Amazing. This has been the quarter for Blizzard and their crazy announcements, starting with Diablo 3 and their gameplay footage, now you can sign up for Wrath of the Lich King. As I’ve found, you can have an inactive World of Warcraft account and still sign up for the beta.
https://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/ for US accounts
http://www.wow-europe.com/account/ for European accounts
“Today we opened the Wrath of the Lich King Beta Opt-In program, which gives players a chance to win an invitation to the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King beta. For The Burning Crusade beta, we randomly invited players from the entire World of Warcraft community. With the Opt-In, our goal is to strengthen the beta-testing process by inviting only those players who have expressed active interest in participating. Keep in mind that opting in doesn’t guarantee you’ll be selected for the beta.” (worldofwarcraft)
This is a great opportunity to bring back old gamers, since I was able to sign up with an inactive account, if I were chosen I’d be, in effect, paying to test their game. That’s insanity. You know what? I might just do it.
This announcement comes just as Diablo 3’s energy starts to die down on the news wire, giving folks more reasons to talk “Blizzard” news. Perhaps, after this announcement starts to calm down they’ll announce something about StartCraft 2.
The timing is perfect, considering E3 begins on July 14th and Blizzard will no doubt remain in the news up until this event. Once E3 kicks off their publicity will fade as other developers and publishers fight for the spot light (or will they just not show up at all to the dying event?).
The Blizzard hype machine is in full force!
(Thanks, 2old2play)
Halo: ODST
I liked the show, it was fun. I really hope Liam (I hope I remembered the name) will recover.
@New R18+ guidelines drawn up:
It is a step forward, true, but not without some question marks.
I personally don’t like their definition for what’s allowed in terms of violence for R18+. It’s very ambiguous, and it could lead to a handful of people selecting what’s R18+ and what’s RC depending on their personal taste and/or “gifts” received from publishers …
Lol “device that you could plug in” 😀
Jonah, enforcing such fines is a bit more difficult and costly than what a government is willing to invest.
@Kojima: This year has become meaningless
I feel the guy 🙁 … I also have no idea how the last 365 days passed.
Derrick, I definitely agree with the CISCO engineer vs. game devs. While I do put some heart on the stuff I work at my day job, it is far less that what I put into mods or other personal projects.
And while the money comes from the day job, the satisfactions and frustrations come from personal projects. It’s where the heart is.
@Chinese labor camp prisoners forced to play MMOs:
Playing MMOs as a punishment … there’s just something weird about it. I mean as long as you have the freedom of choice as to when to start playing and when to stop playing, MMOs don’t seem that scary.
But when you’re forced to stare in the monitor for hours and hours, day after day, I can see this having the negative effects that would make playing MMOs an effective punishment.
I guess any activity can be turned into a punishment, as long as you can turn the punished person into hating that said activity.
– you can play it while pooping!
Actually, that is a good selling point 🙂 Think of Chinese prisoners again: now they can stack all consoles in a room and have the prisoners “work” from anywhere on the compound 😛
Derrick, you’re not letting down anybody. I enjoyed the podcast a lot, mostly for the personalities of you guys. And by reading the comments in the show you allowed the listeners to somehow connect with you guys.
Anyway, I’ll keep an eye on the RSS feed. Who knows.
at first i was happy because when i updated the podcast on a smartphone i finally saw the new episode and i said yes!!!! Then i saw the title i was like oh man but its okay derrick and jennifer i will only consider this a pause and you could continue anytime you like @qotw i would like to be surprised to see the podcast up and running again
ill be playing minecraft while your gone and will always wait for your comeback
Thanks for all the memories. The TD gaming podcast got me through 2 years of night shifts and was always a weekly highlight. All the best to all of you in the future.
Hope things continue to improve with your son, Derrick and Jennifer. Thanks for your efforts Jonah over the last 20 episodes. And farewell to my fellow listeners and commentors. (Especially Herr_Alien, who always had something insightful to add. Maybe you should team up with Jonah for continuing the cast =D. )
Roger, Wilco, Over and Out.
@Tristan: the thought occurred to me too, but unfortunately (1) I am too PC-centric to be of an actual use to the podcast and (2) spare time is always an issue for me. To get an idea, I got a copy of Portal 2 for … almost a month now and I only managed to play 30 minutes of it.
Add to that time zone differences and things like synchronizing schedules can become hairy.
As for the question of the week, I would love to see the podcast continue.
Jonah, a piece of advice, if you do decide to continue: take a small break to think a bit on the format, find somebody to co-host it, help you out with editing (btw, since editing doesn’t require synchronizing schedules, I can help out with that).
I’ve really enjoyed the podcast since I started listening to it a couple of years ago and it’s sad to see Derrick and Jennifer leave, but I hope things work out well for you and your family. All the best for the future. Thanks to Don too, he was a pretty cool host 🙂
I do hope that you find a way to continue the podcast Jonah, as I think you’ve done a really good job as co-host for the last 20 or so episodes. But if it doesn’t work out, thanks for your efforts too.
And yes, Herr_Alien, you’ve been a legendary listener 😛 Every week without fail there’d be a comment from Herr Alien with many insightful nuggets of wisdom.
So anyway, if this is the end….. So long, Farewell… and I leave you with this:
“Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need… roads.”
A new episode is coming out tonight. Didn’t have time for Reader Feedback, but hope you enjoy it!