Enter to win your own Creative WoW Wireless headset

Hey, you, reading this blog. You like playing World of Warcraft? You like listening to the sounds of the game as you do it? You got ears and a distinct predilection for playing in either the Horde or Alliance faction? Then boy do we have a headset for you: the Creative World of Warcraft Wireless gaming headset is going to be the hottest thing you can put on your head since the trucker hat, and here’s your chance to win one by commenting on this very post. As usual, the contest is open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), and everyone who enters must be 13 or older. To enter, leave a comment on this post before Wednesday, October 21st, at midnight eastern, and please be sure to use a real email that you check often to enter, so we can contact the winners when we choose them. You may enter only once, and each winner will get a Creative World of Warcraft Wireless Gaming Headset, with a retail value of $150. Please note: winners will not receive the headset until it is released later this year. Click here to read the official contest rules. Good luck to you all! And don’t forget, if you want to win five of

Patch 3.3 PTR: New tutorial gallery

As we’ve mentioned in a previous post, there are a new set of tutorials on the public test realm designed to help out new players when patch 3.3 launches. This should help smooth the overall experience for people who are completely new to the world of both MMOs as well as video games in general. While they aren’t nearly as amusing as the fake one I posted above (although, that one needs to get added at some point), they do walk characters through a lot of the major tasks. Currently, there are sixty different tutorial windows explaining things from food to durability loss. There is still plenty of room for additions, but these are a great start. While my gallery may not show it, a lot of the tutorials highlight parts of your screen like your enemy health bars, your minimap, or your action bars themselves to help show what new players are supposed to be looking at. Just a reminder that this is the PTR and these might end up changing or getting re-worded before they hit the live realms. If you have any constructive feedback on any of the tutorials in the gallery, please be sure to hit the US PTR forum or the EU PTR forum and let Blizzard know your thoughts on what

World of Warcraft in the ‘net’s traffic patterns

Arbor Networks is a company that continually monitors the Internet and its usage — they keep track of Internet outages and site visits on a global scale. They just recently released a report of when traffic peaks in the evenings around the world, and at least one of their results is about the game we’re all playing, none other than World of Warcraft. In terms of just general consumer traffic online, the numbers tend to peak, according to the report, at around 8-11pm — the time right before bed when most Americans are done with dinner, and have a little free time to jump online and browse around. In terms of what they’re doing when online, simple web browsing makes up most of that traffic (52%), what’s the rest of it? Gaming, including WoW. More than any other gaming service (they also take a look at Steam), WoW’s chart is extremely interesting — it peaks solidly at 8pm every night, and then falls back down just as sharply around 11pm. In other words, the biggest audience for WoW (during this time period — this is over ten days in July of this year) is raiders, who show up on time at 8 and end the raid around 3 hours later. In

The Daily Quest: Grid healing addon guides and resources

Our very own Robin Torres is making the plunge into raiding and is looking for guides that help with the setup and use of the healing AddOn Grid. Being the resource nut that I am, I had a handful of links for her in two minutes. And now I share them with you: WoW.com guide to configuring Grid healing AddOn Video guide to configuring Grid How to configure Grid to track HoTs Grid configuration with extra plugins Some players prefer HealBot over Grid (here’s a good comparison of the two) and still others prefer AddOns that do more than just raid heal functionality (PitBull 4, though still in beta.)

Sneak peek at Tokyopop’s Death Knight manga

Not long after Tokyopop announced its 2010 schedule, which actually includes a late 2009 release, BlizzPlanet unveiled scans from the first chapter of Dan Jolley and Rocio Zucchi’s World of Warcraft: Death Knight. The story features Thassarian, an NPC first encountered in Ebon Hold and later in the Alliance airship flying above Icecrown. Jolley delves deeper into Thassarian’s past, telling his history as a human Alliance soldier with dreams of rising through the ranks but who eventually becomes ensnared under the Lich King’s employ. Intended to give insight into the different World of Warcraft classes, the Death Knight manga is the first of a series of class-focused full-length stories. Rocio Zucchi is a 22-year old Argentinian female manga artist, and her work on this book is simply sensational, if the first pages are any indication. Jolley employs a lot of flashbacks in the preview, and Zucci handles the storytelling transitions deftly. The book hits the shelves on December 1, 2009, and if you enjoyed Tokyopop’s take on the World of Warcraft universe, Death Knight looks to be an equally entertaining read.

Robert Rodat to write the Warcraft screenplay

Sam Raimi spoke with MTV News about his upcoming Warcraft movie, and while he didn’t confirm (or deny, we guess) the whole subtitle thing, he did mention a new writer. Robert Rodat is apparently putting a screenplay together — he’s best known for writing Saving Private Ryan (and of course if we can get a Warcraft movie as good as that Spielbergian epic, we’ll all be happy), and he’s also penned Fly Away Home and The Patriot. Most recently, says his Wikipedia page, he did some work on 10,000 B.C., though if you saw that movie, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell, anyway — it was terrible. Raimi says he wants to stay faithful “to the Horde and the Alliance and the mythology that takes place in the game,” as well as “choose one or some of the lands that are portrayed in the game with as much accuracy and authenticity as possible.” He calls Rodat a great character writer, and says a great character-based story within the world of Azeroth is his goal. Sounds good. The picture above is the only art we’ve ever seen of the movie (it was presented at BlizzCon a few years ago), but since then, it sounds like the

When to move up to the next raid

I like this post over at Tank Like a Girl that raises the question of just when your guild should make the big step to move on up the raiding ranks. Just last night, my very casual guild headed into Ulduar for the first time, and even though we’d never been in there before (we’ve been doing Naxx, OS, and EoE with some regularity, though when I say we’re casual, I mean we’re really casual), I think we did it at exactly the right time. We made it up to Kologarn — enough to know that we didn’t go in too early (and come out empty-handed, unable to down any bosses) or too late (and breeze through the place). Now obviously, every guild is in a different place raiding-wise (and most guilds are way ahead of ours, I know), and TLaG is dealing with a different dilemma: whether to take down Yogg-Saron before moving on to ToC or not. And in her case, she’s got the added “gotta catch ‘em all” thinking. But it’s a tough thing as a raid leader — you don’t want to move on past content you know you can do eventually, and progression always beckons. In the end, you’ve got to figure out what’s best for the