Big Doings in the Wacky World of Warcraft
Blizzard Entertainment just released a new patch to
its wildly popular MMPORG, World of Warcraft. The two big things are voice chat
and movie recording.
I've bought a few machinima books for the library,
and having seen the work of folks out on YouTube who've made machinima via WoW,
I can see its appeal. So this update, that will allow players to record their
play within the game seems to address that popularity. I haven't tried it out
yet, but I might try my hand at it, and pop a short demo here. I think my kids
might run with it.
Voice chat, the other new thing, isn't actually running yet. My oldest son is all fired up, because voice chat is really useful when running instances, and he was actually trying to get me to shell out for a Ventrio account. If you've ever seen the "Make Love, Not Warcraft" episode of South Park (Season 10), you might understand what I'm talking about. Wow as a standalone application doesn't have, or at least it didn't use to have, voice chat. It was all text chat. Voice chat, in the form that Cartman, Kyle, Stan, and Kenny are using, works outside of Blizzard's software, via voice chat servers. Ventrio is one of these companies that offers voice chat. So, seeing this the next day as a free upgrade was a godsend. What's it gonna be like? I don't know. One thought I did have is that it would be harder to disguise your gender, plus it would be obvious to other players when I'm playing a character versus my son playing the same character. Stay tuned.
And then on top of all that, there's another expansion coming this fall, the Wrath of the Lich King. I guess it will be the size of the Burning Crusade expansion, i.e., it'll raise the top level to 80, throw in a few new areas, new quests, new classes or races maybe. The boys are psyched.
Which brings me to the topic of gaming and reading. My two older sons read a lot about their games. Not just cheats, walkthroughs, but the storyline stuff. I find it rather amusing. They will talk about characters in their games as if they really existed. Everything gets kinda blurry. But it's good to see them reading, huh?
Voice chat, the other new thing, isn't actually running yet. My oldest son is all fired up, because voice chat is really useful when running instances, and he was actually trying to get me to shell out for a Ventrio account. If you've ever seen the "Make Love, Not Warcraft" episode of South Park (Season 10), you might understand what I'm talking about. Wow as a standalone application doesn't have, or at least it didn't use to have, voice chat. It was all text chat. Voice chat, in the form that Cartman, Kyle, Stan, and Kenny are using, works outside of Blizzard's software, via voice chat servers. Ventrio is one of these companies that offers voice chat. So, seeing this the next day as a free upgrade was a godsend. What's it gonna be like? I don't know. One thought I did have is that it would be harder to disguise your gender, plus it would be obvious to other players when I'm playing a character versus my son playing the same character. Stay tuned.
And then on top of all that, there's another expansion coming this fall, the Wrath of the Lich King. I guess it will be the size of the Burning Crusade expansion, i.e., it'll raise the top level to 80, throw in a few new areas, new quests, new classes or races maybe. The boys are psyched.
Which brings me to the topic of gaming and reading. My two older sons read a lot about their games. Not just cheats, walkthroughs, but the storyline stuff. I find it rather amusing. They will talk about characters in their games as if they really existed. Everything gets kinda blurry. But it's good to see them reading, huh?
Posted: Thu - September 27, 2007 at 01:01 PM
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Published On: Mar 19, 2008 08:30 AM
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Published On: Mar 19, 2008 08:30 AM