Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Oh, Blizzard and their funny April fool’s jokes. Moreover – oh, Blizzard fans and their tendency to turn said April fool’s gags into a big deal. This time, someone’s actually made one of the gags flesh. Well, pixels. Blizz’s 2008 rib-tickler was the promise of a console version of WoW – only it was an Atari 2600. World of Warcraft: The Molten Core would, they promised, offer lush 2D graphics and the ability to move in any of 8 directions. Giggles!

Now Gamer’s University have only gone and made the bally thing.
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Do forgive me yet another World of Warcraft post, but, as tends to be the case with that all-consuming MMO, I haven’t really had the chance to play much else this last week. My thoughts on Lich King so far are appearing as a series of review diaries on IGN UK ahead of the review proper, and they lobbed the first one up today. Here, though, I want to talk about a very specific aspect of WoW. Over the weekend, you see, I attended my first ever in-game wedding. Aw.
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What? How? Why? The fricking thing only went on sale yesterday, and already one player’s managed to ding level 80. I’ve been playing most of today, having arduously just hit level 71 a moment ago, and even that’s enough to make my eyes scream and my brain weep. 80?
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Today, as most of the internet is all-too aware, is Wrath of the Lich King release day. I’ve been playing it for far too many hours now, despite having sworn at least eight times over the last few years that I would never, ever, ever, ever, ever play World of Warcraft again.
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How many zombies does it take to make a meme? How many zombies is too many zombies? And why is every game suddenly obsessed with them? Well, even more so than usual.

It certainly seems like the en vogue way to drum up renewed interest in a game right now – no less than three usually non-zombie-centric titles have made the headlines in the last few days thanks to a little unexpected undeadery.
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Edit: Blizzard confirm 13th November, full press release and collector’s edition details after the cut.

It’s been in beta for what feels like forever, but finally it seems we might have a release date for the next World of Warhammercraft expansion. 13th of November, apparently.

Which is rather interesting specifically because it’s relatively hot on the heels of WAR. Which means the world will very much have decided if Mythic’s rival is for them by that point. Will WoTLK have its thunder roundly stolen, or will dispossessed WAR early-adopters flee back to Blizzard’s familiar arms en masse? With WAR’s global headstart kicking off today, we’ll know very soon.

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If you’ve been following the 200+ comments in the thread below our recent discussion of our experiences in the Warhammer Online closed beta, you’ll have spotted that a vocal minority of the WAR community, having made their way here thanks to a link on the warhammeronline.com frontpage, are absolutely furious with us. All those that were simply critical remain, but there were at least another 50 abuse-filled tirades we deleted, consisting of the usual expletives, judgements about our intelligence and sexuality, and a surprising amount of racism towards the British. It’s true: we do drink a lot of tea.

Whether expressed politely or furiously, there were three or four central complaints about what we said – but one stands above them all.
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High-scores are adaptive creatures. They diminished in importance for a while, back when arcades were dwindling but home consoles/computers were isolated, offline devices, but with the rise and rise of broadband reinstating gaming’s social heritage, folks’ odd obsession with proving themselves more skilled than friends and strangers has come back with a vengeance.

So it’s no surprise that Blizzard, who are either the Apple or Microsoft of gaming depending on how you look at it, would get in on gamerscore mania.
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You may remember that, some months ago, there was a legal barney between the WoW creators and the bloke behind Glider, a bot application he sold for a few quid to people who couldn’t be arsed to grind/gold farmers/no-handed folk/delete as applicable. We did a silly little vote on the thing, but clearly the real decision was in the hands of some judge who doesn’t play MMOs. Short answer: Blizzard wins round one.

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This is possibly best saved for The Sunday Papers, but seeing as we’ve been nattering about Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning lately anyway, I reckoned it was worth its own post. If you’re an active follower of WAR you’ll already be aware of this, but those less ingrained in MMO society can roll their eyes at this startling storm in a teacup.

MMO site Massively.com recently ran an interview with Richard Bartle, co-creator of the Multi-User Dungeon system, the concept that essentially birthed the MMOs. He’s more theorist and author than developer these days, but MMOs remain his major subject matter. And though he may not be making the things anymore, he can still stir up controversy.
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