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Last chance to enter our Dell XPS giveaway
Today is your last chance to enter to win in our Dell XPS M1730 World of Warcraft laptop giveaway. Just leave a comment on the contest post with your preference of Horde or Alliance edition. And you need to do it this morning before 11:59am ET because at noon today the contest is officially over. We're locking the post and randomly picking the winner.Here's the other important part: we will be contacting the winner by e-mail. If they do not respond in 72 hours, we will pick another winner. So make sure you check your e-mail this weekend or you may lose out on this gaming beast of a laptop. No one wants to come back from Christmas vacation to find an e-mail declaring them the winner if only they had responded in time!And just so you don't spend the weekend staring at your Inbox, we will be announcing here on the site when we have successfully contacted the potential winner. Thanks to everyone for participating!Good luck and get commenting!
Two chances left to enter to win a Dell XPS laptop
We're closing our giveaway to entries at 11:59am ET tomorrow. That leaves you two more chances, today and tomorrow morning, to enter. All you need to do is go to the contest post and leave a comment with your preference of Horde or Alliance Edition.With 30,000+ entries so far, you can increase you chance of winning by making sure you get in your last two comments. In the meantime, check out the gallery below for the hot sleekness that is the Dell XPS M1730 World of Warcraft Edition laptop.%Gallery-11285%
The Guardian asks: without sci-fi or fantasy, where would MMOGs go?
UK newspaper The Guardian has a good post up on its gaming blog, asking why fantasy is the dominant genre for MMOGs. And if you -- yes, you -- were to design a MMOG without any fantasy or sci-fi elements, where would it be set and how would it work?Sadly, the only MMOG I can think of that isn't fantasy or sci-fi is City of Heroes, but that's kind of sci-fi too. There's also WWII Online; about which the less said, the better. Generally, as soon as you take MMOGs to the real world you complicate matters so much it isn't even funny. Where is it set? Are you going to model geographical locations accurately? Will there be product advertising? Everyone wants product advertising. Is that a Dell PC in the corner? But quite frankly, that's no fun. So what would you design, if fantasy and sci-fi were excluded? For me, 1930's zombie invasion. Who doesn't love zombies? Now imagine if they wore bowler hats.
Day 6 of 8 and it's not too late to win a Dell XPS laptop
I know you regular readers of the site have been entering every day for a chance to win a Dell XPS M1730 World of Warcraft Edition laptop. But word is getting out and new readers have been coming to the site this week for their chance as well.Veteran or newbie, if you haven't entered today, head over to the contest post and leave a comment with your preference of either Horde or Alliance edition. You'll have two more chances to enter (Thursday, and Friday before noon ET) after today, then we close the contest, randomly pick a lucky reader and send them an e-mail.Until then, you can read our hands on review of the beast or add your opinion to the post that explores the question: is the laptop worth the price tag?%Gallery-11285%
Only 4 more chances to enter the Dell XPS contest
Today, tomorrow, Thursday and Friday before noon are your last four chances to enter to win a $5k Dell XPS M1730 WoW edition laptop. Not to mention the Figure Print that comes with it as well as 5 WoW beta keys tied to your account and a host of other goodies.To enter, click over to the contest post and leave a comment with your preference of Alliance or Horde edition. After the contest ends on Friday at noon, we'll randomly choose one lucky winner. With over 20,000 entries so far, don't forget to enter every day to increase your odds of winning!%Gallery-11285%
Day 4 of the Dell XPS WoW Giveaway
When asked how many entries we would get for the Dell XPS M1730 WoW Edition laptop giveaway, I predicted about 8,000. So much for my theorycrafting. Today is day 4 and we are already at 15,000+ entries. And we still have four more days to go!But don't get discouraged by those numbers. You still have five more chances to enter to win this $5k tricked out gaming beast if you haven't done so today. So head on over to the contest post and let us know if you prefer the Alliance or Horde edition. And come back every day until Friday at noon to enter again!Someone is going to win this bad boy. Why not you?%Gallery-11285%
You can enter our Dell XPS give away every day
That's right. You can enter to win once a day in our Dell XPS M1730 WoW Edition give away. So head on over to the contest post and leave a comment with your preference of Horde or Alliance edition. Not sure if you want a totally free laptop? Take a look at our hands on experience with a tricked out M1730 Dell WoW edition laptop and see if it's really worth the price.And remember to check back on WoW Insider every day for another chance to enter! You could be the lucky player taking home this $5k gaming beast.
Enter to win a $5k Dell WoW Edition notebook
EDIT: The contest is officially closed. Thank you everyone who participated. Check your e-mail this weekend to see if you have been randomly selected as the winner! var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/WoW_Insider_is_giving_away_a_5k_Dell_WoW_notebook'; As promised, WoW Insider is giving away one Dell XPS M1730 World of Warcraft Edition and all the WoW goodies that come with it (estimated retail value $4,999). Under the hood of this bad boy is an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T7500, 2GB Memory 667MHz, 17inch UltraSharp TrueLife WUXGA, 512MB Dual NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT w/ NVIDIA SLI, a 200GB HDD and a Blu-ray DVD player. And of course, the winner will be able to choose between the Alliance or Horde editions. In addition to the laptop, you'll get an XPS backpack to carry it around in stuffed with WoW novels, game guides, retail boxes and more. And if you think it can't get any better, check out the full list of goodies included with your XPS notebook after the jump (including the World of Warcraft Beta Club card that contains 5 beta keys for upcoming WoW games!)%Gallery-11285%To enter for a chance to win, leave a comment on this post listing your preference of Horde or Alliance Edition before Friday, December 21 @ 11:59am EST. You can enter once per day for all eight days of the sweepstakes. One winner will be chosen and notified by e-mail within 24 hours of the end of the giveway. You must be at least 18 years of age and a resident of the United States. Check out the official rules for complete details.
Dell announces World of Warcraft edition laptops
This morning Dell has announced their new XPS M1730 World of Warcraft edition laptop. Details are a bit sketchy, but the hardware configuration seems to match the rest of the XPS M1730 line-up, with a few extra touches for the WoW player on the go: custom World of Warcraft cases design for Alliance and Horde a built-in Logitech GamePanel LCD (perhaps akin to that on the G15 keyboard?) pre-loaded with World of Warcraft, The Burning Crusade, and all content patches the package comes with all sorts of WoW-related swag, including a key to upgrade your account to the collector's edition and a beta key for a future Blizzard game If you happen to be in the market for a $4500+ gaming laptop (yes, you read that right), the installed content patches alone may make this one worth a look. (To those of you who haven't had the pleasure of installing World of Warcraft from its original game disks: trust me, you never want to.) Our friends over at GameDaily are already asking: is it worth the price tag?%Gallery-11285%
Hard sell of the week: ads in games are good!
Taking what is perhaps the most transparently self-interested position of the century, Frank Sagnier of ad firm Double Fusion (who you may remember inked a deal with NCsoft not long ago) made the case in Develop Magazine that in-game advertising is not just another stream of revenue for cash-strapped game developers and publishers, but also a useful level design tool. Sagnier says that the programming metrics that are installed to track views of in-game advertising can also be utilized to make observations of player behavior within the game space.Of course, this begs the question: why can't developers just install the code themselves? Ostensibly, the demands of the advertisers give developers a monetary incentive to improve on the existing design and architecture of their game that they might not otherwise have. In an ideal world, making their playerbase happy would be reason enough for developers to get things right the first time, but in this cynical world we live in, I guess that's just not the case. Still, whether it streamlines the design or not, we're still going to bitch about seeing ads in places where they don't fit. See: the above image of a Dell XPS computer housed in a tent on the tropical planet of Foreas in Tabula Rasa. I always pictured the Foreans being Mac users, myself.
Dell's XPS M1730 sneaks onto Dell's site: a beast indeed
Hiddy Ho Mr. XPS M1730, nice to see you up and dancing on Dell's own website for a change. While it's not exactly official, reader Evgeni noticed that a little E-Value code tomfoolery will pull up pictures, specs, and prices easy enough. $4,192 will take home a crimson red, 17-inch WUXGA beast with a Vista Ultimate pre-load and the following specs: 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme X7900 processor (800MHz FSB and 4MB cache) 2GB 667MHz DDR2 memory (4GB for an additional $375) 2 x 200GB 7200RPM disks DVD burner (upgradeable for Blu-ray playback for an additional $550) 512MB Dual (!) NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT with nVIDIA SLI Te 802.11a/g/n WiFi 9-cell primary and 9-cell secondary batteries That's only the start.
Dell drops two new XPS models; one big, one small
Dell introduced two new XPS machines yesterday: one of them is the diminutive M1210, packing an (optional) 256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400 TurboCache graphics solution into a 4-1/2 pound package. All right, not too shabby, but that's not what the hardcore PC gamers are interested in, now is it? They want to hear about Dell's new, enormous, XPS 700 desktop. Dell's XPS 700 desktops pack some serious power, but at what cost? This thing sizes up to 21.86" x 8.6" x 24.25" making it, volumetrically, 74707 cm^3. That's about 8.5 times as large as a PS3! I checked the math ... twice! Alright, so it's not winning any performance per cubic centimeter contests anytime soon, but the XPS 700 isn't supposed to be a pint-sized pixie. Think of it as the sort of computer that will not only run Doom III really well but look like it had a cameo in the game. Outfitted with a bunch of red LEDs and optional Quad-SLI, this thing is sure to melt your eyeballs, both literally and figuratively.[Via Engadget]Read - XPS M1210 LaptopRead - XPS 700 Desktop
Dell pretends to understand gamers
Remember back in December when we wrote about Dell bundling so much useless software with their machines that it could be considered bloatware? According to the same guys who reported the problem, Dell are making efforts to clean up their act. On select XPS machine there is now effectively a "no-bloatware" option with no AOL installation, no “media jukebox” and no free ISP options.We're still not satisfied, for the following reasons: Why "select XPS machines"? Yeah, we know how cut-throat the profit margins are in the PC industry, but isn't Dell's XPS range supposed to be a premium product? As far as I can tell, the option is only available on XPS 400 and 600 systems, not the XPS 200 machines (which are priced identically to the XPS 400 PCs). Bad wording. Dell's wording of the option makes it seem as if consumers will be missing out by taking the option. "Now with limited pre-installed software" doesn't sound too appealing to the average consumer unaware of the fact that pre-installed software means the software equivalent of garbage. More bad wording. When you actually get to configuring your machine, the site offers you "no pre-installed software [included in price]". Gee, thanks Dell for not charging us for non-existent software! Even more bad wording. The banner "You Spoke, We Listened" means nothing to anyone that hasn't read about this issue previously.
