SubscribeElsewhere on NoobGibs: Age of Conan | Guild Wars | RuneScape | LOTR Online | StarCraft | EverQuest | PotBS | Warhammer Online | Vivendi Games |
# 2 Blogger
Kotaku
Kotaku (www.kotaku.com) has great World of Warcraft news, photos, videos and more
Today
Visually Impaired Gamer Sues Sony
Stern repeatedly asked Sony for the addition of visual cues to point out destinations for gamers with "disability impaired visual processing." The suit mentions World of Warcraft and another game that, through the allowance of third-party modifications or other features, make their...
Guitar Hero, WoW & World At War Give Activision Better Than Expected Q3
Activision Blizzard had kind words for the Guitar Hero and Call of Duty franchises, which apparently many of you bought over the last three months, helping Acti-Blizz zoom past its projected $700 million quarter. CEO Robert "Bobby" Kotick pointed to "positive audience response to Acti...
Yesterday
I Clothe Gamers
I wanted to make clothing inspired by our lifestyle, one of video games, pen and paper gaming, geek culture, giant robots, comics and dragons," Gailey says of the origins of J!NX. The clothing company has grown from a bedroom doubling as headquarters to an operation employing 21 people, o...
Wednesday, Nov 4
Blizzard Starts Selling In-Game World Of Warcraft Pets
It was only a matter of time. Blizzard has just put up a pair of in-game pets for World of Warcraft for sale on the Blizzard Store. Would you pay $10 for a Pandaren Monk or a baby Kel'Thuzad? Look for more pets to show up in the Pet Store in the coming months, and who knows? If this takes off, we could b...
Tuesday, Nov 3
World Of Warcraft "Lacks Approval" To Operate In China [Update]
Courtesy of some alleged "gross violations" of national regulations, China's General Administration of Press and Publication have ordered that World of Warcraft be suspended in the country. World of Warcraft' Faces Goverment Crackdown In China [MTV]
New UK Gaming Addiction Center Uses 12-Step Program
But, before you cry out for the blood of people who unfairly cast World of Warcraft as an insidious, addictive substance — consider that the clinic's chief executive acknowledges that the game itself isn't the problem: Mr Dudley believes treating game addiction needs a different appro...
Wednesday, Oct 28
Wolrd Of Warcraft Almost Makes PUGs Worth It
Blizzard drops details on the new dungeon and raid system for World of Warcraft, which brings with it cross-sever instancing, daily random dungeons, and special rewards for taking part in a pick-up group. New Dungeon System [World of Warcraft - thanks Joshua!]
Monday, Oct 26
Hey Blizzard, What's It Like To Make Non-WarCraft Games?
Browder doesn't believe there was any sort of conscious decision to focus on a particular — it was just a matter of the different teams at Blizzard (Diablo III, for example) getting to a point last year where they could show what they had been working on. Browder goes on to say he and Blizzard w...
Sunday, Oct 25
J!NX Aion Shirts Give You Wings
World of Warcraft clothing creators J!NX has been spreading its wings lately, introducing the first in a new line of t-shirts for NCsoft's recently-launched Aion. Check out the full J!NX Aion line at the company's website, and be sure to check out the Dungeons & Dragons page as well, b...
Wednesday, Oct 21
This Week In Video Game Comics
World of Warcraft #24 Written by Walter and Louise Simonson. Drawn by Mike Bowden and Tony Washington. Summary Via Publisher Wildstorm Entertainment:
Monday, Oct 19
Aion Wings It To The Top Of September PC NPDs
Well, Batman: Arkham Asylum slips into the top 20 at least, taking a respectable number 16 position. The two MMO titles more or less storm the charts, with Cryptic's Champions Online snagging number 3, and Aion pulling a double as the normal version rocks number 1 and the limited edition ta...
Friday, Oct 16
Free Realms Holds Halloween Spooktacular
Free Realms' Super Spooktacular runs from October 14th through November 11th, at which point everyone will give up and start playing Modern Warfare 2. The spooktacular features decorations, daily trick or treating, special seasonal mini-games, new quests, and more than 35 new costum...
Tuesday, Oct 13
World of Warcraft Players, You're Gonna Need A Battle.net Account
You just better have it done by November 11, as Blizzard will be requiring it for WoW players, not to mention future games, like StarCraft II and Diablo III. Better yet, it's easy, free and will net World of Warcraft players a virtual penguin to pal around with in-game. There's even a FAQ!!
Monday, Oct 12
WoW Movie Penned By Saving Private Ryan Scribe [Video Game Movies]
Raimi chats with MTV news about being faithful to the source material and presenting characters and settings that will be familiar to World of Warcraft players, while still delivering an original story. That's where Robert Rodat comes in.
Tuesday, Sep 1
Borderlands Impressions From Texas
I'd already tried Borderlands in New York earlier this summer, on the second floor in a Brooklyn warehouse where, below, people hired by the game's publisher were serving slices of a roasted pig. I ran that Borderlands preview in July, comparing the game to a first-person shooter take on W...
Wednesday, Aug 26
Diablo III's Witch Doctor Conjures Up Memories, Concerns
All of this build up: this tapestry of back story, of cultural origins, of personal strife, combines to help paint a picture of a race with a rich and intriguing heritage, but once in the actual game, playing Diablo III as this warrior mystic, I found myself happily, almost mindlessly clic...
Tuesday, Aug 25
Hands-On With Cataclysm's Goblins And Worgen
Still, I can see the direction Blizzard is going in, making the starting areas for these two new races the same kind of epic experience as the Death Knight. My only worry is that rolling a Dwarf, Troll, or Gnome is going to be a great deal less appealing once Cataclysm comes out, unless Blizzar...
Sunday, Aug 23
In Defence Of Sports Games
We've gone back through old posts and read many of your complaints. Heck, they're the same complaints we often have with sports games. That an annual update promotes lazy development, that people are being charged $50 for what amounts to a roster update, etc etc.
Saturday, Aug 22
Kotaku Originals: Slim Goodbody
News Wait, Square Enix Are Sending Cheques To People? Can A Bunch Of Names Sell A Game? World of Warcraft: The Magazine Dark Void Release Void Filled, Launch Date Announced MTV: SingStar Beatles False, All-Singing Beatles: Rock Band Mode True
Friday, Aug 21
Opinion: Upcoming Blizzard Battle.Net Feature Draw From Warcraft, Xbox Live, Life
Rob Pardo came on stage to talk about Battle.Net. Launched in 1996 with Diablo, it was the first matchmaking service integrated completely into games. It's evolved with StarCraft, Diablo 2, and Warcraft 3. The service now has more players on it than World of Warcraft - 12 million to WoW's 11.5 m...
The Big Changes In WoW Cataclysm: From Spiky Racecars To Underwater Mounts
Via Mike Fahey's absurdly detailed World of Warcraft: Cataclysm liveblog, here are some of the biggest things to note about the new 2010 WoW expansion: For even more details, check out Mike Fahey's World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Liveblog. Also check out these first screenshots of Catacly...
Saturday, Aug 15
List of Warcraft Expansion Content Leaves No Rumor Unturned
MMO Champion has put together this list, saying it comes from multiple sources. One of them is a thread on Something Awful, so caveat reader. And this sort of thing almost always precedes a Warcraft expansion. • A remake of classic Azeroth
Tuesday, Jul 28
Therapist Wants Free Warcraft, Swears He's Providing Addiction Counseling
Dr. Richard Graham, a London-based psychiatrist, is so concerned about MMO addiction that he plans to provide "in-game therapy" for those hopelessly lost in the virtual world. Oh, and, he'd like Blizzard to give up some free logins.
Borderlands Preview: It Shoots Rockets!
Diablo and World of Warcraft would co-win the award for games most frequently name-checked by game developer Randy Pitchford as he explained his team's October game Borderlands at a recent event in New York City. The developers at Pitchford's Gearbox have made a cartoon-shaded first-p...
Tuesday, Jul 21
Champions Online Combat Preview: Challenge Accepted
My beef was that a lot of massively multiplayer online game developers claim that their combat is somehow fundamentally different than the usual system of point, click, cool down, then click again established in MMOs like EverQuest II and World of Warcraft. I said Cryptic's claim about C...
Friday, Jun 5
World of Warcraft Patch Adds Cat And Bear
The Horde and Alliance will both get five different designs. "Night elves can choose to change their cat and bear look at any time by visiting the barber shop and changing their character's hair color," Blizzard explains, "while tauren will be able to change which look they use by switchin...
Sunday, May 17
Peggle iPhone Micro-Review: Touching Balls Never Felt So Good
Now it's on the iPhone, and there's goes all your free time. There's something powerfully addicting about the part-pachinko, part-puzzle, part-crack downloadable game. Mercifully the short levels and basic gameplay lend themselves well to portable gaming; but you're not going to wan...
Wednesday, May 13
Blizzard's Next Online Game Is Completely Original
Dreams of World of StarCraft are dashed as a blue poster in the World of Warcraft forums confirms that Blizzard's next massively multiplayer online game is part of a brand new franchise. Blizzard going the way of SOE? [WoWBlues via WorldofWar.net]
Monday, May 4
Former Chinese WoW Operators Releasing Shameless WoW Rip-Off
Never mind that The9 have lost the contract to run World of Warcraft in China to a rival firm. They're going to compensate by releasing a new game! Which...looks a lot like World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft, Meet World of Fight [Wall Street Journal]
Sunday, Apr 26
Warcraft on an iPhone, but is It Coming to Yours?
At minimum, we can only reasonably say that there is an application out there capable of running World of Warcraft on an iPhone, and it seems to be demonstrated above. But that's a long way from "Warcraft coming to the iPhone" territory. I have emailed the spokesperson named on the Vollee/Se...
Tuesday, Apr 14
World Of Warcraft Patch 3.1 Reveals The Secrets Of Ulduar
New dungeons, dual talent specializations, user interface improvements, and much more arrive today with The Secrets of Ulduar, patch 3.1 for World of Warcraft. For a full list of changes, check out the official patch 3.1 preview on the World of Warcraft website. For an extremely overdramat...
Tuesday, Apr 7
PETA Protests Baby Seal Clubbing In World Of Warcraft
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals would really like it if Canada would stop killing adorable little baby seals, and this weekend they're making Azeroth their battleground. This Saturday on the Whisperwind server, activists are urged to travel to the Howling Fjord zone to t...
Tuesday, Mar 31
Blizzard's April Fool's Day Spectacular
So that's two out of three. Not bad, right? Not good enough for Blizzard, however. Just as I was writing this up, the North American World of Warcraft page updated with the new PVP Dance Battle system, complete with custom user interface and crew-based tournaments.
Saturday, Mar 21
Vin Diesel Salutes British Host's Level 80 Wife
Diesel appeared on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, an entertainment/interview program (fine, programme, happy?) on BBC One. The tables get turned rather quickly when Ross asks Diesel about his gaming origins. Vin's spoken about this before, but it seems he also had a Dungeons & Dra...
Friday, Feb 27
K2
A Brief History of Getting Knocked Up In Video Games by AJ Glasser Fear And Loathing Down Under No, World Of Warcraft Has Not Been Banned In Australia by Luke Plunkett You're Fired by Brian Ashcraft Obsessive Game Design From Warcraft Obsession to Game Creation
Five Uses For This Wrath of the Lich King Art Book [Book Review]
The Cinematic Art of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King is published by Insight Editions and is already available on Amazon (despite the press release saying it won't be out ‘til March 11). The book retails for $29.95 – which is pretty cheap as coffee table books go.
Thursday, Feb 5
Opinion: No, World Of Warcraft Has Not Been Banned In Australia
So relax! World of Warcraft isn't banned. It's still on sale, it's game cards are still on sale, and if past experience with video games law and government policy in this country is anything to go on, it will be for quite some time to come.
Friday, Jan 30
The Lich King Hero Classes That Might Have Been [Wrath Of The Lich King]
The Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack flooded the World of Warcraft serves with Death Knights, but it might not have wound up that way had one of the other two hero classes that made the final cut had been chosen.
Friday, Jan 2
Metacritic's Best And Worst of 2008 [Metacritic]
Dud Homie Rollerz PC 1. Fallout 3 2. Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor 3. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King 4. Grand Theft Auto IV 5. World of Goo
Tuesday, Dec 23
World Of Warcraft MMO Gaming Mouse Review: Single-Minded Excellence
The World of Warcraft MMO Gaming Mouse. was co-developed by Steel Series and Blizzard, manufactured by Steel Series. Retails for $99.99. Used mouse as PC mouse for a week, played countless hours of World of Warcraft during testing period, creating multiple profiles.
Thursday, Dec 4
Wrath Of The Lich King Review: We Come From The Land Of The Ice And Snow
Last month, the World of Azeroth got a great deal larger as Blizzard released the second expansion for World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King. Wrath of the Lich King does what an MMORPG expansion should, adding tons of new content and refreshing the sense of wonder that drew players to Wor...
Friday, Nov 14
Composing The Soundtrack To Blizzard's World
Put together by the team behind the popular Eminence concert series, Echoes of War is, as the name suggests, the soundtrack to Blizzard Entertainment. Not the soundtrack to a single game. The soundtrack to the developer, and (almost) all the game’s they’ve ever put out. Warcraft. World of Wa...
Monday, Nov 10
Best Buy New York Lich King Bash - Now With Morhaime
With more than 11 million subscribers, World of Warcraft is the most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game in the world. Wrath of the Lich King is the game’s second expansion. For more information on the game visit www.WorldofWarcraft.com.
Friday, Oct 24
EA, LucasArts Have Sights Set On WoW's Userbase [The Old Republic]
“When World of Warcraft came out, everybody thought, ‘No, the market is only this big, because that’s as big as EverQuest was.’ Blizzard showed that it could be much larger. Our goal is to show that by bringing storytelling to the genre that we can attract an even wider audience. Plus, we have t...
Wednesday, Oct 22
Star Wars: The Old Republic – What We Know So Far
The bottom line is that BioWare knows what makes an MMO good – they’ve played World of Warcraft, they’ve at least heard of Warhammer (y’know, being a new EA partner and all). They want to put the stuff in there that will attract MMO gamers.
Friday, Oct 17
World Of Warcraft Movie Isn't Dead
It's been years since we first heard of Blizzard's plans to make a movie out of WoW. In that time a bunch of game movies have come, disappointed and faded away, and still we have no WoW movie. So what's the deal? Has it been Starcraft Ghosted? Nope. Turns out the project's just been moving along at...
Tuesday, Oct 14
SteelSeries' WoW Mouse Isn't Screwing Around
SteelSeries doesn't screw around when it comes to making computer gaming peripherals. At BlizzCon 2008 this past weekend they unveiled a World of Warcraft branded gaming mouse that could very well be the most feature-packed pointing device I've ever laid my hands on. The World of Warcraf...
Monday, Oct 13
Blizzcon 2008 Round-Up [BlizzCon 2008]
Diablo III Playable On BlizzCon Floor, New Class Reveal Inside The BlizzCon 08 Swag Bag Diablo III's Third Class - The Wizard! StarCraft II Single Player Is A Trilogy! The Best Of Blizzard - Retro Arcade The Obligatory BlizzCon 2008 Cosplay Post World Of Warcraft: The Bean Bag Game
World Of Warcraft: The Bean Bag Game [BlizzCon 2008]
The foks at J!nx are absolutely brilliant. Wanting to bring something other than hats, shirts, and gurgling murlocs to the BlizzCon 2008 party, they've come up with a way to combine all the competition of a PVP arena with the carnival fun of tossing bean bags through holes, the J!nx PVP Aren...
Sunday, Oct 12
Invade Stormwind? You and What Arm— oh, That One
Better yet? He's going to spend another $1,500 on 36 copies of Wrath of the Lich King so his army of level 80 Shamans can start pounding down Stormwind and Ironforge on day one. Here's the class picture. Prepared the 36 Boxer World of Warcraft [Dual Boxing.com via Ripten]
Tuesday, Sep 23
Resistance 2 Brings MMO Sensibilities to the World of Shooter Coop
And it's not just because the developer feels they hit it out of the ballpark with the game's single-player experience, or that they think their game offers the deepest multiplayer competitive mode around. It's also because the game's cooperative mode, which seems to tap into the dungeo...
Monday, Aug 25
StarCraft II: Hands-On With The Zerg
Blizzard's set up at Games Convention this year was identical to the last — one half dedicated to World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, the other to StarCraft II. What had changed, rather dramatically, was how StarCraft II played, with massively rebalanced Terran and Protoss forces,...
Friday, Aug 22
Opinion: Runes Of Magic - More Than A WoW Clone
Dynamic Dungeons: Certain dungeons in Runes of Magic will be dynamically generated, meaning that you will go inside and gain treasures, come out, and the next time you enter the dungeon layout and treasures have completely changed.
Thursday, Aug 14
WoW Gold Site Advertises With Gnome Corpses
In the cutthroat world of World of Warcraft gold sales, a company has to try pretty hard to stand out, especially in the face of companies like IGE. I suppose we at least have to give MMOInn.com credit for originality following the herd. A reader name Joe logged into Ironforge this morning to be...
Wednesday, Aug 13
BlizzCon 08 Panels Announced, Expect New Diablo III Classes There
Diablo III – Lore and Art StarCraft II Gameplay StarCraft Lore StarCraft II Art World of Warcraft Class Design World of Warcraft PvP World of Warcraft Art World of Warcraft Dungeons & Raids World of Warcraft UI and Mods Blizzard Cinematics Blizzard Sound and Music
Friday, Aug 8
WoW Celebrates The Olympics - New Tabard, Pet
From now until August 25th, anyone who participates in a full battleground will receive the nifty ring-themed tabard. The pet, modeled after Olympic dragon mascot Sooty the Air Pollution Dragon, who I just made up, is randomly awarded to players who are on the winning team of a battlegrou...
Thursday, Jul 31
Gigantique Sacks and Lovin' On Squirrels: All About WoW Achievements
We now know that World of Warcraft will get achievements added in when the Wrath of the Lich King expansion comes, and when we sat down with Blizzard today we got to discuss them, learning about some of the kinds of actions and behaviors that will earn you those achievements.
Wednesday, Jul 30
Warhammer Online System Requirements Revealed
So how much will World of Warcraft players have to upgrade their systems to make good on their threats of leaving the game as soon as Warhammer Online comes out? Seeing as WoW has been designed to run on an Intel Generictron processor with crap megs of ram, quite a bit, though the requirement...
Sunday, Jul 29
Opinion: Academics Like Online Gaming, Too!
According to the BBC, a new review in the journal Science shows that some academics (those wacky social scientists, to be precise) are turning to online games like World of Warcraft and Second Life as a low-cost alternative to real-life studies in a world where spendy grants are increasi...
Tuesday, Jul 24
Big Money: Joel Johnson's Guide To WoW Wealth
Don't hand your credit card over to some shady, overseas gold farming fly-by-night company. If you need gold and need it now, invest in Joel Johnson. His handy gold making tips can turn any World of Warcraft noob into an Auction House expert. In just four simple steps (give or take) and ten minu...
Friday, Jul 6
WoW: 2 People, 47 PCs, 46 WoW Accounts, No Life
You've surely heard of World of Warcraft players shunning work, family, responsibility, and drinking water for the love of the game, but if you're not up on your "dual-boxing" as I was, keep reading. Dual-boxing is act of controlling two characters in an MMO simultaneously. Of course, the...
Wednesday, May 23
WoW: Blizzard Makes Boy's Dream Come True
Fifth-grader Ezra Chatteron was diagnosed with a life-threatening brain tumor. While in the hospital, he only wanted to play World of Warcraft. It's his escape. Last fall, his father's house burned down, and insurance money was used to purchase a computer and internet access. Father-and-...
Wednesday, Dec 27
Podcast: World Of Warcraft: Happy Holidays from Blizzard
The folks over at Blizzard Entertainment put together this funny little podcast that is supposed to be a talent search for the World of Warcraft's "Twas the Night Before Wintervale." Besides plenty of WoW jokes and silliness there's also a couple of murloc carols and, finally, the finish...
Tuesday, Oct 24
Diablo 3 Hinted At By Novelist
I've been wondering forever when Blizzard would get around to making Diablo 3, simultaneously praying that they would not make it an MMORPG, which would really lose the visceral, quick thrill of Diablo 2. Well, we still don't know when they're doing it, but in a recent interview with Diabl...
Friday, Jun 23
Opinion: World Of Warcraft: WoW 1.12 - Thrilling New Patch Notes
Also on the docket is World PvP revisions, which are a little more vague. Computer and Video Games is hinting at "a brand-new type of PvP content to the game. The stage is set for intense, objective-based land battles as Horde and Alliance vie for control over important strategic positions a...
Saturday, Jan 28
World Of Warcraft: Never Get Lost in Azeroth Again, With Google Maps
As of Sunday morning, I couldn't get the resource locator to work. It had been disabled because of a huge traffic surge from Digg. Can't wait to see it back up. Man, why are they making the WoW addiction so much harder to kick? Map World of Warcraft [Site]
Wednesday, Jul 20
How To: World of Warcraft: Enter the Dupers
Slashdot has word of a newly discovered World of Warcraft explout that lets gamers duplicate their precious digital wares. The big S posts links to photographic evidence of the dupping and a neat little how-to guide for creating mounds of gold.
