Time once again to share a few things that I’ve found interesting in the World of Warcraft this past week. Including this Horde-etched shot glass, which is only $5 over on Etsy.

• There’s a rumor going around that BlizzCon is being held in Anaheim later this year, which is probably true, but as I’ve always said, there is no BlizzCon until Blizzard says so. Everything I’ve seen of that event is that Blizzard does it both as a favor and an afterthought for the community — they lose money on it, they don’t waste time planning anything for it until a few weeks ahead of time, and when the time actually comes to host it, it’s completely barebones. They pay to outsource most of the work, and/or they use call center employees as volunteers for most of the staff members. If there is another BlizzCon, I’ll be there — they’re a great time, and it’s awesome to see all of the community people in person. But all of this worrying over whether there will be another one or not, or where it will be, is much ado over nothing. There is no BlizzCon until Blizzard decides so.
• On the other hand, Blizzard did reveal this week that they’re planning on integrating the Auction House into the Armory (in both its online and mobile incarnations) in a “premium” way. Now that is fascinating — obviously we’ve wanted to have an iPhone app that accesses mail or the AH for a long time, but the fact that they’re going “premium” (which is a code word for they’re charging) is new. I wonder how much they’ll charge — I can’t imagine it would be more than 99 cents or so, maybe up to a maximum of $5 if they’re offering some serious functionality, meaning something like access to the inventory, ways to schedule auctions, and so on. I would never buy any virtual goods with real cash, but I would spend some real money on real functionality, and creating a market for mobile apps under the Blizzard banner could be a cottage industry. A mobile Battle.net chat client would probably sell, as would an online minigame for Starcraft 2 or Diablo 3 that affected the main game in some way. And while free apps would have to justify their existence (to take away from development time, and so on), paid apps fund themselves. Very interesting. We’ll have to see what Blizzard offers.
• Oh, and the Lich King is dead, but I don’t care. I’m not sure why — Arthas was a pretty epic storyline. But the ending, spoiled by that cinematic that leaked out, feels cheap somehow. It’s funny — at this point, Blizzard must realize that there’s a flip side to including epic cinematics in their games. On the one hand, they want to have epic events feel epic, and putting together a cinematic is a good way to do that. Obviously, they’ve invested a lot in a team that will help them do that often. On the other hand, cinematics are very easily extracted and leaked out on to YouTube, which means that the most epic events in the expansion were seen by everyone even before the patch finished installing for most of us. I wonder if they’re trying to think of another way to keep epic lore epic (seen by only those who’ve unlocked the moments in-game), or if they’re already programming cinematics in expecting that they’ll be seen by everyone when the patch drops.
• Now that Arthas is dead, of course, we can probably expect the usual post-expansion valley of interest, at least until Cataclysm fever really takes off in a few months. Don’t forget my prediction, though: I still think we’ll have a full content patch (rep, daily quests, instances) worth of world event material to bring on the Cataclysm with. I don’t think Blizzard will let us sit around for long before some serious Cataclysm happenings start up in the actual game.
• In game, I’m still mostly just doing random pickup groups, and I’ve found, like Gevlon and Rohan, that groups are extraordinarily patient. I’ve tried to start some group kicks, and I haven’t been kicked myself (yet), but I’ve found that it’s very hard to get anyone kicked for underperforming or even being a pain. That’s probably a good thing — I know I’m often underperforming, and I’m probably a pain as well — but it’s interesting. For all of their reputation about WoW players being jerks to each other, when it comes to random in-game groups, people are actually pretty forgiving. Either that, or they just don’t want to wait for another tank to come through the system and get ready and buffed.
• Some excellent Warcraft wallpapers over here.
• Zath (whoever that is) is running a competition for some WoW gear, and I think all I have to do is mention the contest on my blog. So there you go. If I win, I’ll give the prize away here.
• This is a good question — Blizzard doesn’t always (well, hasn’t ever, actually) made it clear what symbols and flashes and spell sounds are which. Of course, there is a graphic and/or a sound for every single spell, and if you play WoW a lot (which, if you play WoW, is probably how you play it), you can just listen to a raid and hear the rogue hitting their cooldowns, the mage casting their fireballs, and the shaman spitting out Chain Heal. But for players who don’t play (or raid) as often, I wonder if there’s any way to make that a little easier. It might be interesting to see a wiki or something (or a part of WoWWiki) that matches up spell animations and sounds with the spells themselves, sort of a quick reference guide for what kinds of casting are going on.
• Finally, here are some Healthstone soaps. They look like they smell terrific. If you know what I mean.

That’s it! Until next week, happy Warcraft-ing!