Posts tagged Media at WOW Insider

Posts with tag media

Breaking: Gamespy to release new Wrath info at 12:01 a.m. [UPDATED]

Posted May 9th 2008 2:11AM by Adam Holisky
Filed under: News items, Wrath of the Lich King

Many thanks to Tisen for tipping off the late night WoW Insider crew that Gamespy will be releasing new Wrath of the Lich King info in about an hour from now – at 12:01 a.m. PST. We'll get it reported to you as soon as we see it. Stay tuned for updates. Their entire announcement reads:

You're going to want to stay tuned until the midnight here on GameSpy.com. At 12:01AM PST we'll be flooding the site with all-new World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King materials. New movies, media, a preview, a roundtable, two interviews and a look at the Death Knight. Enough for ya?

I have to admit, this is a little strange for it to be posted this late... but I've seen stranger things. More info as it comes in.

Update 12:05 a.m. PDT: No info yet. Though their website still says it's "Thursday." We're expecting something soon.

Update 12:07 a.m. PDT: Bornakk is up late and posted " They aren't the only ones..." in response to WotLK info being released tonight. More to come apparently.

Update 12:09 a.m. PDT: News is incoming, possibly from multiple sources, look for more posts soon.

Student newspaper raises concerns about WoW addiction

Posted Jan 11th 2008 6:00PM by Samuel Axon
Filed under: News items

A boy skipped his senior prom because he was busy playing WoW. A woman divorced her husband because he was more interested in WoW than in her. We've heard these kinds of stories many times before; the media runs them all the time. And while it's frustrating that the games we play are often seen only in that light by the public at large, there's no denying that some people have a problem with unhealthy addiction to WoW and games like it.

The student newspaper of Northeastern University ran yet another piece lamenting the negative effects of World of Warcraft on some people. At this point, all these addiction articles are becoming white noise to me, but this one had a couple notable contributions to the discussion.

An expert was quoted within, saying that video game addiction is mostly a problem for young males of high school or college age. Imagine that! Also, the article featured a not-new quote from Liz Woolley (founder of On-Line Gamers Anonymous and the mother of that boy who committed suicide while playing EverQuest way back when); she said that MMO developers know that players can become addicted, and that those devs are therefore "no better than drug pushers." I think that's a bit harsh, but it's understandable that she'd come to that, given what she's gone through.

You can still achieve many of your in-game goals on limited playtime. Our weekly WoW, Casually column has the hints, tips and tricks for those with 2 hours or less to play.

Getting enthralled, or getting to bed?

Posted Oct 26th 2007 4:34PM by David Bowers
Filed under: Virtual selves, News items

WoW tends to be a night time activity for most people, many of whom find that it's surprisingly easy to move from one objective to another and lose track of time until the wee hours of the morning. Some people I know sometimes stay up most of the night playing WoW, only to get an hour or two of sleep before whatever they have to do the next day. They're young and they say they make up that sleep at other times, but still, no one would argue that this sort of situation is ideal.

A recent study reported by CNN says they're not alone. People who play MMORPGs tend to sleep less and spend more time playing than players of other computer games. It may seem obvious, since MMOs are by nature somewhat of a time-sink, but there is undeniably something more to it; any activity can potentially be a time-sink, after all -- so what is it about MMOs that makes people actually sink time?

The answer is up for debate, of course, but one important factor is that WoW's community of players gives the accomplishments within the game a context of reality. The game's goals, dangling in front of us like carrots, would be nearly meaningless if we could only appreciate them in a single-player context, but with a whole realm of other players working alongside us to get them too, they can feel very important. If the choice is between a few hours having dreams you won't remember, or getting a little closer to riding an impressive dragon mount, then certainly sleep can seem boring and useless by comparison.

Continue reading Getting enthralled, or getting to bed?

BBC: WoW behavior can predict epidemic patterns

Posted Aug 21st 2007 9:30AM by Elizabeth Wachowski
Filed under: Virtual selves, News items

With all the recent news stories about WoW ruining lives, destroying children, supporting terrorism, etc., it's nice to see the media reporting on the positive aspects of the game. But this WoW-positive article has a surprising source -- the prestigious Lancet medical journal.

As reported by the BBC, Nina Fefferman and Eric Lofgren, both from the Tufts University Inititiative for the Forecasting and Modeling of Infectious Disease, have published an article in the Lancet about how virtual worlds can provide models for human behavior in real-world epidemics. The duo specifically focused on the "Corrupted Blood" epidemic of fall 2005, which virtually wiped out Orgrimmar and Ironforge on many servers.

The BBC article states, "Some acted selflessly, rushing to the aid of other characters even though that meant they risked infection themselves. Others fled infected cities in an attempt to save themselves. And some who were sick made it their mission to deliberately infect others." Fefferman added that since it's impossible/unethical to "cause" an epidemic in real life and see how human behavior influences its spread, virtual worlds may be the best model for this type of research.

However, she admitted that people are likely to take more risks with disease in-game than in real life, which sounds about right. Dying to tuberculosis is unlikely to cost you a mere five-minute corpse run, and I don't tend to see many people hiding incredibly infectious animals in bags and then pulling them out in the middle of a crowded shopping center, which is pretty much what happened with Corrupted Blood.

What do you think about this study? And, taking a broader view, does people's behavior in WoW accurately reflect their behavior in real life?

WoW completely ruins another life

Posted Jul 25th 2007 5:30PM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, News items, Humor

The Australian media is at it again (why is Australia such a hotbed of this stuff?), with another report on how playing online games can horribly ruin your life. This time, they profile a guy named Mark Nichols, who apparently "played out his days in a virtual world... while his real life crumbled to pieces." Not surprisingly, he blames the game.

The best part is when he mentions WoW itself: "Then I heard about a game called World of Warcraft. That's when it all went south." Before he played WoW, he was apparently logging four hours a day in Half-Life, which is enough to make any sensible person reconsider what they're doing. But he was compelled (no choice involved, obviously) to install and play the game anyway. You can imagine the rest-- he loses his job (because, playing on a US server, he'd rather play during the day), loses his girlfriend, gains all kinds of weight, and generally becomes a mess. All because of the game. The last part is great, too: "Games have eaten away at my 20s and I was in stasis for a while," he says. "Hopefully it's not too late." As if the rest of his life will be completely ruined just because he chose to install a game.

I can't say much more about this than I've already said, but I will give the mic to the very insightful Rushster over at WorldofWar:

"I do hate the term 'real life' when used in the context of 'gaming ruining real life.' WoW is real life. It's a real-life entertainment activity just like knitting, watching TV, going to the movies, gardening etc. I do wish people would stop saying their 'real-life' was falling apart. I'm sure if you watch too much TV or go to the movies for 12 hours a day it can't be good for you either or your relationships."

Well said. If you're playing WoW for 12 hours a day-- stop now. Just uninstall the game and walk away. Leave the rest of us to enjoy the game responsibly, and have a good time without the media buying the stupid line that it's the game's fault for ruining this guy's life.

The strange style of patch notes, real and fake

Posted Apr 4th 2007 1:51PM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Odds and ends, Blizzard

I don't know if you could call this "Guide to Writing Fake Patch Notes" hilarious, but I think it is at least chuckleworthy. Flibble of Draenor (the realm, not the shattered world) has put together a quick guide on how to trick sites exactly like this one into believing your patch notes. And in doing so, he hits upon some of Blizzard's more conspicuous quirks, i.e. that you should "at least try to glance at the Under Development page, so that you can convincingly lie about the things Blizzard convincingly lies about on their website."

He also notes that every patch includes at least one change to a Mage spell icon (well, there are just so many of them), adding "several new items and recipes" that don't really exist, and has (faked, of course) bugfixes that "preferentially affect the 0.1% of WoW players who make no contribution to society [and] live in mom's basement at age 37." See what I mean? Chuckleworthy.

Truth be told, I really like the way patch notes are written. I'm not sure who writes them (I doubt it's an actual dev, but it has to be someone associated with the dev team), but they are both formal and at the same time seem to have a lot of cool mystery and design behind them. Caydiem hit on this note to extremely comic effect with her fake patch notes (I like that the grass in enemy faction zones is "exceptionally green"), but even the real patch notes read like a kind of otherworldly poetry: "Cabal Zealots are now more threatening while under the effect of Shape of the Beast." To players who know what they're talking about, they import a very technical message. But for someone who doesn't know about that section of the game or the game itself, that's a pretty mysterious statement. As a student of audience and media, I find patch notes pretty fascinating.

Leeroy: The man behind the chicken

Posted Mar 13th 2007 1:27PM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Fan stuff, Virtual selves, Blizzard, News items

Reader DrDiesel of Blade's Edge (thanks!) pointed us to this Denver Westword article about none other than the star of UBRS and Jeopardy, Leeroy Jenkins. Sure, the reporter is a few years late on the phenomenon of Leeroy and this wacky "emerging form" of Machinima, and yes, the article suffers from the same naive cluelessness it seems all mainstream reporters suffer from when they're writing about WoW ("I typed a message into the 'chat window,' a window for chat, and was astounded when a real person typed 'STFU noob' back!"), but on the plus side, there's some interesting stuff in there about Ben Schulz and what it's like to be Leeroy ingame.

Schulz (that's him in a professional looking photo on the right) is the son of a theatrical director and a set designer who works at an industrial lighting company, and who's gotten famous for playing a videogame character for 30 seconds for free (the article doesn't mention if Blizzard ever paid him for putting his likeness in the card game, or if any of those t-shirt companies ever offered him anything for his name). He takes a pass at setting allegations to rest on whether the video was staged or not (who cares, at this point), and he generally seems-- surprise-- like a guy who just likes to play WoW. Who'd have known.

There is a rumor in there, however, that the World of Warcraft movie people were thinking about putting him in the flick as a cameo, and have since blown him off. Blizzard, Legendary Pictures, whoever's listening, I think I speak for the WoW community when I say: this must be done. You've got to get him in that movie. We want Leeroy!

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Breaking: Gamespy to release new Wrath info at 12:01 a.m. [UPDATED]

Student newspaper raises concerns about WoW addiction

Getting enthralled, or getting to bed?

BBC: WoW behavior can predict epidemic patterns

WoW completely ruins another life

The strange style of patch notes, real and fake

Leeroy: The man behind the chicken

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