Expansion Pack Available on Pre-Order

Is that what you think it is?

Yup. It's the pre-order for the Burning Crusade available on Amazon.com.

There's a big write up on it, but here's a juicy excerpt:
"Availability: This item will be released on October 15, 2006."

Now, we all remember going through this when we were originally waiting for WoW. Stores would post it for pre-order and list a date that made no hint it was just an estimate. But we quickly caught on as we saw the different and updated dates. So as of now, it says October 15. Let's see if that sticks.

China = Non-China

(Updated)
Gamasutra - Chinese World of Warcraft Players Threaten Boycott

"The Chinese userbase reports widespread delays of over an hour when logging
into the game and getting a server list, and the last straw seems to have been
complete server outages that disrupted the endgame of a large-scale raid
involving nearly 1,000 players."

Don't we have this all the time in the non-China versions?

Update - (thanks to this post from Clickable Culture) - Apparently in China they pay by the hour rather than by the month. It's not really different I think; we're all paying for time spent in queue. The insanity of it is just painfully more obvious when you're paying for it by the hour.

Do you do polls?

Searching around, I found a few sites with periodic polls:

World of Warcraft Vault (Here)

World of Warcraft Stratics (Current Polls are on the home page and archived polls are here.)

The Druids Grove (Here)

iPod - iWoW

Now for some iPod commercial parodies:

	iWoW chikky! 1/2 minute
	iWoW dance! 1/2 minute
	ipwn 1 minute

Nicely done folks!

WoW Posts - 2006 March 4

Here are some interesting World of Warcraft posts I've collected this past week:

Casual Vs. Raiders Part I Dying in Azeroth Murlocs as the New Crazy Frog Alt-itis Latest WoW Position WoW to be PC based only Official Priest Talent Change Discussion

Disney's Animal Kingdom and The Barrens

In a very "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" making-mashed-potatoes-into-the-Devil's-Tower kind of moment I felt the need to create the photo at bottom to compare to the World of Warcraft wallpaper on the top.

And I still feel like it's not done yet.

Meanwhile somewhere at Blizzard someone is scrambling to shred memos between them and Disney because we're on to their secret subliminal advertising.

Caption Game

While you're flexing those caption muscles to participate in the Caption contest, surf on over to OGaming's Caption game room. (Unfortunately the picture this week is from the contest but there are other pictures there to practice on plus polls on how people liked the submissions.)

2006-March Events

From the Events Calendar for March:

Darkmoon Faire (Mulgore) March 6 - March 12

Call to Arms: Arathi Basin! March 3 - March 6

Call to Arms: Alterac Valley! March 17 - March 20

Call to Arms: Warsong Gulch! March 24 - March 27

During a Call to Arms, emmissaries from that Battleground will be found in the major cities, and honor/faction rewards for performing objectives in that battleground are increased.

Worldwide WoW

Having been with this game since the beginning, it is incredible to realize how many people are still just joining WoW. Check out these stats from Blizzard Press Releases:

Date	Worldwide Player Count	Link to Press Release & Notes
2007-07-24	9 Million	Cached Page
2007-07-03	8.5 Million	Cached Page (BC Sold 3.5 Million Copies in 1 month)
2007-01-11	8 Million	Cached Page
2006-11-09	7.5 Million	Cached Page (BC Street Date Set)
2006-05-10	6.5 Million	Cached Page (BC Features Announced)
2006-02-28	6 Million	Link (Spanish Version Released)
2006-01-19	5.5 Million	Cached Page (1 million in Europe)
2005-12-19	5 Million	Link (WoW is a Year Old)
2005-11-08	4.5 Million	Dead Link (Taiwan Launch)
2005-08-29	4 Million	Dead Link (UK Link) (1 million in North America)
2005-07-21	3.5 Million	Dead Link (Singapore Launch)
2005-06-14	2 Million	Dead Link (China Launch June 7)
2005-03-17	1.5 Million	Dead Link (UK Link)
2004-11-23	Debut	-

Lately it seems as though every month another 500,000 players join. I'm quoting the press releases here; though there are some who would say it literally feels like 500,000 players have just joined on their server alone.

Updated 11/5/2007 to add new Press Releases. Blizzard also removed some of the old Press Releases so I tried to find some replacement links (Cached Google Pages or Blizzard.co.uk links).

.kill all NPC

Yoda walks into the Emperor's chambers.
/waves hand
Both guards die.

Most days I feel like the guards. But for a few moments while watching this video,... I felt like Yoda.

Why? Because in this video we see what it's like to be a GM. I didn't expect to be as spectacularly dazzled as I was. Seriously. My jaw dropped; I sat straight up; I just started laughing. Maniacally. (So this is what it's like to be an evil genious?)

Click to see the video here: GM Video