Project Lore

In an effort to cover World of Warcraft's extended Extended Universe I drank not one, not two but four Game Fuels recently, two of each flavor.  Now I know the Horde is going to freak out about this with claims that Project Lore hates hordies, but your drink taste exactly how I would imagine Cherry citrus-flavored death to taste.  The stuff is absolutely awful.  It should be pulled off the market as fast as Zicam and its creators forced to drink it, and only it, until they beg for mercy.   Screw waterboarding, just force terrorists to drink this concoction of chemicals and "flavor!" As with most things, the Alliance is better.  Well, that is simply relative to the Horde mockery of a refreshing beverage.  This pop is only mildly less appalling than its co-branded cousin, offering gamers a Wild Berry-flavored potion of high fructose corn syrup, caffeine and almost the same collection of chemicals that are difficult (Ethylenediaminetetraacetic Acid), and scary (Glycerol Ester of Wood Rosin), to pronounce.  I've yet to meet someone who drank the disgusting tonics out of something other than curiosity, but the shocking thing is that they have both been around the block before. As unattractive as I find Horde Red, the carbonated catastrophe is a re-branding of Mountain Dew's Halo 3 GameFuel which debuted in 2007.  Not to be outdone by unoriginality, the Alliance Blue is also a re-branding, this time of Mountain Dew's election tie-in flavor, Mountain Dew Revolution. Something good did come of the cross branding though, IRL dailies.  Again, I am not a marketing mastermind, but forcing us to view the same junk, much of which has nothing to do with the sodas, day in and day out seems like an odd marketing strategy.  Even money says it has to do with the act of repetition forcing the human brain to remember things more accurately (see Navi). In all seriousness the good aspect is another vanity pet!  After this morning's failed attempts at the Scorched Stone, my GM and I took out our frustrations on each other's Battle-Bots.  Once fueled up (you have to reboot WoW after requesting your fuel) these guys duke it out for a bit and then one explodes in a great show of leakage.  Glad Blizzard gave the animators some time to play with these machines, but it makes me want a mini Diablo vs. mini Tyrael battle even more. I'd say that between the chance for IRL rewards, even if the token collection system is absolutely stupid, and the in-game combat pet, the co-branding has been a success.  But Blizzard, next time make the other company create interesting IRL dailies.  It really shouldn't be that difficult, some guerrilla marketing, puzzles we have to solve, trivia, need I go on? There are a ton of things more entertaining than "watching" videos over, and over again. Here I thought reading numerous Knaak novels was the worst thing that could come from the Extended Universe!  I kid, I kid, the story arcs are entertaining and leave absolutely no aftertaste (of death). I am sure many of you out there actually enjoy these deviants of ahh, but are you proud enough to admit it?  Me?  I will stick with my Pepsi/Mountain Dew Throwback, as I cannot stand the aftertaste left on my palate by High Fructose Corn Syrup.  The Throwback stuff is awesome, as far as soda goes anyway.  Anyone else get a kick out of the Battle-Bots? Edit: Yes the Horde Drink is the Halo 3 GameFuel, not Code Red. Thank you readers!

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Ever since Mountain Dew's Game Fuel promotion started back in May (the drink itself is just now starting to show up on store shelves), people have been wondering when exactly they'd be able to get their hands on the associated Battle-Bot vanity pets. Well, good news everyone! They're finally here! Here my puny pugilist is trying to convince me that Game Fuel is part of a balanced diet.If you've already signed up for the promotion, then you're halfway there. Simply go to the website, log in, and click the button in the lower-right hand corner. Be warned: you will need to have a Battle.net-linked Warcraft account in order to receive the pet (it's a good thing to do anyway, for added security and the option to digitally download all your favorite Blizzard games once you've authenticated them through the site -- not to mention beta opt-ins!). Once you've gone through all that, simply log out of your WoW account in-game and then log back in. The key to your new mechanical bruiser should be in your mailbox. I have to say that these little guys (invented by famed Gnomish toymaker and proprietor of Wonderworks in Dalaran Jepetto Joybuzz) are actually really cool. Click on them, and they babble in some obscure techno-language (no doubt subliminal messages telling you to buy more Mountain Dew). You can also fuel them up with either a red or blue mixture, and when your Battle Bot encounters another one with the opposite color, they'll get into a fist-fight. Sadly, it seems that the only way to obtain the fuel right now is to visit the Mountain Dew page every day and click through the same image as before. Hopefully, there will be some sort of in-game method for claiming the juice once the promotion period is over. On that note, I have actually found individual bottles of Game Fuel at the local Wally World, but only the Horde-themed red (perhaps this town ain't so bad after all!). The bottle says "Citrus Cherry," two flavors that I generally like, but ends up tasting something like carbonated bubble gum. Not entirely unpleasant, but it probably won't appeal to everyone's palette. Never tried the Halo 3 stuff, so I'm not sure if it's any different, though the Alliance version is some sort of berry (and I use that term very loosely).

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While looking for more information about the new Mountain Dew/WoW cross over promotion, I came across their forums and found this post by the Gamefuel Admin. Turns out the pet is simply a prize to anyone who registers on the GameFuel site who has a Blizzard Account. While there's still no official word that the battle bots are the prize, it's pretty much been assumed by everyone to be the case. So if all you want is a new pet and you don't want to have to participate in the drawings, don't want to have to click on different ads, don't want to have to do your IRL dailies, you don't have to. Just head over to the Mountain Dew GameFuel site, register, and (somehow) you'll eventually get your pet. Might as well enter for some of the cool stuff they have to offer with the points you get for signing up, though. A new Alienware laptop sounds pretty good to me!

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