Both Jeff Kaplan and Tom Chilton presented, with Kaplan showing off the Death Knight class and Chilton showing off the work they've done on Northrend.
The Forsaken-designed starting town Vengeance Landing was shown off -- this was the same area we got to play back at Blizzcon, as well as Utgarde Keep
They also got to see Valliance Keep (the other Alliance starting area), and Warsong Hold, a huge gothic iron structure run by Garosh Hellscream that Kaplan apparently called the "new look " of the Horde
Horde players will be taking a Zepplin up to Northrend
The Nexus, in the Coldarra part of the Borean Tundra, is the first instance on the western side of Northrend from Utgarde Keep, and it's a three wing instance with a raid dungeon where players will meet Malygos.
The Badge of Justice system will continue in Northrend, but there will be new tokens to act as Badges and be returned for loot.
Blizzard has, inexplicably, been keeping the schedule for BlizzCon under wraps. We at WoW Insider have been frantically planning coverage here, and yet we haven't heard a peep from Blizzard about what to expect during the show. But now WorldofWar has posted what seems to be a leaked schedule for the event (no word on how they obtained it), and we'll finally have some idea of how the days are laid out. Here's what to expect if you're headed to BlizzCon:
An opening ceremony (where they'll announce a new game or expansion?)
Panels on WoW classes, dungeons and raids, professions and items, and PvP
A Starcraft II gameplay demo
More panels on Warcraft Art, Blizzard Sound/Music, Careers in Gaming, Cinematics, Starcraft II Lore and Art, WoW UI mods, the TCG, and the Expanded Universe (likely the Warcraft novels)
And the convention will wrap up with a big concert from L70ETC and Video Games Live hosted by Jay Mohr.
Sounds like a full few days! Of course there will also be an exhibit hall open the whole time, but we haven't heard much of what will be in there (don't forget that Xfire will be there, as well as Upper Deck and all the TCG folks, and of course the WoW Insider party will be before the convention starts on Thursday night). Stay tuned for more details as we get them. Under a week left!
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 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.
Wandering Goblin has a cool piece up entitled "25 Things You Didn't Know About WoW." Now, it's not really titled correctly, because many Blizzard fans will at least know a few of the things, and the truth is that they're not all about WoW anyway. But it is interesting reading, especially if you aren't super familiar with the background behind the Blue.
Fr'instance, when WoW released, Mike Morhaime says that every available employee was working on it. And production on Burning Crusade started about six months after that, when Blizzard determined that WoW was "stable." Other interesting tidbits (specifically from the recent WWI) include the fact that China is WoW's biggest market (people there pay by the hour, not by the month), and that Blizzard expects WoW to last them at least 10 years. So we may still be grinding murlocs in 2014.
It's also interesting that Blizzard says they don't plan budget limits for games-- either they're going to make a good game, or they don't bother making the game at all. Most companies probably wouldn't have ditched Starcraft: Ghost so late in the process, but Blizzard seems totally and completely committed to releasing a great game or not releasing a game at all. Interesting tactic, but then again it's worked for them so far.
Regular readers will know that I'm a huge fan of real world crafts based on WoW (I'm disappointed that it seems like that Crochet set never worked out-- if anyone plans to make the Twill set, let me know). And so I was thrilled to see these papercraft figures that "Eric" has put together-- he's making paper models of pets in WoW, and he's selling the plans (in a PDF files) to make them yourself. At least I think that's what he's selling-- his site is pretty barebones, to say the least.
More please! I'd like to see a papercraft Bangalash, and I know kids all over the world would love a papercraft Murloc. As you've probably guessed, I'm clueless about this papercraft stuff, but would it be possible to build player models this way, or is that too complicated?
While we're still waiting on sales figures from Monday's launch of the expansion, at first glance, looking at the pictures posted here and elsewhere from around the world, it was pretty darn successful.
That's right, it looks like Blizzard pulled it off-- almost simultaneously, within the same 24 hours, they were able to both get a game on shelves, get it home with players, and let them sign online. Lag problems aside, that's a huge task, and I'm not sure they could have pulled it off any better.
As a final note on the launch, Rushter over at WorldofWar has done a little YouTube crawling, and pulled up a list of video from events all over the world. I thought things were crazy here in the US, but look how insane they got in Germany.
Look at that line! When I first heard the 5 million copies in the first ten days figure, I was skeptical. But with lines like this all over the planet, it might just be true.
WorldofWar has what sounds like a press release from something called "Players: the Movie." Apparently a documentary crew is putting together a film about hardcore gamers, and they've sent out the call for a few willing souls (especially players of WoW and other "hardcore" games like Halo and... The Sims?) to be profiled. The movie's website is as bare as they come, and the casting call doesn't really sound as if they've done their homework too much on this one-- they want people with "unique life stories" and "dynamic personalities." I always thought part of documentary filmmaking was finding those yourself, but hey what do I know. If you think your story is unique enough and, more likely, you think it would be awesome to be in a videogame documentary, they want a name, phone, pic, and a "brief explanation of yourself and your love of gaming" sent to playerscasting@yahoo.com.
Just think, it could be your ticket to fame and fortune as a WoW player. Then again, it could be your ticket to a warped profile and humiliation. Either way, a great time!
WorldofWar.net also got an invitation to the Blizzard event this past week (our invitation must have been lost in the mail, maybe?), and they've got six full pages of text about what they saw. Six pages hard to read though, so we've got all the salient points right here:
The Australian media is at it again
Wandering Goblin has a cool piece up entitled 
WorldofWar has 
Subscribe
