World of Warcraft

Trivia

At the event "GameStar/GamePro Leserpreis 2006" (23. February 2006) World of Warcraft received the trophies "Best PC Game in 2005" and "Best PC RPG in 2005" after the reader's voting of German gaming magazine GameStar.

The game is referenced multiple times in Douglas Coupland's 2009 novel Generation A, where the character Julien is addicted to it.

Contributed by Sciere (119289) on Oct 10, 2009.

World of Warcraft won the Apple Design Award for Best Mac OS X Entertainment Product in 2005.

One of the quests in Netherstorm, Outland, is called Needs More Cowbell where the player needs to find the cow Bessy using a bell. The quest's title is a reference to the pop culture catchphrase More cowbell, which was launched in a Saturday Night Live comedy sketch on 8th April 2000, about the recording of the song (Don't Fear) The Reaper by Blue Öyster Cult, where a cowbell is featured.

Contributed by Sciere (119289) on Apr 29, 2009.

The game makes an appearance in the 2008 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. Early on, Jacob Benson (Jaden Smith), son of Dr. Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly), is shown playing the game on his laptop.

Contributed by Sciere (119289) on Feb 18, 2009.

World of Warcraft was named #1 Game of the Year in the 14th Annual Computer Game Awards issue of Computer Games Magazine (March 2005).

Contributed by PCGamer77 (3025) on Jan 21, 2008.

214,748 gold, 36 silver, 48 copper seems to be the maximum amount of money you can collect per character in WOW. As they informed in wowinsider, at least two different players, Dorgabas and meth would have reached this limit on January 16th, 2008, a limit theorized before. After reaching this limit, your character can no longer receive money from any source in the game.

Contributed by MichaelPalin (840) on Jan 20, 2008.

In May 2007 Blizzard announced the availability of World of Warcraft VISA credit cards from the First National Bank of Omaha. There are 13 different types of cards like Alliance Draenei or Horde Blood Elf. Aside from the art work, there are other bonuses such as a free month of subscription time with first use and game time at the rate of 1% of every dollar in qualifying purchases.

Contributed by Sciere (119289) on May 06, 2007.

World of Warcraft was named #10 "Game of the Year" by Games for Windows Magazine (March 2007).

Contributed by PCGamer77 (3025) on Feb 25, 2007.

An entire episode of the animated TV series South Park was dedicated to World of Warcraft. The episode, titled Make Love, Not Warcraft, was aired on 4th October 2006 and it was the second half premiere of the tenth season.

Contributed by Sciere (119289) on Nov 19, 2006.

A World of Warcraft novel was published by Pocket Books earlier in 2006: Cycle of Hatred by Keith R. A. DeCandido. It takes place in the period between between Warcraft III - the Frozen Throne and World of Warcraft, filling in blanks and establishing greater continuity.

Another WoW novel is scheduled to be published later in 2006: Rise of the Horde, by Christie Golden -- presumably some sort of sequel to her 2001 Warcraft novel Lord of the Clans.

Among many things that could not be foreseen by the dev team was the dreaded "Hakkar plague" which originated from the end-boss of the Zul Gurub instance and once brought to the cities would repeatedly kill low level characters. After two days of chaos, Blizzard had to force a rolling restart on all servers. What is not commonly known is that the CDC (Center for Disease Control) in Atlanta contacted Blizzard about the plague in the game. The CDC had read that Blizzard had simulated a plague spreading through the world, and was interested in how they simulated it. They were disappointed when they found out it was a bug.

In Elwynn Forest there is an NPC named Terry Palin. He is a lumberjack and he's OK. His name is a reference to Monty Python comedians Terry Jones and Michael Palin who were responsible for the famous Lumberjack Song.

One of the named opponents for Alliance characters in Westfall is a bandit belonging to the Defias Brotherhood, named Benny Blaanco. His name refers to a gang leader in the well known movie Carlito's Way.

Coca Cola launched a commercial in China inspired by World of Warcraft. Three models stand up to their boss when he asks them "to show more". He transforms into an orc and after drinking a coke the girls fight him. The link to the video can be found in the related links section.

Contributed by Sciere (119289) on Aug 13, 2006.

A World of Warcraft gameplay video by the clan PALS FOR LIFE has spawned the internet phenomenon Leeroy Jenkins. You can read all about it in the Wikipedia article in the related links section.

Contributed by Sciere (119289) on Jun 04, 2006.

In every punch card you get in Gnomeregan, there is a hidden binary message:


White Punch Card:
Thrall and Jaina sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G


Yellow Punch Card:
If you can read this, you're standing too close


Blue Punch Card:
The gnome king wears night elf underwear


Red Punch Card:
Help! I'm trapped in a binary punch card factory!


Prismatic Punch Card:
Message to Castpipe: your laundry's ready for pickup.

When playing a Horde character at level 40+ with 225/225 in your First Aid skill, travel to Hammerfall.
Go to the Trauma Surgeon in the building to the left of the entrance. He will give you a quest in which you can gain Artisan First Aid.
In this quest, you must run around and bandage dying patients. When dying, one of the patients says: "Goodbye cruel world.. I'm leaving you today. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye".
Those are the exact lyrics of the song "Goodbye Cruel World" of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" album.

In Uldaman there are 3 lost dwarves: Olaf, Eric and Baelog.
Those 3 dwarves are all from the game The Lost Vikings.
And on top of that, The "Staff of Tsol" and the "Medallion of Gni'kiv" (which are both used on another quest in the same dungeon) spelled backwards "Tsol" and "Gni'kiv" are "Lost" and "Viking" :-)

In the 2005 Christmas event, several new NPCs and quests were added for a short period of time. One of the quests requested that you rescued Metzen the Reindeer - try searching for Chris Metzen on Mobygames and you'll see that he is from the Blizzard staff.

In November 2005, Blizzard opened six new realms for the game in North America to give first time players the opportunity to adventure on equal footing with other players.

Contributed by Sciere (119289) on Nov 09, 2005.

Blizzard developed a program called The Warden to fight off cheaters. It's a highly-intrusive watchdog program, some even call it spyware, that scans for active processes while playing World of Warcraft. By accident, a DRM protection from the Sony record company helped crackers to avoid detection by The Warden.

Sony's DRM, shipped with tens of thousands of audio CD's, installs a virus-like rootkit that causes processes starting with $sys$ to stay undetected at all times. Malicious users with the DRM installed then simply wrote software with a $sys$ process to cheat in-game. With a booming economy and a gold price on eBay that easily matches the currency of some foreign countries, certain players will be rich soon.

Contributed by Sciere (119289) on Nov 03, 2005.

In September 2005, Blizzard added a seemingly innocent instance with unexpected consequences of epic proportions. To a certain extent, it even became one of the most realistic events in a MMORPG to mimic the world and history itself.

The new instance, Zul'Gurub, features the god of blood: Hakkar. When you fight him, he has a debuff called Corrupted Blood, a disease that deals 250-350 damage every two seconds and affects nearby players. Unexpectedly, some players managed to carry the disease, soon dubbed wow aids, hakkar sars and The Great Azeroth Plague, outside the instance and brought it to the towns. It soon became a real plague, affecting thousands of players, of which many did not have the class to constantly protect themselves. Even npcs and pets became affected and low-level players were killed over and over again, as, after respawning, they were immediately struck once more.

The plague became so powerful that major cities became places to avoid. The GMs first tried to quarantine the players, but some kept escaping until it could no longer be controlled. From a small annoyance, it soon became a survival of the fittest where certain players found themselves unable to continue playing under normal circumstances. Ultimately, the plague lasted two days until a rolling restart of all servers.

This was not the first time something unexpected was taken outside an instance, though.

Contributed by Sciere (119289) on Sep 19, 2005.

The Lost Vikings make a cameo during the game. In fact, they are a necessary part of a certain quest. Because of that, I won't say exactly where they can be found; but it's location is somewhere that is deep, dark and dwarvish.

For the upcoming 2004 Christmas season, Blizzard (developer and publisher of WoW) added easter eggs throughout the game in a patch, which enabled players to find egg nog recipes, snowballs and various other references to Christmas.

World of Warcraft quickly became the fastest selling game ever, selling 240,000 copies in 24 hours.

If you look carefully while playing the game, you may find developers or their families among the NPCs, such as Robert Bridenbecker's family in Goldshire, just outside of Stormwind.