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Remember the queues outside stores exactly one year ago? Yes, it was the release for the World of Warcraft's first expansion, The Burning Crusade. Let's look back at the events then and afterwards, shall we?

The Epic Launch

Ah, the nostalgia. January 16, 2007 marked the opening of the gates to Outland for North America, Europe, and Australia. Fans lined up to get copies of the World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade while the die-hard players went for the Collector's Edition. With the expansion's release came two new races (Draenei and Blood Elves), a higher level cap, new professions, more content, and a whole new area to explore.

With a release that can only be described as epic, The Burning Crusade went on to take the world by storm. Launches around the world was much like a party of sorts as cosplayers, guilds, and members of Alliance and Horde gathered to get their copies. It broke a number of records like most sales in a day (nearly 2.4 million copies, FTW!), most sales in a month, and more. It also held a lofty position on top of charts of a good number of months after release.

We saw a number of crazy stuff during launch - a dance alike contest where people mimicked the different classes' dance moves and a lady cosplaying as a murloc, with murloc plushie in tow.

Since then

So what's happened since then? A LOT. Since The Burning Crusade's release on that cold day in January (we know some of you guys camped out outside stores, we got videos from the Gnomeregan Gnews Gnetwork, no less), we've seen the four major content patches: Before the Storm/The Burning Crusade, The Black Temple, Voice Chat and The Gods of Zul'Aman. Plus we're going to face Kael'Thas Sunstrider again once patch 2.4.0 hits the live realms.

We saw the different guilds like Nihilum, Death and Taxes, Curse, Forte, and the rest breeze through raid content, doing away with the big names of the Warcraft universe: Kael'Thas Sunstrider, Illidan Stormrage, and Archimonde.

(We should probably also add that Blood Elf is still the most popular WoW race.)

And now that we're waiting for another expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, here's to hoping that Blizzard delivers more epic love. If The Burning Crusade is any indication of how WotLK is going to be, then we have a lot of good reasons to wait for its release "when it's ready."

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Staying Skin Deep
Graphics, like it or not, are an important part of a game and, for all my pretentious ��game is art!�� arguments, even I have to admit that graphics play an important part in how well a game sells.

For MMOs, graphics are even more important than other games, believe it or not. Connect the dots; graphics make games sell and, for an MMO to be interesting to anybody, it needs to have a lot of players. World of Warcraft, with its stylised cartoony presentation and bright colours, is perfect proof of this and it baffles me that most developers haven��t cottoned on yet.

As an MMO, Pirates of the Burning Sea was never going to bowl anybody over with its graphics because a balance needs to be found between graphics and performance. Lagging out in the middle of a naval port battle is not an option. To make sure you get the most out of it though, we��ll run through the graphics options and illustrate what the most important tweaks are.

Texture Resolution
This option is configurable on a slider in the preferences menu for the game and controls the quality of certain textures in the game. The slider lets you choose one of three settings; 0, 1 or 2.

Higher numbers are better, but we��ve got pictures of all three below.

Texture resolution low (left), medium (center) and high (right)

You can click to enlarge the images if you want, but the area where the difference is most noticeable for the different settings is on the floor, so we��ve zoomed in there.

The different in textures is subtle, but noticeable and the gentle blurring of the textures on the lower settings is something which you should really try and avoid if you can. There was no performance hit that we could detect in the game even with the highest settings turned on, but if you have a graphics card with very little on-board memory, this may be the first thing you want to tone down.

High Quality Shaders
This setting is also available in the preferences menu, but appears as a toggle rather than a slider. Shaders, which can potentially radically effect the look of the game, are most noticeable on the open seas.

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- Wyndforge's Art Galleries This site is featuring custom screenshot portraits of real players, also called "Screenshot Art". "Everyone you see in the galleries are real players in their full and natural form. What you��re seeing is Screenshot Art, where I take screenshots of your player as you appear in game, and then I play digital touch-up and turn it into something just a little more cool" buyfastgold.com
 
Some examples of his work:
 
- CharDev.org
This is a Character Development planning tool similar to Warcrafter but for non-theorycrafters, it allows you to switch different armor, enchants and gems, so you can see how it will directly affect your statistics.

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Priests in Blizzard's World of Warcraft have been pretty happy with the buffs they got in Patch 2.3.0 since it's now easier for them to play solo and grind. Because of this, some players from the WoW forums are inquiring if other support character builds will also be getting some useful buffs.

Blizzard Community Manager Eyonix responded by saying that they do plan on making solo/grinding more viable for all non-dsp, support-oriented specs such as Protection Paladins and Warriors. He added that they want to avoid players having to carry a secondary set of gear to solo. Here's what Eyonix had to say:

Keep in mind, we also don't want players to have to rely on the collection of secondary sets to be able to solo effectively. Meaning, they are likely to have an edge should they go that route (especially if they are collecting high end dps gear), but should still be able to do so with their current set of gear/talent choices.

This is great news for players who intend to play a support specced class as their main character in World of Warcraft. Raid oriented players may eventually be able to stop carrying around secondary sets of gear if what Eyonix said pushes through. We'll have to wait for specific changes before we can say for sure though, but we can always hope.

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If any PlayStation 3 fans find themselves reeling helplessly following the news that Ubisoft drug-fuelled FPS epic Haze might not hit retail until the spring of 2009, then a few extremely sexy gaming images from Japanese print magazine Famitsu might help reduce any swelling disappointment.

Specifically, the leading videogame publication has this week offered up what could be the very first glimpses gamers can get of in-game screenshots from Square Enix upcoming PlayStation 3 exclusive Final Fantasy Versus XIII.

Unlike the sway of beautifully rendered screens currently available for the ravenous eyes of Final Fantasy Versus fans, the two screenshots seen here (via Famitsu scans) seem to indicate actual in-game footage rather than that perfectly textured and flawless presentation usually found throughout CG sequences.

And it would appear that initial fan feedback based on the appearance of the screens is extremely positive, with plenty of shameless gushing at the apparent progress game director Tetsuya Nomura and the Square Enix team are making in tapping the considerable power pulsing beneath the hood of the PlayStation 3.

For those who don know, Final Fantasy Versus XIII will arrive as a freestanding edition of the Fabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy XIII compilation, which includes Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII.

If you like to learn more, then click HERE.

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