This crazy guy hooked up his Wiimote to his computer and figured out how to go fishing using the movements. Pretty cool, now if you could just PvP with it! [Thanks Jason!]

Though I find it hard to believe he’s Exalted with anyone.

Ok I admit it the Armory is fun.

Mounted and MOUNTED! Follow up to this can be found after the jump.
(more…)

I was going to write a story about this but I’m speechless.
5000 Gold for sex.
I wonder if this is a TOS violation.

“I play a level 70 night elf druid and would prefer someone who was into roleplaying (I have a costume!) boy honestly anyone will do, as long long as you have the gold. I would also be ok with a woman too, as long as you have the gold!”

The craiglist ad is after the jump.
(more…)

Because malicious hackers exploit a flaw in the way the Windows handles animated cursors to steal your login info and rape your account:

The flaw came to light in late March and lets attackers take over vulnerable PCs via booby-trapped websites. Warcraft players seem to be one of the targets because accounts for the game are potentially worth significant sums of money.

But the really interesting part is that the hack isn’t directly related to Warcraft. Instead, they’re using it gather WoW login info rather than credit card info because “the raw value of a WoW account is now higher than a credit card and its associated verification data.” How crazy is that?

1up posted an article yesterday titled “How Pro Gaming Will Change World of Warcraft” that, frankly, I find pretty ridiculous:

On March 18, both Team Pandemic and CheckSix announced they each had signed deals to sponsor a WoW Arena team. They sponsors plucked the top two teams from the Bloodlust Battlegroup. “Bloodlust is home to many competitive PvP guilds both from past games and WoW itself (Nurfed, Vicious Cycle, Eminence, etc.),” said Joseph Romano, the leader of Power Trip. “It [the sponsorship] is only going to attract more teams to come to the cluster.”

The article raises a couple of interesting points about the differences between sponsoring a WoW team vs. other games, but overall the potential impact of sponsored Arena teams seems way over played to me. Also, you’ve got to chuckle at the ridiculousness of gems like this:

Ladies and gentlemen, WoW is no longer just a game or a social phenomenon — WoW is serious business.

So, the biggest MMO in history didn’t amount to anything until a couple of low-rent e-sports outfits decided to get involved? I have a feeling that Blizzard, who’s raking in $15 a month from 8.5 million people regardless of what Team Pandemic or CheckSix do, would beg to differ.

Part of the reason why I really enjoy playing my hunter is because she is so suited for solo play, grinding, and just plain survivability. My warlock’s spec is far more suited to raid dps than solo play, so I tend to only bring her out for Karazhan or five-man instances; I don’t spend solo time with her. When things really get hairy, the hunter has tons of survival tricks: traps, feign death, wingclip and run, you name it. Unless I do something extremely stupid, she can survive most things. I tend to solo a lot, so she is my favourite character, and I spend most of my non-raiding time with her.

What is your favourite solo class? What do you enjoy playing the most, and which classes have most survivability?

(PS: Speaking of survivability, I started a Draenei paladin last night. :D I suspect I’ll get bored with levelling her, but I was amused last night at how effective she is – set her to attack a target, and I could go away and read for a bit while she whacked away at it….slooooowly, but always successfully. I was running into groups of blood elves to try to liven things up. As a 70, I have a complete loathing of evil chicken-riders, so it was quite satisfying for my little pally to totally kick belf butt…lol, lowbie payback.)

Is it just me, or does the current April Fools “joke” fit just well into that corporate “our users are losers” Blizzard climate of late? Guess 9 million customers are rarely contributory to corporate humility, but this time… So far, Blizz’ reaction to much any legitimate question lately and complaint has been a condescending “QQ more, nub”. Let’s see…

Users: Blizz, please fix Druid range bug.

Blizz: QQ more, lrn2notbecat

or..

Users: Blizz, please fix Mage blink bug

Blizz: QQ more, lrn2notblink

and then, there’s…

Users: Blizz, the Druid “fix” is a bad nerf,
itemization is not up to par with other classes and will lead to a
situation as pre-2.0 come Karazhan.

Blizz: QQ more, nublet, Durid is b 4 heelz.

and, finally, today:

Users: Blizz, why did you disable cross-faction inspects and then introduce the Armory, which produces well-formed XML which can be easily downloaded and – using a 24 line Ruby script – turned into a feed for an addon which basically pre-loads all Arena teams in my Battlegroup and lets me “inspect” them in-game?

Blizz: Here’s a tinfoil hat, troll. Shed more tears, will ya?

… to wit, the “tinfoil hat” is made from “troll tears” and allows users to “see the truth”, which they “can not handle”.

In short, maybe I am overreacting. But to brand everyone who had issues with the Armory as a “crying troll” and prescribe a “tinfoil hat”, basically dismissing all concerns about the Armory, is … well … not very customer-oriented corporate. Or, maybe, Joi will have to rewrite his “Wisdom of Rob Pardo” and rename it “Lessons why it’s bad to hire a bunch of untrained Everquest no-life raiders to define your corporate culture, especially if some of them were the worst trolls and tear-shedding server-crashers in EQ history themselves”.