You can't talk about PC gaming without giving a nod in John Carmack's direction, the man behind the legendary FPS games Doom and Quake. In a recent interview about the newly launched id Mobile, he mentions the current state of PC gaming and the enormous role Blizzard's World of Warcraft plays on the gaming platform.

Read more about what John Carmack had to say after the jump!

It's kinda unfair that Blizzard's World of Warcraft is so ***d**n popular, that WidowPC will actually piece together for you a specially-crafted WoW-online gaming PC so you can enjoy in full glory the phenomenon that is WoW. Sigh, some of us here wonder if they plan on extending this kind of special treatment to other games that we like, like EVE Online, or Command and Conquer 3, or Microsoft Flight Simulator.

This WoW rig comes equipped with AMD's Athlon 64 FX OR Dual Core (your pick) on an A8N-E motherboard. Toss in nVidia's GeForce 7600, 11 bays for 5.25" hard drives, up to 4GB of DDR RAM, the Killer NIC ethernet card, and high-def sound that blind people can play to (oky, not in WoW, but WidowPC has an article about the blind playing shooters...).

And you get to pick between two lovely PC casings (the picture we've included), the TU-155 and RX-9, both of which look nothing like an Orc, but who's complaining? With that kind of power under the hood, grinding through Azeroth should be no problem. If you can pony up upwards of US$ 1,495 for the basic package, that is.

But tell you what, WidowPC. Throw in the option to upgrade to one of those sweet G80 mothers, and that's a deal that we'd take (even if you throw in the price differential for the G80). With that kind of power, we can then use the PC for more than World of Warcraft - like Crysis, FSX, C&C3, The Sims...

The Online Game tracking application software developers Xfire hava announced the finalists for the World Of Warcraft Summer Movie Contest which we reported on back in July. In case you missed the initial announcement, this contest involved you being able to make a movie using Blizzard's World of Warcraft and submitting it to Xfire in any one of the four categories: Short Film, Comedy, Music Video/Dance, and Drama/Action. It was held for entrants from the United States, Canada and Europe and winners will get $23,000 worth of prizes from big names such as AMD, XFX, Sennheiser and ZBoard up for grabs.

The deadline for the competition was September 15th 2006, almost a month ago and today marks the day that Xfire announce the finalists. Five outstanding contest finalists were selected from each the above categories and here's your chance to get involved in the competition. Gamers have until Monday, October 23, to select and vote for their favorites using the official website, with the contest winners due to be announced on Thursday, October 26. Stay tuned to QJ's brand new WoW blog for all the latest news on the worlds favourite MMORPG!

Visit: [WoW Summer Movie Contest Website]

If you've just gotten into machinima and you're wallowing in sadness because the doors of stardom is slowly closing down on you as the deadline for World of Warcraft's Summer Movie Contest gets nearer, then this little word from Blizzard and Xfire ought to take you out of your black hole - extended.

You've got two more weeks to polish, or even begin, your machinima masterpieces. You can submit it to any one of the four categories: Short Film, Comedy, Music Video/Dance, and Drama/Action. It is open to entrants from the United States, Canada and Europe. Treat the $23,000 prize from AMD, XFX, Sennheiser and Ideazon, plus a $5,000 enthusiast computer as your muse.

The new deadline for World of Warcraft's Summer Movie Contest is now on September 25. Finalists will be announced the same day; voting begins on October 9 and ends on October 23. Winners will be announced on October 27.

Thanks to Chris Placer for the tip.