Project Lore

As you may have already heard, Peggle was just released as a WoW addon (get it here). I've dreamt of this day for years! Ever since I pre-ordered the Orange Box and was tempted to casual gaming with its sweet nectar, I have yearned for a way to conveniently play Peggle. Now I can play the Pachinko-like pinball game while stomping around Azeroth.

As the game is a WoW addon, it is free, unlike most versions of Peggle. Like Bejeweled, you install it as a typical WoW addon and they hope it entices you to buy a full version. Their strategy worked for Bejeweled; I bought it for my iPod Touch when it showed up on the app store because of my great experiences with it in WoW. I hear there is a version of Peggle headed to the iPod Touch, so I'll keep my eyes peeled.

Peggle is a simple game where you have a "cannon" at the top of your screen and a playing field consisting of different colored pegs. There are maybe around 100 pegs on the screen on a given playing field. At the beginning of the game, 20 pegs are colored orange (at least that's what the game claims, they've always looked red to me), 2 are colored green, and the rest are colored blue. The color distribution is completely random and changes every time you play a given stage. You have 10 balls to start, the primary goal is to clear all the orange pegs. You can also try to get a lot of points or clear the entire board. Like WoW, you can place priorities on your goals.

As you shoot balls out of the top canon, they bounce down. Blue pegs get you a small amount of points, while red pegs increase the multiplier applied to pegs you get throughout the rest of the round. Green pegs trigger a special effect. In a full-fledged Peggle client, you would have a choice of around a dozen. In the WoW version, you have a choice of 2: super-guide and space blast. Super-guide allows you to see a detailed trajectory of your next few potential shots, while space blast explodes around the green peg and clears all nearby pegs. At the start of each shot, a random blue peg is colored purple and is worth a ton of extra points. If you gets lots of points on one shot or manage to land the peg into the moving bucket at the bottom, you get extra balls.

This may sound complicated, but you essentially point and click and a bouncing ball triggers all sorts of happy lights and sounds and its extremely satisfying.

The WoW implementation is very true to the stand-alone versions with a great WoW flair. The stages are based on capital cities in WoW; every Horde and Alliance capital is included as well as Dalaran, Shattrath, the dark portal, and Icecrown Citadel. Pegs are mapped along a background image of the city, much like the stand-alone game. There are many multiplayer options, such as battles (where you challenge a group of people to get a high score), duels (time limited skill shot challenges between two players), and even "Peggleloot", which is a loot distribution option implemented using Master Looter and skill shots in Peggle. By clearing stages, you can earn talent points, publish high scores to your guild, see all your friend and guild-mates high scores, and more.

The addon uses less memory than many heavy addons like Lootlink or Auctioneer and does not affect my WoW performance at all. However, there are some small bugs and caveats. On stages with moving pegs, performance drops in WoW mess up the timing of the moving pegs, making the shots very crazy and giving you very little planning ability. But, if your computer rarely has these hiccups with WoW or you avoid playing while in Dalaran or on Northrend flight paths (both of where I get these hiccups on my Macbook Pro), this is hardly an issue. There are some very rare pathing issues where what looks like a smooth surface created by square pegs has embedded corners, and hitting it just right sends the balls flying off in an unexpected direction. Aside from these small bugs, the game is a blast. The fact that all these physics are happening in a WoW addon and we are comparing it to a full-fledged games really speaks to how polished this addon is. It gives me something to do while fishing, during raid downtime or breaks, or scanning the auction house. I don't leave home without it!

Do you think having games inside of WoW is pointless, or do you use it as a casual distraction? I'd love to see more games myself in WoW (as stupid as that sounds, as WoW is a game). Playing chess with a friend while raiding sounds immensely fun, and I'd love to see it implemented. Post comments with your recommendations for mini-games, I'd love to find more!