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Funeral crashing and elf orgies: the definitive guide to two decades of WoW drama A chronological journey through the controversies, feuds, trolling, and epic drama connected to the popular MMORPG.
[Ed.: The following article first appeared as a series of Reddit posts by Rumbleskim and lifelongfreshman.] WoW was an immediate hit when it first came out in November 2004. It followed on the heels of games like Everquest and Ultima Online, but completely reinvented the MMORPG formula, with more player conveniences, far greater variety, graphical fidelity, and storytelling. It was a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stagnating genre, and went on to dominate the MMORPG genre for two decades. Tens of millions of people have now inhabited WoW’s fantasy world of Azeroth through nine expansions and several spin offs, which you know makes for plenty of notable drama.…
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What your MMO says about you We've got you figured out.
The best (worst) Watch Dogs multiplayer trolls Watch Dogs online has been designed to drive you nuts and here's a compilation of some amazing moments.
The increasing irrelevancy of video game journalists Being good at games is now political. Is this a sign of the end times?
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Finish Him! The innovative violence that fueled Mortal Kombat’s success A journey from its start as a failed experiment to re-birth as a predestined success built by the vision and innovation of its Midway Games developers.
We are now almost 30 years out from the 1992 release of Mortal Kombat, perhaps the most famous franchise in the vast genre that is fighting games. The iconic video game series offers endless lessons to developers who would like to take the same path. Get the best computer science help to free some of your time as you focus on developing personal projects. False starts Mortal Kombat started as an experiment that never saw the light of day in the way it was envisioned – a video game adaption of military science-fiction action film Universal Soldier (1992) featuring Jean Claude Van Damme. As Midway Games developers John Tobias and…
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The spooky, gory, and gorgeous worlds of DOOM Sometimes, it pays to shoot pictures instead of demons.
Leave me alone: speaking out against the rise of co-op The once separate worlds of singleplayer and multiplayer are merging – but there's nothing wrong with playing alone.
What’s so scary about the 90s? The best horror games look to the nineties not as a rough draft to be improved upon, but something terrifying in and of itself.
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Gaming’s most persistent myths and urban legends, debunked From blowing in cartridges to Lara Croft nude cheats and the secret Windows95 devil program. I’m sure you believe in at least one of these falsehoods.
Rumors and videogames have gone hand in hand for years now. From school yard bragging about your uncle who works for Nintendo, to the almost constant leaks that seem to plague new releases. We’re all suckers for a lie or myth, and even with a healthy dose of skepticism, I’m sure you believe in one at least of these falsehoods. The Myth: Blowing in Game Cartridges Makes Them Work The Truth: We all know this one. Blowing into game cartridges was meant to clear the dust off the pins, and allow you to continue playing. In reality it was the removal of the cartridge from the console that helped. Blowing…
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Top 5 most controversial Street Fighter characters It's impossible for a franchise to have lasted this long without a few controversies under its belt. Let's explore.
Why esports needs to ditch online aliases Gaming handles may not be holding esports back now, but it can only harm the scene in the future.
The secret to the success of the greatest MMO of them all Vanilla World of Warcraft fed on the blood, toil, tears and sweat of its players, testing their patience and resolve - but that was part of its magic.
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The ultimate history of fighting games Fighting games have always been around. The first one on this list landed in arcades in 1976!
The Street Fighter games are arguably the best-known fighting titles ever released (only Mortal Kombat comes close), and the series has sold a staggering 37 million copies. Fighting games, though, have been around since the very beginning of the medium. The first one we hit on this list landed in arcades in 1976 – a full 40 years ago! Lace up your gloves, charge up your ki, and let’s write the book on the history of fighting games. I tried to play, either on original machines or through emulation, every single game that could be considered a “fighting game” in the history of video games. I’m going to try and talk…
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Former jewel thief reviews GTA 5’s jewelry heists A former jewel thief has taken Grand Theft Auto 5’s heists to task, and explains how he would have done it instead.
Top 5 most controversial Street Fighter characters It's impossible for a franchise to have lasted this long without a few controversies under its belt. Let's explore.
69 things you need to do in GTA before you die So you think you’re done with Liberty City? Think again.
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The 11 craziest video game feats ever captured on video These 11 videos show people taking ordinary video games and making them truly extraordinary.
Video games: how much do we love them? Enough to inspire us to devote a good chunk of our lives to them, at the very least. The incredible world of electronic gaming has something for everybody, from the base casual to the most hardcore multi-monitor Eve Online sock-pooper. We’re going to be talking about the upper echelon of gamers in this piece: the men and women who don’t stop at mere enjoyment and instead fight for utter mastery. These are people who squeeze every last byte out of their games, twisting them under their mental strength until they crack. These 11 videos show people taking ordinary video games and making them truly extraordinary.…
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The ultimate history of fighting games Fighting games have always been around. The first one on this list landed in arcades in 1976!
10 ways to instantly end your streaming career To end—or ignite??—your streaming career, you need to get naked, say naughty words, lie, and cheat.
Funeral crashing and elf orgies: the definitive guide to two decades of WoW drama A chronological journey through the controversies, feuds, trolling, and epic drama connected to the popular MMORPG.
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How our caveman instincts explain why we play video games Video games are fun - that’s a given. But here's why we derive so much pleasure from them.
As I was playing Threes on my mobile phone the other day, it occurred to me that there’s something intrinsically satisfying about tidying up in video games. Taking a messy screen full of numbers and shuffling them neatly into one big number is not only addictive, it taps into a strong desire to put everything in order. The same feeling pops up when clearing the screen in Tetris or mopping up all of those pesky flags in Assassin’s Creed. But where does this desire to tidy up come from? And what function does it serve? “It makes total sense,” says Phil Robinson, director and curator of the Museum of Games…
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Maps that matter: how to build great multiplayer FPS maps We spoke with a group of top game designers and covered just about everything about making maps people want to play again and again.
The legacy of Duke Nukem We take you on the full journey, from hope to hopelessness.
5 pixel art games you need to play right now Who doesn't love breezing through a colorful, simplified world that resembles something from their childhood?
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They really did that?! Little known games from big developers Before Naughty Dog made Uncharted, it made the wacky comedy game Keef the Thief.
Whether it had to start somewhere, ran low on cash or had a crazy one-off idea, almost every big games studio has worked on some surprising games. A football JRPG, a Shrek tie-in, various kinds of licenses, these largely forgotten titles often reflect periods of uncertainty, when talented studios needed a project to keep the lights on and would work on whatever was going. Some of these games are, of course, terrible. Others, like Irrational’s Tribes Vengeances, are cult classics that have come to be regarded as highpoints for their series. Whatever the story though, they’re all surprising. Wayne Gretzky Hockey (Bethesda) Watch this video on YouTube These days the idea…
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The video games about nothing Seinfeld is famously a show about nothing, but indie developers continue to find plenty of something to work with.
Does the C64 Mini’s games library do the Commodore 64 justice? The real reason it trumped the Speccy and Amstrad was breadth and quality of software.
Playing with the human side of history Games traditionally present history as monolithic spectacle, but this new breed focuses on the individual experience of simply existing alongside great events.
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The Legend of Zelda was an explicitly Christian game—until Nintendo of America desecrated it Link, a devout Christian warrior? Believe it.
Before The Legend of Zelda became known for its somewhat complicated lore and disconnected story lines, the popular Nintendo series had real-world religious influences with Link originally written as a devout Christian warrior. I wouldn’t blame you if you missed the references to Christianity in the first three Zelda games because the hints were always subtle (especially for children) and it was never explicitly stated by characters in-game. One of the biggest in-game hints of religious imagery was found in the Japanese version of The Legend of Zelda. If you played the English version of the game, you’re probably familiar with the Book of Magic, which had a cross on…
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Why esports needs to ditch online aliases Gaming handles may not be holding esports back now, but it can only harm the scene in the future.
Video game journalists are a joke Gamers don’t have a problem with challenge. Game journalists do, because they're lazy hacks — and because challenge itself engenders fundamental problems for their ideology.
The making of WipEout Forget Lara. There was only one true herald of the Playstation generation. Real 3D, real music, real gaming. The future, after years of waiting, was finally now.
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Under the thumb: the evolution of buttons How the buttons we press daily were formed over many decades.
I’ve been delighted with Nintendo Switch, not just because Breath of the Wild is probably now my favorite game ever, but because the Joy-Cons really make the hardware feel special. Even more so if you were fortunate to get hold of the neon red and blue version. It may be because no other controller has ever had so much versatility, either for a single player or for the instant sideways turn into two stand-alone controllers. It shakes up a lot of other controller preconceptions, too, and in doing so made me think about all the controllers I have used. How over time that knowledge of where to move your thumb is accumulated,…
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The 11 craziest video game feats ever captured on video These 11 videos show people taking ordinary video games and making them truly extraordinary.
The real reason LEGO Universe shut down: it didn’t anticipate the ‘penis cost’ The challenge of keeping a family-friendly MMO penis-free was too much for Warner Brothers.
Why Zelda dungeons are so great Let's dig into how the dungeons work so well with Mark Brown's great crash-course.
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80 years before X-COM, H.G. Wells designed ‘Little Wars’ H.G. Wells' contributions to modern pop culture can hardly be overestimated, and even video games haven't escaped it.
Having popularized concepts such as time travel and invaders from Mars, the contributions of English author H.G. Wells to modern pop culture can hardly be overestimated. Often described as ‘the father of science fiction’ thanks to seminal, genre-defining works such as The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds and When the Sleeper Wakes (all three published between 1895 and 1899, a testament to his unerring productivity) Wells’ influence is everywhere, even if you’ve never picked up one of his books. Video games are no exception. In fact, when designing one of gaming’s earliest and most recognizable icons, Space Invaders creator Tomohiro Nishikado plumbed Wells’ imagination to stoke his own. “The…
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Catacombs: the inside story of Square Enix’ canceled shooter It’s always a great shame when a game is cancelled, but much more so when a genuine original is lost.
RIP Konami console games, 1983-2015 With Konami moving away from mainstream gaming and onto pachinko and mobile, it's time for a nostalgic look back over its best games.
Former WoW Team Leader: “This won’t stop. WoW gamers are leaving for good. “ Mark 'Grummz' Kern acknowledges explosive leak and writes about failures of AAA culture and why World of Warcraft is dying.
