What better way to honor the birth of a new year than the falling of a dreaded enemy? That was the thinking from the writer at the Domestic Scientist, who wanted to celebrate the victory of the Molten Core Swim Club guildmates over World of Warcraft’s dreaded Deathwing. The resulting celebratory cake is a thing of beauty, even if some of the horns didn’t survive the baking process. See more pictures, after the break.

We already know Blizzard is the king of the video game world, especially after fusing with Activision and going Super Saiyan 5, but just how large is their kingly crown? Aside from owning World of Warcraft, both the bane and champion of the video game industry and MMO market, which millions upon millions of users pay a monthly subscription to play, generating an ever-flowing river of cash directed at Blizzard headquarters, Blizzard has also made $26 million on keychains.

USA’s sort of mock-procedural-but-not-really Psych paid tribute to World of Wacraft‘s theorized-to-be-staged-raid-ruiner Leeroy Jenkins. After a bit of technology trolling, pretend psychic Shawn Spencer determines that the culprit they’re searching for, Leeroy Jenkins, has had a bit of a makeover. Upon discovery of this, Spencer belts out the famous Leeroy Jenkins battle cry. Procedurals like to mess with technology and video games, but at least Psych’s representation of one of the two is a tribute more than a proper trolling.

To some developers, it’s become a dirty curse. To others, it has become a venerated phrase, something immediately associated with excellent growth and revenue. To the common gamer, it is instead a promise of gameplay without immediate monetary investment. Considering the typical console game has a sticker price of $60 whether the player ends up liking the game or not, this can be the point that pushes their curiosity over the edge.

Regardless, we are living in a free-to-play gaming revolution.

But that’s a good thing. It means that developers and publishers are aware enough of their customers’ wants and needs to provide them with tailored content specifically for them.

Regarding World of Warcarft, there are basically only two groups of gamers: Those who play it and those who know they won’t like it. Both groups are fairly large, but with the latest patch, Rage of the Firelands, Blizzard is attempting to turn that latter group into “those who know they don’t like it, but play it anyway.” Now, rather than the free 14-day limited trial, WoW has shifted over to a limited free-to-play trial: Instead of 14 days to test out the game, players will be able to play some of the content forever, but with a limiting level cap of 20 that will only be removed once they upgrade to the full version of the game.

Dubbed the World of Warcraft Starter Edition, the free-to-play “trial” includes the base game and some content from the first expansion, The Burning Crusade, namely the two added character races. So, not exactly a massive shift to a free-to-play model like every other game seems to be doing lately — even games that never had a subscription to begin with — but still, a step in what many people would call the right direction for WoW, a game that needs to reach a new audience, but is so widely known that most of that potential new audience already knows it doesn’t want to play WoW. At least if the game moves to some kind of free-to-play model, all of those people who wouldn’t want to play may give it a shot. It’s entirely possible that this free-to-play trial could be the first step in that direction.

(Blizzard via Joystiq)

MEGA Brands Inc., maker of MEGA Bloks, has signed a deal with Blizzard Entertainment to bring us official World of Warcraft and StarCraft II Mega Bloks. Set to debut in the summer of 2012, the constructions sets will be based on locations, characters and vehicles from the ridiculously popular MMO and StarCraft II’s Terran (for those not in the know: human) campaign, Wings of Liberty. From Vic Bertrand, Chief Innovation Officer of MEGA Brands:

“We’re proud and thrilled to enter into a partnership with Blizzard Entertainment, the world leader in creating epic online game franchises.

The depth of content in World of Warcraft and StarCraft will fuel years of fun, collectible products for gamers and collectors.”

There are not yet pictures of pieces from the sets, but MEGA Bloks handles other franchise sets, such as the Halo construction set, and aside from am overly flashy webpage, that set looks pretty decent, so fans of both non-Minecraft blocky construction and Blizzard franchises with “craft” in the title need not worry about poor product quality. As for which Blizzard franchises should’ve gotten the MEGA Bloks treatment first, we’re happy for the -craft titles, but we all know Lost Vikings would’ve been ideal.

(via Topless Robot)

World of Warcraft is fairly well-known for it’s “kill X [thing]” mechanic and slog of a grind at the later levels, but Night Elf Druid Everbloom on the Feathermoon server surpassed that slog and hit the level cap of 85 without making one kill. Though WoW is known for its kill mechanics (kill X thing, endgame raiding, PvP, etc.), Everbloom was able to achieve level 85 without making a kill due to only participating in gathering professions and exploration, accruing experience from archaeology, herbalism and mining.

Everbloom died only 25 times during her (or his?) quest of pacifism, but took 3 million damage throughout. Everbloom claims she chose the Night Elf Druid race and class combination for the healing, flight and rooting (freezing enemies in one place) abilities. Even though she has been playing since 2004, she claims that taking the pacifist route showed her landmarks and parts of the world she has never seen before–maybe something of which Blizzard will take note.

(Everbloom’s profile via The Escapist)

It’s April Fools’ Day, and you know what that means: All of your favorite tech companies, geek brands, and publications have poured inordinate amounts of time and effort into messing with you. But do you want to be momentarily fooled by their messings-with, or, what’s worse, not see them at all as you browse the Internet today? No, of course not. Luckily, Geekosystem is here to help:

Canadian Internet service provider Rogers has admitted that the software it uses to detect peer-to-peer file sharing was inadvertantly identifying online games such as World of Warcarft and limited the bandwidth of such users. Ars Technica is quoting a company representative with Rogers as saying:

Our tests have determined that there is a problem with our traffic management equipment that can interfere with World of Warcraft [...] We have been in contact with the game manufacturer and we have been working with our equipment supplier to overcome this problem.

But Rogers’ claim that this was a purely innocent mistake may not hold water. This bandwidth “throttling” was noticed by Canadian gamer Teresa Murphy who wrote a very well-researched letter to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, who in turn ordered an investigation into the matter. In her letter, Murphy maintains that Roger’s arguments are highly specious:

Rogers employees on their own forums have been stating that these games use P2P to run, which is why they’re being throttled, and that the game manufacturer needs to change the game. Add to this, Rogers employees have been telling us gamers to disable any P2P, wait 10 minutes, and try the game again. (For the record, these games do NOT use P2P, never have and never will.) I see this as a CLEAR indication that they’re knowingly throttling up/down stream of the entire connection while P2P is active, whether it really IS active, or they just think it is.

This is a thorny issue, certainly. In an effort to curb illegal filesharing, ISPs have pushed for greater control over their user’s online activities. But Murphy concludes her letter with a succinct argument that’s hard to disagree with: “It’s not fair that Rogers customers are paying for a service they can’t even use.”

(via Ars Technica)

Expectations were high for the third expansion to juggernaut World of Warcraft.  After all, with a player base clocking in at 12 million, you can expect a significant number of people to go out and buy the game within a short amount of time after its launch.

Turns out more than a third of World of Warcraft subscribers went out, buying up 3.3 million copies in the first twenty four hours of it being available.  Which means that Blizzard has, with an expansion pack, claimed the title of fastest selling PC game of all time… from itself.  The previous bestseller was, you guessed it, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, the second WoW expansion.