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Meet WoW Insider tonight and get some swag
What are you doing tonight? Does it involve standing in a line, waiting patiently to get your gaming mitts on a hot new edition of Mists of Pandaria? If so, we might have a treat for you. You can find our intrepid team of WoW Insider writers at these outstanding fine gaming retailers. You should come by and say hello, perhaps win fabulous prizes (provided by our good pals Blizzard, to boot)! Or, mostly, come by and say hello. Joe Perez at Amherst, New York: GameStop at 1593 Niagara Falls Blvd Frostheim at Richfield, Minnesota: Best Buy at 1000 West 78th St. Anne Stickney at Grand Junction, Colorado: GameStop at 2536 Rimrock Avenue And of course, you'll find more than a few of us at the official Irvine opening! We hope to see you tonight! Edit: Frostheim's location has changed! It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Digital downloads and midnight releases
In July, Blizzard officially opened up preorders for Mists of Pandaria. But they went a different route than they'd ever taken before. Not only could players pick up a digital download version of Mists of Pandaria, they could pick up a Digital Deluxe edition that contained all the in game items and rewards of the Collector's Edition as well. This meant that they'd get the mount, pet, and rewards offered for other Blizzard titles as well, all at a price slightly less than the physical Collector's Edition. Of course by ordering the Digital Deluxe edition, players would miss out on the physical goodies. No art book, no mouse pad, no behind-the-scenes DVD or Collector's Edition Soundtrack. But there's the luxury of not having to leave one's house in the middle of the night and head to a store to consider as well. For many players, that luxury is one that makes the Digital Deluxe edition the top pick. And for game stores, that means the likelihood of a midnight release is not as high as you'd think.
Two attendees already in line at NYC Best Buy event
Whether you're attending the midnight release event at Best Buy in New York City or not, you might be interested in the fact that they've set up their own Twitter account to document the event. It looks like it's getting some use earlier than expected, too. It's currently a little after 3 PM in New York, and the first two attendees have already been waiting in line for at least two hours!I think it's beyond cool that they took the time to set up this feed. Liveblogs are some of the funnest things to read on days like today, and Twitter is the perfect venue for it if you don't have your own dedicated site set up for something like that. And those early attendees? Okay, they're a little crazy, but I'll go ahead and give them props for it. Events like this don't happen every day, so you might as well make a story out of it. When The Burning Crusade launched, I walked three hours in a Wisconsin winter while it was snowing to pick up my copy. Was it insane? Yes. Was it fun? Yes! If you don't have a story to tell after an event like this, you missing half of the fun. Go out and make the best of today!If you plan on following this feed and you're new to Twitter, don't forget to follow WoW Insider's very own twitter account where you'll see alerts and anecdotes from our team. You might also be interested in some silly fun and want to follow a few Warcraft characters as they tweet.
The Daily Grind: Midnight release party or no?
Unless you've been hiding under a rock somewhere, you've probably heard that World of Warcraft's second expansion Wrath of the Lich King releases this Thursday -- or more properly, Wednesday night. As our sister site, WoW Insider has covered, there are Midnight launch events planned for both stores big and small -- including meet-ups with the WI staff. Even 7-11 decided to get in on the Wrath midnight launch action, providing a one-stop shop for your snacks, Mountain Dew slurpees and MMOs. (Or maybe we're the only ones who think that's pretty cool.) Since this is one of the largest midnight launch initiatives we've seen for an MMO to date, we thought we'd ask; will you be attending a midnight release party for Wrath of the Lich King? Or did you just decide to order it online and save yourself the lines? For that matter, if you ordered it online, what kind of shipping did you go for? Next day? 'Save money and wait for the starter areas to clear out' shipping? We'd like to know!
7-Eleven to have Wrath midnight release
In somewhat unusual news, 7-Eleven seems to be moving into the video game sales business in some capacity. I've noticed that 7-Eleven had sold a couple select games like Madden in the past, but I never thought much of it. I assumed they just had some deal with the distributor for that particular game.However, that's not actually the case. Their Madden sales turned out to be quite the success, and their demographic is rather gamer heavy. Man, who would have thought a 24-hour convenience store would attract a lot of young gamers? My mind is boggled. As of this season, 7-Eleven has begun offering pre-orders of select major upcoming releases (such as Wrath of the Lich King) at their locations. All of their offerings will have midnight releases at the 24/7 chain, so your next midnight release party might just take place between a Slurpee machine and a beef jerky rack. I have a feeling they won't be holding any costume contests.Oh, if you're curious, 7-Eleven says Wrath in November, too. Man, I could actually go for a Slurpee right now. AFK.[ via Kotaku ]
Online retailers point towards a November 4 release for Wrath
We'll begin this post with the usual: this is Blizzard we're talking about, and Blizzard doesn't release games or the dates they'll start selling those games until they're good and ready. So any speculation about Blizzard's release dates, is, by its nature, pretty useless -- if Blizzard wants to announce at BlizzCon that Wrath isn't coming out until January, they will.However, as many readers have noticed, there's been an interesting development in the rumored release date lately. Before now, all the online stores have had all kinds of different dates: some were saying October, some were saying early November, and some were saying late November. But over the past week or so, almost all of the online stores have settled on a single date: November 4. The sign above, sent in by reader Daniel A., is from a JB HiFi store in Australia, and beckons toward a midnight release on November 3rd.So. We'll stress again: retailers often set their own release dates way in advance of an official announcement, just so they can sell preorders of a game. It's very likely this means nothing, and Blizzard will release their game whenever they want -- don't start filling out your vacation form yet, because this is not an official date. But something has pointed all of these online retailers toward Election Day of this year, so if you want to guess at a release date, that's as good as any. Thanks to Ollie, Daniel A., and everyone else who sent this in.
