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A lot of gamers would know Uwe Boll. He’s the guy who directed several movie adaptations for video games such as House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark. He’s also the brains behind the new Far Cry movie.

Despite his long history in making movie adaptations of video games though, Boll doesn’t seem to be Blizzard’s prime choice for making the World of Warcraft movie. In fact, as MTV reports, they practically laughed at him when he offered to do so.

Boll recently got into contact with Paul Sams of Blizzard to make the movie. Boll relates the reply he got was a flat-out denial:

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.

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Thank goodness Uwe Boll won’t get his hands on this popular game to make a movie. It’s been a good six or seven months, I’d say, since I pulled myself from the clutches of WoW (although I still have my level 70 toon just in case…), but still, if it was made into a movie, I’d prefer it be made into a good one. Blood Rayne was a serious letdown.

For all the Uwe Boll haters, the comment “not to you… especially not to you” has to be extremely humorous and rewarding.

The World of Warcraft updating system is a standalone application that automates the task of keeping your add-ons current.

Anyone that has been playing World of Warcraft for any length of time knows how frustrating a new content patch can be. The scripting system in WoW is under constant modification to help add-on writers; unfortunately this does result in add-ons breaking quite often and requires them to be updated - a very time-consuming effort if you have more than a few installed.

WoWus was created to help alleviate the pains of keeping your installation in workable order; please see the Features section for further information.

Latest Changes:
WoWus 1.05
6th February, 2008
- Other: “Name, Description” is now again the default search field in the Search Pane.
- Fixed: Corrupted addon downloads will not result in the addon being removed from WoW.
- Fixed: A somewhat rare startup exception problem.

Download WoWus 1.05

Blizzard Entertainment announced today that its juggernaut MMO, World of Warcraft, has reached 10 million subscribers. The announcement is a note to would-be competitors - listen up Age of Conan, Pirates of the Burning Sea, and Warhammer Online* - the 800 lbs. gorilla keeps getting bigger.

Not only does that subscriber number far surpass the proportions fathomed by MMO-makers pre-WoW, but Blizzard also clarified what the company means by “subscriber.” Specificity further underlines the credibility of the 10 million figure. (The number doesn’t include unused pre-paid cards, for instance.) Blizzard also noted that the game’s first expansion, The Burning Crusade, was the best-selling PC game of 2007, holding the record for fastest-selling PC game of all time. Nearly 2.4 million copies flew off store shelves in its first 24 hours it was available.

Writing this, it strikes me how much WoW seemed like a side project when it was originally announced. Compared to the massive popularity of Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft, it seemed, well, marginal. Of course, now the blockbuster title far overshadows any of those franchises. For the time being, in any case.

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It seems Blizzard has a new celebrity featured in their newest WoW commercial. Vern Troyer (of Mini-Me fame) plays WoW and shares a sneak peek in the video below at his character — which looks a LOT like him btw!

H/T: Gaming Angels

Randydeluxe Jordan of the popular World of Warcraft podcast The Instance, looks at a unique personalized item available with Shane McWilliams, Program Manager of the XPS M1730 WoW Edition development team (off camera).

Download World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.2.0 (FF)

World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.2.0

The latest patch notes can always be found here.

General

- Voice Chat - The new Voice Chat feature is now available in game. Players will need to go into the Options menu under Sound & Voice to activate it. Volume sliders are available for the microphone, speakers, and game-audio fade (which automatically lowers the game audio when a voice communication is received), as is a ?push-to-talk? setting. Right-clicking on a player?s name now includes the option to mute or unmute that player. Muting another player blocks all voice chat from him or her; the ignore feature now blocks both voice chat and text chat from that player.
- Chat Channels- New Chat Channel controls and functionality are now available under the Chat tab in the Social window of the interface. The interface will now show the channels players are in or are available to them, depending on the area of the world they are in, along with the addition of new private channel controls.

Gamecock and Auran announced today the ultimate battle where two elite gaming clans will face off in the new Player versus Player MMO, Fury.

Pandemic is a leader in the World of Warcraft Arena will battle against Flow Gaming which is one of the top FPS clans in the world. The match will be this Friday at 7pm. You can watch the game match video at fury.esportstv.com

“This is the beginning of something monumental,” said Tony Hilliam, CEO of Auran. “FURY bridges the gap between MMOs and FPS’s and we‘re confident it will make the perfect addition to the competitive gaming environment. This is will be our first showcase of the game in the competitive space and we are honored to have two top e-sports teams on board to fight it out. This will be the perfect lead-up event to our $1 Million Fury Challenge Open Beta event that starts September 15.”

I’m really curious about Fury. It sounds like an interesting mix between the two worlds of MMO’s and FPS. For me it will come down to controls. Because I’m horrible at FPS as it is, Fury could turn out quite difficult for me to play, but we’ll see!

Fury is scheduled for release on October 9. Visitors to CPL Dallas will be able to get hands-on-demos and talk with members of the Auran and Gamecock team.

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This adventure can potentially cost $13.2 million. However, as you’ve gathered, it’s not the latest expansion but a lawsuit “against the creator of the “World of Warcraft” and the game’s local operator for allegedly using its Chinese character fonts illegally.”

The Chinese version of “World of Warcraft,” run by Shanghai-based The9 Ltd., uses five Chinese character fonts developed by Founder without authorization, Song said. Founder employees discovered the alleged violations while playing the game.

If true, it sounds like an expensive mistake, but with WoW being the cash cow that it is and 3.5 million subscribers in China alone, what’s a mere $13.2 million?

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And dance.

Last week 10-year-old Ezra Chatterton helped design a new quest in World of Warcraft. The Make-a-Wish Foundation had arranged a day-long session with Blizzard Entertainment for Ezra, who is fighting metastatic brain cancer. Since then gamers worldwide have emailed their support — and yesterday an online fund was created to help him with his fight.

Ezra’s been facing discomfort, his father told the local paper. But last week’s visit “impacted his health and happiness,” and their limousine ride home from Blizzard Entertainment was one of the few times he’d seen Ezra feeling “contentment and peace.” A second time was yesterday, “as his mother and I read letter after letter from World of Warcraft players and others across the globe who wanted to send their love.”

The heart-warming story comes from Southern California, where a local reporter is also providing updates on the paper’s blog. “He sat back from his dinner in the bed and just smiled deep from his heart,” Ezra’s father tells them, “as we read him each of your messages.

“You gave him that smile, and I will always be thankful for that.”