Random WoW Items

There is an article in the New York Post (which Consumerist picked up on) about issues Time Warner Cable customers are having with lag and disconnects while playing WoW. Both Blizzard and TWC seem to be pointing the finger at each other. There is an official thread gathering information on the issue.

As a current Time Warner Cable customer (I can't get FIOS where I live), I'm curious to see how this all plays out.

Update: The digital communications director from Time Warner responds here.

While I was browsing the WoW forums, I came across the Blizzcon forum and the massive levels of customer anger being expressed therein. Apparently, in addition to the fact that the tickets available for Blizzcon 2008 were limited in terms of the sizable customer base, there were a number of issues with the website on which customers purchased (or couldn't purchase) tickets.

WoW Insider has a number of posts on the topic, Relmstein has a blog entry on it and CNet's Crave has a post as well. Someone even made a video. I see that a Blizzcon ticket on eBay is currently at $710. The ones on StubHub are $1,500 for a pair so it's looking like seven hundred and change is the current FMV for a ticket.

Weirdest MMO Promotion Ever?

I've heard of promotions that give you in-game items or maybe even a poster. But only Richard Garriott would give you the opportunity to send your DNA into space or have your MMO character data uploaded and stored on the International Space Station.

You can check out his Operation Immortality and read more about it. You do need a Tabula Rasa account but you can still be elgible with the free trial. Each week, 8 Tabula Rasa players will be selected to have their DNA sequenced and the data uploaded to Garriott's Immortality Drive. And when he travels to the International Space Station in October, he'll be taking that data with him to store there.

Even if you don't get your DNA selected, Tabula Rasa players have the opportunity to have their character data uploaded to the Immortality Drive or leave a message to be stored on it.

In this Wired article on his journey to space, Garriott also mentions that he has ideas for an MMO that "shares more in common with Ultima Online than today's popular virtual worlds."