I got World of Warcraft today. I know, I know; you either think I'm too late to the game or shouldn't have walked into that minefield at all. I blame Humphrey Cheung, one of our faithful news editors over on TG Daily who stuck the idea into my head out in LA two weeks ago.

Fortunately for those concerned folk who do not want to see me stuck in WoW for the rest of my days, the WoW Europe website seems to be totally fooked to the point that setting up an account is impossible. Agree to the terms, enter the authentication key, your details; I've got as far as "Choose payment method" on one of about a half a dozen tries before it invariably fails to load the next page or spits out an error message in gibberish.

Wonderful, just wonderful. The

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< img width="100" height="90" border="0" src="http://omidr.typepad.com/twitchblog/images/9.jpg" title="9" alt="9" style="margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; float: left;" /> Going to the midnight launch of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade expansion pack I expected to see one or two nuts (besides the one accompanying me) and a lot of geeks. What I didn't expect to find was a pretty accurate demographic spread of Southern California; ranging from dyed in the wool geeks to what one less politically correct than I might term "hot chicks". Even a square-jawed security guard sidled up to me at the top of the line to ask me if I played. He's a level 60 mage.

We've seen a lot of crazy lines for launches recently, what with the PS3 and Wii launching at the end of 2006; but I didn't expect to find people who had been queuing up since 6.30am for a videogame, easier to mass manufacture than a console as it is. Still, if ever there was a living example of how far video gaming has progressed in terms of the demographic it reaches - everyone, basically - it was this World of Warcrack line.

I met middle-aged and upwards folks who have been playing Blizzard games since time began; and I met high school kids high on caffeine and planning their Tuesday morning illnesses. I met professionals and I even met a three year old girl who had accompanied her mother along for the launch; daddy having been unfortunate enough to have to queue up for his copy on the snowstruck East Coast earlier that night.

So there you have it - everyone's a geek nowadays.

Don't pre-orders just suck?

Aaron griped about the lack of honor for pre-orders in the game industry a while back, considering all the angry gamers that have vented to us about their PlayStation 3 and Wii orders not showing up. And I've complained about fulfillment myself, as my Wii bundle got all screwed up by Walmart.com. Well, the vicious cycle of broken promises continues for World of WarCraft addicts, er, I mean fans. Word is a number of folks that had pre-ordered the Burning Crusade have received e-mails informing them that, woops, the store is out of stock. What a bummer. And if you think console fan boys were upset when they missed out on their PS3 or Wii pre- orders, you have no idea how bad some WoW fanatics are wigging out today after getting e-mails like the one below (special thanks to Neil for forwarding us the e-mail).

"Dear NEIL As you may have heard, stock of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Collector's Edition is extremely limited, with Vivendi only shipping a very small amount of stock for the UK market. We're really sorry, but this means that we have not been able to fulfill your order.

We've only just been informed of this stock shortage from Vivendi, and sincerely apologize for the short notice. Though you're no doubt disappointed, the Standard Edition is still available to order from HMV.co.uk for just ｣17.99, and if you order before the weekend, you should receive your copy of the game from day of release (Tuesday 16th January).

You can cancel your order for the Collectors Edition via your online account, though we will be automatically canceling your order within the next 7 days. Once again, we're sorry for any disappointment caused.

Regards (A very large British retailer with a three-letter acronym for a name)"

And by the way, copies of the Collector's Edition are currently going for more than $500 on eBay. For more on the Burning Crusade event, check out TG Daily.