In what could be one of the greatest South Park Episodes ever, “Make Love, Not Warcraft” won the Animated Program Primetime Emmy Award (for Programming Less Than One Hour).

In “Make Love, Not Warcraft”, Cartman, Kyle, Stan, and Kenny come into contact with a gamer who doesn’t play by the rules. Even the executives of Blizzard Entertainment don’t know how to stop the renegade and are forced to put all of their hope into the hands of the kids of South Park. The boys dedicate their lives to defeating the mad gamer and saving the game for all.

If you haven’t seen this episode, go find it somewhere because it’s hilarious. I can’t believe they gave an Emmy to a show that features Cartman shitting all over his mom (literally). Too funny.

So if you play World of Warcraft and you thought that the new level cap of 70 was a pain, here is the trailer for the new expansion for WoW, Wrath of the Lich King, and it will provide you with a brand new level 80 cap. You can also expect a new class, Dark Knight (think Necromancer from Diablo), siege weapons, a new crafting skill and more quests. Enjoy the add-ons and say goodebye to reality once again.

I recently read an article by Julian Dibbell entitled “The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer” and I was thoroughly intrigued. It brought perspectives to light I hadn’t thought about, Many gamers out there are quite familiar with MMO games such as World of Warcraft, Phantasy Star Online, Ultima, Guild Wars, Second Life, Final Fantasy, the list goes on, but some may not be aware of the subculture that exists as a result of these games.

There are many players who play the game straight up and are content with leveling and questing, perhaps joining some buddies every once in a while and making a new one at other times. Then there are the hardcore gamers that play with no other purpose than being the best and having the most elite gear or the largest bankroll. Then there are the players that want to be “elite”, but want it the easy way and purchase their items from farmers or online services.

The latter classes of players are the ones that intrigue me and made me think about what is right and wrong with MMO games. In all MMO games there is a sub culture of gamers for the most part of Asian decent that play, no better stated “work”, in these games to gather gold or currency in order to sell it back to real life players typically in Europe and America. If you have played an MMO like WoW they are typically known as “Chinese Gold Farmers” and typically are frowned upon by other players and in extreme cases hated and even hunted.

Hit the jump for more…

We all love 300. That can’t be denied. World of Warcraft is an aquired taste, but you still have to respect it. Anyway, some bright people decided to recreate scenes from 300 in World of Warcraft. All I can say is: brilliant.

So here is our latest weekly installment entitled the rumor mill, here will be the grand hall of speculation and rumors, so sit back and enjoy the conspiracy theories.

We will start off with a biggie, there are some rumors flying around about a World of Warcraft game hitting our next gen consoles some time in 2008. It is also rumored to be an entirely different game than the current versions made solely for the consoles titled World of Warcraft: Azeroth Adventures. That means this game will not be a PC port of Burning Crusades or the original and will be made from the ground up to utilize a controller as the main input. Think of the potential of having Azeroth played in HD, on your flat screen, in 5.1 surround sound over Xbox Live. This would fit in nicely with the newly developed and imminently launching keyboard input device.

How sweet the sound of a rogue in stealth ganking a noob on your 360. Blizzard why do you mock us and not release this already? This game could single handedly change the face of MMORPG for the consoles. Or you could just skip WoW and make us a Starcraft MMORPG for our consoles(giggles like a school girl!).

The in-game ad firm Double Fusion inked a multi-game deal with THQ, which will allow them to place in-game advertisements in their upcoming titles and franchises. Included in the deal are not only static advertisements but also real time adverts.

I for one am on the fence about this whole in-game advertising movement. Yes I understand that the advertisement in theory will allow developers more revenue to expand their titles and offer gamers new experiences but at what cost? Will we soon begin to see a K-Mart in World of Warcraft or maybe a Best Buy in Phantasy Star Universe? I think that in-game advertising must be handled very carefully if not it will in fact cheapen our experience as gamers.

I actually had a chance to take part in what I thought was a beta test of Splinter Cell: Double Agent a while back, but it turned out to be a glorified ad agency asking how many adverts I noticed while playing. I was a bit upset by the whole thing and gave the lady a piece of my mind, I doubt she will call me back for another “test”.

After playing many different MMORPG’s both PC and console based, the big 2 for myself being Phantasy Star Online and World of Warcraft, it amazes me how some people are just retarded. Let me explain some facts of MMORPG’s before you decide to delve into the black abyss of this genre:

• These games are played typically by fairly bright players that become obsessed with leveling and finding items, which turns into an addiction and neglect of real life.
• These games have been designed to be played with “strategy” as a key element, which means that a group needs to be functional, this means the healer must fucking heal, buff, etc. Man does it piss me off to hear of mage type characters trying to melee or tank characters trying to DPS.
• If you are female and have a mic you can easily score free items from a bunch of lonely guys that have probably never spoken to a female before. Seriously, or just make a girl character and never speak.
• Once people reach the level cap they become bored with the game, maybe you should have thought about that before you grinded for three days straight and maxed out your level so fast.
• Also once people hit the higher levels they become an elitist and don’t give a shiet about helping others, they actually shun lower level characters and make them feel retarded for not knowing how to play yet.
• People playing MMORPG’s with you are not your friends! They are just some people you meet online and play games with, which means they don’t give a shiet about you or your feelings. I have actually heard of people getting upset because they were not invited to groups, let it go stupid.
• After logging in hundreds and hundreds of hours you still are no better off in the real world than you first started.

This has been a public service announcement from your good friends at Loot Ninja. Play at your own risk.

I should have done this write-up earlier but I was busy leveling

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade is the first expansion to Blizzard’s insanely popular MMORPG World of Warcraft which has over 8 million subscribers worldwide. If you have no idea what the original game is about or need some background, check this out. I played the original way too much, so naturally, I waited in line for the midnight launch. Standing in line at midnight for anything other than free head probably isn’t a good idea, and being there with about 75 other guys from that episode of South Park to get the game 8 hours early made me feel pretty self conscious. Oh well.
Hit the jump for more…

I’m sure I am like every other RPG player, more specifically MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game), which gets drawn in full force and twitches if his/her fix of online enjoyment is not met. In all seriousness the addictive power of these MMORPG’s is ridiculous, it is like any other drug that man can get addicted to. Right now I am addicted to PSU on the 360, I want to start to wean myself off but it draws me in, it talks to me, just one more run, just one more level. I recently went to Best Buy and saw the Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft, I held it, looked at it, sniffed it (ok I didn’t really sniff it, but you get the idea) and decided against it. I am still thinking about getting the expansion and firing up my old WoW character, but I recall the utter engulfment it had over my life, I would get home from work and fire up the PC play for hours and eat by the PC, and constantly fight with my wife over logging off. My life became instance runs, leveling, grinding and I always had something else to try and do that would only take me a bit longer. I look at the burning Crusade and I say not again Blizzard, you will not get me in the clutches of your crack, I fear Sega has already drawn me in and it’s too late, but I won’t do WoW, not again. The major problems with these games is there is no end, there is no final mission or goal, and if there was the developers will put out some new content, missions, weapon, item, etc. that will make you continue to play, they are truly and open ended scenario where you take your character as far as you would like, some just never know when to stop.