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Our good man and resident rodeo clown Jeff Woleslagle drove his Shriner's mini-car into Manhattan to parley with Blizzard about, what else, World of Warcraft. Eyes wide and red-nose glued on tight he dragged himself away from the amply endowed geisha girls at the Pokemon conference across the street and sat down with an editor from FHM (which raises the question, why don't we have "The Girls of TenTonHammer.com?") to view a demonstration of the upcoming expansion, The Burning Crusade. You can read all about it right here, thankfully in Jeff's own words and not mine.

After two-years of development, which I believe is the Guinness World Record for longest time between launch of a successful MMOG and the release of an expansion what have the finest and most brilliant minds at Blizzard come up with?

• Flying Mounts - Verdict: Cool. The only problem is that it appears you can only use these flying mounts in the expansion zones. If you planned on buzzing the tower in The Barrens then you are out of luck and perhaps more likely, friendless and alone in your mother's basement.
• New Alliance Race - Draenei - Verdict: Cool. Two words, Space Paladins. Heck, these guys even give me a niggling ambition to play Alliance.
• New Horde Race - Blood Elves - Verdict: Ruins the Horde Persona. What the Horde didn't need was a "pretty" race. An annoyingly vocal, belligerent and attention craving segment of the WoW population play "pretty" characters. To this point, the Horde has been fortunately segregated from this group. Blood Elves will change that, bringing a new flavour to the faction. A flavour that many Horde players will find not only distateful, but nauseating. Blizzard should have left the virtual strippers and attention hounds on the Alliance side.
• New Raid Max of 25 Players - Verdict: Nasty. Tell your friends to find another guild. They are no longer welcome on your raids. Sure they have helped you and the rest of the guild progress for two-years, but there is no room in the Inn. Good-bye and don't let the instance portal hit you on the way out.
• Revamped PvP System - Verdict: Kill 'em all and let Blizzard sort 'em out. The Arena (2 vs 2) combat seems like a nifty idea, but buying goodies based on my honor accumulated through BGs is still up on the air. Until we know what tier of gear we can purchase we are in limbo between a dollar store and a Lexus dealer.
• Jewelcrafting - Verdict: Cool. Socketed items will undoubtedly create balance issues, but customization is something that most players enjoy.

Head over and read Jeff's article. The guy drove 8-hours to sit down with Blizzard. The least you can do is read the words he has so lovingly put to type on your behalf, his little rodeo clown fingers smearing white paint all over his keyboard.

Is the expansion going to deliver what you are craving? What are your feelings, the deep down ones that you usually hide from the world about the changes that will be implemented with the expansion? Post a comment at the bottom of this blog. If you are shy (or female and sending in naughty pictures) you can E-Mail me.

Every good guild needs a home. A home free of gold ads, secondary market farmers. Look no further than GuildPortal.com.

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Exclusive new TenTonHammer.com Content!
Let us entertain you or at the very least waste some of your time at work.08.15.2006 Exclusive Content

• Dungeons and Dragons Online: Top 10 Reasons To Play A Barbarian
  "As we continue DDO Top 10 Week at Ten Ton Hammer, we take a look at a handful of the many great reasons to play a barbarian. Battlebeard and Ralsu team up to bring you this exciting list."
• EverQuest 2: The Evil Otherwise Known As The Random Number Generator
  "Kiara's at it again. She's been watching too many late night infomercials, because she firmly believes she can find a way to get rich quick in EQ2."
• World of Warcraft: Scholomance Guide
  "We've gone through our Scholomance guide and updated all of the information to better reflected recent instance changes. Everything from forming your group until the last boss fight has been looked over and updated with even more helpful information!"

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Vin Diesel Fact of the Day - Vin Diesel only has one hand, the upper hand.

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Now on to the real world. You can't make this stuff up. [Thanks Matt for the story links]

• Robot balances, moves on ball instead of wheels
  All hail our new Cirque de Soleil robotic overlords.
• Death of Y May Spawn New Human Species
  Mr. T unavailable for comment.
• Girl's Windfall For Lump Of Whale Vomit
  Powerball Porpoise Puke lottery coming soon.
• Blind Man To Judge Miss Manitoba Contest
  Contestants no longer required to wear paper bags over their heads.

As always, thanks for visiting TenTonHammer.com,
-- John "Boomjack" Hoskin

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