We are happy to announce our latest contest, Legendary Tales, inspired by the upcoming Paramount Pictures movie Beowulf. In the style of a graphic novel, tell us your story of overcoming a seemingly insurmountable foe in World of Warcraft. Simply create and submit a screenshot-based photo journal of your in-game exploits, and you could win! Whether you held off the fel orcs of Hellfire Citadel or overcame the chicken scourge of Goldshire, your story should dazzle and amaze.

Five winners will be chosen to receive a one-year subscription to World of Warcraft!

(WoW page for submissions and other details.)

Which sounds lovely, but I doubt very much that this contest was “inspired” by Beowulf, but rather was *paid* by Beowulf. There is a difference.

And I think it would be nice if we just called it like it is instead of pretending the Blizz dudes were “inspired” to create a Beowulf-like contest because it seems like a really cool movie.

World of Warcraft shills for Toyota trucks.

(via Curse)

Here’s what I say: why rationalize? It’s none of our business, frankly.

An interesting history lesson about this and prior fan site sales, including Thottbot and Allaka-adver-popups, by Ahmed Farooq, former acquisitions dude at IGE: “Hot off the Presses: Wowhead sold for over $1 million”.

Goddammit, when is somebody going to go on the record with these stories? The truth is, I can’t figure out WHAT we’ve got and until then, I have to use lots of slashed up phrases for all the “either-or’s” like estimated/rumored/speculated and current/former/not-yet-denied.

I could be misreading this but that sounds like a call to REVOLUTION! Hang the rich.

Here’s a screenshot from a recent, wretched Fornost PUGgie to whack the hilt mobs. As gaming vets, it’s always our responsibility to get the new-to-gaming noobs up to speed on how all this works. I realize that, I accept that, but after giving my short-speech about the do’s and don’ts of crowd control to the same 5 people again and again, I get a little irritated.

They never did get it, but fortunately for me, we one-shot the last hilt mob — a BAMF nemesis mob — and thank you, Jesus, I never have to go to that pisspool again.

If you’re thirsty for more arrogance and Napoleon-esque posturing, Psycho E-Bitch’s Fraxx was granted an IM audience with me last week to chat about gaming, books and cyber music: A Visit with AFKGamer’s Blogging Bad Boy.

Some highlights: the “Mithaniel Marr story”, the rest of you suck, the liberal manifestos I’m reading, and, gaming’s last dirty little secret.

How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat fish?

If you’re shopping around for a World of Warcraft gift for your faux WoW girlfriend, you might want to farm A Steamy Romance Novel.

It starts off strong, but becomes rather formulaic.

I’m a little disappointed with my fan mag’s Issue #2. Page 75 of the online AFK Magazine:

Rating every game on a scale of 8.0 – 10.0 is to be expected, but CMON, L2Edit or disband now.

Many dead noobs and noob NPC guards later, the foul beast fell to the zerg. The best part of the entertainment, it shut up the trash-talking Goldshire noobs for a good 5 or 10 minutes. Also taught them an important lesson that will serve them well their entire Warcraft life: When you see a fire-breathing dragon coming your way, you GET OUT OF THE WAY.

Teremus’ journey from just outside Goldshire to his death in Stormwind is documented in a Flickr photoset, clickable from the thumbnail above.

Lastly, the week is AFK Gamer’s annual Week of Fives. Raster (blog slave and guild puppet) and I will be tag-teaming a week of posts looking back on 2006. Later today, Five Things World of Warcraft Does Really Well. Ya, really.

Schild of f13 caught wind of some Wall Street presentation by Castle Blizzard warning of discussing their plans to create MMOGs from all their franchises: “All Blizzard franchises will become MMOGs.” (f13 link reblogged around the world) No other details are immediately available like, oh … where on Wall Street this was or to whom was it directed — I spent five minutes of fruitless googling, that seems plenty. Hey. f13 redesigned their site. Looks good.

Penny Arcade, the comic lifestyle, has inked some sort of deal with the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) for a public service ad campaign targeted at gamers. From GameDaily BIZ, the purpose of the campaign is to “… inform the gaming population why the video game rating system is important to them.” (GDBiz link) Is it? I don’t really think it is. It’s important to me the citizen, it’s important to parents certainly, but me the gamer, it’s only important so far as I avoid the “E – Everyone” games, like I avoid the “G – General Audiences” movies. Y’might think this is exactly why I need to be educated about the benefits of the ESRB, but I think it’s just a “W – Waste of Money”.

That combat revamp many months ago in Star Wars: Galaxies just might go down in history as the worst business decision ever in gaming — and I am hopeful because I like to witness history in the making, like I enjoyed being part of the Anarchy Online launch. Unlike the typical major retool where players become resigned to their new fates and move on with their lives (usually elsewhere), there’s a solid core of old school SWGers committed to resurrecting the pre-CU/NGE SWG world. (ShardWire SWGEmu link: The First Step into a Larger World) Sony, there’s opportunity knocking. Also, a SWG-classic-ruleset server would eliminate future emails in my inbox from the old SWG gang about getting the pvp guild back together for some wtfpwnage and I would very much appreciate that. Thanks.

The Wall Street Journal, the spam of American offices everywhere, published an article last Friday about gamers that meet in game and get married in real life. GOD NO! When did this start happening?!? (Uhh, back in Ultima Online … seven years ago.) You know all that. What caught my eye were some stats they quoted, courtesy of Nick Yee, game industry voyeur of Stanford University: 29% of women players and 8% of men said they had gone on to date someone they met in a game. Edge Online and We Make Money Not Art chased down this additional stat from Yee’s website: 80% of females and 60% of males have engaged in a little light flirtation [in game]. Holy gender gap. Age? Lying? We’ve got some real playahs in MMOs who are too busy working the shemales to log out and complete a survey?

Lastly, no patch this week in World of Warcraft. Still. It’s like watching a glacier carve a new landscape — which makes me think I’ll be buying that Starcraft MMO for my grandkids, and I haven’t even started yet.

We don’t need more players in World of Warcraft. We need more hardware or different internet hook ’em up thingies or at least some new ideas.

We, for sure, don’t need more players who will level a warlock to 60, join a Blackwing Lair raid and then ask if they should soulstone a mage before the fight.

Ya. Soulstone a mage please. Because if the shit starts to hit the proverbial fan, I want to make sure I can get a portal OUT.

I used to wonder where we found some of our fine warlocks, but now I know: It must have been a past Recruit A Friend drive.