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Guildwatch: "Are u a Tauren or a mouse?"
The "negotiating a /gkick" drama above was probably the most legendary drama this week (in fact, if you're a drama connoisseur like we are, you probably already heard about it), but we've got lots more, including the "Tauren or a mouse" quote above, and the usual weekly requisite of ninjas and loot drama. Good times, as always.For more drama, downed, and recruiting, news, click the link below. And don't forget to send us your tips -- wowguildwatch@gmail is the address. Whether you're tipping us about a great down your guild did, or a hilarious forum thread you saw on your realms' forums, we want to read it all!
Let me get a 12" Ornate Triple Pepperoni Blunderbuss
Reader Jacckk sent along this funny bit of WoW, hidden in a strange place. On the menu of one Eden's Pizza in St. Paul, Minnesota, there is an item for an "Ornate Triple Pepperoni Blunderbuss," right in between the "Mean Supreme" and "Sicilian" styles (actually, the "Rastafarian" sounds really good, too). And yes, for those of you who've done some gun shopping in Azeroth, the artery-clogging pepperoni with mozza and feta monstrosity is apparently a reference to the old Ornate Blunderbuss, a vendor weapon available pretty commonly throughout the game.Why they'd name their pizza after a vendor weapon in WoW, we have no idea, but there you go. If you do call them up to order the pizza though (think they'd deliver me one to Chicago?), make sure to get a side of Sulfuras Buffalo Wings, too -- they'll make you "taste the fire of Sulfuron!"** I also would have accepted "Sulfuras Buffalo Wings: By fire be purged!"
DC shows off what look like Series 4 Figures at ComicCon
Empire magazine is already posting pictures from this weekend's ComicCon out in San Diego (WoW Insider also has correspondents there on site), and though they have no idea what they've stumbled across, it sure looks to us like what might be DC Unlimited's Series 4 WoW figurines. And rather than just the standard player characters, Blizzard and DC are going a little NPC for this series -- as you can see above, they've included everyone's favorite elite gnoll, Hogger himself. Also included in the series are a Succubus of some sort (with what looks like a Tauren with a polearm in the back there), and a gun-wielding Tauren Hunter.The figures all have signs that say "Worldwide Debut Friday 4pm" on them, so it looks like we're getting to see them a little early. And Blizzard is excited, too -- Slorkuz has even written a poetic ode to Hogger in honor of his likeness being immortalized.We'll keep an eye out for more info -- looks like DC is expanding their action figure line to include a few more less traditional character types. Who else should they honor with a figure in the future?
Azeroth comes through on the love hunt
This is one of the sillier articles that PC Gamer UK has probably ever written about massively multiplayer online games, but still, I enjoyed it. One of their writers went (only half seriously) looking for love in a few popular virtual worlds, and he found it, surprisingly enough, in Azeroth.Neither EvE Online or City of Heroes were very helpful in the love-finding department -- despite finding a fetching young lady superheroine in CoH, the writer was a little disappointed to find out she was a he behind the keyboard. But WoW, as usual, provides the best of MMO experiences -- the writer finds some cute love in the Night Elf starting area.Sure, it's silly (and probably not true -- just because someone says they're a Finnish college student means nothing at all online). But I found it strangely touching, the thought that a real human connection could be made in an online game. And isn't that why we play these in the first place?[via WorldofWar.net]
Guildwatch: "I done runs with him before same then"
The guild above, Natural Order on Steamwheedle Cartel, has graced these pages before for dramatic reasons, but just to show there's no bad feelings, we're highlighting them in the downed section this week -- as you can see, they were able to topple Archimonde, and that's an achievement for any guild. As long as you can keep progression going, no drama is all that bad.Unless you run into some of the really harsh drama found in this week's GW, which starts right after the jump. Drop us a tip (anonymous or otherwise) at wowguildwatch@gmail.com if you've got news about drama, downings, or recruiting notices from around the realms, and Sargeras-willing, you'll see it here next week.
A Death Knight with pink pigtails
Ever since we heard way back at BlizzCon last year that Death Knights would be available for all races, the lament has been heard: Gnome Death Knights will ruin it for everyone else. Death Knights are, by their very nature, supposed to be pale and scary and imposing, and given the fact that there are bound to be a ton of Gnome Death Knights out there just for hilarity's sake, the Death Knight starting area is going to look more like a nursery than a gothic bed of evil.But will it really ruin the lore? Daniel already pointed out very insightfully that Gnomes definitely have a dark side -- we all seem to overlook the fact that Gnomes can be Warlocks, and that doesn't make the Felguard they send after you any less scary. And while yes, on launch day, there'll be a lot of Gnome DKs running around (the starting areas will be chaos no matter what gets rolled), after that it should settle down for sure. After all, if Gnomes were all people wanted to play, we'd never see Humans or Dwarves on the realms, and there are plenty of those.So I'm all for Gnome Death Knights, pigtails or otherwise. If nothing else, it'll give us Horde something to laugh at -- right before we go in for the kill.
A look at the geography of WoW from Interesting '08
This is just beautiful, from the title ("Brave Noob World") to the idea -- a geographical survey of Azeroth. James Wallis, the director of Hogshead Publishing, gave this presentation at an "unconference" called Interesting '08, in which he tried to do a survey of Azeroth, in the same way that Tobold did -- by walking from one end to the other. And he discovers that Azeroth is pretty small and pretty dense -- it's about 12km across, according to him (I really like his comparison image of the Death Star), and using a Female Tauren, he even comes up with the force of gravity, which is about equal to Earth -- about 1g. Which makes sense; Blizzard would want the virtual world to feel the same as our world, no matter how big it is.There's a problem with that, though -- if you have a small planet with the same gravity as a much larger planet, the only answer is that the mass of the planet is much more dense. And when you get a really small, densely packed mass, you start to mess around with the flow of time. So Wallis actually ends up explaining one of the more annoying features of Azeroth with actual science. Very nice.It's definitely a fun example of looking for more in this MMO than Blizzard probably put there, but Wallis covers it with enough zest and logic that it works, strangely. Now if he could only explain the weather...[via Massively]Update: Looks like the video got pulled. It's been stowed after the break, just in case it comes back.
One Shots: Do they turn into gremlins?
Today's One Shots isn't one of a game -- it's of one of the most popular virtual worlds out there, Second Life. This particular screenshot was one of the first things our Senior Editor, Elizabeth Harper found after she had decided to jump into Second Life and check it out. We're not entirely sure what the story is behind this particular display, but we do know that it's terribly cute. We're also curious just what would happen if one were to theoretically feed the plushies. Would they turn into gremlins? Or perhaps they're just on a low-fat plushie diet after being fed too many snacks for being too cute. Have you seen anything in your travels that made you stop and giggle? We love to laugh along with the rest of them, so if you've seen something silly or fun, please send it to us here at oneshots AT massively.com so we can share it with the rest of the readers! %Gallery-9798%
Jerome, where's my mirror?
Gizmodo's Jesus Diaz has a wonderful solution to the problem of videoconferencing on your 3G iPhone: compact, convenient and battery-free! Okay, we get it: a camera on the front of the iPhone is probably a pretty useful idea. Although there's something oddly compelling about turning a videoconferencing session on the iPhone into a Morris Day and the Time concert....
The Daily Grind: What's your funniest death
The other day, we were kicking around some of the funniest deaths we'd experienced in different MMOGs. There were those who had accidentally typed "a" back in the day in EverQuest while trying to /hail an NPC -- thereby attacking them, since "a" was auto-attack. Others had some great stories to tell from World of Warcraft, such as one tale of a poor unwitting group that went into Scarlet Monastery and weren't aware you needed to clear the entire cathedral before you pulled the boss at the end. (He calls all mobs still alive in the cathedral to come beat you to a pulp otherwise. Oops.) One of our favorites had to have come from our own blogger, Adrian Bott. Adrian's own silly character death came while playing Age of Conan. He said that while merrily smacking chickens to watch them explode in game, he was unexpectedly attacked and beaten to death by an angry chicken seller NPC. That has to be one of the strangest (but funniest) deaths we've heard of as yet. What would be some of your funniest deaths in an MMO?
Breakfast Topic: If you could have any spell in RL...
We get our motivation today from Thongsnapper (nice name) of Gorefiend who asks, if you could have any spell in Warcraft in real life, which one would you have? Hearthstone would be an interesting choice for sure, and Polymorph would make for an interesting life (though its uses might be pretty limited, considering that real life doesn't actually have aggro management), but I think personally I'm going to have to fall back on the old superpower standby: stealth. Moving around unseen just seems too fun to pass up.Actually, I might second guess that -- in terms of practicality, healing spells might actually be more beneficial to the world. Wave your hands, and any ailments, no matter how big or small, are done away with. I'll have to give this some serious thought. In the meantime, let's hear it: if you could have any spell from the game in real life, which one would you choose?
Licensed to play WoW
Wil's new license plate, as seen over on WoW Livejournal.Also see the discussion here, the frames over here (if you don't want to actually have a custom plate), other suggestions (most of which seem like bumper stickers -- "My other car is a griffon"?) here, more discussion here, and many different WoW-related custom plates here.Not sure what it is that drives us WoW fans to adorn our cars with inside jokes and lingo from the game, but it does seem to provide a fun hint of Azeroth while driving around. If you've got something cool on your car not seen here, send it along to us, and we'll add it into the gallery below.%Gallery-20183%
Size matters: Tauren shrinkage
For those of you who do not frequent the forums, you might not know that since patch 2.4, there has been a Tauren outcry. It seems that cows everywhere are logging in to find that their weapons are roughly 50% smaller than they were previously. Should you take your weapon out to get a better look at it, you'll get to watch it grow back to pre-patch size. Unfortunately, this is not a bug. Hortus has confirmed that it was an intentional change because certain weapons would clip the ground while sheathed. While the Tauren have been getting some support on the forums, some players seem unsure of why this is such a big issue. Let's take a deeper look into why players are upset, including the fact that cows will seemingly be the brunt of even more jokes. Not innocent jokes either; not like "steak! It's what's for dinner!"
Cinemassively: Bobbo No. 5
We're still filling in for our regular cinediva Moo Money who is ramping up for SXSW this weekend. This may or may not be a good thing, depending on if you like more amateur machinima or not. Today's Cinemassively is interesting to us from the standpoint of choreography, editing and just pure fun. If you're looking for epic story-lines, tight scripting, or great visual effects, this isn't it. If, however, you are looking for a fun little music video that features City of Heroes celebrity cameos, including what may quite possibly be the most Freakshow (yet best choreographed) CoH chorus line ever, then this is for you![Thanks, Blazefire from The Girls of Nukem High]
On CMs and their thread choices
Unholycow on Thrall finally calls out the CMs (in a more literate-than-usual way, I mean) for something they've been doing a long time on the forums-- posting in inconsequential threads, while big player questions remain unanswered. As he says, "what's going on?"Neth answers pretty quickly, and this issue goes almost directly back to the issue of communication between players and CMs. The CMs feel they have a lot more freedom to post on silly threads, obviously, and so they do it more. But when talking about "serious" issues (or maybe just more touchy subjects), their words carry more weight, and so they have to pick and choose what they say.And to that, I have to agree with Tolki, who posts in the thread that we'd rather have an Oprah than a Tony Snow. Sure, things didn't work out so well the last time a CM was completely honest with us, but surely there's a middle ground. BlizzCast is a start-- maybe the devs and CMs should work together to make sure that fairly often (once a week or even once a day), they can speak out on a "serious" issue, and give the player base something to chew on. It could be argued that the CMs' words carry so much weight on serious issues because we almost never hear from them, and if that's true, a regular schedule of discussions with either CMs or devs would help give the CMs more freedom to be more honest with us about what they think about (hey heeeeyy) what's really going on in game.
The Daily Grind: Funny guild names
Have you ever run around in your game of choice only to stop dead in your tracks, laughing at a great guild name you've seen? We definitely have. One of the funny ones we've spotted in World of Warcraft was <and two stealthed Rogues>, which made it look like the player had a subtitle telling you that at all times two stealthed Rogues were with them. But we know that while we're in a lot of different worlds, we haven't seen one tenth of the funny guild names out there. Today we'd love to hear your favorites! What guild names (or guild names combined with character names as with the Horde player we found above) have made you laugh?
The Daily Grind: Comedy MMOs?
One of the things that came up last night in a round of "what would you like to see" was the concept for a "comedy" MMO. Now I have to admit, I've never really considered that at all, but there are certainly elements of the silly or absurd in some of the games that we already play -- so why not a "comedy" mmo? If you run around in WoW, you'll find many many truly silly things. By way of example, think of the Winterspring Yeti quest, wherein you release a wee tiny mechanical yeti that goes chasing people hither and yon. You can almost hear the Benny Hill music in the background. If you look at different bios in CoX, you'll find many have written some awfully funny (and fun) ones to go with their character concepts. Also, there are things like Lego Universe and even Cartoon Network's FusionFall coming out that really would lend themselves to funny-business. Now, all that said -- our favorite concept we came up with through throwing names around was a Monty Python MMO. You could have PvP/RvR castle sieges involving French Taunting, catapulting cows, and the witty usage of wooden trojan badgers. (The rabbit, after all, not being a so-witty usage.) Epic battles? Take on the Killer Rabbit, or go head-to-head with the motorcycle grannies. If you feel like soloing, you can level up your skills in How Not to be Seen, or practice your Silly Walks! With all that silliness aside, we'd like to ask you -- do you think comedy would work as a major "plot element" beyond just the one-off quest? Would you play an MMO that spent most of the time with tongue firmly in cheek? Are there any other wickedly funny properties that you think might make for a good MMO to play with friends? (Even if just in a java-based browser game like Runescape.)
A Snow Globe for your iPhone
Christmas is approaching, and what better way to wile away a minute or two than with a virtual snow globe? The kind folks at Pop Art created this iPhone Snow Globe that one 'shakes' by changing the orientation of the iPhone (using this method, perhaps?).It'll amuse you for a moment, and it is free so why not? That's what the holiday season is all about, right?
/silly: Arturis's farewell
Well, it was fun while it lasted. Due to personal reasons I can not and will not discuss here, I will no longer be drawing the weekly /silly comic for WoW Insider. I am thankful to you, the thriving mass of WoW Insider readers, for taking the time to view my strip for the past 11 weeks. To those that commented with support and praise, I offer an even larger helping of the Thank You pie. You are the reason I stayed up those late Monday nights, forcing myself to draw out the twisted images in my head in order to share them with the world. I sought your approval, and I received it in spades. Will there be a future for /silly, after I am gone? That is up to the higher-ups at WoW Insider to decide. If they do replace me and continue on with the series, I hope you all will show the new artist the respect and support that you gave to me. And I hope that the comics will make me laugh as much as mine made you.As for my future, do not worry. I have more passion for gaming than most people you will ever meet, burning deep within my soul like a warlock DoT that will never expire; like the Light that drives a paladin to battle against overwhelming odds. I will find another way to be a part of the industry that I love, and with a little luck, you will see the name Arturis again.Arthur E. "Arturis" Orneck
/silly postponed until Thursday
Due to unforeseen circumstances brought about by that dreaded time waster between WoW sessions we call Real Life[TM], it unfortunately comes to pass that this week's /silly will not be ready for your Tuesday morning perusal. Fear not, good friends! Not only will I have a dumbfoundingly witty (or unwittingly dumb, depending on your point of view) comic for you come Thursday A.M., but I also have gifts today to tide you over until then. Below, you will find links to a wallpaper based on the art from the third installment of /silly, featuring the ever-lovable Shadowsilk in both hand drawn and in-game model forms. For a refresher on who she is and why you would want to have a wallpaper of her, feel free to click the image above and reread the original comic. To skip straight to snagging the wallpaper, select your screen resolution from the links below. 1024 x 7681280 x 10241680 x 1050 I now return you to your regularly scheduled WoW Insider, already in progress. Arthur E. "Arturis" Orneck apologizes for any inconvenience his murderous rampage may have caused, and reminds you that squirrels can be deadly when cornered.
