As we are all well aware, the expansion hit the ground running over the past few days and while not actually a WoW player, I do like the music, and the snipits I listened to are very interesting. Considering the fact that they were created by Blizzard Entertainment veterans Derek Duke, Glenn Stafford, and Russell Brower with performances by the Northwest Sinfonia Orchestra and Chorus, what else would you expect?

The iTunes edition of the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Original Game Soundtrack contains 21 tracks, including three exclusives and each song is, of course, the usual $.99 or you can purchase the full soundtrack for $9.99. Right now, the most popular track is “Arthas, My Son” and following in a close second is the “Wrath of the Lich King”, main title track. If you happen to own an iPhone, those are also the most popular ringtones at the moment as well.

This is for North America–if you live in another region, you may wish to check with iTunes before you get too excited only to find out it is not available yet.

---
Related Articles at Gaming Today:

• WoW: Wrath of the Lich King’s Alpha is Underway
• WoW: Wrath of the Lich King Bestiary; Nerubian Vizier and Plague Eruptor
• WoW: Wrath of the Lich King to Fall on China
• World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Trailer
• World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Screens

Want to start playing “World of Warcraft” and the new “Wrath of the Lich King” expansion, but don’t know what to do?

We’ve come up with a few things you should know about the game — both in the game and outside of it — if you’re thinking about joining the 11 million other people around the globe who’ve logged on.

Take a look at our 13 tips and see if you’re ready to begin your adventures in Azeroth…

1. Yes, you’ll need three games to enjoy “Lich King.” But it doesn’t cost as much as you think. You can purchase the “World of Warcraft” Battle Chest which includes the original game and the “Burning Crusade” expansion for $39.99; it also includes strategy guides for both (handy). Then add $39.99 for the new “Lich King” expansion. So if you want the content that everyone else has, you’ll spend around $80. It’s not cheap, but you will be getting a lot all at once.

2. Check your specs. Before you run out and buy anything, you should check to see if your computer, PC or Mac, can handle the game. Most computers can.

3. You need to have a level 55 to start playing a Death Knight. If you’ve heard about the new Hero class, which is a major feature in “Lich King,” you first have to have an existing level 55 character on the server you’re on to be able to create a brand-new Death Knight from scratch. The Death Knight will also start at level 55 in a new area specific to Death Knights.

4. It’s not as hard as you think. The interface may seem intimidating at first, but when you begin the game, you start off with only a few abilities. The menus are pretty self-explanatory, and if you need help, there’s also plenty of websites and guides dedicated to all things “WoW,” like Thottbot, Allakhazam, WoWWiki and Wowdb, to name just a few.

5. You’re not that far behind. The game has been adjusted to allow new players to level faster. Quests now give more experience points, and the experience points needed to go from level to level has been reduced. To boot, characters can now obtain mounts at level 30 instead of level 40, making questing easier and faster. Plus, if you have friends in the game, they could also start a new character with you — after all, there is power in numbers.

6. … But you don’t have to play with other people. While it helps to have a friend or two with you, or to group with other players, you don’t have to play with other people. Even though it’s a “massively multiplayer” game, some people play the game solo.

7. Try different characters. You can create multiple characters of different races and classes — up to 10 per server — and you can create characters on multiple servers. So it wouldn’t hurt to create a bunch and try everything until you find ones that you like.

8. The more you plan to play, the cheaper it will be. The game costs $14.99 a month, but if you pay for three months at a time in full, it comes out to $13.99 a month, or $12.99 for six months in full. There are also subscription cards you can purchase where you pay month-to-month ahead of time if you’re worried about paying and not playing.

9. You can always come back. If you decide to quit or just don’t want to pay for the game for a while, you can turn off your account. But when/if you decide to come back, your characters will still be there (unless you manually delete your characters). Blizzard will save your characters forever so that you can easily come back whenever you want to.

10. Learn the lingo. There are a lot of abbreviations and terms in the game — AFK (away from keyboard), LFG (looking for group), NPC (non-player character), lag (slow Internet speeds or high latency), main (main character). Usually a quick Google search will explain it, so don’t post questions in the general chat about that stuff or you’ll end up looking like a n00b.

11. Use common courtesy. Just because you’re in a virtual world doesn’t mean real-life rules don’t apply. The game is monitored and all it takes is a click of a button to report someone who’s saying or doing something unacceptable in the game.

12. Player vs. Player isn’t mandatory. When you create a character, you can either choose the Horde or Alliance faction. You don’t have to participate in PvP unless you’re on a PvP server, area or battleground, and those will be demarcated accordingly. When in those areas, which you’ll have to go into intentionally, players on the opposing faction are your enemies and from there, anything is fair game.

13. We’re not all nerds. Many “WoW” players are not socially inept basement-dwellers. In fact, a slew of celebrities play the game, including Mila Kunis, Macaulay Culkin, Felicia Day, Brandy, Corpsegrinder… And according to this forum post, there’s many more, like William Shatner, Mr. T, Hulk Hogan, Dave Chapelle, Robin Williams, Vin Diesel, Cameron Diaz, Kanye West, Ben Affleck and… Jessica Simpson? If she can play it, anyone can.

***

“WoW” veterans, got any more suggestions to add? And new players, are you going to get started this weekend?

Related Posts:
‘World of Warcraft’ Fans Lining Up At NYC Launch [pictures]
What To Name Your Death Knight In The New ‘World of Warcraft’ Expansion
On The Eve Of ‘Lich King,’ My Boyfriend Is Ditching ‘World of Warcraft’
One Week Until The ‘World of Warcraft’ Expansion: The ‘WoW’ Gamer’s To-Do List
My Weekend With ‘World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King’

WHAT: On Monday, November 10, Buccaneers WR Maurice Stovall and DE Greg White will visit with military veterans and their families at Fisher House at James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital in Tampa. This will be the first time that the Buccaneers have visited Fisher House, which provides a supportive environment for families caring for loved ones recovering from war injuries. Then on Tuesday, November 11, the Buccaneers will host a video game competition with military from around the world at One Buccaneer Place in honor of Veterans Day. CB Phillip Buchanon, LB Cato June, TE Alex Smith and CB Aqib Talib will play video games against military at four separate USO stations with the help of Pro vs. GI Joe, an organization that coordinates video game contests between professional athletes and troops overseas via the internet. Local military personnel from MacDill Air Force Base as well as families of the participating military will be in attendance to enjoy the event and visit with their loved ones via satellite video. For more information on Pro vs. GI Joe, visit www.prosvsgijoes.org.

Link

Some of you may remember the NintendoNow Blogspot site, where three and a half years ago RMC humbly began his journey bringing you all the most comprehensive Big N news amalgamation anywhere else on the web. Then 3 years ago, the site and podcast were rebranded as GoNintendo, becoming a standalone site and community, free from the limitations of Blogger. Shortly thereafter, I became involved with the community side of things, offering up a few image designs here and there, eventually taking on a moderator role in the dungeons of the messageboards, and offering RMC what technical experience I could.

Ever since becoming staff–especially within the community context–it’s been my desire to really evolve the experience and improve it where and when we could. Today marks the third iteration of evolutionary milestones, almost three years our anniversary. And it is obviously a very large step.

Why? Well, a number of reasons, the not the least of which is the desire to ditch Wordpress, which for our veterans needs no explanation. The technology just isn’t designed or optimised to handle the volume of traffic you all represent, and even early on in GN’s life caused major site outages and crashes. Bad news for everyone.

Second, all the stories posted each day can be a lot to digest, even for avid readers. Seeing only ten stories per page becomes more of a chore than Nintendo news should be, especially when you have to click through at least 15 pages of it per day, maybe more if you stop by several times per day.

Third, and this has been a major pain point for me, is the incompatible technologies of Wordpress and phpBB, requiring TWO registrations from visitors who want to fully participate in the site through story comments and messageboard discussions. This dual citizenship was confusing to many, and limited the integrated features that can make a vivid group like Nintendo fans really flourish.

Plus, it’s no secret that our comments section can at times be a wilderness, a hive of scum and villainy, where all manner of user-generated content can be found… and unlike Mario Paint, the content isn’t always charming. Wordpress doesn’t really have a feasible system for comment moderation, but now we can employ a whole team of people to help keep a sense of order and everything running smoothly in commentland.

I could go on, but in the (already hypocritical) spirit of brevity, I’ll cut to the chase. Nine months ago, I began conceiving a solution to all these things, and with the advice and diligence of our resident programming and tech mastermind, T27duck, began developing a brand new system from the ground up to surpass anything our previous site iterations could offer. So here it is: GNV3.

To bullet point some of the major new features:

• New index layout: A listing of dozens and dozens of stories–not just 10 at a time, fully organised for your consumption. The ads are also more intentionally placed, versus the random and sloppy appearance they have now.
• Integrated site login: comments and messageboards require one registration and one login.
• New comment system: builds on the phpBB messageboard technology, allowing avatars, quoting, BBCode formatting, contact/community info per user, etc.; previous comments are archived for posterity.
• Podcast integration: The site automatically updates itself when a new webisode is posted, and is playable on the index or in a popup player.
• Live stream/Twitter: We can enable special “boxes” on the index for events like the Live stream or Twitter, when appropriate. They will always appear at the top of the page for maximum access, and will disappear into the shadows when the events are over.
• Featured stories: we can now display custom images to represent the top-top stories, or special promotions, which cycle and link to their respective stories. “On This Day” is accessible as a banner at all times, the last in the rotation.
• Cross-browser compatibility: IE6 sucks, we all know it, but some people (have to) use it anyway. The site works just fine with it. Newer browsers will yield better results and a more complete experience, but everyone should be able to participate.
• Dual site format: So we’re pretty sure some people will want to hang me by the delicates for changing our beloved site so radically, and for all of you I present Blog View (located in the upper left-hand corner of the site). It’s as close to the GoNintendo of today as we can give you. But seriously, “Standard View” is way better
• Plus lots more little touches here and there to make life better or easier. You’ll have to explore a bit to get them all.

So here we are. A new/improved GoNintendo, and hopefully one people can appreciate on whole new levels. Hundreds and hundreds of man-hours were spent developing, testing, re-testing, and tweaking this new site between myself, T27duck, and our team of private beta users from within the community (remember that browser poll not too long ago?).

It’s not the end of development; we do have some tweaks and improvements to roll out in the near future, but for now, it’s mature enough to put into everyday use, and we hope you like it. Or love it, maybe even enough to stalk some of us staffers

Activision is using both Call of Duty: World at War and Guitar Hero: World Tour to bring entertainment to America's troops this holiday season. They're working with the United Service Organizations (USO) to bring a taste of home to service people around the world. 

For the Veterans Day launch of World at War, Activision will hold launch events at GameStop locations in San Francisco and Washington D.C. where fans can play a real-time game against active servicemen and women. My guess is that they'll have a leg up on the non-military people. At the D.C. location, Activision will give $10 of every copy purchased to the USO, up to $20,000.

As for Guitar Hero: World Tour, Activision has partnered with 98.7 FM KYSR in Los Angeles to support the release of their 2008 Live CD project.  Portions of the sales of this disc will go to support troops around the world. There will be a launch party at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park on November 21, and anyone with a military ID will be admitted for free. Activision has also donated over $100,000 worth of Guitar Hero III to the USO, where they will be installed in USO gaming lounges and military bases around the world. 

PROS

+It will kick your ass, a lot (Castlevania veterans will love it).
+Stunning environments.
+Art design much better than the anime ones from the previous two games.
+Great bosses.
+Nice soundtrack.
+You will enjoy coming back and kicking its ass.
+Boss rush, to relive your ass being kicked.

CONS

-It will kick your ass, a lot (Casual gamers might be overwhelmed, though this is a positive in my book).
-Glyph system isn’t really original.
-Some levels are short and pointless.
-Some may think there is a lack of weapon variety.
-It had to end.

Full review here

Mike Stemmle got his start at LucasArts during the company's golden age of adventure game development, and early in his career served as one of the design and writing leads on Sam & Max Hit the Road, the first game incarnation of Steve Purcell's surprisingly cross-medium dog and rabbit duo.

This year, he was hired as a game designer with California-based Telltale Games, which is getting ready to start development on its third season of Sam & Max episodic games.

It brings things full circle for Stemmle, who left LucasArts after the planned sequel Sam & Max: Freelance Police was cancelled, and then spent some time at now-defunct Perpetual Entertainment on its also-cancelled version of Star Trek Online.

This week, Telltale shipped the third episode of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, a monthly PC and WiiWare series based on the popular online Homestar Runner flash cartoons. Stemmle has contributed writing and design to the series.

We caught up with the designer to speak about his new role at Telltale, the company's unusual development style, the relief at finally shipping a game after years of cancellations, and whether the studio plans to introduce its own original games based on non-licensed IP.

The Telltale Process

What are you up to since arriving at Telltale? There are so many series going at once.

Mike Stemmle: Yeah, yeah. When I came in, in early March or late February, the very first day I was there -- literally -- they said, "Hey, we're doing the Homestar game and we need somebody to write dialogue for Episode One. Go!"

And I said, "Homestar? What's a Homestar?" That's not very true. I was actually pretty well acquainted with the cartoon. But the thought of just jumping in was pretty tricky.

I came in and wrote a lot of the dialogue for the first episode, but that was really Mark Darin's design. A lot of it had already been designed at that point, so we traded off episodes. Chuck Jordan [led] the second episode. As Episode One was winding down, I was designing the third episode, Baddest of the Bands, which we had a rough idea about.

That was pretty much it. We had a seed and we had a reason to do a "battle of the bands," but the puzzles were up to me at that point. It was really a collaborative process anyway, because our process is [that] every day all the designers for the season get together and say, "We're working on the puzzles for Episode Three."

I kind of have ownership over it, but we all work together to come up with the puzzles. That keeps the episodes from getting really uneven, difficulty-wise.

What was very funny is when we submitted to Nintendo, and I was doing a sign-off with a producer, I went to the studio and suddenly realized, "This is the first time in a few years since I actually signed off anything." I was thinking, "That's a really good feeling."

Will you move over to the Sam & Max series when the next season starts?

MS: Yeah. Right now everybody who would be working on Sam & Max Season Three is kind of at varying levels of deepness from waist to armpits to foreheads on Strong Bad.

We've started talking. We've had some story seed ideas and some game mechanic ideas for the next season that we're already kicking around. We're starting to reserve about 10 percent of our brains to think about that and get excited about that. But we're making sure that Homestar is everything that it needs to be.

You were on the cancelled Sam & Max: Freelance Police project [from LucasArts], right?

MS: I was leading the Freelance Police project, yeah. Didn't get it out.

Do you have plans for original Telltale properties in the future, not just licensed ones?

MS: We always talk about it. We've always got a few things bubbling around. We're trying to get to a point where we're secure enough in our pipelines that we can push out a little time to be talking about it more seriously.

[Designer] Brendan Ferguson is back from his vacation, so he's doing high-level design thoughts right now, and we'll start thinking about stuff like that more often. It's [a matter of] finding the right thing, because we've got so many cool things going already that we have to make the first original thing the coolest darn thing ever.

We get the designers together a lot to toss ideas around. I'm missing one of those today. People are constantly talking and throwing ideas in front of Dan and Kevin to see if anything sticks. We'll know it when we see it. That's how it usually goes.

Constant Production

Must be refreshing to go from these cancelled projects to a company where you're constantly shipping games all the time.

MS: Well, that's the thing. Especially after working on [Perpetual's cancelled] Star Trek [Online]. Even if it had been any MMO, even if it's going smoothly, it makes the old games that I was working on look like short games.

You know, it has kind of been really interesting to be at Telltale for six months now and get a game out that's got a writing credit on it. And in a few weeks, somewhere in there, I'm going to have a game out that has got a design credit on it. And we'll ship an entire season by the end of the year. Wow, that's cool.

I'm just flabbergasted by the level of smoothness of the production process at Telltale, while keeping the quality up. This isn't sort of "knock it out" game design production here. This is everybody coming together and making sure things get polished. It's not passing bucks around. It's just about everybody working on a project to do about three or four things. When they see something wrong, it's their responsibility to fix it or immediately get in front of somebody who can fix it.

It's great. It's full, hands-on programming and designing. I've been exercising my feeble programming chops, my choreography chops, my design chops, my writing chops night and day to get these things together and so does everybody else. Testers come in and do patches and even code on occasion. It is something can do, so we don't have to bother always. It's great.

How big are those teams?

MS: On this sucker, the low twenties. They're lean and mean, and we have it set up so the choreographers finish what they're doing for an episode and are mostly moved on to the next episode while other guys are fixing all the bugs and stitching it all together.

There are these one-week periods where everything seems to be lying out on the floor, and all of a sudden it just congeals together into a playable game in a week. You're thinking, "Okay, I'm impressed."

From what I've heard, it wasn't that clean-cut at first, but it's really come together.

MS: We still learn new things every episode. The process gets better, but they have figured out a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff is working now, and it's great because it allows us to start pushing on our engine and saying, "Here's what we're going to do differently for Wallace & Gromit, and make it different not just visually, but gameplay-wise.

A lot of the cool things we're going to be doing from here are [the result of asking], "Going into Sam & Max: Episode 3, what did we learn from Strong Bad?" We get to experience that. We're going to put our stakes in the ground and make it all better. It's great.

Episodes, Veterans, And Twenty-Somethings

"Episodic" was a buzzword there for a while, but Telltale seems like the only high-profile company doing it in a way that's really comparable to, say, an episodic television model.

MS: I think there will be other players that get into it. It helps that we have this really great mix of veterans who understand how to ship games, how to finish them up, and the usual curry of incredibly hungry young twenty-somethings whose adrenal glands we feed on to actually get a lot of work done. But there will be other people. It's just a question of getting your tools together.

I can't say enough about the fact that we have one development tool [known as the Telltale Tool]. We have one tool; that's the thing we use. When we go start up a new property, we don't want to build an entirely new tool. So many companies run into that [mentality] of, "I didn't invent it, so I won't use it." We use that one tool, and that's what we push.

On day one, I was able to write dialog that went into the tool, and you could see characters performing it. I've been on projects where it takes months to get to that point. That, alone, is enough to get us 80% of the way through the battle.

Knowing that that's settled makes it so much easier. Some people will complain about working in a box for that. No, it just means, "Here are some things I can do. Let's see how I can push it."

We've got a puzzle in the third episode with Strong Bad auditioning for Pom-Pom with this continuous song that you're trying to get the rhymes down correctly for. I crossed my fingers, because there's this whole question of smoothly flowing from one thing to the next that can be a problem. But we pretty much pulled it off. With the tool, we didn't have to add a single thing to it, we just had to know what the tool did, and drop those things in. It's wonderful.

We can do so much with our basic technology, really. We can break out if we want to. We're slowly getting to that. You'll start seeing some really interesting trends. This season of Strong Bad, and the [upcoming] Sam & Max and Wallace & Gromit are going to do some amazing stuff.

Speaking of veterans, it seems like almost every few months there's a new LucasArts veteran coming aboard at Telltale.

MS: There's a little bit of that. We all know each other, so it's a nice incestuous little industry as far as that goes. Telltale's got this very veteran-friendly work atmosphere, and I think a lot of that is happening in the industry anyway. The 40-year-olds in the industries are really officially tired of working ridiculous hours.

At Telltale, we work hard every day from the moment you get in to the moment you get home. But it's nine-to-six. Maybe at the end of the crunch, you throw a couple hours at the end. But Dave Grossman, the head of the design department, looks physically pained if someone says, "I worked on Saturday." No, something's wrong if we're working on Saturdays. Something's wrong if you've worked a 15-hour day. A lot of veterans like coming into that.

You're going to get a bunch of job applications when this interview gets published.

MS: I think we're hiring. We must be hiring, because we have a lot of projects that we've got in the pipe.

You were full time at Perpetual Entertainment, right?

MS: I was at Perpetual for a couple of years working on Star Trek Online. That was a fun process, getting deep into the largest game that I could possibly be involved with. I met a lot of good people there who are off doing other good things now.

Were there jobs in between LucasArts and that?

MS: There were 14 years at LucasArts and then a very interesting four or five months of freelance contracting, which involved actually working with Cisco for a few months.

Cisco? What were you doing there?

MS: They wanted to do some gaming stuff for trading. It was a good, high-paying gig. And also there was contract work, ironically enough, for LucasArts on...is it Battlegrounds 2? Battlegrounds or Battlefront?

[Star Wars:] Battlefront.

MS: I always get the 'Fronts and the 'Grounds mixed up. Battlefront 2, yeah, doing some script work. It was fun.

What was your last full-time Lucas project?

MS: My last Lucas project was [Star Wars:] Republic Commando. And what's really funny is that I was working at LucasArts for 14 years and it wasn't until the last year and a half that they let me anywhere near Star Wars.

Was that deliberate on your part? I know [former LucasArts and now Double Fine designer] Tim Schafer explicitly did not want to work on a Star Wars game.

MS: It was half and half, I think. I had other things on my plate, and it was also that the company was probably very happy that I didn't get the Star Wars in my sights. Like, "Really? You wanted to do Star Wars? You're going to do funny stuff with Star Wars, aren't you? We don't need that."

But towards the end, yeah, it's when I was doing a lot more straight up dialogue writing. That was basically it.

The company had pretty much transitioned to just Star Wars games for a while there, right?

MS: No, it was just where I was needed, really. They were always searching around for the next original IP that they wanted to do. I don't think LucasArts ever got to a point where they said, "We're only doing Star Wars." It was just trying to find more things to do, and they're doing that to this day.

How did you end up Telltale? You have a lot of old Lucas buddies there, right?

MS: Well, it is sort of funny getting back there. I didn't quite have the spheres to go off and start off with Telltale at the beginning. All credit to [CEO] Dan [Connors] and [CTO] Kevin [Bruner] and everybody involved for starting this puppy up. They really pulled it together and had a great model.

When I got out of Perpetual doing Star Trek, I kept looking at Telltale out of the corner of my eye, watching them to see what they were up to. I had to do Star Trek. I'm a monstrous Trekkie, and the opportunity to basically write Star Trek was one I really could not ever actually leave until the last dog died.

So when it became apparent that the last dog was, in fact, on life support, Telltale was the first place I showed up and I said, "If you can use me, use me." They were very good about taking me in. And so that's how I ended up there. You know, I love the just colossal irony of -- how many years is it now since [Sam & Max:] Hit the Road came out?

Fifteen years.

MS: Fifteen years, and I'm going to end up doing more Sam & Max.

Veterans might want to give the game a look for its updated graphics and brand new games, although there may not be enough new content to warrant a purchase. Nonetheless, Kirby Superstar Ultra is a worthy remake of a classic title. Hopefully the pink puffball�s finest outing will get its due this time around.