In the latest patch to drop last week, Blizzard has again improved upon ways to find additional players for instances. The new Dungeon Finder tool is their newest toy and after playing with it for a few days I have to say, I'm completely blown away by how helpful it is. In the end this is probably one of the most impressive interface changes I've seen happen to WoW and I can only hope that other games take a page from Blizzard on this and release their own versions in the future.

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World of Warcraft is the 300-pound gorilla at the top of the MMOG pyramid; seeing the oodles of cash being raked in by Blizzard, most other developers are understandably interested in getting a piece of the same pie. Allods Online is an upcoming free-to-play MMOG from Russian developer Astrum Online Entertainment; at first glance it would be easy to dismiss Allods as yet another carbon-copy of WoW. But Allods has some strong originality going for it that could present it as a compelling AAA title once it gets its Western release.

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Exciting news for everyone still invested in World of Warcraft – patch 3.3 is out at long last, one year and one month since Wrath of the Lich King was released. The big event for this patch is the opening of Icecrown, the citadel of the Lich King himself. Finally, the culmination of WoW's second expansion nears as players will be able to face Arthas, the "Big Bad" of Wrath, in final confrontation.

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Again in keeping with my previous post, the entry below was a re-print of a letter-to-the-editor I sent Bruce Steele at The Advocate; coming off of the previous entry about this subject, I contacted him with my concerned over an image I felt that his magazine and much other popular gay media was perpetuating. This entry was dated May 13, 2006. Unfortunately I don't feel that the particular situation has gotten any better in the time since.

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As per this earlier post, the entry below was originally dated February 26, 2006. Although the article mentioned in the first sentence is no longer available online, it pertained to a group advocating the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and I found some of their marketing to be a bit offensive and marginalizing towards gay people who happen to be effeminate, thus the inspiration for this entry. Yes, the title was a Kelly Clarkson song lyric.

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While the escapades of Zevran and Leliana in BioWare's Dragon Age: Origins have been featured positively in a lot of gay media, it was presumably only a matter of time before their inclusion would show up in negative depictions as well. WorldNetDaily, a popular conservative news site ran an article last week with the ridiculous headline of "Players have dirty 'gay' sex in hit game".

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For my birthday a couple weeks ago, Adam surprised me with a brand new PlayStation 3. Whilst browsing things on it, I recalled a title I heard about months ago which seemed interesting: Flower, an ambient/atmospheric game available for purchase on the PlayStation Store that has you taking control of the wind, ushering seeds and flower petals around in a beautifully rendered landscape. Having seen videos of the game on YouTube and hearing rave reviews from friends, the game seemed intriguing and I eagerly added cash to my account to buy it. What has happened next has really annoyed the hell out of me.

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