World of Warcraft

Yeah, the Tokyo Game Show may be happening right now but that event is almost all console games. The real cool PC cats know that the place to be this weekend is BlizzCon 2008. And we can report that thanks to our friends at our sister site WoW Insider Big Download will have exclusive coverage of the events going on at the Anaheim Convention Center beginning today and ending on Saturday.

Specifically our special WoW Insider correspondents will be covering the non-World of Warcraft games that will be shown at BlizzCon. Yep, that means both Starcraft II and Diablo III will be covered on our site (and it looks like Diablo III will be playable to the public for the first time this weekend). Of course WoW Insider is your best bet for coverage of all of the World of Warcraft related news and events at the event and we want to thank the team for their help in covering BlizzCon for us. It's going to be a very cool couple of days and we hope you stick around for it.

We are just a couple of days away from the start of BlizzCon 2008 and Blizzard has been updating the official web site with more info on what will be happening at the convention on Oct 10-11 at the Anaheim Convention Center. One big development is that Blizzard will be streaming "selected" portions of its various game tournaments from the BlizzCon web site so folks who are unable to attend can at least see some of the tournament action for free.

Also, people unable to attend can enter the Original Question Contest. You can submit a Blizzard related games question and Blizzard team members will answer a select number during BlizzCon. People who have their questions selected for answering will get a prize package of BlizzCon related merchandise as well as an ATI graphics card.

If you are one of the millions and millions of World of Warcraft players around the globe you may have some concerns about if the second expansion pack for the game, Wrath of the Lich King, will run on your PC or Mac. Thankfully Blizzard's official message boards have some updated system specs for you to take a look at. Both PC and Mac versions require 15 GB of hard drive space, a keyboard and mouse for controls (multi-button mouse with scroll wheel recommended) and a broadband Internet connection (duh).

For the PC Blizzard has minimum and recommended specs for your system:

• OS: Windows XP (Service Pack 3), Windows Vista (Service Pack 1)
• Processor: Minimum : Intel Pentium 4 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlon XP 1500+ -- Recommended: Dual-core processor, such as the Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 X2
  
• RAM: Minimum - 512 MB RAM (1GB for Vista users) -- Recommended - 1 GB RAM (2 GB for Vista users)
  
• Video Card: Minimum - 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transform and Lighting with 32 MB VRAM (such as an ATI Radeon 7200 or NVIDIA GeForce 2 class card or better) -- Recommended - 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM (such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT class card or better)
• Sound: DirectX-compatible sound card or motherboard sound capability

Mac owners, here's your minimum and recommended system specs

• OS: Mac OS X 10.4.11 or newer
• Processor: Minimum: PowerPC G5 1.6 GHz or Intel Core Duo processor -- Recommended: Intel 1.8GHz processor or better
• RAM: Minimum: 1 GB RAM - Recommended: 2 GB RAM
• Video: Minimum: 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transform and Lighting with 64 MB VRAM (such as an ATI Radeon 9600 or NVIDIA GeForce Ti 4600 class card or better) - - Recommended: 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM (such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA 7600 class card or better)

We are just a few days away from the start of Blizzard's latest edition of Blizzcon and this week the event's official web site has revealed the full schedule and floor plan for the Oct. 10-11 show. The event, which is completely sold out even with $100 tickets, is being held at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California.

As you can see from the schedule, Blizzard is planning at least a couple of panels on their two upcoming announced titles, the sci-fi RTS game Starcraft II and the fantasy action-RPG Diablo III. Of course panels and events for their MMO World of Warcraft are also being held. The schedule also has the times for the various tournaments and contests and their closing ceremonies. The interactive map gives attendees the locations for all of the various stages as well as the many exhibitors.

[via WoWInsider]

Blizzard is pulling out all of the stops for their (sort of) annual Blizzcon event that's being held this weekend. They have already announced that comedians Jay Mohr and Patton Oswald will be appearing at the event at the Anaheim Convention Center in California. Now comes word that a legendary comic book artist will be there as well.

That would be Jim Lee, who first gained fame drawing The X-Men but has mostly worked for DC Comics on various projects. Lee, a major gamer, will be signing at Blizzcon on Sunday to promote DC's World of Warcraft comics (Lee handles the cover duties). Lee is currently heading up the art direction for Sony Online's upcoming DC Universe Online.

Blizzard and MDY Industries, the company responsible for a bot called Glider, have been at each others throat since 2006. Using the bot Glider, World of Warcraft players were able to send a bot out to perform simple tasks that would lead to be rewards, most notably was the ability to have the bot auto engage enemies to grind levels. Blizzard quickly reacted by filing suit against MDY Industries citing the bot was in direct violation of the end user license agreement all players must accept in order to play the game. According to BBC News the courts agree.

After winning one legal battle against MDY Industries in July 2008, Blizzard has been awarded $6 million from the bot developer in its most recent court case. Blizzard, however, may still appeal the ruling as the famed game developer expected a larger stack of money. Further litigation is planned for a January 2009 court date which is expected to resolve other issues stemming from the creation of the product.

The entire quagmire began when MDY Industries filed suit against Blizzard claiming the software giant was strong arming them from selling the $25 application for invalid reason. Wow. Someone at MDY Industries is totally firing its legal team right now.

We are just a couple of weeks away from the start of Blizzcon 2008 (to be held at the Anaheim Convention Center on Oct. 10-11) and this week Blizzard revealed more info about what will be happening at their (sort of) annual gathering of fans of their games. Comedian and actor Jay Mohr will return for his second appearance at Blizzcon as he will host the live contests. In addition, fellow comedian and actor Patton Oswald will host the closing ceremonies. That event will include a concert by Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain, a band formed by Blizzard team members.

As previously reported, DirecTV will broadcast 16 hours of live high definition footage from Blizzcon and that will be co-hosted by Spike TV's Geoff Keighley. Members of Blizzard will drop by the DirecTV broadcast during Blizzcon desk to talk about their work and the convention. They will also show a tour of Blizzard's offices and if DirecTV owners have the proper DVR they can download high-def cinematic trailers of upcoming Blizzard games. Remember if you sign up for DirecTV via the Blizzcon site by Tuesday, September 30 you can get the Blizzcon pay-per-view event for free (a $39.99 value).

There's apparently not enough stuff to do in World of Warcraft to make people happy to play in the best selling MMO so casual game maker Popcap Games is getting ready to release an add-on for the game that will allow players of Blizzard's title to play the hugely popular puzzle game Bejeweled inside the title.

Our sister site WoWinsider has a hands-on preview of the Bejeweled add-on for World of Warcraft which is scheduled to be released for free on Tuesday. The add-on, which is not officially endorced by Blizzard, will have some World of Warcraft sounds and art incorporated into the game and will even interact with World of Warcraft itself in small ways.

Blizzard's massively successful MMO World of Warcraft is usually known as a fun (and even addictive) way for tons of folks to get together, make cool characters and team up to go on raids. But a researcher who works for a military-funded university seems to believe the game and others like it could be used for terrorism.

Wired has posted up a story about this idea, which was presented by Dr. Dwight Tovas who works at the Pentagon-funded National Defense University. His idea is that terrorist groups could get together virtually in World of Warcraft and train to destroy real world targets. However, there's been no evidence that such activity has happened in the game and analyst Steven Aftergood is quoted as saying, "This concern is out there. But it has to be viewed in context. It's the job of intelligence agencies to anticipate threats and counter them. With that orientation, they're always going to give more weight to a particular scenario than an objective analysis would allow."

As predicted earlier this morning via an ad blitz, Blizzard has now officially confirmed that Nov. 13 will indeed be the release date for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, the second commercial expansion pack for the hit MMO. Not only that but a special Collector's Edition of the expansion will be released as well.

The Collector's Edition will contain the game (of course) along with a new behind-the-scenes DVD, the game's soundtrack CD, two mouse pads, two starter packs for the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game (containing two cards only found in the Collector's Editon), a 208 page art book and a new in-game pet; a baby frost wyrm named, oddly enough, Frosty.

As you can see from the image on the right the Collector's Edition will also come in special packaging (without the icicles we hope). It will sell for $69.99 as opposed to the regular edition of Wrath of the Lich King which will sell for $39.99.

[Via WoWInsider]

It's likely to be the biggest selling PC game of 2008 (sorry Spore) and now it apparently has a release date. According to an ad running on the database web site Wowhead.com, the next World of Warcraft commercial expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, is set for release on Nov. 13.

Wowhead is using the occasion to give out 10 keys to the current beta test for the expansion for the Blizzard MMO, two per day, starting today. But for most of us the news about the expansion's release date is more than enough. When you have an MMO title that now has nearly 11 million subscribers worldwide, the release of the game's second commercial expansion is going to be huge for the newly merged Activision Blizzard publisher. You also have to wonder if the publisher wasn't trying to take some of attention away from Electronic Arts' launch of Warhammer Online, which is officially launching later this week.

[Via WoWInsider]

While we wait patiently for Blizzard to deliver Wrath of the Lich King sometime before the end of the year (we hope) the main World of Warcraft game is now testing out their major new patch, 3.0.2., on their test servers. Our sister site WoWInsider has posted up the massive patch notes for this new update.

This patch is supposed to lay the foundation for the commercial release of Wrath of the Lich King and include new content features like a Harbor added to the city of Stormwind, major class revamps and more. There's no word on when the final version of the 3.0 patch will go live on the public servers.

It's your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen. According to a story on the Ocean County Register's web site the University of California at Irvine has received a whopping $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct a study centered around Blizzard's hit MMO game World of Warcraft.

Specifically the study is supposed to look into why Chinese players of the game tend to play it as is while American players tend to try to use mods to play the game. UCI informatics professor Bonnie Nardi, who will head up the study, says, "We are examining the many reasons for this disparity, including cultural and institutional factors," We will leave it to our readers to debate whether a government agency should be spending our money in this matter.

[Via Massively]

As the September 18 launch date approaches for Mythic Entertainment and Electronic Arts' long awaited MMO Warhammer Online it stands to reason that players of that massively huge MMO hit World of Warcraft might be interested in checking out the new kid on the block. Our sister site Massively has just the thing for those players in a new feature article designed for specifically for those curious World of Warcraft players.

This feature goes into detail on what World of Warcraft players can expect when Warhammer Online opens for business. Despite a surface similarity, the two games are aiming at very different kinds of gameplay and settings (for example war is happening in the Warhammer Online universe while war in World of Warcraft is a thing of the past). If you have any interest in Warhammer Online you definately should check this out.

A while back we mentioned that the DirecTV satellite TV service would be offering exclusive HD coverage of this October's Blizzcon event via pay per view. This week DirectTV announced the details on how new subscribers to the service would be able to get the Blizzcon coverage for free.

Simply put, any new DirecTV customers who sign up for the service by September 30 will be able to get the Blizzcon pay per view for free. Existing customers will have to shell out a whopping $39.95 for the same privilage. That pay per view will offer at least eight hours of HD coverage per day of Blizzard's sort of annual event on October 10-11. Anyone who orders the pay-per-view will also get a cool World of Warcraft in-game item; a polar bear mount with a murloc that waves a Blizzcon flag.