NYT on World of Warcraft
The New York Times (registration required) has a piece on Blizzard's World of Warcraft, discussing the game's popularity and high sales. The article also examines the design processes that go into the game, and the artistic outlook of the WoW live team. From the article: "From around a dark, windowless room, nine young men peered into the unfinished virtual interior of Karazhan, a haunted tower set in a forlorn mountain pass that will open later this year. 'As you can see, the architecture is a little ornate, a little Gothicky,' said Aaron Keller, a 29-year-old designer, gesturing to the 3-D model on the computer screen before him. 'We're thinking about turning these arches into horse heads.'
And to beat the inevitable rush of complaints, the Hardware issues are much improved over release. When speaking about the World of Warcraft everyone seems to have selective memory. There hasn't been a majorly anticipated MMORPG launch in the history of internet gaming that didn't have bottlenecks.
"Bnetd are your friends? They publish a public server to bypass the copy protection on Blizzard games and they're your friends?"
The Bnetd people are like your friends that always bail you out of attending your 6-year-old niece's terrible birthday party to instead film a car chase on the interstate and then all go to an action movie with Samuel L. Jackson followed by Steak n' Shake.
Here's a list of the online gaming communities that are stupider than battle.net: