Warcraft Experience

Blizzard wanted to spread the word about this…

Blizzard wishes to welcome the many adventurers starting new journeys in Azeroth this holiday season! In order to better serve our subscribers both old and new, we have temporarily extended the phone hours for our Billing & Account Services team at 800-59-BLIZZARD (800-592-5499). For a limited time, Billing Representatives are available until 9pm Pacific Time to take your calls. Our team will also be available for special Saturday hours as well, from 10am-4pm Pacific Time on Saturday, December 31st, 2005.

Isn’t that just so sweet of them to make it easier for newbs to continue to overwork and overload our existing servers? With 1.9 being a distinct possibility on Tuesday (yes, we’ve heard it before but one can only hope) let’s hope that they have systems in place to handle the stress.

A raging debate is occuring currently on whether the horde truly is evil or not. After reading the WoW Books and playing Warcraft I - III you can certainly sit on the fence on this issue.

The Horde is Evil

In the Terranova backchannel, an ugly debate (I’ve been creating most of the ugliness) has erupted over the significance of avatar choice. I’ve advanced two controversial positions: that avatar choice is not a neutral thing from the standpoint of personal integrity, and that the Horde, in World of Warcraft, is evil. Nobody agrees, but it’s been suggested that the community could chew on this a bit.

So here’s my view: When a real person chooses an evil avatar, he or she should be conscious of the evil inherent in the role. There are good reasons for playing evil characters - to give others an opportunity to be good, to help tell a story, to explore the nature of evil. But when the avatar is a considered an expression of self, in a social environment, then deliberately choosing a wicked character is itself a (modestly) wicked act.

Then when we look at WoW, it seems to me obvious that the Horde races are on the whole evil. One element of this is the fact that the words ‘troll’ and ‘orc’ and ‘undead’ have implied evil creatures for as long as those words have been in use in the English language (since the 9th century in the case of ‘orc’). No one, not even mighty Blizzard, can un-do the meaning of a word in a matter of a few years. But more importantly, all you have to do is look at the values expressed by the cultures, and it should be apparent which sets of values are worthy of praise. The human race is the only one with children, and charitable giving, for example. Orcs, on the other hand, value warfare and power. In terms of public ethics, this is a no-brainer to me, really.
So it’s been fascinating to me to see the counterarguments. For example, it was said that because Warcraft’s orcs have some noble features, and humans some ugly features, the two races are ethically equivalent. And there were many other, similar arguments, which to me have had very little merit.

Read the rest of the article and join the debate!

Spotted an article over at mmorpg.com today which looks at the Burning Crusade expansion due later this year and talks about some of the features, etc. available to players.

This loot list is dedicated for helping you gear up your warrior/rogue as best as possible. This list includes all loot up to, but not including, the current (1.6) end-game content (Molten Core, Onxyia, ect…). Have fun!

http://www.geocities.com/nebk316/RLL/Rogue_Loot_List_v1.html

Boy you learn something new every day. I didn’t realize that WoW was licensed in China. Thanks Gaming Steve for clearing that up.

World of Warcraft China Examined

Considering all the recent talk on how World of Warcraft actually functions in China I thought it would be interesting to take a much closer look at this little understood topic.

First and foremost it’s important to understand that Blizzard doesn’t actually run World of Warcraft in China. They have licensed WOW China to the company The9 which is one of the leading online game operators in China. In addition to running WOW, The9 also run several other MMORPGs including “MU”, “Mystina Online”, “Granado Espada”, and “Joyful Journey West”. I’m sure that most of you probably haven’t even heard of some of these games but they are extremely popular I assure you.

Just to give you an idea of how popular MMORPGs are in Asia and China the game “MU” first launched in February 2003 and very shortly reached a player base of over 15 million registered users. MMORPGs are a huge business overseas and completely dwarf the American and European MMORPG market. Even your “average” MMORPGs in Asia have over a million registered users (meanwhile Everquest is proud of having nearly 500,000 users at their peak).

The9 and Blizzard launched WOW in China on June 7, 2005 and in less than one month the game exceeded 1.5 million paying players and continues to grow at an breakneck rate. Financial analysts expect WOW China to easily reach over 10 million registered users if not more.

Read more… »

For all of you corpse camping/pvpin’ nuts out there check out the ultimate “how to” guide.

http://strategy.worldofwar.net/strategy.php?id=53

World Of Warcraft Enchantrix V3.2.0.617 Mod
Enchantrix is an addon that provides your tooltips with additional information on the elements and quantities that a particular item will disenchant into. This plugin is primarily for enchanters to see whether they should buy an item based upon what it will disenchant to.

Battle to the death against mighty warriors in this Flash game. Fight your way to the top for fame, fortune and most importantly honor. Features include 8 characters to play with, a slew of monsters to slay. A quickfight mode and a full fledged story mode. Try it Now!