Come in Spinner! Celestial Steed Mount

Blizzard just added 2 new items to the pet store The Blizzard Pet Store has just been updated with a couple of fun new choices that you can get for your characters. Continuing in the theme of cute, miniaturized bosses, we have Lil' XT, and the Celestial Steed is the first-ever mount to be available through the service. Of course, the Pandaren Monk, Lil' KT, and the Wind Rider Cub and Gryphon Hatchling plushies are still available there as well.
Head over to the Pet Store to see what's available.

At the time of posting I was in Position 80368 and have to wait over 5 hours! So let's look at that for a sec 80,000 x $25 = $2,000,000 in sales in line at this time!

For all you non WoW players this is a digital ingame item, it’s a flying horse for your Avatar to fly around on.
Yes it’s a sexy mount but wow ... someone a Blizzard is getting a pat on the back right now!

Supreme Commander 2 - the Prequel in Design

I have no doubt that Supreme Commander 1 was one of the best RTS games of the last five years ... sorry, not was but still is. The expansion for it, Forged Alliance added the extra features to the game that gave it a new life. So, I was quite excited when I saw that Supreme Commander II was being launched this month. To top it off, Steam even put it on special for the pre-orders. What a bargain! But after a really dodgy product launch, the reality hit ... this was in no way shape or form a Supreme Commander 2. It's a sequel only in story but not in maps, gameplay, graphics or anything else. As I played the first missions I was baffled as to why the graphics were not as good as in Supreme Commander 1. Jumping into skirmishes, I discovered that the maps were not even a quarter of the size of those in number 1, or the expansion. None of the maps require any type of naval units either. The maps included with the game are designed in a way where you can't do anything physically practical with the ships or the ocean. There are no island maps (etc).

So, what would drive a developer to release a game that's not as good as its prequel? Why would you dumb down a game? Take out features? The answer of course is ... console. Supreme Commander II was designed for console gamers. It was dumbed down so that it will run on the Xbox. I am not dissapointed that they made a console version of this game but I am dissapointed that they tried to release this as a sequel on PC. Give me this new story line on the old engine and allow me to use all the maps from the first game and the add-on. Give me back all of the glorious graphics that made Supreme Commander 1 a truly brilliant game. If I was able to return this game, I wouldn't think twice about doing so. Unfortunately, Steam doesn't allow for refunds. I guess that's why they had it on special for pre-orders. Once the word got out about how crap with game is on PC, no one will want it. But hey ... If you're looking for an RTS game on a Xbox, this game could be fun ... but it's only a shadow of what number 1 was on the PC.

StarCraft(r) II: Wings of Liberty(TM) Beta Test Invitation!

Yep thats right they are out and I just got it in the mail!

Congratulations, this is your invitation to the beta test for Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft® II: Wings of Liberty™! You are receiving this email because you attended a special Blizzard Entertainment event, participated in a related contest or promotion, or have otherwise been selected to join the beta-testing process. This email contains your beta key along with instructions on how to get started.

As a beta test participant, you’ll have the opportunity to experience the multiplayer gameplay of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and explore the social-networking, matchmaking, and other new features of Blizzard Entertainment’s revamped Battle.net® online-gaming service. Throughout the StarCraft II beta test, you’ll be able to take part in cooperative and competitive battles as the terrans, protoss, and zerg -- and at the same time, you’ll be helping test the stability of the Battle.net service and fine-tune the game balance prior to launch. The developers look forward to hearing your feedback and seeing you on Battle.net!

I'm off to PLAY!!! will report back soon!

Make-A-Wish Foundation Receives $1.1 million donation from Blizzard Entertainment

February 17, 2010 08:30 AM Eastern Time

The Make-A-Wish Foundation® Receives $1.1 Million Donation from Blizzard Entertainment

Contribution to Help Grant the Wishes of Children with Life-Threatening Medical Conditions Around the World

PHOENIX--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Make-A-Wish Foundation today announced a $1.1 million donation from Blizzard Entertainment, a premier developer and publisher of entertainment software. The donation is based on 50 percent of the total sales during November and December 2009 of a special in-game pet, the Pandaren Monk, for Blizzard's award-winning, massively multiplayer online role-playing game, World of Warcraft®.

“This generosity is helping us bring hope, strength and joy to children when they – and their families – are facing an unimaginably difficult time in their young lives.”
On Tuesday, Feb. 16, Blizzard made the presentation during a special ceremony at the company's headquarters in Irvine, Calif. Blizzard invited 15 wish children who are also gaming enthusiasts and their families to enjoy an exclusive learning experience with the World of Warcraft development team, including an inside look at how the game is created.

“We've had a long relationship with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and we're proud to support the priceless work they do for children,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “This donation also reflects the spirit and generosity of our players – their enthusiasm for World of Warcraft and for supporting a good cause made this possible.”

I love this Song!

Boom De Yada WoW - Eng Subtitles



And
Boom De Yada - The Making

The World of Warcraft Lich King Figure by DC Direct - UGO.com

What you see here is the first image of the Lich King figure for the World of Warcraft collectibles line by DC Direct. read on : The World of Warcraft Lich King Figure by DC Direct - UGO.com

Global Agenda just took a headshot form Kyle Bennett

I had a bit of a look some weeks ago at Global Agenda, a new MMO from Hi-Rez Studios. Too be honest, the first thing I thought was that it looked a lot like Tabula Rasa ... and that was enough to keep me away. I have no idea why some developers beat a dead horse. How many times do you need to see Si-Fi FPS style MMOs fail?
But to see developers take on a failed idea and then let bad community managers or developers say stupid things to its community, amazes me. I get how hard it is developing a game but if you have no fracking idea what you’re talking about, don’t talk to your community!

Kyle Bennett, the owner of the hugely popular hardcore PC hardware review site, HardOcp.com said:
“What has me a bit riled up is that Hi-Rez Studios is locking out the users of Eyefinity,TripleHead2Go, and SoftTH from enjoying their hard earned computer hardware when it comes to playing Global Agenda.”

Read on and see why it’s dumb to piss off your community!

What to do, where to go in SWG

Sony online Entertainment sent out an email to all their Star Wars Galaxy members, inviting them to come back to the game for the month of February for free! When I received this email, I thought what the hell, let’s see what they’ve done. When I last played this game three years ago, I had a few max level characters – an elder Jedi, which I spent months levelling to be an uber elite character, and also a master Bounty Hunter, which has a full set of Madalorian armour and is extremely wealthy.
When I logged in, I found most of my houses in the game had been packed up. This was a feature Sony introduced a while ago to clean up some of the abandoned houses throughout the Galaxy. Unfortunately, for players coming back, this means that the first hours of their gameplay involves unpacking houses and sorting out where all of their stuff is. For me, this took about 2-3 hours of gameplay.
While I was unpacking my house I got whispers from old guild members and got invited back into my old guild that I had founded five years ago. The current guild leader gave me some gameplay hints and told me what I needed to do for the new content in the game.
The new heroic dungeons that were introduced in a recent patch involve simple quest lines to give access to these instances. Apparently there are five heroic instances in total and the guys in the guild told me about the improvements you can make to your character. But after showing them what I had, so far as geared was concerned, we discovered that there wasn’t much I would need to be competitive. So after three years, SOE have managed to provide little to no improvement to characters, apart from their appearance. It really seems like SWG is more like a World Sim than an Epic heroic adventure. It’s more about setting up houses, cities and communities than epic battles against epic villains.
For me, the first time around, I loved it and levelling my characters was enthralling. The first time you discover new worlds were good times ... exciting adventures. But when you get asked to go to the same place to do similar quests over and over again, it gets boring real fast. There are only so many times you can be expected to kill the same NPCs for a loot item.
Good luck Sony. I don’t think I’ll be hanging around – but thanks for the free re-trial!

WoW Lady Deathwhisper 25 man raid guide by Gamingface.com

Another WoW ICC 25 man raid guide from us here at gaming face.

Raiding etiquette

You know, I don't ask a lot from my raiders.know the strats of the bosses we are fighting ... come prepared with flasks, food, what ever else you might need during the raid and listen to the raid leader. It really annoys me when you spend two and a half hours for a couple of nights trying to progress through a new boss and it becomes extremely obvious when someone asks a really stupid question, that they haven't read a strategy. These people think it doesn't become obvious about who does and does not know the fights and who does and who does not lie when they get asked if they have read the strategy and watched the video guides. I would have asked maybe four or five times over the last week if everyone had read the guides and watched the videos. When you get no reply you just presume everyone has done the minimum expected research. What these people don't realise is that all the raid leaders notice when people ask obvious questions that are explained in every guide - that they have not read the strategy and then have not done their research and they have lied to the raid. These people then wonder why they get put on standby for future raids. My advice to any raider is to be honest. If you've read the strategy but don't quite understand it, ask questions. If you have read the strategy and it was four weeks ago and you've forgotten exactly how it goes, ask for a re-cap. If you have not read it at all, don't try and wing your way through, ask to have the fight explained or ask for time to go and read the strat. Attempting to wing it through will only get you caught eventually. Although it might not matter too much in pugs, in the guild scenariojavascript:void(0), it's definitely going to piss people off.