I skillfully managed to evade this crazy rumour so far, but my Vanish happens to be on cooldown right now, so I'll pretend to take the hit this time. As the story goes - and I know this may sound ridiculous - the rumours about a possible mobile version of World of Warcraft are pestering us yet again. A couple of weeks ago, some guy tipped off BlizzPlanet about a few low-res avatars, deluding himself into thinking that they were created for technologically-limited devices, such as mobile phones.

Now, Mobile Gamer further stirs the pile of bullshit rumour mill, basing their argument on some wicked smile or something...

"yesterday, we had a chance to get the official line, when Vivendi Games Mobile boss Paul Maglione was sitting in the audience for one of the panel sessions at MGF, and was asked directly about mobile World of Warcraft.
"Mobile aspects will become part of all MMOs," he replied, with a distinct smile on his face."

Umm... hello, operator? Get me the healer on the line...

While waiting for Wrath of the Lich King has opened new opportunities for the WoW community, be it cancelling accounts, seeing the light of the day for the first time in years or discovering that huge collection of porn that started gathering dust three years ago, Blizzard decided to start feeding us junkies some scattered info about what to expect from the future expansion. Now, PvE wise.

The Bestiary finally opened its gates to the humble audience, depicting two of the incoming nemesis that we will probably have to rape to death. Good ol’ grinding days for another Ding are starting to get closer and closer, and so do the minions of the Scourge. First off, we have the Nerubian Vizier, a mighty and not so friendly spider-like creature, bent on destruction and various other things. All, including death, pain, corpse running and huge repair bills. And maybe a good drop here and there, for the sake of our lousy Auction House.

Second on Blizzard’s list is the Plague Eruptor, some sort of genetic experiment made by the Lich King himself (who tends to show off his chemistry, medical and biological degrees much too often), that is labeled as one of the most feared and deadly fighting force in all of Asia the Scourge army. Well, if this Plague Eruptor is also good at wiping the bot-infested Warcraft universe of those little Chinese people that sit in a 2x2 paper box, farming leather scraps from morning till dawn, it’s fine by me.

Anyway, here is a link to the almighty Bestiary, be sure to check it once in a while for casual updates.

"Hai gusy!", shouted out Luke Johnson (WoW RPG developer) last night, after some silence on the White Wolf forums. His sudden reappearance marked the long-awaited announcement of a release date for the World of Warcraft RPG book "Dark Factions", which is now officially set for June 2008.

This follows an earlier confirmation from last week that the book was not cancelled after all, and it would indeed be released this year, since it's "currently at press and coming out shortly". As was said a couple of years ago, "[Dark Factions is] similar to the Alliance and Horde Player's Guides, but for independent races and factions. You'll see things like naga, pandaren, satyrs, the Argent Dawn, the Cult of the Damned, the Farstriders, and such".

In other news, the World of Warcraft Fan Art Gallery was updated with a gloomy piece by Romanian artist Alexandru Sabo (who did some art for the Warcards TCG), depicting the darkest of factions.

10 million... Christ, my mind hurts just thinking about the buckets of money that Blizzard & co. are receiving from such an overwhelming subscribership. But to hell with it, they deserve it! Yes, we're all pissed off at them every now and then, but at the end of the day we're still playing World of Warcraft - and so are 10 more million people around the world!

This awesome figure was just announced by Blizzard, who went on to remind us of all the "best-selling" records held by WoW and The Burning Crusade expansion. They also give a division of the game's population in the three major continents it was launched in: over 2 million subscribers in Europe, over 2.5 million in North America, and about 5.5 million in Asia.

In other news, Age of Conan was pushed back to 2009 May 2008. I keked.

Bored? Bloody maintenance getting extended again? Patch taking too long to download? Login servers are down? Lag is over nine thousand? Whatever the reason, we've all been there - that dreadful time of the month / week / day when we have to take a break from WoW, and indulge ourselves with some good ol' fashioned, offline, or even "manual" gaming (blasphemy!). The World of Warcraft TCG would obviously be my first suggestion in cases like these; but if, for some reason, you're looking for an alternative, how about a bored board game of StarCraft?

As announced on Blizzard's website, StarCraft: The Board Game is now available from Fantasy Flight Games, packing 180 plastic figures with dozens of unit types, employed by the six warring factions (two for each race), an innovative modular board, and a card-driven combat system which "allows players to modify and upgrade their faction with a wealth of powerful technologies. Players can unleash a Zergling rush, use powerful Protoss shields to halt an enemy invasion, or even dispatch cloaked Ghosts to guide nuclear missiles to their target."

Speaking of Ghosts, Blizzard mixed some of the ex-StarCraft: Ghost cinematics in a walkthrough trailer which outlines the generals rules of combat, and basically shows us what the StarCraft board game is all about. Watch it right here on Wipefest.


StarCraft: The Board Game... Are you that bored?

Surely, you know about the upcoming WoW patch 2.4 (to some extent), and unsurprisingly enough, there is still no cow level listed in the release notes. There is, however, a new zone dedicated to high-end raiding, dungeoning and wiping, called Sunwell Island - complete with a whole new reputation associated with the new NPC hub there, called the Shattered Sun Offensive. Because eeeeverybody loves to grind reputation from those god damn daily quests!

The island's main attraction will naturally be Sunwell Plateau, a raid dungeon inhabited by the Burning Legion, where everybody will be welcome to intrude, but very few will live to tell what's inside. Think of it as the next Black Temple, and think just how many players make it even that far... Right, so much for me ever seeing the end of it.

Luckily, there will also be a five-man dungeon on Sunwell Island, called the Master's Magister's Terrace. This is where the rest of us sinners will go hunting for epix, either in normal or in heroic mode. That's right, epic loot will drop even in normal mode, but only from the final boss - and don't expect anything better than low-level Karazhan stuff. In heroic mode, however, every boss will drop epix, and if you manage to kill the final one, the lewt will rival in quality and shinyness with Prince Malchezzar's treasures from Kara.

If you want to learn more about Sunwell Plateau and Magister's Terrace, as well as other changes comin in 2.4, be sure to listen / read the transcript of BlizzCast Episode 1. And here are some pictures from Sunwell Island to go with that. Nice boat!

 (...)

 Continue reading 'Sunwell Dungeons In 2.4'...

Ah, Siege Tanks! Those majestic war machines that I used to love so much in the good ol' days of Dune II, and later in the first Starcraft... Right until I got totally owned by a pitiful bunch of flying thingies pissing in the wind, and down on my ironically sieged tanks. As cool as they may look, sound and feel, I guess that Siege Tanks will - and should - forever remain a limited tool of descruction, crippled on the battlefield by their weak points, unless properly backed up by other units.

The same will generally hold true for the terrans' Siege Tanks in Starcraft 2, as well, now that the blues have updated the game's website with info about the new Crucio Siege Tank. So... what exactly is new, you ask? Well, other than the expected visual update, this about sums it up:

"The Crucio has been designed for increased survivability with an enlarged, reinforced turret and hull. The new turret layout also features an upgraded assault-mode armament package so that the Crucio can fend for itself more successfully in an open battlefield. Force deployment costs for the Crucio have increased over the older Arclite, but the increased versatility of the powerful new siege tank more than compensates for the additional expense."

There be more pics, clips and such on the Starcraft 2 website, if you can be bothered.

It won't matter if you're prepared or not, anymore, when the next World of Warcraft expansion goes live. Unlike Illidan - who is rather exclusivist with allowing guests to visit and wipe in his shiny Black Temple, the Lich King Arthas will be a lot more user-friendly, it seems. That's not to say that every casual guild will be able to melt his face, and his frozen throne along with him; just that all the players will be able to "interact" with Arthas from the get-go.

That interview with Tigole we mentioned a few days ago was published in full by CVG, and his final words shed some light on what kind of "interaction" awaits us:

"We're giving all players going into the expansion interaction with Arthas. We were too protective of Illidan [the arch villain in The Burning Crusade] making sure we didn't waste the opportunity, so now you're interacting with him straight away.

You're talking to him, having these moments with him (ed. - that sounded so gay), so you don't have to be a raider to see him. We're also having a Caverns of Time mission - The Culling from Warcraft III - so that you can go back and play alongside Arthas when he was shiny and good, when you're burning Stratholme."

Burning Stratholme? Yaaay, I just LOVE to burn things!

There's more to wiping than just PvE dungeons and raid bosses: when it comes to PvP, the question from our first poll - "Are you a wiper, or a whipee?" - takes a whole new meaning. It's wipe or be wiped, and in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, we'll have an entire zone with nothing but PvP slaughtering, called Lake Wintergrasp. It's a frozen area located to the west of The Dragonblight region, inhabited by taunka - a lost tauren race - at a settlement named Icemist Village (check the Northrend map).

"No PvE quests. No dungeons. Just raw PvP, siege weapons and building destruction." That's how Wintergrasp lake is described in the latest issue of the PC Zone magazine, in which lead designer Jeff Kaplan (Tigole) talks about some of the zones in Northrend. You can read more about the others over on Blizzplanet.

Sounds to me like the good old days of Southshore / Tarren Mill world PvP'ing are back with a vengeance. Blood will flow freeze, arrrrrr!

Aside from being a couple of hopeless WoW addicts, we also happen to have a sweet spot for the Japanese visual subculture - so, for our first "official news", we turn over to Blizzplanet, who revealed that Tokyopop will publish a new manga book by Keith R.A. DeCandido, based on the Starcraft franchise. No title or other details have been announced so far, only an estimated release date set for August 2008.

This news comes in addition to the Warcraft: Dragons of Outland manga planned for March 2009, which was revealed in the pages of the recently released Warcraft: The Sunwell Trilogy Ultimate Edition collection. As its title obviously implies, this new Warcraft manga will be based on some Outland'ish events from The Burning Crusade expansion, and it's being written by the same dude, Richard A. Knaak.


If only Warcraft had more lolis, we might actually look forward to this.