Blizzard also took advantage of the holiday season in December, offering the BattleChest for $5, Wrath of the Lich King for $10 and Cataclysm for $20. Without these deals you can expect to pay $19.99 for the BattleChest and $39.99 for both the Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm expansions. Sadly these sales ended pretty quickly, but if you were one of the many who wanted to get started with World of Warcraft and not break the bank, you’re in luck!

GameStop is offering the BattleChest and the Wrath of the Lich King for $19.99. In other words, buy the BattleChest and get Wrath of the Lich King for free! For a mere $19.99 you can get to level 80 and attempt to slay the Lich King in the final boss battle in Icecrown Citadel.

[via GameStop

Blizzard vice president Chris Metzen has described the land of Pandaria, the new China-inspired country that comes in this expansion, as a peaceful place. This peaceful place, he says, is then ruined by the players that come in with the expansion. So basically Blizzard is daring us to be evil, essentially. The announcement of this expansion game at this year’s BlizzCon, taking place this week, and it is said that it will focus on a war between the game’s two factions, blue and red, rather than any sort of new external enemy, he saying thusly:

“Red and blue are about to get it on with a heavy ferocity that has not been seen since the days of Warcraft II” – Metzen

My god! Store your food and stack you paper, war is coming! This announcement also came aside word that World of Warcraft would begin to have an annual subscription plan that would be able to be paid for in monthly installments. For a limited time, they say, anyone who decides they want to sign up will receive a TOTALLY FREE COPY of none other than DIABLO III. Oh my gosh, my goodness, I think I’m going to have a heart attack.

Of course also of note is the fact that neither Diablo III nor the Panda expansion for WoW has been given a release date, so you’ll just have to continue to chill.

[via Wired]

Take a peek at all three cards in their tinier state in the gallery below or head over to Blizzard to take a peek at slightly larger versions. That barbarian is totally absurd. I mean, look at all those extra horns and whatnot sticking up everywhere – he’d totally stab himself in the eye! And look! He’s crushing all the presents! All hell shall break loose upon the day of that Santas arrival.

[Via Blizzard Entertainment]

*The image you see above is from this post: Dungeon Defenders Coming to Android

R3 Media Network

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Now, this is an awesome tactic. This sort of deal was offered on the original base setup of World of Warcraft and there’s definitely demo versions of basically every Blizzard game out there, including the greatest series of all time Diablo (don’t deny it mang.) This new expansion for WoW isn’t hurting for sales, breaking records by selling 3.3 million copies in 24 hours, but I’m sure a little demonstration action wont hurt to give that another boost.

Check the full trial out over [here] and don’t be shy, tell everyone how you like it (or, if it’s the worst thing since the amount of time you’ve had to wait for Diablo III, say that too.)

[Via Blizzard Entertainment]

When asked why he’d do such a lovable thing for the fans of this epic game, Pearce, signing autographs as he spoke, had the following to say:

Those guys have been in lines for days. Those are some of our most dedicated fans, of course we want to treat them right. I mean, we want to treat all of our fans right but, you know, special recognition for those guys is really important. I think it’s really valuable for the community to know they’re really important to us.

What a nice guy! Also, courtesy of the Orange County Register, take a peek at this launch party video. Looks like a completely wild and crazy time had by all:

[Via Orange County Register: OC Unwired]

You can upgrade online by heading over to Blizzard Account Management, or go to the store to find yourself an elite Collector’s Edition which features a behind-the-scenes DVD, soundtrack, artwork book, exclusive WoW trading card game cards and starter packs, mousepad, the game, and best of all, an exclusive in-game pet, Lil’ Deathwing! Check out the full press release below:

WORLD OF WARCRAFT®: CATACLYSM™
IN STORES NOW

Highly anticipated third expansion to the critically acclaimed massively multiplayer online role-playing game launches around the world this week
IRVINE, Calif. — December 7, 2010 — Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft®: Cataclysm™, the highly anticipated third expansion for the world’s most popular subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game, is now on sale in stores throughout North America, Europe, Argentina, Chile, Russia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, and will be available beginning December 9 in Korea and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

The expansion can now be purchased at retail stores on DVD-ROM for Windows® XP/Windows Vista®/Windows® 7 and Macintosh® at a suggested retail price of $39.99 USD. A special Collector’s Edition packed with bonus items is also available exclusively from retailers for a suggested retail price of $79.99 USD. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is also offered as a digital download through Battle.net® account management (www.battle.net/account/management) for $39.99 USD.

“Cataclysm adds an incredible amount of new content for players to explore, revitalizing the game world and building on everything we’ve learned since World of Warcraft launched over six years ago,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We thank all of our beta testers for helping make this our best expansion yet, and we’re looking forward to seeing everyone in the new Azeroth.”

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, the corrupted Dragon Aspect Deathwing has returned, and the world has been reshaped by the devastation left in his wake. In an effort to survive the planet-shattering cataclysm, two new playable races — worgen and goblins — join the struggle between the Alliance and the Horde. Players can now begin their journey to the new level cap of 85, discover newly revealed locations, acquire new levels of power, and come face to face with Deathwing in a battle to determine the fate of the world.

For more information on World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, visit the official website at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm/.

About Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.
Best known for blockbuster hits including World of Warcraft® and the Warcraft®, StarCraft®, and Diablo® series, Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. (www.blizzard.com), a division of Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ: ATVI), is a premier developer and publisher of entertainment software renowned for creating some of the industry’s most critically acclaimed games. Blizzard Entertainment’s track record includes twelve #1-selling games and multiple Game of the Year awards. The company’s online-gaming service, Battle.net®, is one of the largest in the world, with millions of active players.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements: Information in this press release that involves Blizzard Entertainment’s expectations, plans, intentions or strategies regarding the future are forward-looking statements that are not facts and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Blizzard Entertainment generally uses words such as “outlook,” “will,” “could,” “would,” “might,” “remains,” “to be,” “plans,” “believes,” “may,” “expects,” “intends,” “anticipates,” “estimate,” “future,” “plan,” “positioned,” “potential,” “project,” “remain,” “scheduled,” “set to,” “subject to,” “upcoming” and similar expressions to identify forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause Blizzard Entertainment’s actual future results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements set forth in this release include, but are not limited to, sales levels of Blizzard Entertainment’s titles, shifts in consumer spending trends, the impact of the current macroeconomic environment, the seasonal and cyclical nature of the interactive game market, declines in software pricing, product returns and price protection, product delays, retail acceptance of Blizzard Entertainment’s products, competition from the used game market, industry competition and competition from other forms of entertainment, rapid changes in technology, industry standards and consumer preferences, including interest in specific genres such as real-time strategy, action–role-playing and massively multiplayer online games, protection of proprietary rights, litigation against Blizzard Entertainment, maintenance of relationships with key personnel, customers, licensees, licensors, vendors and third-party developers, including the ability to attract, retain and develop key personnel and developers who can create high quality “hit” titles, counterparty risks relating to customers, licensees, licensors and manufacturers, domestic and international economic, financial and political conditions and policies, foreign exchange rates and tax rates, and the identification of suitable future acquisition opportunities, and the other factors identified in the risk factors section of Activision Blizzard’s most recent annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The forward-looking statements in this release are based upon information available to Blizzard Entertainment and Activision Blizzard as of the date of this release, and neither Blizzard Entertainment nor Activision Blizzard assumes any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements believed to be true when made may ultimately prove to be incorrect. These statements are not guarantees of the future performance of Blizzard Entertainment or Activision Blizzard and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, some of which are beyond its control and may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations.

R3 Media Network

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And bonus! Though nothing compares to actually buying the game, running home at full speed, and playing it for a week straight, there are a couple more things. One, customers who purchas Cataclysm at midnight will get a free video game rental coupon, and two, those same customers will get a $5 off coupon for the strategy guide (uh yeah right who would buy such a thing! Me.) Check out the full press release below:

AMARILLO, Texas, Nov. 30, 2010 /PRNewswire/ — Hastings Entertainment, Inc. (Nasdaq: HAST), a leading multimedia entertainment superstore retailer, has announced its plans for chain-wide midnight release parties for the new World of Warcraft: Cataclysm video game. Fans are encouraged to join their local Hastings for a midnight release party on Monday, December 6. Festivities for the night will begin at 10:00 pm and will end after the video game goes on sale at Midnight.

Fans enjoying the festivities and awaiting the release of the game will be able to take advantage of special promotions, including 30% off all used CDs, books, video games, and movies during the release party. Customers who purchase the game at the party will also receive a free video game rental coupon and $5 off the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm strategy guide.

To find out more about the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm midnight release party in your area, visit us online atwww.goHastings.com or contact your local Hastings superstore.

About Hastings
Founded in 1968, Hastings Entertainment, Inc. is a leading multimedia entertainment retailer that combines the sale of new and used books, videos, video games and CDs, as well as trends and consumer electronics merchandise, with the rental of videos and video games in a superstore format.  We currently operate 146 superstores, averaging approximately 25,000 square feet, primarily in medium-sized markets throughout the United States.  We also operate a new concept store, Sun Adventure Sports, in Amarillo, Texas.

We also operate www.goHastings.com, an e-commerce Internet Web site that makes available to our customers new and used entertainment products and unique, contemporary gifts and toys.  The site features exceptional product and pricing offers.  The Investor Relations section of our web site contains press releases, a link to request financial and other literature and access our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

WoW fans may be wishing that they could play the game on their shiny new iPad and some pictures of just such an occurrence have turned up online. WoW is streamed in these images to the iPad using Gaikai online gaming service.

The Gaikai service lets you play games within a browser using server side streaming tech. If you are intrigued be the possibilities this streaming tech brings you can sign up for a private beta invitation. The big question right now is exactly how the iPad is working with the service since Gaikai typically uses Flash and that’s obviously no happening on the iPad.

Over at Cologne, Germany, Gamescom is going strong, and companies like Razer are not letting the time slip by without some kind of announcement. In the case of Razer, they had a doozie lined up for this conference: a 17-key mouse, that looks like some kind of futuristic toy, which is called the Naga. It’s set to be used for Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games, but as you can probably already assume, it’s tailored for the largest of them all, World of Warcraft.

This USB-connected peripheral has a unique 12-button pad on the left-hand side of the mouse, lined up in a simple to use format, so that your thumb doesn’t have to travel all that far to press any one of the buttons. In addition, there’s the regular five buttons found on “normal” mice, which means there’s some semblance of a traditional piece of hardware in there somewhere. The mouse itself isn’t solely designed for MMOs, and can be used with any application that allows for button configuration of custom mouse buttons, as well as Razer’s own Windows software which can be used to map a wide array of shortcuts to very specific tasks.

We’d just like to say how unique this thing looks, and, if it’s not too crazy, attractive. Maybe it’s just the promotional pictures, but either way, we’re pulled in and can’t wait for this thing to ship, whenever it ships. At this point, Razer isn’t letting out anything other than “soon.” But, one good thing we can take away from this, is that it won’t cost you your left arm to get this peripheral. Just $80 will get you more than prepared for your next year-long campaign in WoW. Are you ready?

[via Electronista]

The character profile site now features all sorts of stats including tabs that make it easier to keep track of your Achievements. In-game calendars are also included. Pretty much any detail you want to know about your characters or your friend’s characters can be found out here.

Apparently, you can even figure out how many times your character has hugged or waved at other characters, too. Who knows why you’d want to know that, but hey some people are stat happy, and if this appeases them, good for them!

According to Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard, the company is already thinking about what the next expansions will bring to the World of Warcraft. There’s nothing official yet, as the company is still working hard to ensure Lich King is a success, but Morhaime did make one thing perfectly clear: they will continue to expand the game so long as people want to play it.

He also noted that Blizzard wanted to continue making “regular expansions.” However, it is not clear what “regular” means. While they would like to have yearly expansions, the gap between The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King has almost been two years. They would like to decrease the space between expansions, but they will not do so if content is sacrificed.

So you can set hot keys when playing WoW on a standard keyboard, but it can be difficult to remember what you set the comma to do as opposed to the hyphen. To avoid this confusion, this keyboard has specific keys to make it easier for you. For instance, there are keys for Raiding, PvP, macros and more.

There are also color-coded keys for easy identification. You’re allowed up to 7 keystrokes at once. Yeah. That’s a lot, I know. But for those hardcore Warcrafters, this should be great news. Sounds pretty cool to me. And it’s designed to match up right with your Lich King expansion pack. You can get the keyboard now on Amazon for $69.99.

The original launch plan was to make it so everyone had to wait until midnight in their time zone to access the the expanded content, but a change in the plan occurred yesterday. Instead, users were allowed access at 9 p.m. PST to make for a single launch. Of course, some subscribers complained, but there will always be a few discontented individuals.

Apparently, one bug has already been detected that makes it so users on the European servers couldn’t access the Death Knight class, but Blizzard made a temp solution: first create a new character at level one, and then make a Death Knight. A real fix should be rolled out soon.

Now that the latest expansion pack for the game, Wrath of the Lich King, is drawing closer to its release on November 13, many have signed up for the beta phase. In fact, it was this beta testing that pushed the game over the 11 million mark. That’s a lot of people, folks.

This is pretty impressive, especially considering WoW is several years old now. Blizzard keeps breaking records all over the place, so we’ll just have to wait and see how they do with the Lich King expansion.

And while the patch brought new things, like a harbor at Stormwind, new spells and abilities, Barber Shops, plus a lot of class-specific alterations, it also caused a few problems.

In fact, the server was down 24 hours during the patching process, however they came back online and popped back off over and over again. People’s character lists were messed up and there was a serious lag that caused many to take their complaints to General Chat. Things seem to be back to normal now, however, so I guess that means all is well in Azeroth.

[via CrunchGear]

According to a recent conference call with Blizzard co-founder and CEO Mike Morhaime, “we have said that it will be coming out this year,.” That nails it down to sometime in the next five months, however, he goes on to say that “I can tell you it’s not coming in the July to September quarter.”

So it looks as though we can expect to see Wrath of the Lich King on store shelves in Q4 this year. If I were a betting man, I’d say it’s more likely that they would get it out in October or November for the holiday season.

[via WoWinsider]

The email came in last night around 9pm EST, so if you haven’t checked your mail since then, you might want to do just that. I then was able to upgrade my current account, create a new temp account for the beta and then select one of my characters to copy over to the beta server.

Unfortunately last night was rather busy, so after the nearly 3 hours of waiting for the new client to download from Blizzard and install, I’ve had little time to do more than wander around briefly with my favorite mage. I’ll be covering the beta until it closes, so if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to answer it.

Hopefully you have a thing for lace accenting your bags with a bit of polka dot fabric lining the inside of the bag. The bag is made from blue corduroy material, which means it’s likely to be a bit more durable.

The seller has been playing WoW for a little over two years now and suggests that the bag be used for strategy guides, game cards and other random WoW stuff you may own. The bag is being sold for $180.

[via gearfuse]

Of course if you haven’t gotten that wonderful email (I haven’t either), don’t fret, as they’re going to keep sending them out until the beta ends. If you didn’t remember to sign up in the first place, registration will be open until the beta closes as well. You can register here.

There’s really no way to ensure that you’re going to have better odds of getting a key. You could have purchased a special WoW Dell XPS which gave you instant access to the beta. Everyone else is picked at random.

[via WoWinsider]

In case you missed the previous memo, you can now pony up 35G at level 30 to get yourself a mount. This does not change the requirements for subsequent mounts, but will definitely make those 10 levels between 30 and 40 go much quicker.

A few other big changes include contstruction of a new dock inside of Stormwind city in preparation for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. You’ll also find a few new time management features such as an alarm and stop watch. Now maybe you won’t look up and realize you’re an hour late for work anymore.

The gaming community has a tendency to get a bad reputation, especially when it comes to the mainstream media. Thankfully, the LA Times has a story about a married couple playing WoW together and it’s actually positive.

The story is about Brad and Cynthia Murdock who are happily married and play WoW together. She actually started playing with him, so instead of grumbling she tried out the game.

The LA Times even managed to get an interview with Frank Pearce who avoided giving out the release date for WoTLK. Just stating “We typically try to avoid launch windows until we’re pretty sure we can achieve them.” Well, looks like a heart touching story about gamers in love won’t even get us the release date any sooner. You can check out the full story here, it’s nice to see a story like this reaching the LA Times.

[via wowinsider]

If you head over to the official WoW site and log into your account, you’ll find a handy link for the beta opt-in. If you’re feeling particularly lazy, you can just click here and it will take you to the right place.

We still have no word on when they will begin sending out beta keys, however, I would imagine that we’ll be hearing more in the coming weeks (if not sooner). We do know that the selection process will be totally random, so you’ve got just as much of a chance as anyone else.

[via WoWinsider]

Set to be debuted at the Worldwide Invitational, the Blizzard Authenticator is a small device which is associated with your WoW account. It generates a random six-digit code which must be entered in order to log on. Since the code is generated on the device every time you log on, not even a keylogger will allow someone else to gain access.

This is very similar to the fob that I have for my PayPal account. It’s a little bit of a hassle to pull it out and enter the extra code, but it really does give an added level of security to your account. The device will go on sale from Blizzard sometime after the big show, and will only set you back $6.95, which is a small price to pay for security.

[via WoW Insider]

Yet another free track is set to be released today for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Guitar Hero III. The new track is “I Am Murloc” by Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain.

The track was written for last year’s BlizzCon event, and is a fairly amusing song from the perspective of one of the most annoying characters in the game. Personally I would have rather liked “Rogues Do It From Behind” but a free track is a free track.

Of course we all know that it didn’t turn out that way, since we’re still shelling out money every month to play. It seems that after much researching they discovered that it just wouldn’t support the game the way they wanted to.

While I’m sure they would have still gotten a large player base, I doubt that it would have been the same success that it is today. The up-front cash that they receive from each player monthly is likely what fuels their content-creating engine. Still, it’s interesting to hear how some of our favorite games were originally supposed to turn out.

[via Gamasutra]

According to the patch notes for 2.4.3 (which is now live on the test realms) “Mounts at 30?! Yes, it’s true: Apprentice Riding and mounts are now available at level 30. Training costs 35 gold.” Just from reading that in the patch notes, they’re as excited about it as we are.

I can only imagine that this is being introduced so that players can more easily get up to level 70 in anticipation of the new content (and additional levels) being introduced by the new expansion. That, and to help out people (like our own Abby) who have a severe case of altitis.

[via WoW]

Yes, we’ve all seen achievements on our Xbox 360s among other places, so they’re nothing new to the gaming community. I’ve always been a little torn on the subject of achievements. Sure, I get a warm fuzzy feeling inside when I complete something, but after a while trying to unlock them all starts feeling more like work and less like fun.

I’m not really sure that this is something WoW really needs. Honestly there are going to be a lot of low-level achievements, or ones that will take a long time to accomplish (such as the 2,000 quest one depicted above) that longtime veterans really aren’t going to feel like completing. I seriously doubt that they’ll go back and give you achievements for things you’ve already done in-game.

[via Kotaku]

The regular Armory takes a long time to load on an iPhone (even if you’re on a WiFi connection) and certain features like hovering over items to see their specs don’t work. Instead, you have to click on them and wait for another page to load. After trying this only once, I decided that it really wasn’t worth the effort.

I recently heard that someone was working on their own Armory web app for the iPhone, and signed up for their alpha testing group. They were kind enough to let me in, and I’ve been playing with the currently release for a little while, and I thought I’d share my thoughts.

First thing you’ll notice with iArmory is that you lose a lot of the flashy graphics, which while it might not be quite as pleasing to the eye, it makes for much quicker loading times. Once you’ve looked up your character, you are quickly greeted with just about every stat you’d be looking for in the Armory. To cut down on load times, it doesn’t automatically show your items. However, a quick tap of your finger fixes that.

Once you have your items displayed, you can then tap on any of their names to show a full description of it. Again, this all loads rather fast (over a WiFi connection), which makes things much easier than using the official site. There are still a bunch of features that are going to be added, but this is certainly something I wouldn’t mind using if someone had a question about my gear or stats when I’m out and about, away from my PC.

iArmory is currently only in alpha testing, and is invite-only. However, if you want to keep up to date on the latest info, you can check out SaladFork’s blog here.

Well Mondolithic Studios creates actual oil canvases of your characters. They will create a character on your server and follow you around in your routine to see you in your element. The style of the art is slightly different from the in game style, which might be nice because if you wanted an identical copy you could just take a screen shot and print it out.

Thus far they only have a few samplings of their work and you will have to email them to get an estimate. Likely these paintings won’t be cheap though, especially as much time it sounds like they will be dedicating to your painting.

[via wowinsider]

It has been officially stated that it will be released during the second half of 2008. Which isn’t far off from what most of us would have guessed anyway, but it’s nice to finally have that official word on it.

Unfortunately I have a slight love, hate relationship with the new expansion. I am going to have to deal with respecing my holy priest in order to level, which I tend to dislike, purely because I prefer holy. However, the excessive amount of new perks is definitely worth it.

[via wowinsider]

It has been set in October once again and will run from the 10th to the 11th. Tickets haven’t gone on sale just yet, so you have a little bit of time to save up for the $100 entry fee. It will be held at the Anaheim Convention center in California.

In the next few weeks tickets will go on sale. I am hoping to be one of the many that attends BlizzCon this year. As it draws closer to October more details about BlizzCon will be released.

When WotLK launches we can expect to find new mounts that will let another passenger board and ride along with you. This is something that could be incredibly useful. I can’t count the number of times I’ve wanted to run a lower-level guildmate somewhere and had to walk, rather than ride. Then there are times when someone sets to follow you and goes afk, only to get hung up on a rock or tree, which means doubling-back to make sure they don’t get killed.

Of course we don’t’ know if these mounts will be rare drops, or if we’ll just be able to buy one from the vendor at the appropriate level.

[via WoW Insider]

Somehow I doubt that’s how it went down, but either way, they did get a ton of new info. One of my favorite changes for the upcoming expansion is how they are handling instances. My guild still isn’t up for 25 man raids, though we’re working on it. For now we’re sticking to just the 10-man runs, which means there is plenty of content out there we’re missing. However, once WotLK comes out, that’s all going to change.

First, there aren’t going to be attunements for any of the raid instances, freeing up more time to actually run them. However, what’s awesome is that all raid dungeons will have 10-man and 25-man versions. This means that any guild that runs 10-mans should be able to take on any instance in the new expansion. Of course the loot for 25-man raids will be a tier higher to compensate, which gives people a reason to work for it, but the drops for 10-man raids will be plenty worth it.

[via GameSpy]

I’ll admit that some of these people do put some effort into their fakeries, but regardless of how nice it looks, there are a few things to remember. First, when WotLC hits beta, you’ll know about it. If you haven’t heard any news, chances are that it’s not entered beta yet. Another dead giveaway is that these sites don’t point back to an official Blizzard site. Be on the lookout for urls that are blizzard.com and worldofwarcraft.com, as these are the real deal.

One other thing that I can never stress enough is that a Blizzard employee will never ask for your password. Unless you are on the official WoW website or have your game client up, you shouldn’t be putting in your password.

[via WoW Insider]

If you are unfamiliar with the works of Uwe Boll, some of the gaming atrocities he has created are Postal, House of the Dead and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. He has been requested by many many gamers to please stop creating these awful movies, however, he has said that no amount of petitions will stop him.

He apparently got in contact with Paul Sams of Blizzard and Paul then stated. “We will not sell the movie rights, not to you…especially not to you. Because it’s such a big online game success, maybe a bad movie would destroy that ongoing income, what the company has with it.”

[via kotaku]

For those skeptics out there, Game|Life has confirmed with a source at Blizzard that these screens are the real deal. These aren’t the greatest quality, as they were captured via a camera pointed at the screen.

Blizzard is shooting for a Fall release of the expansion. For those of you that still haven’t made your way to 70, I’d suggest doing so to take advantage of the high-end content, I wasn’t prepared for Burning Crusade when it came out, and it kind of sucked. You can bet that I’m geared up for Lich King when it finally gets here.

[via Game|Life]

Even though I’m a major WoW geek, I’m a little torn on this design. It is slightly humorous that the ominous looking Dark Portal shows in the center the Apple symbol, I’m still undecided if it’s just a bit too cheesy.

The job was done by a company called Austin Laser Art. The laptop itself took a grand total of 20 minutes to do. The great thing is that even if you decided you hated an etching job you could just snag a skin to throw over the top.

[via wowinsider]

Next up, a new guy and/or company landed on the scene, the name, Van Der Led. So far we’ve heard about the new Asus Eee look alike from the company called Jisus, and then later this past week we wrote about a new cell phone watch from the same name, it’s all kind of fishy, but we’ll see. Speaking of Asus Eee-like computers, we first saw some reviews of the new HP Mini-Note coming from various sites, then later this past week we discovered that they’d gone on sale on HP’s site with an advertised ship date of April 15th. Lastly, in line with budget PC’s, Everex pushed out a new one, their MyMiniPC small form factor desktop PC that had a new version of gOS Space with the whole package being customized for MySpace users the world over.

Still on the topic of Notebooks, Toshiba released several new models including the A300, M300, P300, and U400 series’ of notebooks and extended the X205 SLI line by two new models. Toshiba also pushed out some new REGZA television sets ranging from 52-32-inches in size with most of them packing hard drives and built in DVRs as well as a ton of ports including 3 Ethernet NICs making these TV’s more connected than my computer. In other TV news Mitsubishi announced the name of its line of upcoming laser TV’s, thusly dubbed LaserVue.

In other news, Buffalo expanded their LinkStation line to include one of the first remotely portable models, it uses two 500GB laptop hard drives, a quite, small, fan-less case design, it offers up all of the lovable features of their LS line including the 1TB of storage space in a package small enough to fit in your hand. RedPost has upgraded their product lineup from the RedPost/Kit to the new RedPost SignBeta. Also, the BBC’s newest iPlayer has been expanded from the computer, to the iPhone/iPod Touch, and now to the Wii and is causing considerable network strain over in the UK leaving Internet providers looking to the BBC to cough up all or part of the estimated 831 million pounds needed to upgrade the network.

In Mobile news, we got an invite to go to an event being hosted by HTC in London on May 6th where we believe they’ll be unveiling their first Android Phone, rumored to be called the HTC Dream. Speaking of Android, we spotted a Nokia N810 that was running Android, and I must say it looked pretty amazing; hopefully they finish up the coding on the project so more N810 users can adopt the new Android OS.

Lastly in gaming news, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed got a release date of September 17th, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King has entered alpha testing. Microsoft is rumored to be working on a Wiimote-like controller for their Xbox 360 system which would be great for games much like the upcoming Star Wars title. There was also lots of news regarding Grand Theft Auto IV; the most interesting is that a shortage of the game is expected in the UK, who would have thought they’d enjoy frolicking around killing anyone and everyone in some random city.