By Alec Meer on April 23rd, 2009 at 10:44 pm.
One massively compulsive game playable within another massively compulsive game? Why, that’s like mixing Pringles with heroin. Yes, an official (from Popcap’s end, at least) Peggle plugin has been released for World of Warcraft. Which is a) terrifying b) exciting and c) supports the viewpoint that MMOs are not merely a genre anymore – they’re a platform all of their own these days.
The obvious response is “if you’re bored enough in WoW to want to go play Peggle instead, you should probably just stop playing WoW.” Which may be true, but it’s not that simple – the WoW devout like to live in WoW – it’s their internet. So this is a joyous thing – they don’t have to leave Azeroth if they want to play something else, plus it’s something to help while away those long minutes waiting for everyone to gather at the raid entrance or to cling to sanity during those oh-so-tedious cross-continental flights.
Sounds like Popcap have gone to some lengths to ensure WoWPeggle isn’t some weirdly compartmetalised hoojum of its own either – it can be used to settle loot rolls, there’s a versus mode, and there are customisable leaderboards (e.g. to create a ladder for your guild only). There’s even a special Peggle talent tree, for heaven’s sake. Aaargh…so…meta…hurts…brain.
Yes, this does signal The End Times. But it’s Peggle! Inside World of Warcraft! Also, free and available already. There’s also a similar Bejewelled plugin, which has been around for a while now – but, y’know, boring.
23/04/2009 at 22:54 Theoban says:
One day we’ll all just have computers that play World of Warcraft, and all other computer related tasks will take place within the confines of World of Warcraft.
I have to go book a flight to Germany, I’ll speak with Captain Easyjet in Orgrimmar.
29/10/2010 at 16:14 watch movies online says:
cool idea
23/04/2009 at 22:55 Darren T says:
You can use it to roll for loot?
Absolutely genius!
23/04/2009 at 23:01 Trollwind says:
This sounds cool, but I’m going to hold out for the Plants vs. Zombies plugin so I can fight zombie dolphins in the Plaguelands.
23/04/2009 at 23:03 Kulantan of Kul Tiras says:
oh dear raid wipes…..
23/04/2009 at 23:20 SuperNashwan says:
And how many peggles is the download then?
23/04/2009 at 23:37 MWoody says:
The most profitable game in the world is so boring in parts that people have to download other games to play during it. My… my head hurts. I have to go lie down.
23/04/2009 at 23:39 Colthor says:
About 0.6 peggles, I think…
Vaguely related news: Plants Vs. Zombies is pre-orderable on Steam for a meagre-seeming (for a $20 game) £7.
And you get Heavy Weapon Deluxe as a freebie for doing so. It seems a pretty fun (also rather hard, but maybe I’m just rubbish) scrolling shooter that wouldn’t have seemed out of place on the Amiga (probably in a “this is how I remember them being” rather than “this is how they were” kind of way). It also has nukes and MEGALASER!s.
23/04/2009 at 23:43 Inanimotion says:
Back in the good ol’ days of the 40man raids, me and my guildies (mostly the bored healers) would play Texas Hold’em with a plugin we had.
My guild leader tried to ban is cause we weren’t paying attention. (we just switched channels :P)
23/04/2009 at 23:47 Psychopomp says:
I WANT THIS FOR EVE DAMNIT!
I’ve just spent an hour flying around, picking up fittings for my shiny new Myrmidon!
23/04/2009 at 23:47 TheSombreroKid says:
pay a £10 subscription to play a game you can get for under a tenner! wow!
23/04/2009 at 23:49 Uglycat says:
I love Bejewelled :(
24/04/2009 at 00:02 Rinox says:
Dang! Someone should do a study on the correlation between rising deaths in gamers with addictive personalities and the release date of this…thing. Might wanna throw Facebook in the mix.
Prediction: MASSIVE SIGNIFICANCE
they are the unheard victims in all this
24/04/2009 at 00:15 Tei says:
Obligatory: yo dawg i herd u liek games u i put a game in ur game so u can play while u play
24/04/2009 at 00:15 Monchberter says:
I fully expect something similar to turn up on Steam too. Playing Popcap games after getting shot in the face by a 12 year old in Counter-Strike after ten seconds and having something to do until round end.
24/04/2009 at 00:41 kyrieee says:
@Psychopomp heard of Jita?
@Monchberter great idea : D:D:D
24/04/2009 at 00:51 x25killa says:
… Is this the most greatest evilist gaming thing that has ever been created?
24/04/2009 at 01:01 Serondal says:
This is old hat, they had Tetris inside Ever Quest WAAAAY back when.
24/04/2009 at 01:23 Dave says:
@ Colthor: thanks for the tip! There’s a zombie on my lawn, and we don’t want that.
24/04/2009 at 02:32 Ginger Yellow says:
If they make a Peggle plug-in for the Demigod matchmaking system, then I’ll be interested.
24/04/2009 at 02:41 Lukasz says:
@Tei. That’s the first time I see this joke and it is actually funny.
Yeah. Eve needs stuff like that.
24/04/2009 at 02:46 Psychopomp says:
@Kyriee
I live 57 jumps away from Jita…
Modun FTW. Nice ice, we’ve got 4 POS’s there, it’s a dead end, and no NPC stationn so it’s safe. The biggest problem is getting in and out, Sagain and Saminer are deathtraps…
24/04/2009 at 02:57 mc says:
pringles and heroin is definitely a better combination than WoW and peggle
24/04/2009 at 02:58 unique_identifier says:
one of my mates used to play EVE and Counterstrike simultaneously, in windows…
24/04/2009 at 03:47 Eamo says:
@unique_identifier
It’s not exactly hard to play EVE and something else at the same time, hell I used to sleep and play EVE at the same time.
EVE’s skill system is so scarily like progress quest that it isn’t even funny. At least progress quest you have to keep it running, EVE doesn’t matter if you have your PC turned off or if you are sitting at your PC giving the game your full attention, you gain skill level at the same boring slow rate regardless. When I found myself only logging in to EVE once every few days to start the next skill training I realised it was time to pack in my subscription.
24/04/2009 at 04:53 cjlr says:
If you need to play a game in order to keep yourself occupied (and, I can only assume, entertained) while ostensibly already playing a game… Doesn’t that defeat the point? Yes, I understand that it’s possible to use WoW or some other MMO as basically a chat client. Hell, I’ve done that on occasion. But still… Recursive entertainment?
@Tei: you beat me to it
24/04/2009 at 05:43 Chiablo says:
I don’t think I’ve played any MMO fullscreen for longer than a week. I used to watch episodes of MST3k while we were doing Naxx raids back in the day.
24/04/2009 at 06:57 Bobsy says:
Mm. I’ve known about this for ages but seeing it manifest like a terrible brain-slug is actually far more worrisome.
But no doubt this will set off the WoW despisers with self-congratulatory chin-stroking over the idea that a game could be so boring that you want to play other games while you wait.
Well notwithstanding that, as an MMO, WoW takes longer to play per session than most single-player games, WoW has plenty of “timesink” moments, where play is elongated with periods of inactivity. For heavy raiders, waiting for your goddamn offtank to get a bloody move on and get back from walking his goddamn dog can get tedious the nth time. And everyone’s got bored at some point or other travelling from A to B (especially with the current crop of irritating daily quests from the Argent Tournament).
And having Peggle in WoW isn’t actually all that new or weird. You can already have Peggle running in the background ready to alt-tab to during an idle moment. Or the BBC iPlayer. Or a dvd. Or (god forbid) posting snippy comments to Rock Paper Shotgun.
So really, this doesn’t actually change anything. It’s just… it’s Peggle.
24/04/2009 at 07:03 unique_identifier says:
@eamo: ja. when i used to play eve i would read books at the same time, but frankly reading was the more exciting of the two, so i terminated my subscription.
24/04/2009 at 07:17 Owen says:
I introduced (and thus naturally hooked) a WOW addict friend on Peggle a couple of weeks back. This combination of the two pretty much means he’ll never be seen again.
24/04/2009 at 08:08 Kompi says:
I’m not all that surprised really; seeing the amount of people who randomly stand around/fly around/show off their mounts while waiting for the next Wintergrasp/Battleground/Raid/Heroic to form, I’d say people definitely would have an interest in something to pass the time while doing so.
I fear for a day when we might end up with personal multifunction displays hovering before our eyes; seeing Bejeweled and Peggle making their way into WoW.. I can so see those driving accidents caused by cluttered MFDs that System Shock II mentioned.
24/04/2009 at 09:10 Theory says:
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/warcraft_sequel_lets_gamers_play
24/04/2009 at 09:31 Ian says:
Somebody will hopefully start talking about their Peggle success on an RP server.
24/04/2009 at 09:39 Super Bladesman says:
Why the heck would one want to play WoW, which normally involves a lot of input, and Peggle, which normally involves a lot of input, simultaneously?
EVE I could understand…
24/04/2009 at 09:46 Ian says:
I’d imagine, even aside from the people who just go on WoW for social interaction, for people waiting for groups to turn up and during longer flights between places.
24/04/2009 at 10:47 SuperNashwan says:
Bobsy beat me to it. It’s the nature of an MMO that there will be downtime waiting on other people because 25 people in one place is a lot of opportunity for unforeseen interruption. The only solution Blizzard could implement would be AI for AFK players…
24/04/2009 at 12:06 Lord Skwizzal says:
Mummy, I’m scared.
A jade goody musical, now this…….I’m losing faith in humanity by the day.
24/04/2009 at 12:14 Heliocentric says:
Level 80 Druid spec’d Bjorn Looking to run evil temple for extra balls.
24/04/2009 at 12:19 MetalCircus says:
What’s so wrong with this? I don’t understand why people think this is bad? I don’t play WoW but… hmm. Don’t understand. brain… hurts… nnngh!
24/04/2009 at 12:22 Nero says:
Holy shit. Is this the end of time as we know it? If it is, I’ll see you guys on the other side!
24/04/2009 at 12:26 DMJ says:
@MetalCircus: Rest that fevered lump of grey matter. It isn’t bad in and of itself. It’s simply that this is foretold in the Book of Revelations as a portent of the End Times.
24/04/2009 at 12:56 The Hammer says:
I have the Bejewelled add-on, but with the light of this news, I’m never using it again. Peggle all the way, baby!
24/04/2009 at 13:19 Arnulf says:
CCP really should take a page from the WoW book.
Playing Bejeweled while mining would be a godsend. Or Peggle… if they must.
But that versus mode and loot roll option, I have to admit that is a kind of integration that’s scary. Also, I’m really tempted to resubscribe.
24/04/2009 at 13:36 leelad says:
“Why the heck would one want to play WoW, which normally involves a lot of input, and Peggle, which normally involves a lot of input, simultaneously?”
Flight paths?
It’s also got a function to vanish on ready check in raids
24/04/2009 at 13:54 Bardie says:
Mmm… Heroin pringles
24/04/2009 at 14:55 theleif says:
This is a pretty old idea. My brain has melted down, but there was a Amiga game that let you play a Space Invader clone while the game was loading.
24/04/2009 at 17:17 plant42 says:
As someone else pointed out – this points out almost exactly where the game designers failed. If you need another game to play because the first one has ten minutes of down time, you might want to consider patching up that gameplay hole with something fun, reducing the wait, automating things etc… rather than stuff in another game to relive boredom.
24/04/2009 at 19:25 Serondal says:
1) Puzzle Pirates had the forsight to build their entire game around tetris like puzzles, might as well have them sign a deal with Peggle to use it for attacking land based fortress with ships ;P
2) Does this mean from now on instead of having a bunch of idiots begging to duel you all the time in towns you’ll have a thousand peggle duel requests to ignore? )sigh(
3)In Eve you should be able to play asteroids while waiting.
24/04/2009 at 20:04 mashakos says:
this is the second time my head was close to exploding. The first was when I heard about corn dogs on TV.
24/04/2009 at 22:20 Wulf says:
I’m amazed they didn’t compile the code into encrypted pub files, Blizzard style, I’m amazed that hasn’t happened actually since this is clearly some sort of licensing deal.
The end result is that, after looking over the code (which they did their best to obfuscate, but that’s only a very minor delaying tactic), I can tell you that this would be very, very easy to tamper with. I can see a bunch of people using haxed Peggles to win loot rolls, to further their own greedy ends.
Damn you, Blizzard, damn you for corrupting everything! Peggle was something pure before it landed in Warcraft, now there’ll be a mess of people arguing over whether the next WoW gamer was playing Peggle or Haggle*.
(That’s what I imagine the hacked version of Peggle is going to be called when it’s released.)
TL;DR: PopCap, get those damn games wrapped up in pub files already!
25/04/2009 at 01:15 DigitalSignalX says:
This is stunning, I had no clue you could get Heroin laced Pringles. Is it like a whole can or just the little snack pack thing in vending machines? How will this change PC gaming when Hot Pockets and Cheetos will be forced to make a competing product?
25/04/2009 at 19:34 Logo says:
Instead of jumping the shark, WoW has instead opted to bounce a peggle ball off of it.