This one’s a little old since the content is pre-Wrath and from when Burning Crusade was new stuff, but it’s still hilarious, especially if you’ve played through BC and enjoyed it. I particularly like the gnome who gives the environmental report. He clearly has better things to do with his time, and uh…I guess I don’t blame him.

That’s right folks, the Night-Elf Mohawk Grenade is active in live realms – pick one up and give ANYONE, regardless of their race in-game, a night-elf mohawk. And we’re not talking about taking their existing hair and making it a mohawk, we’re talking about making their heads a night elf with a mohawk, Mr. T style.

The video above is a commercial for World of Warcraft that features the grenade and features Mr. T advertising the in-game item that only he could market. You’ll have to visit a mohawk grenade vendor outside of one of the starting zones to get one, but once you’re all stocked up you’re ready to party in your next raid or battleground! Personally, I love the things – I’ve seen some hate for em, but then again, haters are gonna hate no matter what, so I say sit back, relax, and lob a mohawk grenade at ‘em.

On that note though, I love how his first target is a gnome. Hee! They’re just such easy targets!

This is an amazing question for me, because multi-player role-playing games and table top RPGs and I have a long, rich, and mixed history. What about you? What’s your history and love affair with role-playing games? Shout it out in the comments!

And yes, I’ll bare all, don’t worry, just behind the jump:

I’ve been a tabletop gamer for a long time, although I can’t say I’ve always enjoyed it. Back in high school some of my friends and I tried to play a Dungeons and Dragons Dark Sun campaign, with me as a 6-foot tall preying mantis called a Thri-Kreen. (You can see what artists imagine them to look like at Google Images.) I thought the playable race was fun, until in our campaign we kind of exploited it to make me hear something no one else could and I slowly went insane and went on a killing spree over it. Kind of put a damper on the campaign. Potential, but we just didn’t keep it up.

At the time I was more engrossed in Magic: The Gathering, which I still love and while technically isn’t an RPG in the strictest sense, I think it’s arguable that it would fit into the topic. When I got to college, it was all about MUDs and MUSHes and other text-based games on the Web like Legend of the Green Dragon, which were playable in quick bursts from computer labs or class.

I dabbled in other tabletop games, but it wasn’t until my roommates and I started playing Warhammer Quest (probably the only Games Workshop game that didn’t require a billion figures and was relatively forgiving) that I really really got into tabletops. We would throw on the soundtrack to .hack // SIGN and play a couple of dungeons, invite a few friends over, and completely dork out for a few hours. It was a lot of fun, and I still love the game.

Around the same time, I started getting into MMOs – I don’t remember which one was first, but I picked up Final Fantasy XI at the behest of the same roommates, and while I loved the game visually and gameplay-wise, I was about to get my first taste of the social drawbacks of MMOs. Everyone I played with – all of my roommates – stayed up later than I did and at the time didn’t work as long hours as I did or commute as far as I did, so they had plenty of time to play while I was working or out with friends and such. I wound up falling behind level-wise, and as anyone who’s played FFXI knows, grouping with people who aren’t of approximate level in that game results in a pretty hefty experience penalty for everyone involved.

Eventually interest in FFXI waned even though the game lived on, and my friends started dropping off of the game. I did the same, and even though I still haven’t found another game that encourages people to stay logged in the way that FFXI did with its Bazaar system (where players sat and AFK’d outside of the auction house and sold their own wares that they didn’t want or couldn’t put on the auction house) – I mean, I’d leave for work in the morning with bags full of items to bazaar, and come home at night after having been logged in for 9 to 11 hours to find empty bags and tons of gil.

I will consider The Adventures of Fisternis and Prufrock the everliving testament to how awesome that game was.

Shortly thereafter – and probably through the entire time, I was seeing my first MMO love. A little game that not a lot of people may have played, but was rich with experience, depth, roleplay options, and amazing design and graphics: a space-based MMORPG called Earth and Beyond. Seriously, check out the trailer: it’s epic:

Of course Earth and Beyond got completely rolled over because it wasn’t making enough money to keep EA happy, and they were worried about the looming threat of the still popular but wildly more complicated and more massive space MMO EVE Online. That being said though, I played a Jen’quai Explorer named Laithe – a proud Sha’ha’dem intent on following his explorer heart as a member of the explorer caste but without sacrificing the teeth that he had earned from training with the Shin’wa warrior monks of the Jenquai people. Yeah, I know that’s all gibberish to you, especially if you’ve never played the game, but it was a lot of fun, and when I wasn’t exploring vast sectors of space, responding to distress signals and jumpstarting ships, or mixing it up with alien baddies out in the depths of space, I did a little reporting for Net 7, the in-game fan-contributed news and community portal.

I probably played Earth and Beyond for a couple of years, almost right up until Sunset, when EA and Westwood decided to shut the game down. I wasn’t there for that, but I’m glad to see that a couple of Google searches for the game prove that the idea still lives in the form of emulators and fans trying to recreate the in-game galaxy on their own servers for other fans who miss the game as much as I do.

I went without playing MMOs for a long time until I got accepted into the beta of this new game that my friends told me would change the face of MMOs forever. I didn’t really believe it, although I admitted that the company behind it had some strong lore, amazing storytelling power, and so far the screens I had seen looked interesting. A little game called World of Warcraft.

I signed up for the beta and fell in love – the game was immersive, beautiful, fluid, and had tons of different character classes and races, as well as factions that opposed each other – it didn’t take long for me to decide I had to play it when it came out. The closed beta became open beta, and the open beta went live, and I dropped off for a few months. At the behest of my friends who had run out on launch day to pick it up, I snagged it too, and well…the rest is history. Haven’t stopped playing since.

So what about you? What got you into RPGs? Did you start with tabletop games back in the day, or is World of Warcraft your first RPG love? Was WoW your gateway drug into a new world of role playing, or would you say WoW is pretty much the only RPG you could ever see yourself playing?

Over at the venerable WoW.com, they had huge news that I think is worth sharing, partially because I highly reccomend everyone head over there and read the result of that news, and partially because it’s a huge deal for a very good friend of mine: Kelly Aarons, also known as Cadistra of the Webcomic WoW, eh?, is joining the staff of WoW.com and will be working on a weekly comic just for the site!

The comic is called Byron: The Tauren Rogue, and heralds what is sure to be one of the signs of the apocalypse: ninja cows. Verify we are living in the endtimes.

I’ve mentioned Kelly several times before: in my WoW people to follow at Twitter post, again when she conceptualized what a Tauren Paladin might look like, and again when she started submitting recipes for Nourish! The Azerothian Menu. Okay, I probably mention her too much – but her art is amazing and congratulations are in order – head over and take a look!

If you thought FigurePrints were awesome, you’ll love Print Warcraft – a site where you can log in, create custom artwork using your World of Warcraft characters, and then have it printed out in poster or print form.

Don’t get too excited though – the site is a great idea, but it essentially lets you take your character based on screenshots and imports of what your character looks like and put them in front of a group of standard backgrounds or other screenshots, all in the WoW in-game art style. Don’t expect any of the beautiful imagery we’ve come to expect from any of the WoW comics, the loading screens, or even the WoW trading card game.

The idea is solid – you can get posters and prints of your character with their name superimposed on a logo plate and the horde or alliance emblems on it, and for a pretty reasonable price at that – a 12×18 print will run you just shy of $18 USD, and a massive 40×27 wide poster will cost you about $30 USD. The pricing is good, although I can’t speak for the quality of the product. In any case though, they make for great custom posters that you can hang anywhere in the house.

That being said though, I personally would take a different approach. Many of us, myself included, love our World of Warcraft characters, and wouldn’t mind a poster or a small print of them hanging on the wall near our computers – in the past though, I’ve turned to the massive WoW fan art community of webcomic artists and players who love the game just as much as I do to help me out. Find yourself a Webcomic or a fan artist you know who’s done World of Warcraft related art in the past, and ask nicely if they’re taking commissions.

That way you get art that’s not only truly personal and likely one of a kind, but even if you pay more for it you get something really unique and special for you and your character – something you won’t have a hard time framing. And, with any luck, you’ll make friends with an artist who may very well be happy to take your commission fee and your support.

Don’t get me wrong though – I’m not dissing Print Warcraft at all, but I am advocating the huge WoW fan art community, of which many of its members are really talented, exceptional artists – my friend Cadistra being one of them (although she’s so busy I doubt she has time for commissions, but maybe someday!) – there are tons of artists out there willing to make you something really special and unique that’s real art you can hang on your walls, instead of a high-rez screenshot. If you’re looking for something you wouldn’t be afraid to hang on your wall in your college dorm room or that you wouldn’t be heartbroken if it got beat up a bit though, Print Warcraft all the way!

Blizzard just hosted its first ever #Blizzchat developer chat on Twitter! The @warcraft twitter account took questions from other WoW fans on Twitter and took time to answer them all in a nice huge blue-laden forum post, posting the questions and answers as they went along!

Among some of the questions, well, there’s the one above sadly (click the image above to embiggen) – it means my hunter will never have a level 80 druid to love. But seriously, the questions are fabulous and the answers, while not always forthcoming, are entertaining to read. Of course the thread dissolves into your standard WoW-forum behavior after too long, but the blue posts are more than worth it. It’s clear that Blizzard is planning to do this again and make more use of its Warcraft Twitter account in the future, but for the time being? We have some amazing questions and answers.

Listen. I’m a huge fan of drinking, and I’m a huge fan of WoW. If I can combine the two in any possible way, I’m all about it. (please drink responsibly, if you drink at all!) That’s why I was thrilled when the Brewfest Tankard O’ Terror arrived at Warcraft Steins (shown above in the center – a replica of the actual Tankard O’ Terror item from the game, but also why I’m even more excited to hear that the new Charge of the Great Dragonflights stein has also landed:

The stein has a wrap-around panoramic image of all five of the dragonflights, beautifully created by artist James Zhang. The stein made an appearance at Blizzcon to rave reviews, and should be shipping in mid-October.

In addition to the Charge of the Great Dragonflights stein, you can also pick up the Tankard O’ Terror (shown above) for $39.99, a Horde or Alliance stein for $89.99, a Rise of the Lich King stein for $89.99, or go epic with the Legenday Collection version of the Rise of the Lich King stein for $174.99.

The Charge of the Great Dragonflights stein however, can be yours for $89.99 plus shipping, although at those prices you may be a bit wary about drinking from them and instead wind up putting it in a collector’s case!

This has got to be one of the best WoW-videos I’ve ever seen ever, ever, ever.

Warning – it’s a Parody of “I’m On A Boat,” so the language is downright filthy – not at all safe for work.

Clear? Now that that’s out of the way, click play, full-screen, and enjoy the lens flares. Or head over here at YouTube to watch it in it’s natural habitat. (thanks to WoW.com, without whom I would never have seen this!)

I’m drinkin’ noggenfogger’lix cause it’s CLASSIC.

I don’t know who originally made this, but they’re probably one of the best feral druids I’ve never met.

Image courtesy of @valkyrierisen on Twitter, who found it through her guild forums – if anyone knows where it originated, shout it out in the comments!

I was turned onto this video thanks to WoW.com’s Guildwatch column, which is one of the best the site has, I have to admit – if it were all they ran I would still think it was a great blog, but since it’s not the only thing they run, they’re even better – but that being said, one of the entries was that this guild Renaissance, playing Alliance on Ravenholdt-US, had put together a truly fantastic video showcasing not only one of their recent Ulduar runs, but the fun they have together when they run.

And believe me, the video is hilarious. From the music selection (opening up with “United States of Whatever”) to the healers’ hilarious death/rezzing macro text to the absolutely glorious “air ganking squad” (near the end of the video, I won’t spoil how they do it if you don’t know), these guys look like they know how to have a great time, and considering they cleared Ulduar, they know what they’re doing too. Now if only they were recruiting hunters…