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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. However, it is hard to dislike someone too much that doesn’t seem to mind putting that out there. I have to, at least, hand him that.

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

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.

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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.

Mexico City, Mexico – (MH) – Mexican World of Warcraft player Bronco Carson reported to local police on Saturday that 3 men broke into his home and beat his arms with clubs and smashed his computer. It was supposedly in retaliation for Carson stalking and repeatedly killing one of the attackers wife’s character during computer video game play.

Carson admitted to police that he had been “making it hard for her to get far in the game.” He said that after repeated online threats from the woman, she sent her husband and friends over to his house to “take care of him.” Carson later said that he had made the mistake of telling her where he lived and “if her husband was man enough to just come meet me to settle this.”

2 weeks leading up to the assault he said he had been harassed by a few characters constantly during game play. “I knew that I might be messed with in the game but I didn’t really expect her husband to come looking for me. I couldn’t have been more wrong.”

Carson suffered 2 broken fingers and a fractured wrist during the assault. They also destroyed his computer and entertainment center before leaving. No arrests have been made in connection with the assault.

Unless known by the assailants in real life, the ganker would likely had to have to voluntarily given up his home address for this story to be true.

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Hit game may be the most popular MMO you’ve never heard of

With more than 3 million units sold, legions of passionate fans and heaps of critical acclaim, “Guild Wars” is probably the most popular massively multiplayer online game you’ve never heard of.

It’s easy to see why. Blizzard Entertainment’s “World of Warcraft” is a seemingly unstoppable juggernaut, with 8.5 million worldwide subscribers. “Burning Crusade,” the expansion to the original game, sold an estimated 3.5 million copies in just one month.

“Because of those big numbers, and because ‘WoW’ is the first subscription-based MMO that’s broken out of hardcore market, [Blizzard] gets a lot of attention,” say Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, the company that developed “Guild Wars.”

But small, scrappy ArenaNet thinks it has plenty to brag about, too. In seven years, Strain and its co-founders, have taken a pretty radical idea about online gaming and built it into a successful company. continue reading…