Well, Mr. Critic himself Roger Ebert has gone and apologized to gamers everywhere for his remarks about games “not being art.”

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Yesterday, Blizzard released a few screenshots of the new zone in which players starting new Troll characters will have their own zone, instead of sharing the zone with Orcs.

The new zone, labeled Echo Isles, provides new quests for levels 1-5 such as protecting the Bloodtalon raptors that trolls use as  mounts and protecting the local food supply from other animals. You’ll soon move up to larger targets like a naga invasion force. Eventually Vol’Jin, the head of the Darkspears trolls, calls for you and gives you quests.

Cataclysm, the third expansion pack for WoW, aims to fill in the map of Azeroth with new zones. It will also add two playable races, implement numerous class changes and do a whole lot of other stuff too.

Check the images after the cut.

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If anything, MMOs are created to be played almost ad infinitum, constantly awarding your efforts with better gear, higher levels and an all around more fun gaming experience. There’s never really an end in sight, and that’s probably what attracts most gamers.

But a Taiwanese man has gone as far as to proclaim himself the first person to “finish” World of Warcraft, and it’s not a stretch if you think about it.

The man’s character, Little Gray, is the first to successfully complete all of WoW’s 986 achievements. To get to this point Little Gray had to kill 390,895 creatures, accumulate 7,255,538 878 points of damage, complete 5,906 quests (an average of 14,62 quests per day!), raided 405 dungeons and hugged 11 players. If that doesn’t give him bragging rights among WoW gamers, I dunno what will.

Technically, Little Gray did cheat. According to the player he’s missing one rare, event-tied achievement called the “BB King”. He avoided this by exploiting a glitch to award himself one extra, and false, achievement point. I say he needs to get back on his ass and get the final achievement before he gets full bragging rights. Read more on MMO-Champion

Blizzard has just released comprehensive details for the raid dungeon that will feature in World of Warcraft’s 3.3 content patch, Icecrown Citadel, which will see adventurers finally take the fight to the Lich King himself!

Check out the screenshots and full details below.

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Tired of your World of Warcraft mount looking like every other raptor, wolf, horse, kodo, or nightsaber out there? Want to spice it up with some armor plating, a few spikes or chains, or maybe even some flaming decals?

Then Z to the A to the zzber (whew, that’s a mouthful!) will be glad to welcome you to his shop where you can epic-ize your mount with some phat total pimpage!

Coming in a future content patch, Blizzard plans to bring you a new feature that will allow you to alter the colour, the armour, or add decorations to your in-game mounts. Simply drop in to Zazzber’s Local Fix-’Er-Up, pay a small fee, and leave your mount there overnight.

The next morning, you’ll pick up a mount that is uniquely yours!

Recent decisions by the Australian classification boards has degreed that, until they receive an age rating from the board itself, the majority of MMOs available to buy in the country can’t be legally sold.

Up until now, MMO were exempt from requiring a legal age rating due to their lack of single-player content, but the law has since changed to include multilayer only titles.

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The World of Warcraft 3.0.8 patch went live today; the first major game patch since Wrath of the Lich King back in November. The main focus of the patch is class balancing (read: nerfing) and major bug fixes.

You’ll have to wait until 3.1 if you want the good stuff.

If you enjoy reading pages and pages of WoW lingo, or love analysing every single change in the game, hit the jump for the full list of patch notes.

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The worlds most popular MMO, World of Warcraft has now reached a userbase of 11.5 million says Blizzard, sale of the game have been fuelled by the new Wrath of The Lich King release, which shifted over 4million copies in it’s first month.

“We’re pleased to welcome the new and returning players who have helped World of Warcraft reach these new milestones, and we appreciate the enthusiasm and support that the game’s global community has continued to show,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard.

Only two months ago, Blizzard was saying that there was a fanbase of  11 million, 500,000 new people have subscribed.

Soon everyone will be playing the game.

Blizzard Entertainment has confirmed in a press release today that the new World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King sold 2.8 million copies in its first 24 hours on sale, becoming the fastest selling PC game ever.

The past record holder… ironically… was the previous expansion, The Burning Crusade.

2We’re grateful for the incredible support that players around the world have continued to show for World of Warcraft,” said Blizzard boss Mike Morhaime.

“Wrath of the Lich King contains some of the best content we’ve created for the game so far, and we look forward to seeing even more players log in to experience it in the days ahead.”

A well deserved success for an epic series.

You know you’ve been playing too much WoW when…

Playing Wrath of the Lich King, expansion for the highly successful WoW MMORPG, for 24 hours took its toll on a 15 year old Swedish boy. What might have been a drive to accomplish the European feat of reaching level 80 in a one 27 hour marathon turned into an epileptic seizure.

Doctors described his body as “…systems had been disrupted by a combination of sleep deprivation, lack of food and the prolonged period of concentration on the game.”

Since the experience, the kid’s father is putting his foot down on the time spent on playing video games once he’s properly recovered. Let’s hope the boy learned his lesson on how to enjoy his games responsibly.

Taking only a meagre 27 hours, warlock players Nymh has earned the honour of being the world’s first level 80 in Wrath of the Lich King, the epic expansion to World of Warcraft.

Nymh, who hails from French server Drek’thar, used the crypts in the Drakil’ji Ruins in Grizzly Hills, where mobs are on a very fast respawn rate (around 30 seconds) to help speed level himself all the way to the expansion’s level cap of 80, with the assistant of an out-of-party healer to maximise his downtime.

In real life, Nymh is 21 years of age and in full time employment. Nymh took vacation time off work to enjoy the newly released expansion pack and to accomplish this feat.

I guess it just goes to show that you don’t have to be an overweight, greasy, social reject who lives in their mom’s basement to commit to an MMORPG and achieve something.

No matter what your stance on WoW, its hard to ignore the release of something as large as Wrath of the Lich King, the latest expansion for the massive online game. It follows almost two years after the previous expansion, adding even more into this enormous fantasy world.

This intrepid reporter was dragged along to a midnight release, despite not being able to afford it herself. So what else to do, but talk to the people there, to bring you some wonderful insights?

Clad in a borrowed “Home is where the hearthstone is” t-shirt, with my handy notebook to jot down interesting facts, I ventured forth bravely into a gathering of WoW players so much more experienced than I.

We arrived about 11:30pm, and were gestured inside by the waiting staff. The pre-order paid off, receipt stamped to show we had paid. As we were then ushered outside again, the queue began to form. Clutching their receipts, fans (and their support crews) waited excitedly for midnight. I took the opportunity to survey some of the people waiting in line.

The majority were proud owners of at least one level 70 character, all classes represented in those I talked to. Most of the people were Alliance, with Horde players being a smaller percentage of those lining up just before midnight.

But then the moment comes, and the first copy is given out. The first person emerges from the store, clutching box and poster in their hands, and the excitement seems to push even higher, if that was possible. But time passes, and the line shortens. People arrive late, tagging on to the end of the line, but its the end of the evening for us.

Or not, really, because it was time to head home at watch it install, to be one of those flooding Northrend, playing a Death Knight, just being there as the moments ticked over, and watching people push to higher and higher levels, unreachable until this moment.

Wrath of the Lich King launches in the UK less than three hours from now, and we’ve compiled a detailed list for you of the four things you’ll want to be most interested in checking out once you make landfall on the frosty shores of Northrend later tonight.

Lets start from the beginning…

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A world event has just been triggered in World of Warcraft portraying numerous scripted events across the world of Azeroth, as a prelude to Thursday’s Wrath of the Lich King midnight launch worldwide.

The Orcish capital of Orgrimmar sees itself under attack by the Lich King’s Scourge invasion in an event that repeats every 20-30 minutes. After the scourge forces are beaten back, the reserved leader of the Horde, Thrall and Garrosh Hellscream disagree over the suggestion of invading the Lich King’s home directly, in Northrend.

Thrall urges prudence and paitence, but Garrosh suggets an immediate assault. The argument escalates heated, and the two begin fighting, with Garrosh nearly winning before the Herald of the Lich King announces yet another attack on the city.

The harbour of the human capital of Stormwind has also been reported to be under attack by the Lich King’s forces, with the scorned King Varian Wrynn and other noble heroes of the Alliance attempting to put up their best defence against the oncoming invasion by sea from the bitter frozen wastes of Northrend.

Will you be fighting the good fight?

Blizzard has just released a full listing on its European site of all confirmed midnight shop openings for the launch of Wrath of the Lich King all across Europe tomorrow.

You’ll be hard pressed to find a country that isn’t on the list, to be honest.

In addition, the game itself is gearing up for its launch with the Lich King’s forces currently laying siege to capital cities all across Azeroth. Will you be fighting the good fight?

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King launches at midnight, November 13th.