When the World of Warcraft edition Dell XPS M1730 laptop was first introduced, we imagined that a lot of you guys weren't able to purchase it because of its rather high price. Dell, however, has decided to slash around a thousand bucks from this gadget's price. Know more about this development after the jump!

Here's something for the Christmas list of World of Warcraft fans: in a joint project, Dell and Blizzard brings you the Dell XPS M1730, World of Warcraft Edition, the bigger badder brother of their WoW XPS M1710. The WoW Notebook PC is emblazoned with custom World of Warcraft artwork and comes with a ton of extras. Find out more in the full article.

Time Warner Cable's (TWC) Road Runner Internet service in New York City may have taken a turn for the worse as complaints of one of its cable Internet service rose to a peak today. Blizzard received distressing feedback on Time Warner's Road Runner service, which reportedly ended in random pockets of lag in World of Warcraft.

 

All in all, the issues severely degraded the gameplay experience for a fraction of the U.S. realms' players. People were led to believe that the issues experienced could have something to do with TWC's shift to "packet shaping," although they were quickly denied by representatives of the company.

"We don't have a network management policy called packet shaping," spokespersion Alex Dudley told Shacknews. He remained firm in the belief that the company would not implement any changes that would affect gameplay in Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft.

In contrast, however, investigative Internet surfers identified a portion of a press release gathered from connection technology site Broadband Reports. The text definitely stated the term "packet shaping" and implicated the name of Time Warner and the announcement of the technology's release around the U.S.

According to posters in the forum where the partial press release was discovered, the text information was e-mailed to them by customer service representatives in light of the recent increase of service complaints. But in a final note, Dudley has assured that Time Warner Cable is looking into the issue and promises that the problems will be resolved as soon as possible.

Let us go far as to say that an article like this had to be written, and we're glad that someone actually did. While blogger and PC geek dp was as avid a gamer as any of those who remain of the multi-genre gaming enthusiasts, it's not hard to see where his sentiments are stemming from.

As part of the social subculture in the world, LAN parties used to be the pinnacle of community gatherings and social structuring that allowed gamers to connect on a real inter-personal level. But now, as broadband weaved its way to the mass market, the number of LAN party attendees soon dwindled to nothing.

It was pretty fine at first, of course, as most FPS or RTS gamers who couldn't win a match (even if their lives depended on it) were noticeably the first to go. But then even the mainstream LAN gamers suddenly opted out, seeking out human flesh player pwnage glory in the likes of MMORPG PvP games. The end of the LAN party was at hand.

While broadband's 2Mbps and even 4Mbps is nothing close to the mainstream LAN party's 100Mbps (or if you've got the bucks to blow - 1Gbps), gamers opted for the laggy, increasingly unimaginative but virtual worlds that MMO games had to offer. Players didn't mind not knowing the person that they were playing with, as long as they could be played with. And then players were able to hide behind masks of alter-egos, even if it confused some of the more practical players.

So now the once-mainstream, now-brainwashed gamers spend around eight hours a day crawling around dungeons with pixelized versions of themselves, hacking away at other pixelized versions of monsters with a sorry excuse for AI. Soon, those gamers couldn't pay for their own Internet connections that they soon returned to LAN parties, only to connect their PC to the high-speed network and fire up World of Warcraft. The nerve!

Thanks to some charitable PC enthusiasts who have the audacity to shell out their money for a great LAN gaming session, or even well known game developer companies such as id Software, LAN parties still have a fighting chance to be epic milestones in the gaming community. The upcoming QuakeCon is one of the world's most awaited and celebrated LAN parties, and it's probably the only last refuge of the LAN party culture. Competitive games such as the Electronic Sports World Cup and the World Cyber Games need this mechanic, and so it's not a big deal on their part.

So for game enthusiasts that are still out there, here's our calling to revive the gaming culture's biggest social achievement in world history. Let's return it to it's former glory and even seek out to bring the FPS-heads from consoles into our fold. After all, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 are all capable of wired and wireless networking. And if it's not hard to ask, can we get more cross-multiplayer titles? Please?