The Wow Blog

Playing World Of WarCraft Good For People

Usually we hear about how violent video games are bad for people. But today, a new study has been announced which paints games such as World of WarCraft in a more positive light. Psychologists as Middlesex University think playing the game might help people more than hurt.

The psychologists studied 292 male and female online gamers playing World of Warcraft. They found that overall the gamers, aged between 12 and 83, were more likely to feel calm or tired after playing, although there were differences depending on sex, age and personality.

“There were actually higher levels of relaxation before and after playing the game as opposed to experiencing anger but this did very much depend on personality type,” said Middlesex University’s Jane Barnett, who is also an International Game Developers Association committee member.

It looks like this will be one more excuse people can use to keep on gaming!

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Blizzard Announces Bard Class For World Of WarCraft

Blizzard has announced the second hero class for World of WarCraft. The new announcement details what will be available in the new hero class of “Bard”.

Armed with a trusty axe, killer riffs, and a ton of attitude, the guitar-wielding bard is the second hero class to be introduced in the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft. The bard excels both as a solo performer and as part of a solid group lineup, able to front in a number of roles as varied as his musical repertoire. The bard’s extensive Metal skill line grants the potent transformational ability “I Am Murloc,” as well as direct damage effects like “Epic Solo” that will rock foes into oblivion while powerful Indie debuffs such as “Tape Jam” and “Shoegazer” keep them in check. If things heat up, the bard’s Punk tree can support the party with a wide range of abilities, such as “Nonconformity,” which dispels fear, mind control, and similar effects, or “Mosh Pit,” which briefly boosts the group’s movement speed while its members stay within range.

The bard class should be of a lot of interest.

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AddOn Studio For World Of Warcraft Released

Great news for World Of Warcraft players. It was recently announced that AddOn Studio has been released.

Key Features of AddOn Studio Include:

Visual Design Surface - AddOn Studio includes a set of toolbox controls that you can drag-and-drop onto the designer to visually design the layout of your addon including popular Visual Studio features like Snap lines which enable you to visually align controls.

Lua Code Editor - AddOn Studio includes a powerful Lua code editing environment including syntax highlighting, colorization, collapsible functions, built-in IntelliSense support for Warcraft functions and events, IntelliSense Code Snippets for common Lua language constructs, code navigation features like bookmarks and Go To Declaration, and all IDE settings are customizable.

FrameXML IntelliSense - AddOn Studio provides built-in support for FrameXML schema validation for addon developers who want to manually edit and customize FrameXML markup.

Auto-Generate Table of Contents - AddOn Studio also takes the hassle out of building the Table of Contents (TOC) file by automatically building it based on what files are in your project.

Auto-Generate Lua Events - The Addon Studio property window shows all of the properties and events available for a Lua control or frame and enables one-click creation of event handlers like a button_OnClick event.

Other Goodies - AddOn Studio includes lots more features including project templates for creating Ace2 addons, automatic deployment to your Warcraft directory, Task Window, Error List for FrameXML and Lua parsing errors, TGA and MP3 file format support, powerful search-and-replace features, and its fully extensible so that developers can build additional tools and editors to improve addon development.

To find out more or to download, please visit Codeplex

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World Of Warcraft 3 Year Celebration

World of Warcraft has been around for 3 years now. In order to celebrate the game’s success, Blizzard Entertainment has created a new contest to commemorate the anniversary.

It’s been three years since players first entered World of Warcraft and took up their roles in shaping its history. In that time, friendships have been formed; wars have been waged; and through incredible feats of coordination and perseverance, some unimaginably powerful beings have been vanquished. To celebrate the third anniversary of the game’s North American launch and to show our gratitude for the ongoing support, enthusiasm, and dedication of its thriving community, we’ll be giving away several prizes over the next three weeks:

* During the week of November 26, we’ll award 10 J!nx gift certificates valued at $100.00 each.

* During the week of December 3, we’ll give away 20 sets of four World of Warcraft action figures.

* During the week of December 10, we’ll provide 5 lucky players with an Apple iPod Touch and a two-year World of Warcraft subscription.

So you have a chance to win prizes. Check out the contest rules and regulations for more information.

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Cheating In World Of Warcraft

A number of companies are attempting to work on stopping cheaters in online games. The idea is simple, but the execution, at times, leaves something to the imagination. Cheating is a fact of dealing with humans, and large systems of networked computers are not exempted.

Cheating tools flourish online, catering to insiders conversant in the games’ arcane language.

“Take advantage of this programming breakthrough — why waste time grinding with the grunts . . . play WoW in GOD MODE!” one ad reads for a $28 downloadable cheat package for World of
Warcraft that purports to be “undetectable”.

Most online-game companies appear resigned that cheating will occur, so they try to block it by observing game play and looking for suspicious things, such as avatars unexpectedly teleporting.

World of Warcraft has attempted to squelch cheaters with a program called “The Warden.” They have refused to make public comments about it.

Do you think these games can ever stop cheaters?

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World Of WarCraft Name Change

If you ever wanted to change your name in World of Warcraft, I have good news and bad news for you. The bad news is: you have to pay $10. The good news is: you can finally do it!

We’re happy to announce that through the wonders of modern gnomish engineering, you are now able to change your characters’ names. Finally, you can turn the moniker that seemed like a good idea at the time into something more befitting your true standing in World of Warcraft.

Visit Account Management ( https://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/ ) to begin the paid character-name-change process. The fee is $10 per name change. As with our recent addition of voice chat to the game, this feature is being rolled out across all realms in several phases. The first-phase realms are listed in this forum post. Enjoy this new feature and the subsequent effect that your bold new name will have on friends and foes alike.

For some this may be great news.

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World Of Warcraft Online Atlas

Blizzard has announced the new World of Warcraft Online Atlas. The Atlas should help players get around in the world a whole lot better.

The World of Warcraft Online Atlas is here! The new Online Atlas is an informative resource to help you navigate the many locations and regions of Azeroth and Outland using an intuitive Flash interface. The Atlas has two display modes:

Detailed Region Info: See all the regions of Azeroth and Outland by clicking the minimap on the upper left. Each region is marked with cities, towns, dungeons, and other points of interest. Clicking on each marker displays additional information — for example, clicking on a town shows you what resources are available there, such as trainers, flightmasters, and repair merchants. Detailed capital city maps are also available from each continent’s drop-down menu.

Customized Region Info: Clicking on the Customized Region Info tabs displays an overlay on the world map highlighting only the particular type of information you select. For example, clicking on the Transportation tab brings up all the flight paths and boat/zeppelin stops in the world, and the Region Levels filter displays the appropriate level range for all regions in the world.

We hope you’ll find the new Online Atlas handy in your World of Warcraft adventures!

Check it out: Atlas

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Avoiding Keyloggers - World Of Warcraft

Here’s a post worth reading for anyone who plays World of Warcraft and takes their security seriously. You can avoid keyloggers if you’re careful.

There are numerous things you can do to check the intergrity of a post and links within it and these include:

1) Before clicking links, make sure that a reputable hosting site has been used. For example, Image Shack.

2) Ignore the content of the post. Previously, it was possible to identify potential keyloggers via bad grammar and written language and the general content of the post. Now however, keyloggers have started posting on issues that genuinly do effect the player base and as such, people have been fooled into clicking links.

3) If it is a server forum, check the character that is posting the links. If the character is posting from another server it is best to exercise caution when clicking links.

4) Check the posting character’s post history if you don’t trust the links that they provide. In a large proportion of cases, a vast quantity of posts containing the same content and a link will mean that the poster is a keylogger.

5) Check the spelling of what look like legitimate links. For example, the “o” in World of Warcraft may be replaced with a “0″ (zero) in order to trick you into click the link.

6) Check replies in the thread. In most cases, another member of the community will highlight a suspisous post and if this is the case, a report should be made.

Make sure to read the whole thing for more great tips.

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World of Warcraft Trading Card Game

Today this product was announced: “World of Warcraft(R): The Art of the Trading Card
Game”, which will feature artwork created for the highly popular World of
Warcraft Trading Card Game. This should appeal to fans of the game.

World of Warcraft: The Art of the Trading Card Game will feature a collection of sketches, paintings and finished artwork highlighting a selection of World of Warcraft’s most valiant heroes, devastating spellcasters and bloodthirsty creatures created by some of today’s top fantasy artists. These artists include Todd McFarlane (Spawn), Greg Staples (Judge Dredd), Zoltan Boros and Gabor Szikszai (InQuest Gamer magazine’s “Artists of the Year” recipients), Marcelo Vignali (Disney Animation), and Todd Lockwood (Forgotten Realms), among others.
“World of Warcraft is a global phenomenon that boasts a large base of people who not only actively play the online game and TCG, but who also really enjoy the artwork in the games,” said Tim Muret, Vice President of Upper Deck Authenticated. “We wanted to release a book for these players as well as celebrate the great work of these artists.”
Insightful forewords are given by Blizzard’s Senior Art Director, Samwise Didier, and Art Lead Glenn Rane. Jeremy Cranford, Art Acquisitions Manager for Upper Deck Entertainment, provides the book’s introduction.

For more information: click here.

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Possible World Of Warcraft Outage October 19th

Just a heads up. They say their won’t be any downtime, but never know.

Our internet service provider (ISP) will be performing backend maintenance on Friday October 19, 2007 from 10:01 PM PDT to Saturday October 20, 2007 4:00 AM PDT. We do not anticipate any service impact, and will be watching realm stability and performance closely.

Keep an eye out.

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