Project Lore

Earlier this week WoWInsider broke a story involving PopCap Games, makers of the popular, casual title Bejeweled. Why would a WoW blog be covering the casual games market? Well, PopCap Games has decided to take that downtime we have in World of Warcraft and convert it into color matching time. The casual developer has employed Moongaze, creator of numerous in game game addons including Besharded, Bombsweeper and Bust-a-shard. Moongaze was tasked with porting the popular puzzler into WoW as an addon which will be released for FREE next week. I myself have dabbled with dual-gaming, as I like to call it, before and will have more on that subject and its challenges tomorrow. That being said, the addition of a new time sink and distraction in WoW may be the end to fast raiding times and skilled PvPers. I can see it now... 24 raid members to the tank/hunter, “Pull, please.” “Hold on, I have a huge chain going on with a big multiplier” says the distracted gamer. Someone else pulls, the tank doesn't notice and the raid wipes. Tank screams “WHY THE HELL DID YOU PULL?! NOW I HAVE A 50 GOLD REPAIR BILL!” Rest of the raid laments, leading to the the bank getting looted, the guild collapsing, and 10 members quitting WoW all together. Me, dramatic? Never! Along with breaking the news, WoWInsider managed to score a beta copy which they seem very found of. Early this morning they posted yet another Bejeweled-based story, an interview with PopCap's T. Carl Kwoh and Moongaze. The Q&A session is lengthy and it's because the two interviewees happened to be a bit long winded rather than a whole lot of questions being asked. Anyone interested in Bejeweled, the addon community or why the heck they thought of the idea should venture over. Who else is going to check out Bejeweled when it launches next week? I should mention that playing Bewjeweled - and being skilled at it - is the object of some Achievements.  That'll definitely get you Achievement nuts to look at it.

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