Project Lore

In press release earlier today, Blizzard announced that, in China, World of Warcraft will be licensed to NetEase.com, who already has the rights to operate both Starcraft II and Diablo III. Once Blizzard's current deal with The9 expires in June, NetEase will take over the operation of WoW in China, with further details to be announced on their website. According to a VentureBeat article, that means Blizzard's cut of revenue from WoW in China will increase from about $50 million per year over $140 million per year, almost purely profit. It will be interesting to see if this means that Wrath of the Lich King will be coming soon for China, because they still have yet to see it released. This is a reminder of how, although WoW is a huge and global game, we aren't even able to interact in game with nearly everyone due to restrictions like different regions, languages, and servers that the game is played on. In the Totally Rad Guild, we have people from all over the United States, Canada, Australia, and probably more that I don't even know about. So how about you guys - where are you gaming from?

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A few things have cropped up in the larger World of Warcraft community that are likely to interest many of you. Both of them are Wrath based, although I would not call any of the upcoming information a “spoiler.” So feel free to read on without learning that Arthas is a sled and that Azeroth is really Earth in the distant future. First up, we have a YouTube look at the new calendar system. The guild calendar is one of the biggest changes that Wrath of the Lich King will bring to the user interface. Although, we now know that the change will be coming as part of the last content patch for The Burning Crusade. When the patch launches, guilds can stop depending on, and the author can stop creating, GroupCalendar. Since the video is from the beta, things may change a bit before it goes live. Highlights include:

• Personal calendar filtering by Battleground Holidays, Raid Lockouts, Darkmoon Faire, Weekly Holidays and Raid Resets.
• All users can create events viewable by a selected group and/or the guild.
• Created events can be of various categories - PvP, Raid, Dungeon, Meeting, Other.
• Creators and moderators can modify the event including attendee status.
• Users will be notified of event invites by a flashing calendar icon on the minimap. They can then RSVP to the event.
• Events will display the number and classes of players that have RSVPed. Inviting from the calendar interface is also possible.

The next piece of Wrath goodness isn't created by Blizzard in anyway. WotLKWiki has put together a tidy, interactive map of Northrend that acts a lot like Google maps (it is “Powered by Google” after all). You can click-drag the map, center, zoom in and out. Double clicking on an area will zoom in and center. So yea, just like Google Maps. Really there isn't anything too impressive with the map but it's fun to take for a spin.

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