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Korean pro Warcraft player says 'zug-zug' to a half-million dollar contract
Korean professional gamer Jae Ho "Moon" Jang has signed a three-year, $486,500 contract to play with WeMade FOX in the Korean gaming leagues. His manager is working on introducing more quality players as there "aren't many first-class players in Korea." Um, if you're, like, really good at Warcraft/StarCraft ... now's the time to start learning Korean.Best part: Jang isn't even the highest paid professional Korean player, just the highest paid Warcraft player. Top billing goes to his WeMade FOX teammate, Yoon Yeoi "NaDa" Lee, who signed a contract for $521,250 to play StarCraft back in 2007. Wow.[Via VG247]
Beyond the Game examines the lives of Warcraft III players
This isn't about World of Warcraft, but it will be familiar to some of you who spent hours building up bases and creating Spirit Towers. Beyond the Game is a new documentary from the Netherlands about two world-famous Warcraft III players and how the game has affected their lives and the people around them. It looks intriguing -- having been to a few gaming tournaments and interviewed a few of the top players myself, I agree that these guys are living some really strange lives. Even if you're not a Warcraft III player, this kind of esports is getting more and more popular around the world (from the old Counterstrike to WoW's Arenas, of course), and even though it hasn't quite hit the mainstream yet, more and more players are finding this kind of existence.The film is set to be released in parts of the EU mid-March, and is being shown at a few gaming tournaments in various places around the world. There's no word on a US or DVD release yet, but we'll keep an eye out for it.
BlizzPlanet reviews upcoming Arthas novel
One of the Warcraft novels I've actively been looking forward to is Arthas, Rise of the Lich King. It's set to be released to the world on April 21, 2009 but BlizzPlanet.com has gotten its hands on a few bound galleys of the book early. Some of them are being given away, but he's also reading one on his own and has gifted us with a quick review.The review makes the book sound incredible, though perhaps a bit too cluttered. The novel is roughly 300 pages in length (I believe) and the first 100 pages covers his childhood from the arrival of the Stormwind refugees in Lordaeron to the beginning of Warcraft III. That covers about fourteen years, and that's potentially a lot of territory to cover!
Tips from the manual
Guynumber from Area 52 brings up a good point: why did Blizzard even bother putting game information in their original manual? Surely, they must have known that they'd be changing the game quickly, and while of course they'd have had no more idea than we had that some things so big would change (no ammunition, anyone?), they could have at least kept in mind that patches were coming.Curious, I pulled out my old original manual. Here's some tips straight from the original release of World of Warcraft, when Magister's Terrace was a twinkle in a dev's eye, and Icecrown was just a level in Warcraft III, that aren't applicable any more: Pallies are only available to Alliance races and Shamans are Horde only. As Guymember points out, the manual says you will lose significant experience on death (but not so much as to lose a level). Only the Priests, Shamans and Paladins have resurrection spells. Attack Rating increases your chance of hitting a target with a weapon. As a first level priest, your maximum skill level in holy magic is five. As you cast holy spells, your holy skill will max out until you level up and the cap increases.
Hi Arthas! Want some help slaughtering the innocent?
A guildmate of mine was healing a Culling of Stratholme run last night and finally broached a question that seems to have occurred to everyone who's helped Arthas take his utilitarian moral perspective on the road: "Why are we helping this guy?"It's a question that people used to ask about Black Morass a lot too (indeed, the first boss, Chrono Lord Deja, will ask you that himself), but Black Morass was a little more cut-and-dried. Medivh unquestionably cost many lives in bringing the first Horde through his portal, but if the orcs never set foot in Azeroth, then the world would have fallen to the Legion. The Bronze Dragonflight is unusually blunt about the cause-and-effect; war breaks out among the human kingdoms, the Alliance never occurs, the new Horde is not present at Hyjal to defend against Archimonde's forces -- indeed, the Legion may very well have swept the world without Hyjal ever occurring. So, despite the destruction wrought by the first Horde's entry into Azeroth (and you could argue, because of it), Medivh must succeed in opening the portal.I'm not sure it's quite that straightforward with "Old Strat" -- and questions about whether it is prompt some thought-provoking questions concerning Azeroth's past, present, and future.
Ask a Lore Nerd: What's coming our way?
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week Alex Ziebart answers your quests about the lore in the World of Warcraft. If you have any questions, no matter how big or small they might be, ask them in the comments section below and we'll try to answer it in a future edition.On this very special edition of Ask a Lore Nerd, we're going to look into the future, at what's to come in Wrath of the Lich King. There's a lot on the horizon, and a lot of questions about what's to come. We're going to try to be light on spoilers, but give some idea of what's going down.Yeah yeah, so there's a Troll zone, we learn the origins of Humanity, we meet some Tauren relatives, there's some junk about Dwarven royalty and all of that crap. Who cares? What about the Gnomes? Where's the Gnome lore!?
Gametrailers.com's Warcraft Retrospective continues
The second part of Gametrailers.com's Warcraft Retrospective has gone up, and it's no less fun and informative than the first. Picking up right where it left off, the second part starts with Warcraft III, following the ascension of some of the most well known Blizzard employees such as Rob Pardo, Chris Metzen, and Samwise Didier, not to mention the company and Warcraft series as a whole.This edition of the series focuses a lot more on one specific game than the first edition, and there's not necessarily anything wrong with that. Warcraft III changed a lot about the RTS genre and whether that's a good thing or not is up to the individual. It changed how you managed your units, your base, and your resources, making units more important than just canon fodder. That was especially true when it came to the hero units that now highlight World of Warcraft. This retrospective also goes into the infamous DOTA before it steps up to The Frozen Throne, so if you've no idea what that crazy Europop video is all about, you'll find out!
Christie Golden drops more info about Arthas
BlizzPlanet has a nice tidbit from Christie Golden about her upcoming novel about Arthas Menethil (better known as half of the Lich King, that bad guy we're going to be spending a lot of time with in the expansion). The book is due out next year (so odds are that we'll be approaching the end of the story by the time it hits store shelves), but it'll offer a look at the bad guy way before he started being bad -- the book starts with Arthas as a 10-year-old Prince, and covers everything between there to his little meltdown we witnessed in Warcraft III. The romance with Jaina is supposed to get some good coverage as well, so the book should be a good read.And there are some bonuses for close readers as well -- we'll have seen some scenes before (including one between Arthas and Muradin in Beyond the Dark Portal), but of course, in this book, they'll be from Arthas' perspective. Arthas is undoubtedly the villian of the next ten levels in WoW (they even named the thing after him), but it's really exciting to have a villian with such an interesting and twisted past behind him.
Blizzard retains PC gaming dominance
As if in response to predictions of the beginning of the end, Blizzard's market dominance in US PC game sales was reaffirmed in late August through the NPD Group's research. In fact, World of Warcraft garnered three of the top spots on the PC game sales chart, with The Diablo Battle Chest and The Warcraft III Battle Chest thrown in for good measure, Gamesindustry.biz reports. While it could be argued that World of Warcraft's steady retail box sales silences all erroneous claims of the rise of a WoW-killer (oops... uttered the dreaded phrase), this doesn't seem to take into account all those Warhammer Online pre-orders placed in August. In that case, September might paint a different picture. But let's face it -- WoW's not going away anytime in the foreseeable future. And despite the knocks World of Warcraft takes from some MMO gamers, would you really want a world without Warcraft? One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!
Forum post of the day: What makes a Death Knight heroic?
The Death Knight has been touted as the first heroic class in World of Warcraft. Hopefully there will be more to come in the future. We've heard some interesting tidbits about this class, and many people are chomping at the bit to play one. Aegulle of Cenarius wants to know what it is about Death Knights that makes them "heroic." To him they appear to be just another class. Some suggested that the starting level of this class makes them heroic- that nothing more thank skipping 55 levels of grinding is enough to qualify for an elevated status. Unlike existing classes, a player must put some effort into WoW before it can even be rolled. Death Knights can only be created by those who "unlock" the class by leveling at least one character on the server to 55.
Warcraft III's Orc appears on fireworks
What better way to celebrate the Fourth of July today than to sit outside with some good beer, some tasty BBQ, and a whole lot of cheaply made fireworks? Brom and Seku on the Llane server were kind enough to send us this picture they took of a firework they found at a store in Pittsburg, Kansas -- apparently the "Behemoth," made by the Consumer Fireworks company in China, not only "emits showers of sparks," it also blows copyright law completely out of the water. Very nice.One more gigantic pic of the Behemoth and its Warcraft III orc cover art after the jump. If you do use fireworks (or break copyright law) today, do it safely, and have a great holiday!%Gallery-26839%
Pardo says Warcraft IV is "one of the ideas on the table" after SC2
Our good friends at Gamedaily recently got a chance to sit down and talk with Rob Pardo, VP of Blizzard, and he dropped hints about yet another new game that they might be working on. No, not Starcraft II, or the rumored Diablo 3, or even the long-awaited (and unfortunately, probably never coming) Lost Vikings sequel. Nope -- he hinted that after the release of Starcraft II, whenever that happens, Blizzard's RTS team might be hard at work on... Warcraft IV.Don't hold your breath, of course (this is Blizzard we're talking about) -- this would be after the current real-time strategy game is done, and Pardo says it would be "one of the the ideas on the table," so it's not exactly in the planning stages yet. But it's interesting to hear that Blizzard may still return to the Warcraft universe under the RTS banner -- we've seen such a different aspect of the world in the MMO, it would be very strange to go back to controlling these units from the top down.Pardo also says that a console version of WoW is pretty much out of the question at this point -- if there is going to be a super-successful console MMO, it's not going to be World of Warcraft, as this game was designed for PC and has gone through so many iterations since that Blizzard isn't at all interested in trying a port. We are still waiting for that playable version of the Molten Core console game, though...[via WorldofWar]Update: Whoops, the interview is a bit old (Pardo said this last year). Still, news to me that Blizzard might bring RTS back into the Warcraft universe, but considering that Starcraft II doesn't even have a rumored release date yet, we're going to be waiting a long, long time.
Blizzard opens its digital download doors
If you just can't take the wait of driving to a brick and mortar store (or even worse, waiting for something to show up in the mail!) then Blizzard's got you covered with their new digital download service. As of right now they're only offering the Starcraft Anthology, Warcraft III and its Frozen Throne expansion pack. However, we could see Blizzard eventually offering both World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade -- not to mention Wrath of the Lich King when it launches.Currently it's possible to get a digital download version of World of Warcraft and its first expansion through third-party. We're sure Blizzard will eventually take over those titles, as the company probably wants to make sure that buying their product digitally is as good an experience as it can possibly be. The thought of having every Blizzard PC title at our fingertips is a little scary though, we're worried that our bank accounts may suddenly drop soon for some mysterious reason.[via WarCry]
Professional Warcraft III players to carry Olympic torch in China
All political controversy aside, bearing the Olympic torch during its long route to the Games is an incredible honor, and this year two professional gamers will take part in the international relay. Through a sponsorship deal with peripheral manufacturer Razer, XiaoFeng "Sky" Li and Jae ho "Moon" Jang will both bear the torch as it passes through China en route to the Beijing National Stadium.Both Sky and Moon are professional Warcraft III players, with the former being recognized as the world's best Human-class player, and the latter as the one of the world's best Night Elf-class players. Both were chosen by Razer from a group of ten professional gamers, selected by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games. Congrats go out to both.
WoW theme for Blackberry
Not to be outdone by the WoW iPhone theme, Xtina over on WoW LJ took it upon herself to use those WoW icons to create a theme for the Blackberry. This one's even a little more in-depth -- she even skinned the calling screen (which is actually easy enough to do on the iPhone as well, but we just hadn't seen it before). Plus, the best part is that this one is completely legit -- you just download the file from Xtina's page there, and you can install it using Desktop Manager.Of course, we haven't actually heard from Blizzard about any of this stuff yet -- odds are that as great as their icons are, they're not real thrilled with seeing them used in other places (a friend of mine who just recently saw me playing World of Warcraft shouted out in surprise, "Hey! Those are the icons from that game on Facebook!" I didn't bother telling her about the real DotA or Warcraft III). Then again, both of these are completely fanmade and free to download -- surely themes like this, that let Blizzard fans show off their loyalties, can be let through the loopholes.
The Infinite Dragonflight in Stratholme
We hit on this one with Mount Hyjal before, but Ironcog brings up an interesting point: why exactly are we going to be mucking around in the old city of Stratholme via the Caverns of Time? In Escape from Durnholde, we're obviously trying to make sure Thrall gets out of the prison camp, and the Infinite Dragonflight is fighting to stop us and ruin history. Same deal in the Black Morass -- the Infinite Dragonflight is trying to keep Medivh from opening the Dark Portal. But in Hyjal, the dragonflight is nowhere to be seen, and we're basically just time tourists. You'd think the Bronze Dragonflight would want us to stay out of there.Of course, we don't exactly know what's happening in the Stratholme of the past -- maybe the Infinite Dragonflight is causing problems there that we need to stop (or, even better, maybe we'll get to see an as-yet-unknown reason why a Paladin of the Silver Hand, headstrong as he might have been, decided to slaughter an entire town even before he was under Frostmourne's corruption -- maybe there's more to Arthas than we saw in Warcraft III).But hopefully the Infinite Dragonflight storyline will be continued in some way -- mucking about in time isn't exactly safe, so there should be good reasons the Bronze Dragonflight sends us back to these past events. Watching history firsthand is fun and all, but the lore of the Bronze Dragons falls apart completely if they just start opening up theme parks in the past.
Getting your RTS background in before it's too late
Methedras asks once again over on WoW LJ if now is a good time to be playing the old Warcraft RTS games, and, actually no, now is probably not a good time to be playing them. You should probably be heading up to the Isle of Quel'danas and helping your realm and the Shattered Sun get those dailies unlocked.But yes, after patch 2.4 has quenched your interest in the World of Warcraft for a while, now would be a perfect time to play Warcraft III and its expansion, the Frozen Throne. Because we are right smack dab in the thick of the lore following both of those games -- Illidan and Kael'thas' stories have just finished, and the main event, with Arthas Menethil, is just about to start in Northrend. Up until the end of Wrath of the Lich King (and we're just now reaching the end of the Burning Crusade), World of Warcraft was really just a gigantic, cross-genre, extremely involved and detailed sequel to Blizzard's earlier Warcraft games.There are other places to go beyond this, however, of course, and we've discussed a lot of them before (and will again, no doubt). But yes, if you haven't played the RTS games yet, you've already missed half of the story. Now would be a great time to play them, before you miss the second (and in my estimation, much more interesting) half.
Why is Kael a bad guy again?
A few days ago, Allison posed an interesting question: Why is Kael a bad guy? The answer is pretty clear to me, there's a definite path you can follow to Kael's corruption and downfall. It isn't very well laid out for you in the World of Warcraft, there's some connect-the-dots you need to do, but I think the answer is there. Be warned, there are some spoilers for patch 2.4 ahead, so be careful if you're trying to dodge them.As Allison detailed, a lot of things had happened in Kael'thas's life just prior to Warcraft III, and during it. The captain of the football team steals his girl, kills his pops, and massacres the people of Quel'Thalas. Dalaran gets destroyed, and the remnants of his people are slowly falling into sickness for unknown reasons. Despite this, Kael'thas forges ahead and steps up to lead his people and protect them, no matter what it takes. This may mean allying himself with the remnants of Lordaeron, the people who indirectly caused the fall of Quel'thalas. This may mean allying with the Lady Vashj and the naga, described by Allison as "vicious," despite being what they are. For the good of Quel'Thalas and the Sindorei, anything goes.
Today's most nerdcore video: Blizzard employee raps for community
What's the best approach for telling the community your patch isn't coming out this year? If you're Blizzard, you can try responding to a YouTube rant about an absent WarCraft III patch. And you can do it by trying to rap. We applaud the effort, but the "rhyming" verses make us cringe. Video embedded after the break.[Thanks, Medievaldragon]
BlizzCon tournament brackets announced
We knew that there Blizzard was going to be holding tournaments for StarCraft, Warcraft III, and World of Warcraft Arenas at BlizzCon, but until today we didn't know who would be participating. The BlizzCon site has been updated with a list of participating players along with brief player profiles. The Arena tournament will includes the top two teams from Korea's regional finals, the top two teams from the European regional finals, the top three teams from the American regional finals, and the winner of the 2005 BlizzCon Invitational. (Don't ask me how that works, since I'm quite sure we didn't have arenas in 2005.) And for those of you curious about worlds beyond Warcraft, check out the StarCraft and Warcraft III brackets.
