Recently, I transcribed the first pages of World of Warcraft: Arthas, Rise of the Lich King by Christie Golden. The book to be published on April 21 introduces a very key feature of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion’s storyline that reveals Arthas was wounded in the duel against Illidan, and after he merged with Ner’zhul, Arthas went into a long sleep where the orc, the prince and the boy (Matthias Lehner) brewed an inner-turmoil during his long dark dream.  The answer to end this long dreamscape was to cast his own heart out to strip away his weakness.

If you read the book preview, and experience the Icecrown quests with Matthias Lehner you will see a big tie-in between the book and the in-game quests. Probably a connection with what might happen in the Lich King dungeon encounter. Some fans do not have yet the Wrath of the Lich King expansion or don’t play WoW at all. If you don’t mind heavy spoilers, watch the two videos below showing you the quests given by the child Matthias Lehner (Arthas Menethil anagram).  You get to control Arthas and use his abilities in two quests.  You fight Illidan too.  More interesting is what happens when Tirion Fordring—wielding the Ashbringer—faces Arthas the LIch King at the Cathedral of Darkness in Icecrown.

I am gearing up with a press badge to attend the 2009 New York Comic Con to bring you as many details as possible of all Blizzard Entertainment products to be showcased at the event.  The event will take place through February 6-8. Among the companies coming to the New York Comic Con are: Pocket Star Books, Tokyopop, and DC Comics. Sideshow Collectibles, sadly, isn’t coming to the event this year (bottom). I will be in contact with some writers and with Upper Deck to find out if they are attending.

The line-up of products to be most likely showcased are:

• World of Warcraft: Arthas
• Starcraft: The Dark Templar, Twilight
• Warcraft Legends Vol. 3
• World of Warcraft: Death Knight
• DC Direct World of Warcraft Action Figures
• World of Warcraft Comic Book

One Blizzard product in particular I am hoping to hear about—crosses fingers—is the StarCraft Comic Book. My DC Comics contact wouldn’t budge to offer details a few days after Blizzcon 2008.  It was revealed in the BlizzCon comic sampler. DC Comics will make an announcement of this comic on 2009. The matter is when. New York Comic Con could be a good candidate for the announcement, as well as San Diego Comic Con (July).  It was at the San Diego Comic Con where the World of Warcraft comic book was first announced.

Keith R.A. DeCandido confirmed to be attending the event. I will corner him to get some details of the Starcraft Ghost; Academy trilogy (manga) and the Starcraft Ghost: Spectre (Pocket Star Book).  Aaron Rosenberg will be book signing copies of World of Warcraft: Beyond the Dark Portal. Jim Lee (Wildstorm) and Bill Roper (ex-Blizzard North) will be at the event too.

Pocket Star Books will be at booth 1402.  Tokyopop at booth 1621 and DC Comics at booth 1641. Grab your tickets online early. They are more expensive on-site.

Open to the Public:
Friday, February 6—1:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Saturday, February 7—10:00 AM - 7:00 PM
Sunday, February 8—10:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Got any questions for any of those companies about a particular product? Feel free to share your questions to ask them on your behalf.

TOKYOPOP Editor Troy Lewter sat down with NEO Magazine writer Lesley Smith to discuss all things Warcraft and StarCraft, giving her all the details on TOKYOPOP’s 22-book publshing program with Blizzard Entertainment, the creators of World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, and many others. Read the full interview. You can find the NEO Magazine article here (PDF).

And when you’re done reading that, make sure to check out details of StarCraft: Frontline Vol. 2, and Warcraft: Legends Vol. 2 now in stores!

Blizzard has been involved with the production of the manga every step of the way. Every element that appears in the manga has gone through a rigorous approval process with them, whether it’s story, art, cover, etc. They obviously know what the fans would want to see in a Warcraft manga, so on that front I never had any doubt that fans that did pick up the manga would approve.

Today a very lucky and special fan has won one of The Music of Blizzard Entertainment: Echoes of War. Hiroaki Yura (Artistic Director, Producer and Violinist) from Eminence Symphony Orchestra will be pleased to ship the prize to Sunstrider on the Northrend Gateway (Warcraft III).  One thing I am very surprised by is that Eminence didn’t place any country restriction to ship this prize.  The random picked winner is from Bulgaria. Congratulations!

To find out more about Echoes of War, read our recent review that has been spotlighted by the official WoW Site for the past three weeks.

I gathered below a few of the comments from the contest submissions expressing their opinion after listening to the Echoes of War audio samples:

“I like “A Tenuous Pact” best because it is a breathtaking soundtrack, which has gorgeous motives and inspires me. The WarCraft series are my favourite, too, and this soundtrack title reminds me of the time spent playing them.“—Sunstrider @ Northrend (Warcraft III)

“A Tenuous Pact” was my favorite of the four though “The Eternal Conflict” was a strong candidate as well. It was the intensity of the music that just got one in the mood and felt that it was setting a scene of a lot of intensity. I’ve always been a fan of music that felt that it had an intensity/urgency behind it… and this one just gives me that feeling. — Niekon @ Azuremyst (WoW)

“If I really had to pick a favorite, I would choose “The Betrayer and the Sun King”, because it prominently features brass instruments, using very deep, rich, consonant tones and chords, which is something I always like to hear in music. Though, “A Tenuous Pact” would have to be a close second, because it has part of the instrumentation from “A Call to Arms,“ which is easily one of the best Blizzard pieces ever made. Also, the opening Tristram chords of “The Eternal Conflict” did send chills down my spine.“—Lachdanan @ Kel’Thuzad (WoW)

“I enjoyed A Tenuous Pact because of the new twist on the classic WoW theme. It manages to capture the WoW feel in a way that better reflects the current expansion, with its use of tension and buildup of epicness.“—Maged @ USEast (Starcraft)

On April 21, 2009 Pocket Star Books and Blizzard Entertainment will unleash one of the most awaited Warcraft novels based on the Wrath of the Lich King Expansion (World of Warcraft).  Christie Golden has been known by fans of this franchise for her work on Lord of the Clans, Rise of the Horde and Beyond the Dark Portal. The last two with prominent development of Ner’zhul. In this new novel, she has the pleasure of fleshing out more of Ner’zhul and to fathom the inner-depths of Prince Arthas Menethil.

Something to note from this excerpt is the appearance of the boy Matthias Lehner (anagram to Arthas Menethil). This boy appears in very key quests at the Icecrown region, which makes fans strongly believe this novel will fill in the blanks and tie-in with the game’s storyline, and more importantly… the Icecrown Citadel raid dungeon. It’s highly probable the content patch releasing this dungeon might be live by the time this novel hits bookstores.

Below you may read an excerpt of World of Warcraft: Arthas, Rise of the Lich King.

A few weeks ago, I reported that Pocket Star Books is launching STARCRAFT GHOST:SPECTRE on December 2009. Originally, at the New York Comic Con 2008, Keith R.A. DeCandido said he was hoping it would go out on the Summer 2009, but the 35 layoffs that hit the publishing company—including Marco Palmieri (Editor)—schedules were delayed.

The Tokyopop manga titled Starcraft Ghost: Academy (a trilogy) is aiming to hit the end of 2009. However, it is possible to be pushed to 2010. What I was informed is that Tokyopop hopes to unleash the three parts of the manga trilogy within 2010.

Keith R.A. DeCandido is currently writing Starcraft Ghost: Spectre and the Academy manga for Tokyopop.  DeCandido offers many updates on how far he is with this book almost in a weekly basis. Here is some of the latest updates to amuse you.

	Blizzard Quote:
	DeCandido: I turned in the script for the prologue and Chapter 1 of Ghost Academy Volume 1 on 19 December 2008. Chapter 2 is due 11 January (which will be do-able, assuming Blizzard’s feedback comes in a timely manner, as I don’t want to start it until I know I was on the right track with Chapter 1), with Chapter 3 due 31 January, Chapter 4 due 21 February, and Chapter 5 due 13 March. Still waiting for the formal approval of the plots for Volumes 2-3 of Ghost Academy, but I can’t even start scripting that until late March anyhow… *laughs* Ghost: Spectres is in progress, due to Pocket by the end of this month. Not sure when this is scheduled to be published. I’m hoping it and GA will both come out around the end of 2009/beginning of 2010. I also have some pitches rummaging around for future volumes of the Frontline manga anthologies, but that’s all preliminary right now.

Vaneras has revealed a few details about the upcoming new 25-man raid dungeon: Ulduar It will be partially available on PTR at some point in upcoming weeks with various hard-modes to tackle.  Blizzard is satisfied with how the Sartharion dungeon was designed and plan to create new dungeons with many hard-modes.  Ulduar will not be just for everyone. Even in normal mode it will be challenging. It is developed for those guilds that have geared up through Malygos, Naxxramas and Sartharion, yet those will find Ulduar a hard experience..

	Blizzard Quote:
	Ulduar will be available on PTR in the future, however we are planning on having several limitations in place so that we can control what can be tested at any given time. Ulduar will also not be available permanently like Naxxramas was in the WotLK Beta. All this basically means that if there is something we want to test, then we will enable the zone and encounter so that it is available. If at some point there is something that we no longer want to test, then the zone will be disabled so that it is no longer available. Keep in mind though, that there will be quite a few encounters to test in both the 10 and the 25 man versions, and there will also be a whole lot of “hard modes” and achievements to test. We are quite pleased with how Sartharion and his drakes worked, so we would like to expand on that idea quite a bit in Ulduar and future raids. We are currently planning for most of the encounters to have “hard modes” that will allow for raids to increase the difficulty. Increasing the challenge will of course also mean an increase of reward level if successful. Ulduar will be on PTR in the future, but we’re going to have tight controls in place on what can be tested at any given time. Ulduar will also not be up permanently like Naxxramas was in the WotLK Beta. If we have something to test, we’ll make the zone and encounter available. If we don’t, we’ll disable the zone. That being said, there’s going to be a LOT of encounters to test in both 10 and 25 player modes. There will also be a whole lot of “hard modes” and achievements to test. We’re shooting for most all of the encounters to have “hard modes” that allow raids to increase the challenge and reward level if they’re up to it. We’re pretty pleased with how Sartharion and his drakes worked, and we’re going to expand on that idea extensively in Ulduar and future raids. The reward for completing the hard modes are not going to be just achievement points, titles, or mounts, but improved, additional item rewards. I think it’s safe to say that Ulduar will be a bit more difficult overall than Naxxramas, even without the hard modes. We’re still going to tune the zone for accessibility(*), but a raid group that’s done Naxxramas, Malygos, and Sartharion and obtained the gear from those encounters should be well prepared for Ulduar. Not only is the raid’s gear better, but players should now have some raiding experience under their belts. We also have a much more accurate picture of what guilds are capable of from a healing, damage, and tanking perspective then when WotLK first went live. If Naxxramas was the introduction to raiding 101 class for players who have never raided before, think of Ulduar as the second year class. * There will be one optional encounter that is only tuned as a “hard mode” encounter. I don’t think you have to worry about spoilers from Achievements, to be honest. Seeing achievement text before you fight a boss is like seeing a single piece of a large jigsaw puzzle. Sure, it’s something, but it’s nothing really without seeing the context of the encounter as a whole. I also expect achievements to be something tested late in the PTR process. Implementing them is one of the last parts of the development pipeline.

By now most players have completed all the Winter Veil achievements and acquired their The Merrymaker title reward. If you are among the few who haven’t completed all the achievements, you should consider doing it asap. On January 2, the Winter Veil ends.  A very good reason to finish all the achievements is that if you complete all of the Seasonal world events year-round, you will get a special reward: Violet Proto-drake Mount.

For your benefit, finish the Winter Veil if you haven’t.  You can check out all of the achievements here. Don’t forget to visit the complete Winter Veil Guide by Maticus.

Voodoo Extreme (Ve3D) has announced the 2008 Game of the Year Awards winners and Wrath of the Lich King won the Expansion Pack of the Year.  The fans are responsible for voting and selecting nominees for this Awards. As a Wrath of the Lich King player myself (since closed beta) I have to agree. This is a great expansion with various Quartermasters, outdoor daily quests, dungeon daily quests, new vehicle and mount mechanics for either quests or PvP and a great set of storylines among many other features.

Happy New Year to Blizzard and to our fans!

The EndSights reports a teen was arrested on Monday after making suicidal remarks to a World of Warcraft GM in order to obtain virtual items for his character.  The GM immediately contacted 911 in good faith to offer assistance to the player. Shortly, paramedics and the Middletown police arrived to the home where the teen told the officers he was joking. The teen was taken under custody and charged with a first-degree misdemeanor for the stunt. For this matter, we advice fans to be careful with their jokes when contacting a GM after opening a ticket. The GM will call your bluff and contact the authorities to protect you.

1UP interviewed Dustin Browder to talk about Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty. The Zerg and Protoss Campaigns are in concept stage, and the team is focusing mostly in the core game. They know the storyline already, know how it evolves and concludes, but for now their efforts are into building the Terran Campaign.  The Zerg and Protoss campaign are considered expansions.

Some fans have grown concern that the Zerg and Protoss won’t be playable in multiplayer. This is not true. Once you purchase the Terran Campaign: Wings of Liberty, it will have multiplayer capability through Battle.net 2.0, and all three races will be available. Once the next expansion is released, new units and content will be added.

This interview offers a few screenshots of interest. One of them shows the Terran Tech Purchase UI that allows you to buy units and upgrades once you have acquired enough resources doing mercenary jobs.

When pressing one of the units or upgrade buttons, a rendering of the unit is displayed to the bottom left. To the right you get to read stats info such as credits cost, a profile, HP, armor, special bonus attributes.

The second image contains a zoomed in view of a battlecruiser laying siege to Zerg forces. This image clearly shows an in-game cinematic as we know them in Warcraft III.  On the left we can appreciate Matt Horner (Jim Raynor’s Second in command). On the bottom, a black frame displays subtitles of what Matt Horner is saying: “Horner: Glad we made it in time, sir. Now let’s get you boys outta there.“ If anything, it gives Modders an idea of how they can create their own campaigns and in-game cinematics. Hopefully we get to see more of this type of screenshots. Read the full interview.

	Blizzard Quote:
	1UP: Do you anticipate the production cycle for the StarCraft 2 trilogy to feel like making three separate games, or more like World of WarCraft and its expansions, where the bulk of the work is on the first installment, and subsequent ones are more about iterating and refining rather than inventing? DB: Well that’s the hope; that a good amount of the hard work of designing gameplay mechanics and systems, as well as the internal tasks of creating tools and protocols to develop all this content, is mostly settled at this point as we get deeper into the creation of the core game. So once we ship the core game of StarCraft 2 and start delving into the expansions, we’ll have a great deal of that infrastructure under our belts and be able to concentrate primarily on content creation for the two expansion sets. That said, we’re conscious of making sure we are providing new and compelling content for the expansions. The meta-aspects of the Zerg and Protoss campaigns, for example, will work a lot differently than how we’re doing things with the core StarCraft 2 game. It doesn’t make sense for Kerrigan to be flying around in a battlecruiser and picking out mercenary missions for cash, which is what you’ll be doing with Raynor in the core game’s campaign. So we’ll be doing something different with Kerrigan to get her to evolve and grow her Zerg army. Meanwhile, Zeratul’s Protoss campaign may require you to engage in diplomacy with the different Protoss tribes in order to gain access to different units and technologies.

Leatherworkers may purchase new Grand Master Recipes with two types of currency: Heavy Borean Leather or Artic Fur. These function like Emblems or Badges, except this currency comes from killing beasts throughout Northrend. The recipe prices cost either 3 Heavy Borean Leather or 2 Artic fur. The recipes have different pre-requirements ranging through Leatherworking level 400-440.

These are sold by Braeg Stoutbeard (Fur & Leather Trader) at the Mages Commerce Exchange district—coordinates [37,29]—in Dalaran. Take a look at all the 46 recipes below.

Enchanters have a very special way of getting new recipes outside of the Profession Trainer that doesn’t require to knock a dungeon around senseless over and over again; as was the case with dungeons in WoW Classic and Burning Crusade.  All you need to do is disenchant any green item drop you find from farming mobs or from the quest rewards to acquire Dream Shards.

This is a form of currency for Enchanters, similar to how you use Emblems of Heroism or Emblems of Valor to purchase armor, trinkets and weapons.  In this case, Enchanters use Dream Shards to purchase new recipes from a vendor. You can find Vanessa Sellers (Shard Vendor) at the Simply Enchanting building, next to the Violet Citadel in Dalaran at the Magus Commerce Exchange district. The catch is that you need to have Enchanting 425 to purchase and train the first recipes. A good incentive to dust off and start leveling your Enchanting profession.

Below you can take a look at all the Enchanting recipes available from this vendor.

JLM Pacificreported there was a leak of the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King with a Chinese interface that allowed players to join North American servers. Links to said file were since removed. The9 and Blizzard Entertainment are investigating this incident.

Chinese players will need to be patient in the meantime to play the expansion. During the expansion’s midnight launch in New York, Frank Pearce told Wolrdofwar.net the following:

	Blizzard Quote:
	We are still going through the process of iterating on that, working with the different government authorities responsible for that, so we don’t actually know specifically what we are gonna change, if anything.  We want to make the experience as identical as possible around the world, but we also have to accommodate the local requirements, so we’ll see what happens.

1. A reminder that the Echoes of War contest and the Razer Xmas Contests will end on January 2 at 11:59pm (New York time). The Echoes of War contains music from Diablo III, Starcraft II, Starcraft: Ghost and Wrath of the Lich King. You shouldn’t miss it. Read the instructions to participate. Just need to answer of a few questions and submit your entry.

2. The Razer Xmas Contest gives away a Razer Armadillo, a mouse cable management system that enchances your gameplay by grounding the mouse cable for better movement and precision. Send a screenshot of your character wearing the Winter Veil costume while mounting the Metzen Reindeer. Instructions here. Ends on January 2.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King offers many daily quests to entertain, and as good source to increase your economy. These are optional, but daily quests allow you to pay repair costs, to buy special mounts from the Sons of Hodir and Wyrmrest Accord, or to cost your gear’s enchants and jewels.

This time we will discuss the daily quests given at the gunships in Icecrown: Orgrim’s Hammer (Horde) or The Skybreaker (Alliance).

Some daily quests are not available right away. You require to do all the quests at the gunships, but eventually you will get access to all of the daily quests. Below you may read the Icecrown Daily Quests Guide Part 1 with links to our WoW Digger.

Myndflame released a new Christmas Machinima featuring Arthas Menethil aka The Lich King - who explores his feelings for the Winter’s Veil season. Directed by Johan Vågstedt and featuring Matt Greenberg as Arthas with additional vocals by Glenn X. Govan (aka Caruu), this dark comedy rendition of a classic Christmas tune is sure to bring a smile to your face provide you with a good laugh even if you’re not a World of Warcraft player.

MOVIE URL:  http://myndflame.gameriot.com/videos/Northrend-wonderland
TITLE: Northrend Wonderland      
PUBLISHER: Firebolt Productions
RELEASED: December 23rd, 2008
DURATION: 4 Minutes, 47 Seconds
CATEGORY: Music Video

Description of the Movie:
Holliday shopping got you down?
Having a hard time finding your holliday cheer?
You’re not alone.
Even a Lich King can get the blues!

Written and Directed by:
Johan Vågstedt

Voice Cast:
Matt Greenberg
Glenn X. Govan

G4TV interviewed Chris Sigaty and Dustin Browder. Both developers talk about Starcraft 2’s plans. And the exciting thing to highlight in this video is how many times they mention the word: BETA.  It’s like if they were teasing it to be very SOON. It’s strongly hinted we will have this game on our hands within 2009.

	Blizzard Quote:
	Chris Sigaty: We’re really excited in 2009 to get StarCraft II in front of you the gamer and put battle.net in front of you and put this brand new multiplayer experience that harkens to the original game in front of you and hear feedback, so, I can’t wait.

Thanks PsiSeveredHead (StarcraftWiki) and GaussWaffle.

Blizzard has announced that World of Warcraft has reached a new milestone of 11.5 million players worldwide. Wrath of the Lich King made a new world record of sales upon launch, and nigh month and a half from its launch we see subscribers growing more. Of course, the new World of Warcraft TV ads may be responsible for the new subscribers.

	Blizzard Quote:
	PARIS, France—December 23rd, 2008 –  Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft®, its award-winning subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game, is now played by more than 11.5 million subscribers worldwide. This new high was reached following the November 13 release of the game’s second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King™. Within its first 24 hours of availability, Wrath of the Lich King sold more than 2.8 million copies, making it the fastest-selling PC game of all time. In addition to winning a number of editor’s choice awards from major gaming publications, the expansion has now gone on to sell more than 4 million copies in its first month, setting a new record for monthly PC-game sales. Both sales records were previously held by World of Warcraft’s first expansion, The Burning Crusade®.* “We’re pleased to welcome the new and returning players who have helped World of Warcraft reach these new milestones, and we appreciate the enthusiasm and support that the game’s global community has continued to show,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment®. “We look forward to providing all of them with an excellent entertainment experience for a long time to come.” “World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King was the biggest selling PC game of the year for Play.com, and has cemented the World of Warcraft franchise as the largest PC franchise in Play.com’s ten year history. Well done to Blizzard for developing such a great game that keeps people coming back for more.” Gian Luzio, Head of Games, Play.com To keep pace with the continued growth of World of Warcraft as well as development on other Blizzard Entertainment games, the company is currently hiring for numerous open positions. More information on available career opportunities can be found at eu.blizzard.com. More information about the latest World of Warcraft expansion is available at the official Wrath of the Lich King website on http://www.wow-europe.com/wrath.

Our sister site Diii.net has a very interesting prize to giveaway during the Christmas Season: The Diablo II Collector’s Edition. All you need to do is to post a comment at the following thread. That simple. Want to know what’s within the Collector’s Edition?

• Diablo II Game
• Exclusive Diablo II DVD Movie - All 24 minutes of the Diablo II game cinematics digitally re-mastered for enhanced picture quality on your DVD player in Widescreen format.
• View Storyboards & listen to audio commentary from the Diablo II cinematics team
• Original Cinematic Trailer
• Commemorative Game Manual - Collector’s Edition Game Manual signed by the Diablo II Development Team
• Dungeons & Dragons Tabletop RPG - Exclusive Diablo II pencil and paper RPG designed by Wizards of the Coast. Based on AD&D rules.
• Original Diablo II soundtrack - Over 60 minutes of wickedly atmospheric original music from the game.