So after Thor this is the inevitable follow up episode with a little hands on ‘un-boxing’ of the StarCraft 2 collector’s edition. It really is my favourite of all the Blizzard collector’s editions so far; it feels like it’s giving away more cool-things than any of the World of Warcraft ones. The art and behind the scenes DVD are both incredible, you get to see just the tip of the iceberg that was the 10 year development cycle for StarCraft 2 and begin to appreciate the work behind it all. As I said in the video, I’d love to show you more, or even just better quality bits of what I have shown you, but I don’t think I am allowed! That being said, you really should try to get your hands on a copy of the collector’s edition, it is a must for any gaming fan out there!

So everyone loves Thor. He’s a badass, but what about a tiny version of him? Would that be as badass? Could it even be more badass? Only one way to find out!

All you have to do is buy the collector’s edition of StarCraft 2, register the game with the same Battle.net account that you use for WoW and you’ll find this little guy in all your character’s mail boxes! If he doesn’t show up right away, change your battle.net password and it’ll give it a poke and send him through. (There was the same bug with Grunty from BlizzCon 09, not everyone will need to do this!)

Otherwise I’ll have a hands on of the StarCraft 2 Collector’s Edition up shortly.

So I finally got around to stop playing the Beta and start taking some video for you all to enjoy! This is a quick comparison video showing you the current version of Old Ironforge (Or the Hall of Thanes as Lore nerds like myself would prefer you to refer to it!) verse the new and improved ‘New-Old Ironforge’.

In the video I obviously talk about events that are apparently going to happen in the build up to Cataclysm, as such, please don’t view the video if you don’t like potential spoilers. For everyone else who is not a scared little girl, click play and enjoy! Oh and expect there to be more videos of some of the awesome new experiences coming up in Cataclysm.

I’ve been crazy busy recently, alphas, betas, whatever-comes after betas, you name it. I’ve been playing a lot of World of Warcraft as you no doubt expect and I’ve been loving it more and more. Recently Blizzard introduce the Real ID system into WoW. This meant that we could ‘friend’ our real-life friends and gain the ability to see them on any server, not have to populate our friends lists with all their alts and even see when they are missing out on all the fun by playing some space game (Just kidding, StarCraft 2>WoW ).

I wasn’t sure about it at first but I’ve grown to love it. I’ve added some of my current guildies and some of my old-old-old guildies from when I first started playing the game. It’s a great way to keep in-touch in the game without spending a fortune on server transfers or splitting my playtime across 6 different servers. Do I care about them knowing my Battle.net name? No, I’v got an authenticator (Though I should note: this was only added recently after I was hacked due to using a computer that was compromised with a keylogger.) Do I care about them knowing my real name? No, I’ve always displayed both my real name (Mark Turpin) and my internet name (Turpster, The T, The Chosen One, you name it I’m called it) publicly.

So yesterday Blizzard turned around and said, “LoLz We are in your base broadcasting your real name to the world” (not an actual quote). In brief, shortly before StarCraft 2 comes out and then before Cataclysm’s release they will be changing the forums to display your Real name above that of your character’s name. Now as I said earlier, I really am not bothered about this personally since for me it’s not a huge amount of difference to how I choose to display myself publicly on the internet anyway. But that is my choice. I totally get why some people don’t want to have their name out there for anyone (read: Google) to see and I know that there are a lot of unsavoury people already out there just waiting to know who you are.

I would like to share a story with you all, one that came to mind when I heard the news and the predictable outcry from the WoW community. When I was younger I had a part time job in a department store selling Computers and all that stuff. There was this lovely lady who worked with me who had been in retail for a long time, but I wont lie to you, she was a fox. A cougar if you will. It’s kind of beside the point but she was hot, and as you by now know, a woman!

The store we worked in decided that to help give better customer service (and I think in part to make Staff more responsible for their actions in front of customers) that everyone would have to wear name badges. Not a big deal to many people, loads of other store already did this and it was kind of a natural progression for the store. Now this smoking hot slightly-older lady (did I mention she was blonde?! SHWING!) wasn’t too happy about this, apparently she had worked at one of these other stores where they had name badges before and, I guess due to being fairly attractive, was victim to unwanted attention from some of the customers that in one extreme case this turned into stalking. Because she wore a name badge this creep was able to glisten more information about her and eventually find out where she lived etc.

So, understandably so, she was pretty upset about this change and went to the management to complain. She laid-out her reasons intelligently, calmly and sexily (What?! You had to be there, something about ladies getting passionate about stuff…). The management took what she had to say fairly well but then pointed out one flaw in her argument. You see, this lovely lady was wearing a nice, albeit slightly tacky looking necklace, and on this necklace was her name… (I know, epic fail! I thought so too)

After all this arguing and attempted reasoning she forgot to notice that she was already sharing her name with anyone who walked into the store and had been for some time. As I said, she was blonde (I kid, I kid, Blondes are no smarter or ‘un-smarter’ than any other hair colour)

So I guess what that long winded story was all about is just to ask you guys to have a good think about how you are already featured on the internet. You’d be surprised as to how easy it is for many people to find out information about you already without your real name courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment.

Do I disagree with people’s fears about this new forum system? Hell no. But I do think that it will make the forums a more accountable place which will make it more palatable for myself to visit more often than my bi-annual (Got to be careful how you spell that one!) trip. But enough with my pointless tales and vanilla views, What do you guys think about the Real ID changes? I’d love to hear more from you.

Hey folks!

First up let me thank you for taking the time out of your busy gaming lives to come on over to my little ol’ spot on the internet. Have a look around, you’ll see some new stuff as well as all the classic videos you came to love. Feel free to subscribe to my RSS feed (I’ll be honest, I don’t have a clue what it is or what it does but I’ve got a button for it so it would be a shame to waste it).

Otherwise, let me know what you want more of, what you want less of and I’ll see what I can provide – I’m great like that!

I wont keep you any longer, it’s not that I am meant to be tanking at the moment (though it would be fine if I was since this group is made of utter failure and keep pulling agro when I am writing this without telling them that I am writing this)

1231231231231231231231231231dddddddddwwwwwwwwwww…. oh nuts, yeah, we wiped.

~T

This past week I undertook an epic unveiling of not so epic proportions in opening up my very own <a href=”http://www.figureprints.com/”>FigurePrint</a>. Fortunately for you, the lucky viewer, I’ve captured this live on video — a first encounter of the most awesome kind — which can be found below the break!

The first thing that struck me upon opening the package was the weight of it all; the dome is real glass and is a fantastic way to display your character, keeping them free from dust and many other household evils that lurk outside of Azeroth. The reason I would want to go for a<em> </em>FigurePrint would be to immortalize my character, preserving the culmination of four and a half years hard gaming, and this extra layer of protection allows that to happen. It does however present a barrier, much like we have when playing the game, where we can’t touch our character (This statement takes on a whole different meaning with some of <a href=”http://www.gameaxis.com/img/blog/3105/Image/wow_night_elf_stripper.jpg”>Night Elf female mailbox dancers</a> out there) but obviously it serves the purpose of protecting the FigurePrint so I guess I can let it slide.

Click on past the break to catch the video and check out the gallery getting up close and personal with FigurePrints!

The FigurePrint was easy to create (see the gallery for some of the screenshots from <a href=”http://www.wow.com/gallery/figureprints-review/2098626/”>the creation process</a>) and if this little video has sparked your interest then I have just the thing for you. Now don’t say I don’t give anything back, ’cause The T has gone one step beyond and now you can all get 5% off of the cost of your FigurePrint with a very, very secret code. Do you have your pen and paper ready? I’ll only say it once, ok, here it goes:

For 5% off of a FigurePrint of your very own use the discount code: TURPSTER

I’ll be taking advantage of the ‘TURPSTER’ code and have already started farming MC for the <a href=”http://www.wowhead.com/?itemset=209″>Warrior Tier 1 ‘Battlegear of Might’</a> set – the best looking set on Gnome Warriors across the whole of Azeroth. For those of you out there who have FigurePrints or are thinking of getting one, what’s your character wearing?

As I said in the video, stay tuned into the site for the 24th of June as we’ve got some great news to pass on to you guys, but that’s all I am allowed to say, you’ll have to keep checking out WoW.com for more information.

The <a href=”http://www.wow.com/2008/04/23/figureprints-figure-underwhelms-will-be-replaced/”>vibrancy of the colors had been an issue</a> which some of the early FigurePrint lottery winners felt their FigurePrint hadn’t lived up to their expectations. At Blizzcon ’08 <a href=”http://www.wow.com/2008/10/13/blizzcon-2008-a-followup-with-figureprints/”>we spoke with Ed Fries who commented on their customer satisfaction</a> and I can say that I am blown away with the overall quality of the product, but if you don’t believe me, <a href=”http://www.wow.com/gallery/figureprints-review/2098407/”>check out the gallery</a> to see for yourself!

I will say that I am not a huge fan of <a href=”http://www.wow.com/gallery/figureprints-review/2098406/”>the font used for the name</a> on FigurePrints. It’s been a long time since I have used the default fonts in <span style=”font-style: italic;”>WoW</span> but I am pretty sure that there could be some better options than a sans serif (the font type not <a href=”http://www.latina.com/files/041409thespirit_article.jpg”>Eva Mendes from The Spirit</a> – though I would totally be cool with a FigurePrint of her) bright yellow block of text, but maybe that is just me.

You will dance

From the original article over at Massively.com on the 19th December 2008:

“Hey folks, it’s good to be back; MMOs just wouldn’t be the same without TurpsterVision! Today we are taking a look at Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria‘s new Legendary Weapons. I’ve often wanted to have a sword glow blue and warn me when danger is near. To be honest I’d settle for an iPhone app that would do the same thing. But fortunately for me I don’t have to settle for anything less than the real deal, albeit a virtual-real deal.

Moria not only granted us two new classes, which I’ll be exploring one at a time over the next two weeks, but it also granted players the ability to gain Legendary weapons of old which they can level up alongside their character. But enough reading about it, this is TurpsterVision! Watch on after the break…”

From the original article from Massively.com on the 14th October 2008:

“I am extremely proud to invite you once more to join in with the fun right here at Massively that is TurpsterVision! “Oi Git face! Wot’z dis? Da same game twice? Dis is an outrage! WAAGHH”

It is true folks, we are having a look at Warhammer Online once again here at TurpsterVision, but this time we are looking at the game as a whole and trying to answer that age old question of; is it actually fun to play?

Well if I told you here that would ruin all the fun, ‘ow about you join me afta da break an’ we’ll see wot I make of a life at WAR…sorry, been playing Greenskins just a little bit too much recently.

From the original article from Massively.com on the 24th September 2008:

“As you are undoubtedly aware, Warhammer Online hit the shelves last week; and with it brought a whole new level of awesome to the MMO playing field. Right here on the site we have spoken of the joys of Public Quests, Realm Vs. Realm and a whole host of other goodies.

I have chosen to just focus on a couple of elements that caught my eye this week and I guess we’ll have a more in-depth look at the game in the near future. But for now, grab your Spade or Garden Fork and join me in what could quite possibly be the most bloody battle yet…Cultivating!