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The best of WoW Insider: January 20-27, 2009
What a week in the World of Warcraft. We've had game-breaking bugs, gold ads on the official forums, and there's a rumor going around that the official WoW mouse might be broken, too. But don't worry -- when things break in Azeroth, as they definitely have this past week, WoW Insider is there to pick up the pieces. Check out our top stories of the past week below. News The disaster of patch 3.0.8Blizzard's latest patch is riddled with bugs, from bad to worse. World of Warcraft 3.0.8 patch notesHere's what's supposed to have happened. But most of this didn't actually work until late last week. Steelseries WoW mouse is dangerous in no uncertain Terms (of Use)Could an officially sponsored mouse get you officially banned? Breaking news: Arenas disabledYes, things got so bad last week, Blizzard temporarily took both Wintergrasp and the Arenas out of the game. Gold ads appear on Blizzard's forumsBlizzard suffers an amusing slip in its forum advertising. Features The Overachiever: Completing the Lunar Festival achievementsA guide to finishing up all of the goals for the Lunar Festival, now happening in Azeroth. The Queue: Who cares about 3.0.8, where's 3.1?Our readers wonder where the new content is. Breakfast Topic: Is 68 too low for Northrend?A daily discussion about when the right time to head north should be. The Art of War(craft): How 3.0.8 changes PvPPlayer vs. Player and what's different with the new patch. Two Bosses Enter: Keristrasza vs. CyanigosaOur showdown of in-game bosses is back for Wrath, with some dragon on dragon action.
Blizzard puts advertising on the WoW front page
Bornakk has fessed up to Blizzard's little slip yesterday of letting gold buying ads sneak onto the official forums. As expected, he says it was a complete mistake, and that Blizzard is taking steps to keep it from happening. I'm surprised this isn't the action Blizzard took from the beginning -- when the ads first showed up yesterday, Blizzard's forum moderators were deleting (and presumably banning) anyone who mentioned the ads. But almost all of Blizzard's fansites (and even WoW Insider) have had problems with gold ads appearing in advertising content outside our control, so it doesn't seem like Blizzard need worry about it. Sure, it was a mistake, and sure, it was hilarious, but there was no reason to hide the fact that it had happened -- especially since there were screenshots aplenty right away.However, Blizzard apparently still hasn't learned their lesson: they've now also got external advertisements being served right on the game's front page. These ads are served up by the same company responsible for the ads on the forums, and thus clearly they have the same possible problems -- if one gold ad can appear, more can as well. And while the ad that appeared on the forums was not harmful (other than the fact that it linked to a website that offered a service that would get you banned from the game), anytime you're bringing outside content to your own site, you run that risk. Blizzard has decided to monetize their presence on the web, but it's costing their customers a little bit of security as well.
Gold ads appear on official Blizzard forums [updated]
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/Whoops_Blizzard_puts_ads_for_WoW_gold_on_official_forums'; Gold ads on fan sites are one thing (we've been plagued by them in the past, ourselves), but today gold ads are starting to turn up on the official Blizzard forums! The above screenshot was taken by me at about 3:15 EST this afternoon. This is a major (and hilarious) slip-up on the part of whoever handles the advertising on the forums (which was just put in fairly recently). I expect to see a lot of people buying gold and trying to claim that Blizzard endorsed it with these ads, and then getting confused when their accounts get banned. At the moment Blizzard forum moderators are apparently deleting all threads pertaining to the ads, which seems appropriate enough; they clearly know about the problem. Oh, and folks: don't buy gold. Update: Blizzard has responded officially to the matter, stating: "Recently, there was a temporary error with our forum advertisements that caused a gold-selling ad to be displayed. At this time, we have resolved this error. Our stance... remains firmly against the buying or selling of gold, and we may take action against accounts that are involved in these activities."
Welcome to Massively!
This is it. The design is in place, our bloggers are trained and at the ready, and the password has been lifted from the site. Our brand new blog, Massively, is now live and ready for your perusal, your comments, your tips, and your eyeballs. Here, you'll find breaking news about MMO games both upcoming and established, insightful and wisecracking commentary about your favorite worlds, tips on how to get all your characters in all those universes the best they can be, and the high level of quality you've come to expect from WoW Insider, Second Life Insider, Joystiq and the Fanboy network. This is Massively, and welcome to it."But wait," you say, "we've already got tons of MMO sites out there. I've got sites I read for commentary, and sites I read for news. I've got dev blogs, community forums, and even sites that sift community forums for me. There are guide sites that have their own guide sites, and everybody and his cousin is already blogging about MMO videogames. Why do we need one more MMO blog?"The answer is: because this is the place where all of those things come together, in one location; because of our commitment to producing top-notch original features; and because our incredibly talented staff of writers have spent as much time leveling their word-smithing skills as they have spent leveling characters in the virtual worlds we're going to be covering.
WoW Insider tag feeds
Pssst, did you know that you can get tag-specific RSS feeds from WoW Insider just like you can get category-specific feeds? (What are RSS feeds? What are tags?) Just go to any tag page, for example ArenaSeason2, and add rss.xml to it to get the tag feed. Speaking of tags, check out the tag cloud in the right-hand column to get a picture of what tags are most popular in the past 30 days. And as long as we're here, we may as well remind you of a few housekeeping items: How to contact WoW Insider How to help us fight gold ads How to add a WoW Insider Firefox search plugin to your browser How to join the It Came from the Blog guild, and how to join our forums
