Um, is this a Good Thing? World of Warcraft is rolling in "player achievements" with the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

...*sigh*

I'm slightly intrigued, but a bit more revolted by what feels like a strange addition to the game. Here's where I found a take on it that can I relate to. Although I'm on the "they pull me back in" phase of my journey with WoW, I've most certainly begun to find an end in sight with some of the end-game goofiness. Here's the thing... I've never been in the WoW end-game world before pretty recently.

I played the game since late-ish beta and loved it for a year.5, but fell out of things before ever getting to 60 with any avatars... yeah, I played the game for well over a year and never hit 60. I was always soloing or playing with a single friend while my guild went through the raid progressions of the time. I was never quite high enough level as I wasn't playing nearly as much as others in the guild. Playing catch-up for over a year finally wore on me and I let the 'scrip go.

Then, after Burning Crusade came out, I got back in to see how things were. I finally leveled to 60 and had only two people to rejoice with -- everyone else laughed and pointed. ...onward to 70! Yay. Now I've been in the world of 70's for a while and I'm of course massively undergeared, even with most peoples' 2nd or 3rd alts. Yay!

So I've found a home of sorts in the world of PvP and here's where I realize this game is testing my limits of determination for MassMOGs in the long run. I would really love to do some of the raiding since I missed out on almost all of the instances -- no exaggeration -- but I don't have time to run through any of this stuff unless that Lotto check comes in.

Running battlegrounds persistently has scored me copious amounts of honor and more AV marks than I can possibly spend (maybe I should buy another Stormpike Battle Charger, just in case my other one gets tired??). Now my gear isn't totally crap (for PvP, anyway) but I still have a LONG way to go in that world... how much more can I take of running BG's repeatedly just to get the currency to buy gear so I can run BG's more effectively??!? Oh, and by the way, Season 4 just came out, so now I'm getting rapidly outgeared -- if my outgeared gear wasn't outgeared enough already.

My nephew and a good friend of mine want to start an arena team, so that's why I'm currently motivated to gear up. We'll see how that goes, but damn, it's been months of playing just to get geared enough to feel like we can do anything worthwhile in PvP! All that gearing to prep us for more gearing! Whooo!!

Anyway, I told you all that to tell you this: Achievements??!?

Maybe I don't get it, but I'm not about to embark on the journey of re-exploring the world so I can have a new tabard to mark my achievements. Now, I might find some satisfaction in getting this achievement!

...maybe I'm missing something.

...maybe I'm just rambling about nothing worth reading. Well, you can stop now. :-P

Yippee skippee... the big news has arrived. I'm sure many of you want to know so I'll just throw you the frickin' bone and you can gobble up the juicy news as you see fit: The draenei are the new playable alliance race in the upcoming Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft.

Wonderful.. now can I get back to playing A Tale in the Desert? Or how about Sin: Emergence?? Whoops.. that's not a massivity-spiffy hoohah... sorry, but it's a damn fine game! Support cheap episodic content!!! (Content that I own, not that I have to pay every month to pretend that I own... until I don't pay one month.)

Have you seen Google Maps? Do you play World of Warcraft? Wouldn't it be cool to navigate around the WoW world map using the slick Google Maps interface?? Yeah, I think so too... MapWoW.com has just that. They've used the Maps API and glued in the WoW world map, along with some handy information like travel paths and resource locations. Nifty!

You can decide how useful it actually is for you, but it sure is pretty sweet. Fun to tool around different places in Azeroth as seen from the orbiting satellite, I think.

I know this is past due, since April Fool's Day is long gone for the year.  However, I missed this one from Blizzard (again) and thought it was pretty funny.  Long, but funny.  If you're a WoW veteran-type person, you'll likely find something entertaining in the "evil patch notes" for v1.11.

Oh.. and I don't want to hear whining from people saying they shouldn't be wasting time on things like this and should be working on the game... phooey!  Game developers are people too.

Freakin' suhweet!  Although this news comes a day earlier than this news ought to have been posted, I'm just too damn stoked to leave it out until the big A1 day.  Check out the finally-unveiled Alliance race for World of Warcraft Burning Crusade expansion, the Wisps.  Pretty clever, methinks.

Seriously, if you go read that and start bitching about how lame you think that decision was, you're missing a key concept about the day on which you're reading said news.  Well, unless you're reading it the day I posted this, which might lead to confusion... just come back and read this again on Saturday if you're confused.

 If you still don't understand, go read about Blizzard's new game BurgerCraft.  Got it yet?

World of Warcraft is the massive online continuation of the tremendously popular Warcraft game series by Blizzard Entertainment.  Built upon the extensive lore and backstory of the Warcraft universe, WoW is a lot of fun and is designed very well.  The questing system works great, the environment is stylistically magnificent and the game just "flows" very, very well...