Riot Games - the crew behind DoTA have hired some of the people behind the popular Defense of the Ancients mod for Warcraft III, taken the basic premise of the game and created their own independent IP - League Of Legends.

Players control a Summoner - a commander character that can be leveled up and enhanced - who controls troops taking part in organized arena-type battles.

The game is 'semi persistent' with champions and gaining levels and items that are lost at the end of a session, while your core Summoner avatar will be carried forwards to the next bout.

Hit the jump for some screens...

[League of Legends]

What's interesting on top of packing one world-class timesuck inside of another (in real world terms, this would be like snorting bacon-flavored meth), is how it all came to pass. Michael Fromwiller, a student at San Jose State, wrote an add-on he called Besharded, which came reasonably close to mimicking PopCap's hit. But it didn't come close enough for PopCap, which instead of sending out a C&D letter, reached out to Fromwiller and hired him to do a version of the real thing. Next week it's available for WoW, with no opposition from Blizzard. Wired has the word straight from PopCap itself, but a no-comment from Blizzard.

Bejeweled, Warcraft Combine to Form World's Most Addictive Game [Wired]

“(The) Chinese have invented some interesting ways to play with the in-game economy (not the real world economy). Ways that I have not observed here in two years of studying ‘World of Warcraft.’

“Chinese players are more attuned to the aesthetics of the game. At least they mention them more in interviews. They talked more about color schemes, animations, architecture, and so on more than American players.

She notes that Chinese players are less likely to play with add-ons and modifications because they like the 'challenging' version of the game better. Well, whatever works. Nardi will be completing her research along with a doctoral student; hopefully her final paper will shed more light on little-studied areas and not just broad generalizations of the obvious.

UCI tackles ‘World of Warcraft’ mystery [OC Register]

MMOs aren’t like other games. They’re closer to a lifestyle choice, for a lot of people defining how their spare time is spent, how their lives are lived. So if you criticise the game, you criticise the player. God knows there are plenty of non-MMO games that people treat as though they’re bound to their very souls - witness the pile-on for Eurogamer’s MGS4 review, or even the outrage about various RPS writers being down on Stalker: Clear Sky - but it’s even worse with MMOs. Telling a WAR player that his game is similar to WoW is like telling a goth that he’s emo. No-one wants to be told they’re not unique and interesting, to be dismissed as a stereotype they’re not.

WAR is not WoW. But it is a lot like it in a number of crucial ways, and for one essential reason: money. I suspect Mythic and EA aren’t too concerned about the comparison themselves - they might disagree with the sweeping generalisation, but if they didn’t want to be compared they would have gone for an entirely different interface and art approach. Saying WAR is like WoW is not the same as saying it’s a bad or a lazy game, but unfortunately there are guys who do intentionally make the comparison unfavourably, and that’s perhaps understandably made a lot of WAR fans very touchy.

Personally, I'm fascinated by the fan communities generated by MMOs, popular ones and not — not being much of an MMO player, I find 'people watching' to be more entertaining than the game in a lot of cases. I don't have the patience to wade through the original comment thread, but I'm pretty sure I could rattle off the general reaction with little prompting. Meer's thoughts, however, are deserving of a read.

A Dirty Word [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

Lest anyone missed this little gem among the E3 hubbub, Blizzard has scored a victory against WoW bot maker Glider. Don't remember that whole kerfluffle? Blizzard sued Glider over EULA infringement for copying code, as well as the ancillary issue of pissing WoW users up and gobbling up resources. Glider shot back with 'But grinding your way to level 70 is boooooring.' Probably unsurprisingly, this argument did not go over very well in court and Blizzard won its summary judgment motion. All's well that end's well ... or is it? Over at PlayNoEvil, there's some interesting analysis on what this judgment could mean and why it may not be all that it's cracked up to be:

1. This ruling is very dangerous to any third party utility provider. Especially security companies like Symantec, who load programs and "check them out" to see if they are malicious. Ironically, it would seem that Blizzard's own security program, Warden, would be imperiled by this notion of copyright ....

3. What if Blizzard wins? After a long fight, Blizzard defeated the unauthorized Battle.Net server developers, BnetD, which simply drove the system outside the US where it is still available. It is actually surprising that MDY didn't move its business offshore to a country where this suit could not have been effectively tried or did not have a copyright treat with the US.

4. Legal solutions to business and technical problems are terribly inefficient an expensive. While they may be able to shut MDY down and even bankrupt the company (and perhaps its owners), how much will this have cost Blizzard and how long until another equivalent product is made available. Might MDY simply publish the source code to Glider as a "finger in the eye" gesture at Blizzard? (or "leak" it onto the Internet?)

No doubt this case hasn't been put to bed quite yet — any future developments should be pretty interesting.

Blizzard Wins Key Judgments Against WoW Bot Maker MDY on Copyright and Tortious Interference Claims [Virtually Blind] and A Pyrrhic Victory? Blizzard vs. Glider [PlayNoEvil]

There's a more or less constant trickle of mainstream articles discussing people 'finding love in all the wrong places' — but Tom Francis has a hilarious look at his attempts to play the dating game in MMOs. He tracks his progress in EVE Online, WoW and City of Heroes. The CoH section is my personal favorite, featuring Francis' trenchcoated character, 'Manley Power,' whose bio page read "Power's two favourite things are commitment and changing himself.":

Although some of the female gamers I know only play sexy characters, all of them object to luridly over-sexualised body shapes. This did not seem like the sort of physiology a real woman would choose.

Still, I invited her to do a mission with me. She accepted and suggested I take the lead. Manley Power approved. I didn't want to spring the obvious question too soon, as it'd be a shame to creep her out if my intuition was wrong. But after skewering most of the goons in the warehouse together, an easy way to broach it occurred: "So, from the sheer size of your character's breasts, I'm guessing you're male in real life?" At exactly the same time, a speech bubble appeared over her own head: "lets go out."

Wait, what? Is Manley Power that attractive that she'd instantly ask his player out? Or was she referring to some sort of cyber-relationship? God, maybe she was male and still wanted to hook up in-game. I should have known when I found myself warming to my creation: I'd made him too pretty. I'd created a manly monster. Hang on, she probably means the warehouse. We've finished, we can leave now. "Yeah, im male lol" Correction, he probably means the warehouse.

It's a clever and funny look at the intricacies of introductions in MMOs - and a hell of a lot more fun to read than an article on some guy who left his real-life wife for a Second Life vixen.

The Dating Game [ComputerAndVideoGames.com via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

And where did those Vikings get off to? I cannot seem to find them anywhere?

Then there is the question of the latest rune, which I cannot seem to place. It looks like a solar system, doesn't it? I've been pouring over Blizzard stuffs but cannot for the life of me place it. I checked out various Diablo-fan forums to see if anyone had a clue before the sheer number of people fooling themselves into seeing things that weren't there made me too frustrated to continue. When you want something so badly you start deluding yourself you just need to take a step back and relax a little before people start looking at you funny.

Finally, here is the secret picture as it stands now, with four images in place. It's quite obvious to me now that we're dealing with an eggplant with tiny feet, a tail, and a mohawk.

Two more days and we'll know for sure, and then I can finally get some sleep. Damn you Blizzard. Damn you to hell.

Thus began the first scientific conference held in Azeroth, the online universe inhabited by millions of people playing World of Warcraft. Anyone who has been part of a conference's organizing committee knows that some glitches and mishaps are just unavoidable. And as usual, the problems that actually did occur were unforeseen. It was a success nonetheless. By the end of the third day, a real scientific exchange took place, I married one of the conference participants, and within an hour of the wedding, we were all dead.

There are a lot of feel-good stories circulating about how scientists are using online games to study behavior, but this one is a lot of fun.

Slaying Monsters For Science [Science, thanks Gumblackwood!]

GamePolitics brought Stevens to our attention, and MMO site Wandering Goblin followed up with a detailed interview that reasonably depicts Stevens as neither a fringe/novelty candidate nor, as a parent, permissive to the point of self-caricature when it comes to games.

She's a mom and a laywer. That's enough motive and opportunity for making an informed decision on her own kids' entertainment choices. And far be it from me to lecture Republicans on their values (but I will anyway) she adopts what is truly a conservative principle regarding video games in the home: "You get to be the legislator, you make the laws of your home. Don’t abdicate that responsibility to the government."

As for her gaming habits, she says her father introduced her to WoW three years ago. She has three characters and recites their stats like she would her children's scout badges. Stevens can be found on the Alexstrasza server but eschews PvP as she's usually gaming with her kids and helping their characters.

Says candidate Stevens:

WoW is the sum total of my experience. We’ll get Lich King when it comes out. The boys play Xbox live, Halo and Call of Duty series, though Guitar Hero is getting quite a bit of play now. As a parent, I will not allow GTA in my home – that is my choice. If you’d like to play it in your home, go for it.

If she wins in November, she'd join Sen. Ray Tenorio, level 70 Dwarf Priest of the Guam legislature, as known MMO-gaming lawmakers. However, Stevens' opponent, Deb Heinrich, is a two-term incumbent and vice chair of the General Assembly's appropriations committee (which is joint House and Senate). Not sure how things shake out in Connecticut, but typically that's a tough resume to beat. Stevens herself is an attorney and was a prosecutor for the Manhattan District Attorney. Thus ends my handicapping of the race.

The WoW-Playing Candidate [Wandering Goblin]

While I have enough work to kill an ox this weekend, I took some time last night to play with this delightfully silly side-scrolling WoW sendup. Here's one introduction to a quest: "Now that you've begun to get the hang of that most fundamental of skills - killing shit - and started to properly become a bit more class conscious, we can tackle a slightly more disturbing problem." Karl Marx even makes an appearance (never mind the Mario appearance pictured above). It's worth checking out if you've got some extra time to waste this holiday (in the US) weekend.

WTF?! [via Grand Text Auto]

Looking for new reading material? A new book is out examining WoW, and is available from Amazon for the nice price of $19.77 (not bad for a book coming from an academic press!). I'm personally really fond of edited volumes, and this one sounds pretty interesting — both in the contents and background of the research. Scott Rettberg, one of the contributors, explains:

Hilde G. Corneliussen and Jill Walker Rettberg ... edited this volume, which is the first book-length anthology to carefully read the culture of the world’s most popular massively multiplayer online game. The anthology is the product of a unique collaboration. The volume’s contributors all played the game together for a year in a guild of academics known as “The Truants” before writing their chapters, each of which examines the game from a different theoretical/analytical bent. There are thirteen chapters in the book.

According to the publishing blurb, they're cutting a pretty wide swath here:

The contributors examine the ways that gameworlds reflect the real world—exploring such topics as World of Warcraft as a "capitalist fairytale" and the game's construction of gender; the cohesiveness of the gameworld in terms of geography, mythology, narrative, and the treatment of death as a temporary state; aspects of play, including "deviant strategies" perhaps not in line with the intentions of the designers; and character—both players' identification with their characters and the game's culture of naming characters. The varied perspectives of the contributors—who come from such fields as game studies, textual analysis, gender studies, and postcolonial studies—reflect the breadth and vitality of current interest in MMOGs

I'm currently up to my neck in reading on Japanese imperialism, but this is definitely on my list of to-dos this summer.

Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader [GrandTextAuto]

"We're pleased to continue working with TOKYOPOP to bring our game universes to an entirely new audience," said Paul Sams, chief operating officer of Blizzard Entertainment. "Warcraft: The Sunwell Trilogy proved to be a top-quality adaptation of Warcraft to the manga format, and we look forward to matching that quality with the upcoming StarCraft and Warcraft books."

TOKYOPOP and Blizzard Entertainment® Announce Three-Year Publishing Plan

Twenty-Two All-New Warcraft® and StarCraft® Manga Volumes Slated for Release through 2010

New York Comic-Con, New York (April 17, 2008)―On the heels of the critically acclaimed international hit manga series Warcraft®: The Sunwell Trilogy, TOKYOPOP, the leader of the global manga revolution, and Blizzard Entertainment®, creator of some of the world's most popular game series, are proud to announce their three-year publishing plan. Over the next 36 months, the companies intend to release twenty-two all-new never-before-told adventures set in the richly detailed Warcraft and StarCraft® universes.

According to TOKYOPOP Editor-in-Chief Rob Tokar, "After several fantastic years of working with Blizzard Entertainment on Warcraft: The Sunwell Trilogy, it is both a pleasure and an honor to extend our relationship in such a grand fashion. The entire TOKYOPOP team is incredibly excited to help expand the Warcraft and StarCraft universes through manga. Blizzard has been a terrific partner and, by incorporating original characters from Warcraft: The Sunwell Trilogy into their incredible massively multiplayer online role-playing game, World of Warcraft®, they have again shown that their game universe is a vast, rich, immersive phenomenon that transcends any one medium."

"We're pleased to continue working with TOKYOPOP to bring our game universes to an entirely new audience," said Paul Sams, chief operating officer of Blizzard Entertainment. "Warcraft: The Sunwell Trilogy proved to be a top-quality adaptation of Warcraft to the manga format, and we look forward to matching that quality with the upcoming StarCraft and Warcraft books."

In celebration of the 10th anniversary of Blizzard Entertainment's bestselling StarCraft real-time strategy game, this August TOKYOPOP will publish the first volume of the new manga series, StarCraft: Frontline, a collection of four stories set in the dark and gritty StarCraft universe. StarCraft: Frontline includes "Thundergod," by renowned writer Richard A. Knaak (Warcraft: The Sunwell Trilogy) and Naohiro Washio, and focuses on the new Thor heavy combat walker unit that will be appearing in Blizzard Entertainment's upcoming sequel, StarCraft II. Other artists and writers featured in this collection include Simon Furman (Transformers), Paul Benjamin (Pantheon High), Joshua Elder (Mail Order Ninja), and Ramanda Kamarga (Psy-Comm).

August also hails the debut of the first volume of the all-new manga series Warcraft: Legends. Some of the world's best manga creators join together to bring the world of Warcraft to life as never before! Warcraft vets Richard A. Knaak and Jae-Hwan Kim (Warcraft: The Sunwell Trilogy) team up again for "Fallen," which is the first of a three-part tale. Other global talent for Warcraft: Legends includes Dan Jolley (Warriors; JSA Liberty Files), Carlos Oliveros and Mi-Young No (Threads of Time).

StarCraft: Frontline and Warcraft: Legends are the first two of more than twenty releases set in the StarCraft and Warcraft universes that TOKYOPOP and Blizzard Entertainment will collaborate on and publish over the course of three years. Stay tuned for more details about other books in this historic publishing program.

In fact, most people play a combination of four or five games in World of Warcraft. There's the leveling up game, which almost everyone plays ....

After this game, some people play the endgame game, in which they try to fill out their character with the best items, or the other endgame game, in which they try to beat all the raid bosses. Some people play the Honor System game, where they try to amass honor points, and others play the Arena game, where they get to the top rank in any given season. Then, there are the less popular games - or the one I just made up: going from one capital city to another as quickly as possible at level one.

Half Blizzard driven, half player driven - so Warcraft turns. It's a nice little look at games-within-games and how these things take on a life of their own.

'Play Evolution': The Evolution of World of Warcraft and Its Many Games [GameSetWatch]

It is a very sad story. Both the victim and perpetrator are not from affluent families, are not particularly well-educated, and didn't appear to have great prospects in Chinese society. World of Warcraft, operated by The9 (Nasdaq:NCTY) in China, and other MMOs are a great escape, as is obvious from the tens of millions of Chinese playing in these virtual worlds.

Good thing for Blizzard and The9 that China's legal system is still developing. If this happened in the US no doubt the victim's family would hire an ambulance chasing lawyer to sue Blizzard for millions, claiming that somehow Blizzard, rather than the parents, was negligent.

According to an article in the Beijing News [新京報], the 'fire mage' purchased gasoline 5 days prior to the event, which sort of takes the edge off that 'spur of the moment' idea. Furthermore, the interview a Beijing News reporter had with the 'fire mage' was downright disturbing in parts - nothing like sound bites like "[the feeling of watching fire and people burning] is very addictive, very happy!" to make someone come off as perfectly sane. And all this over a schoolyard fight between 17 year olds.

模仿"魔兽"火烧同学 [Beijing News via billsdue]

I admit my first reaction was '... Aren't there plenty of Chinese servers to play on?' and thought that perhaps this would provide a good testing ground for the theory that MMOs help language acquisition (joking, joking). In all honesty, this just seems like one of those things that happens when you live on the Mainland - the 'great firewall of China' is nothing to sneeze at and it's amazing what gets blocked, what doesn't, what kind of gets blocked/kind of doesn't, etc. Welcome to the enigma that is modern China? I'm also not seeing the benefit of the government from blocking all access to US servers - the first thing that popped into my mind was RMT/gold farming, but that doesn't have much to do with the expat population that can't hack an MMORPG in Chinese. Any Kotakuites living in China who have experienced this (or not), feel free to drop us an email.

World of Datecraft

... the results do suggest that EverQuest, and possibly MMORPGs in general, reinforce language acquisition for a number of reasons. The pursuit of quests, for example, requires players to become what Rankin calls "active learners" who engage with other players and the gaming environment. The study also supports Schneider and Zheng's conclusion that the games are inherently motivating.

"The game requires them to do things," Rankin says, "to read directions, to interact with other avatars, to travel over the landscape; that's why they learn the language. You have to comprehend the information that's in front of you in order to advance to different levels and complete the quests. And you can't complete the quests without asking for help from other players, which, again, requires you to understand the language."

This ties in a bit with some of the debate over 'serious games'; I guess just about anything can be made 'serious' in the right context. I especially loved the suggestion that Blizzard could make a killing if they opened ESL servers up in Asia.

On a Quest for English [T.H.E. Journal via Educational Games Research

What Eve doesn't do, of course, is create a world that is as compelling and immediate as World Of Warcraft. And this ties in to my final point.

You might respond to all this and say: "but levelling up gives us something to aim for, the skilling in Eve is so much more nebulous, so to speak. It's better to have quests and a magic horse at level 40 I can aim for. That is why WoW has some many millions of people playing it." This is correct, and it's another reason why the principles, rather than the execution, of Eve Online are worthy of copying. If you were to base your game on Eve you'd make skills, items, and equipment both aspiration-worthy and customisation-friendly. It's about presentation as much as mechanics .... One of Eve's failures is the obscurity of its aspirational targets - any game wanting wider appeal needs to present this more clearly.

It's a quick read & worth a read through, even if you're only tangentially interested in MMO game design.

World of EveCraft [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

The popularity of WoW in remote Shangri-la shows that WoW's lower penetration in lower tier markets (relative to Fantasy Westward Journey and Zhengtu) is a matter of income level rather than geography. Despite Shangri-la's remote location, the county is relatively wealthy. In addition to the wealth created by growing tourism, many residents also receive government subsidies based on both ethnic minority status and the county's high elevation. The additional wealth allows Shangri-la's tour guides and yak herders to pay a premium 0.45 Yuan per hour for WoW in China, whereas most other MMORPGs in the country have shifted to virtual item based free-to-play model.

You know you have serious market penetration when you can count yak herders among your devotees.

The China Angle: 'Online Games in Shangri-la' [Gamasutra]

I started each interview out with a simple premise: that gamers were moving in tribes. World of Warcraft, in my mind, wasn't the 'king of the mountain' because it was the best world out there, whatever our criteria might be. It was prominent because the right people played it, giving it a kind of social gravitational mass. The social bonds, whether forged in or outside of a game, influenced when gamers would move, and for how long they would stay. Some of these interviews dug deeply into this idea, while others carved out their own intriguing territory.

It's an interesting set of interviews from another side of the gaming world: the people who are eyeball deep researching this stuff.

The Academics Speak: Is There Life After World Of Warcraft? [Gamasutra]

Although World of Warcraft was launched in China six month after the game's launch in Western markets, previous content update releases usually lag North American market releases by a month. Chinese WoW players have not experienced any new content since last October, and their patience has been taxed to the limit. The number of average concurrent users (ACU) for WoW has dropped two quarters straight, from 340,000 ACU in the forth quarter of 2006 to 300,000 in the second quarter of 2007.

Some of the speculation is that the new anti-addiction measures (and the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP) that administers said measures) held up approval for the game. Regardless, Chinese WoW fans should be placated soon.

The China Angle: Putting The Wow Back In WoW [Gamasutra]

Sams, Metzen and Jashni made it a regular point to express their wishes to "not... create another video game movie" but to "create an epic." And while some fans may have taken pause at Jashni's reasoning that "we can't just make a movie for the 9 million World of Warcraft subscribers", it was clear that all four were passionate about bringing the mythology of Warcraft to the big screen as faithfully as possible.

The panel invoked the name of Legendary Pictures' recent hits Batman Begins and 300 as indicative of the quality of the $100 million-plus feature film. They also dropped names like Braveheart and the Lord of the Rings trilogy when discussing their vision for the Warcraft movie's action scenes.

For how intense those scenes will be, and what rating they're shooting for, Metzen said "It's hard for us to predict what happens. You want to not compromise and you want to have the intensity." Addressing concerns over a Nerfed fantasy war movie, he explained, "The story and the director's vision will ultimately decide that. We're definitely not going to make a G or a PG version of this. It's not PillowfightCraft."

Warcraft is still in the scripting process, but Metzen reported that they have something that they're happy with. The plot was kept under wraps but Metzen told the crowd it would take place about a year before the events of World of Warcraft.

The storyline is "principally told from the Alliance perspective." After revealing that detail, and waiting for the Horde aligned players to finish their booing, Metzen explained "While my heart lies with the Horde and Thrall's an interesting character, from a movie making standpoint, a blockbuster movie its a little rough to try and tell it from the perspective of this green looking dude."

"What about Shrek?!" a Blizzconner yelled. A busted Metzen quipped "Shrek's a good example. For a kids comedy."

According to Jashni, no director has been attached. "We are starting those conversations. We're going to be looking for someone of [300 director Zak Snyder or Batman Begins director Chris Nolan's] caliber," said Metzen. They snickered at a crowd member's suggestion for Uwe Boll, commenting only on the infamous director's recent boxing match.

With no director comes no casting news. That process hasn't been started yet, but when asked about whether they'd be looking for "big name Hollywood actors" or "fresher faces", Jashni played coy, only saying that "because there's a lot of interest in Warcraft, we've gotten a lot of interesting phone calls."

Following another fan suggestion, Metzen says they haven't yet contacted Chuck Norris for a role or cameo.

Jashni then recounted a story that involved Superman Returns star Brandon Routh accosting him upon hearing of his involvement with Blizzard, with Routh asking "Do you know the Warcraft guys?! Can you get me a tour of [their office]?"

By the end of the panel, we hadn't learned much in the way of concrete details, as much of the film is simply too early in production to talk about. As a sort of apology for being so vague, panel speakers showed one of the first pieces of concept artwork for the film.

Anyone recognize it?

The differences between online worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft were also revealing, said Dr Bainbridge.

In Second Life, participants often only create one alter-ego or avatar and identify closely with it. By contrast most Warcraft players maintain several "alts" and regard them as possessions.

Both could throw light on how people create identities and how they seek to project themselves to others, wrote Dr Bainbridge.

Time will tell how more 'traditional' researchers view the validity of such methods (and their conclusions), but the increasing presence of virtual topics in even the most stodgy of academic fields mean it's not going away any time soon.

Game worlds show their human side [BBC]

What a cool idea. Kaplan and Tokyopop have teamed up to produce a series of mangas designed to increase your vocabulary and thus your SAT and ACT scores.

Among the list of smartifying books (how do you like that vocabulary right there?) is Warcraft: Dragon Hunt, the first volume in the Sunwell Trilogy. All of the books include more than 300 words that frequently show up on the SATs and ACTs. The words are highlighted and their definitions show up in the margins of the book. Love this idea. Brian Crecente

Study for the SATs with Warcraft Manga [Wired]

Don't forget that the Blizzard announcement is hitting early tomorrow morning. My money is still on it being Starcraft 2 and not another WoW expansion or Starcraft MMO.

My sources tell me that the announcement will take place around 1 a.m., which happens to be around the time (in Korea) that the Video Games Live performance will be going on. That makes sense, nothing like having a big orchestra handy when you want to drop some big news.

Make sure to check back here early tomorrow morning to see the big news.. and whether I was right or not. Brian Crecente

Spacewar! (1962)
Star Raiders (1979)
Zork (1980)
Tetris (1985)
SimCity (1989)
Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990)
Civilization I / II (1991)
Doom (1993)
Warcraft (Series) (1994)
Sensible World of Soccer (1994)

The games all represent firsts for lasting genres, such as adventure games, multiplayer, FPS, story-driven RTS, et cetera. Each gamer is required to save these titles to a microchip embedded in the base of their skull in order to preserve our gaming heritage. Michael Fahey

Is That Just Some Game? No, It's a Cultural Artifact [The New York Times, via Grand Text Auto]

WORLD OF WARCRAFT MARIO LEVELS. [The Last Boss - Thanks Andrew!]

Sure, Korea is the place for professional StarCraft players. There are 225 pros (including three lucky foreigners) registered with the Korea e-Sports Association. But, imagine this: You are a Korean pro-gamer with good hair who stinks at StarCraft. What do you do? Think Europe! The best Korean Warcraft players have hooked up with Denmark's Meet Your Maker (MYM) gaming club. Says Danish MYM manager Jakob Dreyer:

Korea has some of the world's very best Warcraft players, which is why it is natural to hire our Korean gamers, who are still being among the best in the world... Our Korean players normally meet up offline. They live, train and meet in the area around Seoul, either in Internet cafes or private... When it comes to overseas traveling, MYM pays everything related to traveling and accommodations.

Interesting, but what is it with Korea and StarCraft? I mean, seriously, what's with the default setting? Brian Ashcraft

Non-StarCraft Players Must Go Elsewhere [The Korea Times]

This screenshot was found on a WoW forum and precariously claims to display the Sword of One Thousand Truths which will be winnable in arena matches in the Burning Crusade.

Some problems with the legitimacy of this claim, besides the obvious, are that the weapon model is exactly the same as another well-known sword, the Hungering Cold, and that the text kerning or ligature or whatever is all funked up in the item description.

Photoshop?! Can it BEEEE? Eliza Gauger

Gotta love the sword [WorldofWarcraft.com, via Digg, pic from GayGamer]

Previously on Kotaku: World of Warcraft Hits Southpark

From the "parents without nuts, literal or otherwise" department comes the harrowing Current Affairs report on a child lost to the dregs of addiction. His smack of choice? A "violent computer game" known as World of Warcraft.

This video makes me hate the whole world.

But it gives me an opportunity to speak on the "game addiction" fad. The thing you always hear from the "addicts" in question is that this is their life, they are meeting people and exploring and hanging out with their friends. They're just doing it in Azeroth.

Before we dismiss this retort as the gibberings of a game-addled teen, we may want to stop and weigh its meaning. I was essentially raised inside a computer tower, spending hours at a time on games, and BBSes, and eventually the internet which is mother to all things. I'm not sure it's fair to say that the "real world" is any better or more fulfilling than an MMO.

Even now, I go to work every day on the internet, I spend much of my money online, I create digital art and writing which is used in digital display spaces, and yet I live in my own apartment in a major city and I'm healthy. The constant scathing glances cast at online pursuits by luddites is just ignorant. Who are they to say what is "real"?

I do assert that this haggard mother should inform her son that he is responsible for paying his subscription and internet fees, but if he is able to provide these things without criminal activity, and he is happy and fulfilled in his guild with his in-game achievements, then who are we to say he should stop?

Honestly, my biggest objection to the hardcore gamers is that they make the playing field steep for the more casual players. Servers should probably be divided based on playtime as well as play style. It'd be fun to be on a server that wasn't full of 12-hour-per-day teenagers with all epic gear and an encyclopedic memory of every map. Eliza Gauger

[via Joystiq]

No links in this post are safe for work. You're playing jubbly roulette with an automatic.

Due to an insane server mashup this afternoon, smutty sister site Fleshbot already sort of posted this on Kotaku, but posts are going to their correct blogs now so this should get an official post outta us.

The previously-referenced Whores of Warcraft site has finally launched, with a ll the chainmail and squatting you've come to expect from gamerotica. Currently there is only one episode available on the site, which pits rogue against warrior in the ultimate whatever.

I did manage to find this horrifying photograph by surfing the site's MySpace, so I guess you can gird your loins in preparation for ogre ass-to-mouth. I hear the ghoul gives the ogre a high five right before the money shot.

Look, I'm sorry. I'm just bitter because nobody makes porn for me. The closest I ever got was one of you tactless flying monkeys e-mailing me, and with nary an introduction, asking me if I read yaoi manga. This person is now filtered, needless to say. Jesus Christ, a "hi, my name is ____, I like the site" might be nice prior to the pornterrogation.

One of the Whorecraft stars is one Monica Mayhem, who appears a few times in the Fleshbot archives. This post showcases the the tragedy of implants in a girl who had some of the most adorable naturals I've ever seen. Perky, pouty, symmetrical, all the right stuff. Now turn asunder. Such a goddamned shame.

I am genuinely curious about the process by which all porn stars eventually look the same. It's the Barbie gravity well. Eliza "yay i get to use the jubblies tag" Gauger

Whores of Warcraft [Fleshbot]

Previously on Kotaku: Not Safe for Warcraft

Let's look at some example scenarios:

Our couple has been trying to slay a dragon for two hours, have died for the 20th time and the last of their armor is broken. Anyone would be irritated at this point, but who is mature enough to laugh it off and show some positive attitude, like suggesting they try again the next day, and instead go on a mountaintop picnic for now? Then again, who is childish or short tempered enough to storm off fuming because it was you that messed up during most of those attempts. Who starts giving sermons about how things are really done?

[...]

In summary: MMO relationships are playing the fast forward button to getting to know someone. As mentioned in one of the articles in the Daedelus project, Inside Out, "you get to know someone inside out".

This article is necessarily bare of the issue of people who roleplay, either for fun, profit, or the joy of deception, as such a tangent would derail the original concept of the piece. Indeed, in my experience, people online are similar to the inebriated: they think they're being funnier, cooler, and more badass than is actually possible, which leads to a sort of fisheye view of their core beings. Eliza Gauger

Better Dating Through MMOs [TerraNova]

It's official: gamers are no longer a subculture. Once you've been merchandised by Hot Topic, you're mainstream. Norm. Mundane. Muggle. However you want to phrase it. You're just done. Time to find a new claim to individuality, a new tribe, a new set of anti-establishment credos, because it's over.

This is your deathknell:

World Of Warcraft Barrens Chat T-Shirt 3XL

Warcraft fans! Check this out. This black T-shirt has a front screen that says, "I survived Barrens Chat." The back has a Blizzard Entertainment logo. 100% cotton. Wash warm. Dry low. Imported.

$26.00

I betcha all it took was that Blood Elf Napoleon Dynamite dance.
Eliza Gauger

WoW Merch at Hot Topic [Hot Topic, thanks Angel]

In a press release that went out yesterday, only to be instantly smothered in a sea of Wii, Havok announced that Blizzard Entertainment has licensed the physics engine for god knows what.

Interestingly, Apple is mentioned specifically:

Jeff Yates, Havok's Vice President, Product Management comments, "The Mac is an important piece of technology and because of the cross-platform nature of Havok's technology, the port to Mac was easy to do. Furthermore, Blizzard Entertainment's commitment to OS X and to the Mac community is a good indication of the growth potential of the Mac as a games platform. Blizzard has always put out great games on the Mac, and we look forward to Havok becoming a part of that tradition."

Blizzard has always been good to the Apple community, even when Mac gamers were even worse off than they are now. Eliza Gauger

Havok Press Release [Havok]

This is fascinating to me: a set of step-by-step construction photos from the team that put together the life-size Illidan sculpture for Blizzard's E3 booth this year.

8 weeks ago I was hired by Blizzard entertainment for the second time to make a display mannequin for their booth at the E3 videogame convention at the Los Angeles convention center. The character is called "Illidan" from their game, World of Warcraft.

Many of you may have heard of this game. There are about 6 million subscribers world-wide that paid $50 to purchase the game and then pay an additional $15 a month to play it online. That's a lot of clams per month. Needless to say, this company is making bank!

I was sent a painting of the creature as a guide and went to work. The specs I was given is as follows:

overall height: 9' to the tip of horns.

Wingspan: 16'

base: 3'x7'

glowing eyes, handpunched hair, costume and glowin the dark tatoos.

I think the construction photos are actually more impressive than the pics of the final piece, although I couldn't quite say why. I also wonder where the beast ended up. Someone's office, perhaps? Held in reserve for quick eBaying when this whole WoW thing becomes obsolete and Blizzard has to liquify? Eliza Gauger

Thanks, Zhien.

More Here [MySpace]

Mike Sellers on Terra Nova doesn't hate WoW, he just doesn't really feel like playing anymore. This is a sentiment I can get behind.

No one I've talked to dislikes the game; there's no sense of having been spurned or that the experience has curdled. But in even the best parties there seems to sometimes come a moment when, amidst the music and noise you and your friends silently agree "great party; we're outta here." For some people that moment has come with WoW. And I'm guessing that trend is only going to accelerate.

So if this isn't just a local phenomenon — if I'm not just hanging out with multiple groups of all the wrong people — then it seems possible that while WoW continues to be grow (bringing new people into contact with MMOGs all the time), it may be approaching that point where significant numbers of long-term satisfied players nevertheless begin to cycle off.

It's like when you've been with your girl for a year or so, maybe two...and you just don't feel like spending every waking moment with her anymore. Maybe the smell of her hair doesn't give you that glowing buzz in your guts anymore, like you're filled with ecstatic little golden bees. She's cool to hang with, but you dunno...maybe it's time to start seeing other people. Eliza Gauger

WoW-nui [Terra Nova]

This should techinically be titled "shitting iPods = terrorism" but this is, after all, a gaming blog.

A member of the WoW.com forums posts that a simple trip to the airplane lavatory ended in disaster when his iPod fell off its clip and into the bowl. He didn't realize it was missing until some time later, and when he told the stewardesses they had already called the feds about the mysterious electronic device in the toilet.

After an emergency landing, the passengers were bussed to a warehouse and interrogated. Our hero's recreational habits fell under scrutiny.

They asked me why I was visiting Canada. I was to visit a friend I met on World of Warcraft, Cara. They took down her name and what I could remember of her address. They asked me how we met.

"In an online game."
"What online game?"
"Umm ... World of Warcraft," I responded meekly.
"What kind of game is this?"
"It's a fantasy game ... it takes place online."
"Fantasy ... like it's got wizards and warlocks?"
"Well, it's got warlocks." (And they need to be nerfed.)

Later on he talks about giving some lip to the fascist bastard that was searching his laptop for "propaganda". I hope this is true, as I am eager to hear about any sort of protestation against the clusterfuck that air travel has become. My last trip through John Wayne Airport was the best reason to move to Vancouver I've ever seen. Eliza "fuck the TSA" Gauger

Full post here [WoW.com] [pic]

This should probably be a boilerplate that's bundled into every WoW subscription, so people know what they're getting into if nothing else. I haven't played for months, myself.

As time went on, we had more toys to play with. I even started to learn to make my own outfits to wear on our play-dates, just to keep things fresh. It was great! You remember, right? I'm sorry, though, but something along the way just started getting kind of weird.

I'd like to say, "it's not you, it's me", but honey, it's not. Your need to have more and more just got far too strange for me. Five-way was strange enough with everyone trying to figure out what they're supposed to do, but then it was all about the ten-way. And that was kind of invigorating, but, well, you know, ten people is hard to keep track of. It's hard to know who's doing what, but we all have to kind of stick together anyway. I thought I could leave it at that and get used to it, but it just wasn't enough for you, was it?

It's never enough, god damn it! I give and I give and I give! And what about MY needs?! Eliza Gauger

Dear World of Warcraft [Aeropause]