I’ve never went to a midnight release. I’ve never queue in a line for a game.  It’s cold outside too.  I hate cold.  I even, for a second, debated getting the collector’s edition of this game … … they’re just like me, they bottle it up until the penultimate minute.  And without further adieu… SQUEE!!!!  Right, I’ve got to get ready and meet up with Sofi, ShimmerGeek and Devidose tonight.

That’s right, Call of Duty World at War and World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King both are out now. COD came out Tuesday at midnight and Wow came out at midnight this morning. I’m heading out to Best Buy a little later to get claim our preorders.

[someone] … has 36 World of WarCraft accounts that he plays on 11 computers simultaneously. He mainly seems to be doing it because he doesn’t like to rely on so many other people to get a raid going, which includes attacking the Alliance capital cities, and on that front I can totally see where he’s coming from.

Something smells funny with this story, although the picture in the post of the monitor setup with Wow sessions split into four sessions at once and a bunch of different mice and keyboards. Why not hookup with something like Synergy to control multiple monitors and sessions with one mouse and keyboard?

For fun factor alone I’m blogging it, but calling BS on this one. Our oldest son diagrees with me and thinks someone could do this. What do you think? Is this story true or fiction? Snopes, anyone?

A two world machinima by Gary Hazlitt exploring the themes of a cross-world quest for love, mixed-reality and online game relationships.

Machinima which explores love crossing the boundaries of two different virtual worlds: Second Life and World of Warcraft. I was intrigued by the title and theme and felt the 7:20 was time well spent. Thanks Gary.

Hat tip to Gary’s love Laurel Papworth who shared this in a blog post writing:

It might make more sense if you know that Gary works a bit in Second Life whereas I am a World of Warcraft addict. If we want to talk to each other, we have to boot up the other virtual world – or turn around and tap the other one on the shoulder.

Interesting.

You really have to wonder, don’t you. I mean, regardless of what Time Warner says they’re not doing or whatever (and let’s be frank, public relations is out there to tell you whatever they want people to think), if there’s anything I’ve learned from my days in testing field applications, that would be the experience that comes from troubleshooting problems:

1. Usually in a network, if only a certain group of people are reporting a problem, then you must find the common element between that group.
2. If the problem occurs randomly, usually it’s a hardware issue when it comes to computing.
3. If the problem occurs while following a pattern, then it could be a software issue.
4. If the problem itself has to do with the network (latency, etc) then check network connections.

Hmm. So you really have to wonder here. Is it what the TWC executives “say” or are they really running some sort of filter or network shaping type tool that is re-prioritizing that WoW traffic? Not being a WoW player, I can’t really test this out but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the above was true from what I’ve read about TWC in the past.

Photo Credit: (tbridge)

Update: It looks like Time Warner’s Director of Digital Communications, Jeff Simmermon, responds to Consumerist.

Strangely enough, I found two things wrong with the answer from the Director. First, he dismisses issues with the network due to traceroutes. I’ll admit that traceroute is actually a flaky way of testing where you’re connecting to depending on routing loads and such, but even so, there’s two problems with this picture.

1. If you use packet shaping? Traceroute udp packets can be set to be let through a network. Don’t believe me? Go buy any broadband optimizer that shapes voip and gaming traffic on a local network and tell me you can’t set certain types of traffic to be prioritized. Obviously this is assuming they even are doing this at the routing level. All I’m saying is that it IS possible. And if they did? They wouldn’t be telling you. Or me. Heck, I wouldn’t be telling me.

2. Based on this traceroute, there is something to be learned.

   5 12 ms 8 ms 9 ms srp0-0.bnghnyplz-rtr02.nyroc.rr.com [24.94.35.27]
   6 18 ms 15 ms 18 ms so-1-2-1.syrcnycsr-rtr03.nyroc.rr.com [24.92.224.169]
   7 150 ms 197 ms 207 ms te-3-2.car2.Cleveland1.Level3.net [64.156.66.41]
   8 75 ms 24 ms 28 ms ae-2-6.bar2.Cleveland1.Level3.net [4.69.132.202]

   Basic network troubleshooting here. I’ll put it into easier terms. When you run your own home network, there’s never a speed issue within the home. In fact, what’s your usual connection issue that technical support asks you do? Connect to the cable modem/DSL modem. Why? Because that’s the first point of routing between your 10.x.x.x/192.168.x.x.x network to the outside. Thus your latency will jump. In this particular example, you see that the latency jumps on the hop afterwards outside the initial network. While this could be a backbone (Level3) routing issue or the traceroute caught the backbone during a load shift (doubtful considering all three return times), my initial thoughts would actually fall upon the routing from hop 6 to hop 7. It’s a pipe flowing to a river scenario. Chance of a pipe clogging is more likely than river overflowing and clogging the pipe. Packet shedding perhaps?

I’ll admit that TWC did point out correctly with the first traceroute that it had nothing to do with them. That’s for sure, as long as the first point above doesn’t apply. And obviously they should get benefit of the doubt here until something funky happens where more people are coming forward with better proof.

On the otherhand? While traceroute is a pretty neat feature and it’s a very basic but extremely useful tool, it doesn’t tell the entire story either. In just the above scenario (#2) it can be seen that there could be a packet shedding issue between TWC routing at Syracuse and Level3 in Cleveland. And as some other have deduced in the comments on Consumerist, there’s more than meets the eye here. Stay tuned for more updates if this even does get anywhere.

MTV News:

So [Frank Pearce, co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment] didn’t mean the current 10 million subscribers to "WoW" would be able to play their favorite game on their cell phones. But why couldn’t they buy and sell items through it? "We would want you to be logged in for that," Pearce replied. "We would have to look at our infrastructure and see if that would have a notable impact on the experience. There’s a lot of considerations we’d have to look at."

This almost sounds like another [gag] social network. I hope people don’t try to do any of this while driving, but you can bet some out there will be into this. Hat tip to Joystiq.

Some 2009 Ford pickup owners will have an option for an in-dash computer with printer, but will they be able to play World of Warcraft during their break time?

via Businessweek:

The factory-installed Work Solutions package includes an in-dash computer with a 6.5-inch touch screen powered by Microsoft Windows CE and Windows Autos. It connects to the Internet via Sprint cellular broadband and is compatible with Bluetooth-enabled phones for hands-free calling.

Forget the tiny screen with crippled WoW functionality, just buy a 2009 F-150.

I couldn’t help myself but laugh when I saw that since it had to be one of those crazy Asian commercials that … only could be done in Taiwan or Hong Kong, and … only could tie two absolutely and completely different things by using a musical group and a MMORPG together. S.H.E is actually pretty popular internationally with the young Asian demographic and they compete against the Twins out of Hong Kong.

Either way, it’s pretty amusing twist on the virtual world alongside reality in a commercial format.

Dell is now selling World of Warcraft themed laptops for $4,499. Buy either Alliance or Horde editions either as the stock or customize.

The machines seem pretty spend based on the specs but the design is clearly where the cost is being added. I wonder what it would be to buy a different shiny gaming laptop, say Alienware and then have an artist do something World of Warcraft oriented on there.

Playing the collector’s item card is a good way for Dell to sell more laptops and advertise World of Warcraft. In our family, Dell is a four letter word, but maybe others reading will do business with them.

Activision and Blizzard are merging into one company called, Activision Blizzard. From reading the press release it looks like a big deal in the gaming world. I haven’t played WOW but I have played Diablo and many activision games. I have read some concerns over the merger but mostly I haven’t seen anything that would cause me to worry. It seems like nothing major will change with the current games or with the franchises. I am still waiting for the next Diablo but it seems this will have to wait.

For new and previous players of the Lord of The Rings Online, they now have a special pricing for the holidays. If you sign up to the new holiday special you can get LOTRO for $9.99 a month. You have to sign up for 3 months at the $29.97 deal. You will then get billed every 3 months for that price unless you cancel. A nice deal for the holidays! This offer ends January 31, 2008. The next update to this game is coming in January and I’m still having fun!

We felt that it was important to share with the community just how serious we are in our efforts to combat this type of abuse. Blizzard has filed a federal lawsuit against the operators of Peons4hire, a popular gold-selling organization which many of you have no doubt seen advertised. As part of the lawsuit, the operators of Peons4hire have been asked to immediately cease all in-game spamming efforts by all entities and websites under their control.

Why, Google, why?
At VTOR we have a standing policy not to accept advertising for companies who sell accounts, gold or money when it violates the terms of service. Unfortunately there is not a sufficient way to filter Google Adsense ads to keep these kinds of ads out of Adwords being shown contextually (or is there?) so it’s likely just by writing this post there will be ads showing for these types of business. Do NOT click on these ads when you see them here or elsewhere and don’t use their services. It would be nice to see Google offer ways for publishers to filter out advertising like this.

As a friendly public reader service message: the VTOR authors and the vtoreality.com publication do not recommend or endorse these types of services.

As Mr. T of A-Team and Rocky III fame would say: shut up, fool! Go watch the WoW commercials already.

Forget Windows Vista, the WoW starts now.