World of Warcraft Message Board older than one year ago

The day has come. Pack your children into a suitcase, sell the dog, flee to the countryside and put all your energy into growing giant marrows. The end times are coming. The Great Doom has begun. The last bastion has fallen.

World of Warcraft now allows you, in a roundabout sort of way, to officially swap real money for in-game gold.(more…)

#fineart Like another man who has done such fine work for Blizzard, Mathias Verhasselt, Chris Thunig is here for one reason and one reason only: his amazing landscape paintings for Diablo III, StarCraft II and World of Warcraft. More »

#worldofwarcraft Poor Perolex. More »

#forza I love it when games are inspired by games that are nothing like them. Take sports games, and how they're up to their eyeballs in RPG mechanics like character creation and levelling. Or driving games. More »

#magicka There's a new piece of downloadable content for PC co-op shooter (spellcaster?) Magicka called the "Gamer Bundle". Normally I don't look twice at a pack offering mere player skins, but these are no mere player skins. More »

#fineart Mathias Verhasselt works at Blizzard. As a concept artist, yes, but he also does one of my favourite things in both cinema and games: Matte paintings. More »

#worldofwarcraft The family that games together stays together. Or so the Santellana family believes, having traded in family outings for nights spent roaming Azeroth on their matching mounts. More »

After just five issues, the official World of Warcraft Magazine is calling it quits. Future US has posted a notice on the website, and subscribers can either get a refund for the issues they didn't receive, or a voucher for six in-game World of Warcraft pets. Future recommends subscribers who want to keep up with the game in a dead tree format can subscribe to its PC Gamer publication, and it's possible Blizzard may try to publish something itself, though there are apparently no plans for that yet.

It's kind of a shame -- the WoW Magazine did offer a lot of solid coverage about the game (and some good looks inside the workings of Blizzard's Irvine, CA campus), but the publication was also torn between its status as an official outlet and a separate press entity. Dan Amrich, the magazine's first editor-in-chief (who left even before the first issue was published, and is now working as an official Activision blogger) recently wrote about some of the troubles he had dealing with Blizzard's licensing department and their control over the magazine.

When you combine that with the fact that MMO fans tend to prefer digital over analog, then apparently the whole venture just wasn't worth it. Like we said, shame.

#canada Last week, Rogers Cable and Telecom, Canada's largest cable provider, admitted that its network monitors may "inadvertently" throttle traffic of customers playing online games. "Inadvertently" or otherwise, Canada's telecommunications regulator has told Rogers to knock it off. More »

#worldofwarcraft Having your World of Warcraft account compromised is a terrible thing which, upon discovery, might seem like the end of the world. Do not despair. Instead, press play and let the soothing British narrators of Blizzard customer service lull you gently to sleep. More »

Blizzard will release six "proven property" titles over the coming three years, Activision Blizzard COO Thomas Tippl said at the Citi 2011 Technology Conference. Tippl named five of these six expected releases: Two World of Warcraft expansion packs, two StarCraft 2 titles and Diablo 3. Tippl also pinned a Diablo 3 expansion as the possible sixth title. Blizzard said it is immediately focused on updates for Cataclysm, releasing Diablo 3 and finishing StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm.

It would satisfy our OCD if these six games would release two-a-year at six-month intervals for three years, and it would satisfy our ADHD if all six titles dropped on the same day, but Tippl didn't provide any more specific dates. Titan, the mysterious next-gen MMO from Blizzard, wasn't mentioned, but it's not a "proven" property and could still launch in its rumored timeframe of late 2013.

#blizzard Do you love Blizzard games? Any of them? The new Blizzard Music site, launched today, lets you listen to snippets of every song on the official soundtracks for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, StarCraft II, Diablo II and so much more. More »

#diabloiii Up on stage at the Citi 2011 Technology Conference last week, Activision Blizzard COO Thomas Tippl told attendees that over the next three years there should be six "proven property" releases from Blizzard. More »

Blizzard will release six "proven property" titles over the coming three years, Activision Blizzard COO Thomas Tippl said at the Citi 2011 Technology Conference. Tippl named five of these six expected releases: Two World of Warcraft expansion packs, two StarCraft 2 titles and Diablo 3. Tippl also pinned a Diablo 3 expansion as the possible sixth title. Blizzard said it is immediately focused on updates for Cataclysm, releasing Diablo 3 and finishing StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm.

It would satisfy our OCD if these six games would release two-a-year at six-month intervals for three years, and it would satisfy our ADHD if all six titles dropped on the same day, but Tippl didn't provide any more specific dates. Titan, the mysterious next-gen MMO from Blizzard, wasn't mentioned, but it's not a "proven" property and could still launch in its rumored timeframe of late 2013.

#pc In March, Canadian gamers were upset to learn that World of Warcraft traffic was being throttled by Rogers Cable and Telecom, the country's largest broadband provider. Now the company has admitted that other games' online traffic might trip its pipeline monitors and result in their throttling, which Rogers called "inadvertent." Canadian gamers do not accept that answer. More »

World Of Warcraft lead Tom “Kalgan” Chilton has been talking to PC Gamer about the recent decline in World Of Warcraft subs, which are down to 11.4m worldwide compared to a 12m high. What is interesting, however, is his citing of “complexity” as a reason why PCs might be “re-emerging” as a platform, suggesting he sees a shift in developer attention back keyboard-baring beast.

“In a lot of ways I see the PC as potentially a re-emerging sort of platform,” said Chilton. “I think that the PC has always offered ways to approach games that you can’t necessarily approach on console, even if it’s just because of UI restraints. Keyboard and mouse opens up options that you can’t get replicate as easily with a controller in RTS games like Starcraft 2. If you look at the way we do an MMO like World of Warcraft, our communication method and all that kind of stuff, it kind of implies a level of UI complexity that would be really hard to pull off on console.” Chilton’s focus on the PC has been continuous, of course, but it’s interesting to see so many developers now expressing this sentiment. (Basically: Devs are so hot for hotkeys.)

Back in 2010, World of Warcraft hit a high of 12 million subscribers. But the company's most recent stats showed that the game has since lost 600,000 gamers. With so many free-to-play games on the rise, some have wondered if WoW's best days are behind it...

#speakuponkotaku In today's thrilling episode of Speak Up on Kotaku, commenter Vezroth explains why people need to stop getting angry when every other massively multiplayer online game in the world is compared to World of Warcraft. More »

#worldofwarcraft Earlier today we walked you through how you can combine the best looking armor you have with the best performing to make something that's the best of both. More »

#worldofwarcraft It's been an eventful Gamescom for Blizzard so far, with fresh details on Diablo III and the end of Deathwing in the works, but what about the question on every World of Warcraft player's mind? What is Mists of Pandaria? More »

#worldofwarcraft Soon hardened World of Warcraft players will have a chance to take on Deathwing in a Cataclysm-shaking end fight. More »

#diablo More »

#worldofwarcraft In World of Warcraft a legendary item is a piece of equipment of extreme rarity and power, a virtual status symbol for those that harness its powers. In SteelSeries gaming mouse parlance, legendary means cheaper with less buttons. More »

#diablo Blizzard really thinks you should get with the times. There's really no reason why an always-online Diablo III should shock you, Blizzard VP of Online Technologies Robert Bridenbecker says in an interview with MTV Multiplayer More »

#wow World of Warcraft's player numbers have been stalled since late 2008, and in decline for most of 2011. That's the bad news for the game's developers, Blizzard. More »

#wow With Blizzcon only a few months away, a trademark filing has surfaced hinting at what could be one of the last big hurrahs for the ageing MMO. More »

#diablo Our own Michael McWhertor spent the better part of a day last week meeting with Blizzard and playing through a healthy chunk of Diablo III. More »

It's no secret that Blizzard has struggled over the years with World of Warcraft and its various players/illicit sources making money off items featured in the game. Be it gold farmers in China, dudes selling swords on eBay, or whatever else, the demand for the sweetest of loot is high enough to where people are willing to plunk down actual cash money to get it.

Now, it sounds like Blizzard has figured out how to get in on the action.

GIANT BOMB GOT THE HOTTEST DIABLO III AUCTION HOUSE SCREENS CLICK HERE FOR THE AWESOME HOTNESS IT'S SO HOTTTT!!!

Blizzard today officially unveiled its plans for item transactions within the world of its upcoming action RPG, Diablo III. Similar to World of Warcraft, players will be able to use in-game gold to put items they collect up for sale via an in-game auction house--unlike WoW, however, they will also be able to put up items for cold, hard cash.

The system uses the same player-to-player auction model as the gold-based auction house, but, you know...for money. Each region will have its own respective currency, and players who sell items will have the option to keep the money in their Battle.net account for future transactions, or cash out entirely via a currently unknown third-party provider.

How does Blizzard make money on this whole process? By taking "nominal" fees, evidently. Blizzard will take a flat fee from the sale price of every transaction, and will also take a fee if you opt to cash out.

The question of the legality of such a system does immediately present itself, especially given the American government's recent crackdown on similar systems employed by online poker sites. Granted, those companies were skirting US law by using offshore companies to house and transfer players' funds, but Blizzard's system does seem on the bleeding edge of what the government is generally okay with when it comes to online fund transfers. In speaking to Joystiq, Blizzard's Rob Pardo did have an explanation for how they plan to try and keep this all above board.

If there's a legal issue at all, it's likely in the "cash out" option. Blizzard is transferring some of the responsibility to the third-party provider and, in order to do that, players will need to choose, right away at time of sale, whether they want to keep the money in Battle.net, or take it out to cash with that extra percentage fee going to the third-party provider. Any money left in the system needs to stay there. Players won't be able to cash it out at any point in the future, except by buying Blizzard products and services. "We're not a bank," says Pardo. "We don't want to deal with all of those additional regulations. So that's going to be the responsibility of our third-party payment provider."

That Joystiq preview features a much longer conversation with Pardo that makes for fascinating reading if you want to learn about how Blizzard plans to make this whole scheme work.

Gotta ask it: How many of you out there would use a system like this? Are you "hardcore" enough to pay cash for the sweetest of loots? Or is in-game gold more-than-sufficient for your play style?

#andersbehringbreivik One week after 77 died in two attacks carried out by a militant extremist in Norway, two retailers have temporarily pulled copies of World of Warcraft and several Call of Duty games from shelves, citing their ties to the accused killer's manifesto. More »