Click the image above to embiggen and enjoy the hilarity.

The best part is that she (Macilore, my beloved guildmate) did this entirely from memory.

Over at the World of Warcraft Livejournal Community, user Tisoi went to PAX and posted some great photo spoils from Blizzard’s presence at the convention. Among other things, Blizzard brought Diablo III, Starcraft 2, and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm in playable form and set up kiosks so visitors to the convention could get some hands-on time with their upcoming offerings.

The photos are pretty nice and pretty large (you can click the one above to embiggen), and show the Worgen and Goblin starting areas in pretty good detail. It’s clear that the Worgen and the Goblin models are different from the ones already in-game and are already much more detailed. Things look pretty polished right now, which I imagine would fool some people into thinking that the expansion is close to release, but I still think we’re looking at a November 2010 release at the earliest.

In any event, head over to the thread at the WoW LJ community to see the photos like the one above, and drool with me.

If you’re not familiar with the story of Ezra Chatterton, you owe it to yourself to read one of the most personally compelling stories I’ve ever read about a boy who loved life and loved World of Warcraft.

Sadly, Ezra passed away several months ago, but his legacy lives on inside World of Warcraft in a number of ways; including the Merciless Crossbow of the Phoenix (specially crafted to his specifications), and now, with his presence as Elder Ezra Wheathoof during the Lunar Festival.

The quality of the screenshot above isn’t great, but it’s enough to see that he’s there on Elder Rise in Thunder Bluff in a column of moonlight, with a trusty Phoenix Hatchling pet at his side. It’s a beautiful and fitting memorial, and here’s hoping he’ll be a mainstay of the festival elders.

The NDA around the Wrath of the Lich King alpha has finally been lifted, and screenshots, loot, and other information about the alpha has been flooding out. Add to that the fact that beta invitations have finally started to flow, and you”ve got a virtual tsunami of information around the upcoming expansion, which of course, is all good.

Full talent trees have been published in a number of places, as I previously mentioned, and talent trees for Hunters and Mages have been updated and included as well. The end-talents planning for WoTLK are pretty impressive, I have to say, but they’re all subject to change at any time.

The fine folks over at MMO Champion have been collecting tons and tons of information about the beta, including screenshots of the new Dalaran – which is essentially a hole in the ground where it used to be and now hovering over a new zone in Northrend called The Dragonblight, and will serve as the expansion’s new multi-faction capital city, much like Shattrath is to Burning Crusade.

You can check out the new talent calculators, set up your own test builds, view screenshots of most of the new zones as they stand now, look into some of the new dungeons, and even check out some of the confirmed loot that’s dropped in the beta. Enjoy!

If you’ve been around the internet this week, you know that someone has cracked the DRM for the HD-DVD format and posted in online.

This has caused quiet a kerfuffle, especially on DIGG (which I realize is somewhat verboten here), but the responses – both pro and con – are interesting.

So, apropos of Paul’s WoW Drama post, I thought I would highlight one WoW player, Gateux, doing his part to spread the 16-bit meme.

Is this a violation of the WoW TOS? Is this kind of dissent useful? Is this a virtual protest akin to some of the Second Life nastiness?

What’s your take?

I logged on yesterday evening to check my mailbox and toss a few shards up on the auction house and was greeted with panic and screaming. I ran outside Orgrimmar to see what was going on and ran smack in to the ass of Highlord Kruul, a lieutenant of Kazzak. This is the second part of the Burning Crusade openeing event.

He shows up at a capital city and walks in and kills everything in his path. He heads through to the leader and is merciless and efficient. It takes a dedicated raid to pull him down and there has to be no outside interference at all, as every death that Kruul causes returns him to full health. When I was in Orgrimmar everyone was hearthing back and flying in to see him and the bodies and bones covered every surface.

A few seconds after he walked past me I was two-shotted and saw this charming message.

(more…)

The first real guild I joined Twisting Nether was “The Crimson Watch.” They were a role-playing/endgame guild when I joined with nightly scheduled runs or RP events. By far the most popular event was our guild induction ceremony held every Saturday afternoon on Dreadmist Peak in the Barrens. This is the mountain whose top is covered in black fog and cultists and contains a jewel that lowbie players must shatter.

We would meet in this cave, with the jewel, and dress in our ceremonial crimson robes. Everyone would be walking, not running. Everyone would be in character. Our guild leader, Morghul, would stand atop the plateau in the cave and the officers of the guild would kneel beside and behind him. The entire guild was expected to come to these ceremonies. The screenshot above is one that I took during one of our inductions.

Inductees would be given a speech about our motivations and about the goals of The Crimson Watch. Then they would be called forward one by one and asked to perform three tasks: donate one gold to the guild, prove they had spilled Alliance blood, and then spill their blood before the guild. This was done using the /emote command, of course. If they satisfied these requirements and also spoke once over Ventrillo, then they were given crafted crimson robes and were official guild members.

Every week after the ceremony the officers would dream up new challenges for the recruits. They would have to duel the strongest warrior. They would have to hold themselves underwater until they died. They would have to sneak into Teldrassil and leap from the tallest branch into the sea. They would form a raid and attack Ashenvale. They would be summoned to the starting area for Dwarves and Gnomes and would have to occupy the buildings there. Every week it was different, and every week it was fun.

The role-playing built guild loyalty in a way I haven’t seen elsewhere.

Remember that day? Compared to the changes from then to today, TBC is small change. Those were the days when we’d disassemble MPQ files to learn more about how Blizzard worked internally, and GMs and Blizz devs cheered us on and helped. Before the day that was a bannable offense.