reappearing, along with other surprises, it's definitely something to look forward to!
If news of the Dragonblight has intrigued you, you'll be pleased to know that more information has been made available.
While we're brushing up on our lore and learning about new areas and factions, Alex thought it fitting to illuminate the lore behind Azjol-Nerub, as the Nerubians will have their own role in the expansion.
Continue through the break for new information on Death Knights, as well as video and interviews, analysis, release date information, and our full-range of Wrath galleries.
This week's round up of WoW-related posts on our sister site Massively covers many different angles of the MMO universe dominated by World of Warcraft. You can click on the links below or subscribe to a special WoW-only Massively feed.
The Gaming Iconoclast: Discomfort Zone Have you ever wondered how the other half lives? Maybe you're a tank, and know the intricacies of threat and mitigation inside and out, but can't figure out what those finger-wigglers at the back are going on about. Or perhaps you're a sniper, and don't care about what goes on in the melee fracas.
The 10 Commandments of Altitis If you're the type of player who just needs to experiment with every available race and class in your MMO of choice, then altaholicism may be a serious concern for you. Seeking professional help is optional, but do know that you are not alone.
Behind the Curtain: More Epic Gameplay? Should MMOs give us a more 'epic' feel to our experiences? In the past, when I've explained the time I spend in-game to friends and relatives, one of the common complaints or opinions that I hear a lot is that it never sounds very exciting.
Player vs. Everything: Fixing the problem of guild-hopping I've gotta hand it to MMOG designers. They really kind of get shafted. They spend weeks, months, and years fine-tuning tiny aspects of gameplay that you never even notice or care about (like the amount of silver that level 12 murlocs drop), coming up with interesting quests...
Twice a week, our writers will tell you more about themselves, and let you get to know them and the characters they play a little better. Click here to read more About the Bloggers. What do you do for WoW Insider? I write the daily machinima posts for both WoW Insider, and its broader MMO sister site, Massively.
What's your main right now? This won't make me very popular, but I actually don't really play WoW. I did for a while after it came out, but I'm not a very good grinder and it just got lonely.
This is an outrage! How dare you write about WoW without playing it? That's actually a really good question. I got my start in machinima roughly two years ago when I was hired to promote it in Second Life, an oft-mocked virtual world. Through experimentation with machinima, as well as the education that I provided to others, I became known as one of the "It" people for machinima in SL.
This week's round up of WoW-related posts on our sister site Massively covers many different angles of the MMO universe dominated by World of Warcraft. You can click on the links below or subscribe to a special WoW-only Massively feed. Also be sure to read past the break, because there was an extra-special heaping lot of WoW-related goodness on Massively this week!
Player vs. Everything: Playing with your friends Players often venture into the wilderness of online games alone and friendless, seeking out allies in the worlds they inhabit and making friends as they go along. Some games are better at encouraging players to work together than others, too.
Changes to WoW arena ratings mean no more 'welfare epics' While no more major patches are expected to hit World of Warcraft before Wrath of the Lich King is released, we'll probably see quite a bit of tweaking between now and then. The next patch due for the service, numbered 2.4.2, makes some major changes to the way that Arena battles rewards PvP players.
What makes games addictive? (Hint: It's not the taste!) Video game addiction is a topic that tends to occupy the attention of the mainstream media any time there's a slow news day, and even sometimes (like yesterday, for instance) when it's not. Videogames; how they're making junkies of your kids, news at 11!
The Gaming Iconoclast: Whither Shortcomings? Many MMO aficionados cut their roleplaying teeth on one of the many pencil-and-paper titles that formed the early generation of multi-player gaming. In addition to rolling (and rolling, and rolling, and rolling) some dice to come up with their basic stats and traits, character generation involved a lot of "wet work" when it came time to acquire skills.
This week's round up of WoW-related posts on our sister site Massively covers many different angles of the MMO universe dominated by World of Warcraft. You can click on the links below or subscribe to a special WoW-only Massively feed.
Player vs. Everything: I look hot in leather Well, not me personally (I think), but my my World of Warcraft Shaman sure looks hot in leather. By hot, I mean ridiculously badass and uber. It's not just fun to run around looking like a Tauren Rogue-- it's also functional. You see, I play an Enhancement Shaman.
How to get to level 70 without losing your marbles In World of Warcraft, getting the thousands upon thousands of rotting bear carcasses and boar meat required to get from one to seventy was enough once. Doing it twice makes most of us want to slam our heads into a keyboard repeatedly.
Massively Speaking Podcast Episode 1 It is our great pleasure to introduce to you a brand new podcast! "Massively Speaking" is a medium-length (40-60 minutes) weekly podcast from the writers at Massively.com! The podcast will be covering a week's worth of highlights...
Player vs. Everything: Loading... A few weeks ago, I was reading an Age of Conan interview with Shannon Drake where he was discussing several of the features that would be present in the game. One of the questions he was asked was why Funcom made the choice to use world zones for AoC instead of a seamless world.
Making/Money: The Wisdom of MMO Banking Does it seem strange to save up to buy a house in a game? We are in an era where the real world economies of some nations are paralyzed by debts incurred from home purchases. Yet in games where there is player housing there is a surprising lack of player debt.
This week's round up of WoW-related posts on our sister site Massively covers many different angles of the MMO universe dominated by World of Warcraft. You can click on the links below or subscribe to a special WoW-only Massively feed.
Five MMOs better than World of Warcraft No fooling. Blizzard'sWorld of Warcraft is a great game, a hugely influential game, maybe even the best game ever written by anyone, ever. Throughout history. But now that we've GOT WoW, well, what's next? Age of Conan? Warhammer? Spellborn? Maybe.
THQ thinks WoW has probably peaked Apparently THQ executive Jack Sorenson is pretty sure that World of Warcraft has hit its peak. He goes on to admit that there will likely still be millions of people playing WoW in a couple of years, but says that its subscriber count will have diminished.
Jerks, brats, and griefers can be curbed with good design According to Bill Fulton, some of the most over-looked aspects of online game development today are design mechanisms to discourage players from acting like jerks. Rather than merely acquiescing to the reality that in any large game communities, there are just going to be a given number of dickwads, Fulton suggests ...
Is WoW a hotbed of political activity? Earlier this week, USA Today published a lifestyle article that made the claim that the population of World of Warcraft has gotten swept up in the political fervor of the day. According to one frequent WoW-player quoted prominently in the article ...
Upcoming MMO movies (and why they'll suck) Dorothy Parker once said "The only 'ism' Hollywood believes in is plagiarism." While not technically plagiarism, the practice of mining popular properties of other media is a time-honored mainstay in Hollywood. Why invent a new franchise when you can adapt one that already exists?
One of the many excellent sessions in the ScreenBurn track at SXSW Interactive this year, the "How Gamers Are Adopting the Wiki Way" panel featured George Pribul (lead admin of WoWWiki.com), April "CuppaJo" Burba (Community Manager for NCsoft's Tabula Rasa), Angelique Shelton (GM of Wikia Gaming at Wikia Inc), and Jake McKee (Principal at Ant's Eye View) talking about the symbiotic relationship between gamers and wikis. Interesting factoid: WoWWiki is now the second largest English-language wiki in the world behind Wikipedia. At 3 million unique users per month, a full half of English-speaking WoW players visit WoWWiki every month. Head on over to our MMO-besotted sister site Massively for the complete writeup.
Game Developer magazine has done a study naming the top 50 videogame developers in the world, based on "sales and reputation data," and our favorite folks at Blizzard have been named number three on the list, just under Nintendo Kyoto (responsible for Brain Age and Wii Play) and Infinity Ward (most notable lately for Call of Duty 4), and ahead of EA, Valve, Harmonix, and Square Enix.
I tend to think this chart is weighed a little bit towards recent sales more than reputation -- as far as I know, Infinity Ward doesn't have a big enough following to actually hold a convention based on their games, and while there's no question that Nintendo has a huge fan following, I'm not sure that it's quite right to include a first party console maker on a list of developers (yes, I know Nintendo Kyoto is a studio, not the company itself, but would the average Nintendo fan on the street know the difference?). Still, lists are lists, and there's no question that all of these developers, Blizzard included, are held in the highest regard by fans of their games.
Twice a week, our writers will tell you more about themselves, and let you get to know them and the characters they play a little better. Click here to read moreAbout the Bloggers. This week features one of our "semi-alumni" bloggers, Krystalle. (She's the short one with the pink hair above -- the rest of the above folks would be some of her many guild-mates.) What do you do for WoW Insider? These days? Some back-end smacktalking helping out where you guys don't see it. I tend to float in and out giving a hand when things are quiet, and am bringing back both Reader UI and Reader WoWspace. Before I landed my current spot as one of the leads on Massively, I was a blogger here, Guild Leader & event coordinator for It Came from the Blog. I had a lot of great times with the WoW Insider readers both there and at Dragon*Con 2007, where I got to co-host several panels with Elizabeth Harper and several other great folks. (And for anyone curious, we're doing it again at Dragon*Con this year too!)
What's your main right now? She's a L70 sword-specced Troll Rogue who I primarily just raid on these days. I also have a L42 Rogue that I'm bringing up, just to see how the other (dagger) side lives. Well, that and because I can't break away from the Rogues. I just love them too much.
We almost can't believe it's true, but it is. If you're a fan of the WoW Insider Show (and our representative from WoW Radio, Turpster), you won't want to miss Massively's new weekly feature, TurpsterVision. Every Tuesday, the loveable rogue (who actually plays a Gnome Warrior in WoW) will premiere a brand new video segment, full of Turpstery goodness. Massively, if you didn't know, is a blog like WoW Insider, but for all MMOs (not just Warcraft), and each week Turpster will examine another wacky game in the quickly-growing world of online gaming. And it's probably a good guess that he'll also do whatever else he thinks of, too-- his is a kind of rampant talent that you just can't control.
This week, he examines The Endless Forest, an MMO that we don't recommend playing unless you really, really like deer and dancing in wooded graveyards. Yeah-- just watch the video over on Massively, and you'll see what we mean. We welcome Turpster to the Joystiq family (he's like the drunken, obscene cousin, but we totally mean that in a good way), and we're sure that the new TurpsterVision will be a must-watch every single Tuesday.
Last December we put out a call for new writers. Breaking news bloggers, weekend bloggers and a Mage columnist were all on our list of positions to fill. After reading the hundreds of excellent applications (and a few very strange ones), we've made our final decision.
The new WoW Insider staffers include Adam Holisky and Alex Ziebart who have both already hit the ground running to boost our weekend coverage. Daniel Whitcomb, Amanda Dean and Heath Milo will be starting this week to cover breaking news throughout the week and Allison Robert will be following soon after.
The decision to choose which applicant would be our new Mage columnist was a tough one. The applications for this position were very, very good. However, one not only informed, but entertained in such a manner that we couldn't say no. Very soon Arcane Brilliance will be returning under Christian Belt. Trust me, there's no one quite like him.
Finally, one applicant who applied as a general writer turned out to be a specialist. We liked him so much that we are in the process of hiring him to write news, tips and guides specifically for AddOns, UIs and macros. Look out for his work to start in the next month or so.
If you weren't chosen, there will always be a chance in the future to apply again. Until then, our sister site Massively, covering news for all MMOs, just put out their own call for bloggers today. Applications will be accepted until February 15th.
This week's round up of WoW-related posts on our sister site Massively covers many different angles of the MMO universe dominated by World of Warcraft. You can click on the links below or subscribe to a special WoW-only Massively feed.
The stormy courtship of Blizzard/Activision The Wall Street Journal unearthed the proxy statements behind the Activision/Blizzard deal to reveal who came out ahead in the merger. And it may not be who you think.
Rumor: New Blizzard MMO to be Starcraft Online? More rumors surface about Blizzard's next MMO. This time, word comes from a Chinese newspaper that states the name of Blizzard's Asian partner for Starcraft Online.
Having been a full-time machinimator in Second Life for about 1.5 years now, I can definitely appreciate the plight of the WoW machinimator. They produce work that is easily 10 times the quality of what comes out of SL, yet have a hard time making any money off of it. However, it looks like Oxhorn has found a way.
Oxhorn has landed a gig with WeGame, a video sharing site with a twist. WeGame not only allows you to upload your machinima, it also provides you with a free desktop client for filming. If you can't afford to pay for Fraps or any of the other options, WeGame is your best bet.
Read on for more about Oxhorn's new job and WeGame ...
From guild bank robberies to Italian painters recast as Tauren Druids, this week's round up of WoW-related posts on our sister site Massively covers many different angles of the MMO universe dominated by World of Warcraft. You can click on the links below or subscribe to a special WoW-only Massively feed. Rumor: Blizzard working on a cell application for World of Warcraft? Word at the Mobile Games Forum event last week is that Blizzard has plans for porting some part of WoW for cell phone use. Michael Zenke runs down the rumor.
How would a Starcraft MMO work? Akela Talamasca explores how Blizzard could transform Starcraft into their next MMO using World of Warcraft as a model. Player vs Player vs Player anyone?
Over the past week, particularly in the last few days, the crisp Internet air has been abuzz with news from the upcoming expansion, 
Twice a week, our writers will tell you more about themselves, and let you get to know them and the characters they play a little better. 
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Game Developer magazine has done a study 
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