"In the end, there is just no point."

Greg Tito writes today about griefing in mmorpg (World of Warcraft) for The Escapist. A both humorous and interesting read, about the tale of his level 29 night elf that met a level 60 tauren. I'm sure many of you will feel similarities with his situation...

dood, it's part of the game
the daedalus project

Der Brennende Kreuzzug

Also, Blizzard have released a trailer featuring scenes from the expansion, it got some very distinct resemblances to another movie I know.

Exploration the Movie - Blizzard version

The Burning Crusade

Blizzcon video streams

I've come across a couple of pages from a german magazine and a english magazine, featuring details about the World of Warcraft expansion. Trying to upload them right now to my blog seems futile because bloggers image servers seems down, but I'll post them asap when they're up again.

Also, don't forget about the Combat'05 today here at the University of Gotland.

Blizzcon video streams
Combat '05

Update: The Burning Crusade

Oh no! More Blood Elves

I got no clue about where these pictures are from, but it's supposedly screenshots of the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, featuring Blood Elves. As I stated earlier, it's highly unlikely that one of the new playable races will be Blood Elves, but it's a huge possibility for them to be in the expansion as NPCs.

Two lovely pictures of Karazhan:

Pictures of Blood Elves:
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13

World of Warcraft - Fake expansion?

BlizzCon (28-29th october) is getting closer for everyday that pass by and the revelation of the expansion for World of Warcraft is going to be at that event. Apprently with it so close at the door, someone felt to post a couple of fake pictures for the upcoming expansion. You can see those below:

These two pictures were posted before those you see above, and they are among the reasons why I believe they're all fake:
Notice in this picture that it says "Four races comprise the horde" and the icon of the Blood Elf is completly red. Also for some reason this picture was censored by someone.

Now in this picture you'll see the icon of Pandaren and Blood Elf is booth differently from any of the previously pictures, also if you zoom in and look at them, they look more 3D than painted, supposedly screenshots from Warcraft III. And the position of male/female icons are all different in these three pictures. In the first picture it says "the brtutal orc", a spelling mistake that isn't in the game. Also, consider the Blood Elf start armor in the first picture, I thougth they should have start weapons and a unique background for each character?

Though the architecture among the first three pictures looks really like they're in fact in-game and that would be pretty hard to fake. We can conclude that all character creation pictures are all fakes, and the new race will most probably not be blood elf and pandaren, but the three pictures supposedly from in-game may be real, we'll know for sure in ten days from now.

Illidan is wating for you...

So now it's pretty much confirmed that Illidan will be featured in World of Warcraft as a hostile NPC in Outlands. He was featured in Nogg-aholic preview that was released over a month ago, showing his modell is in the game, and Blizzard has previously stated that the most powerful NPC in the game at the time was Illidan Stormrage. As shown below from the quest text excerp, he's waiting in Outlands, also if I remember correctly, there should be a location in Outalands called "Illidan's point" at the top of a mountain.

I guess I have to get around someday now and finish the movie, people are so excited about it that some can't even sleep or dream about it when they actually do, most of them have just been waiting for it a long time now.

Nogg-aholic preview
Comments at Warcraftmovies.com

World of Warcraft is watching you

Since a couple of patches ago, Blizzard implemented a anti-cheat check to their World of Warcraft client, and it works by checking if you are running any third party programs that are considered as cheats or hacks that gives you a advantage in the game over the other players. The way it checks if your using such a program is by every 15 seconds taking a snapshot of every titlebar that's running in the background, this includes the titles of what you currently are browsing, which movie you currently are watching, which text documents you are reading and so on. This is breaking the privacy rules for many countries in the world if the user hasn't agreed upon to let the client to check every 15 seconds. Considering World of Warcraft is the most popular mmorpg out there right now, with well over a couple of million of users world wide that is affected by this, and if this is in fact considered illegal, they could be in very severe trouble.

4.5 million copies of EULA-compliant spyware