World of Warcraft Credit Card...priceless!

A new form of e-currency is almost upon us with the announcement from Blizzard that they are offering World of Warcraft themed Visa cards that turn your real world spending into WOW virtual world game time. The card will take 1% of what you charge and turn it into minutes that you can use to visit Azeroth. So, if you want to rack up a lot of time, hand this to your mom/wife/sister when she makes her next mall run.

This comes on the heels of The Sims credit card, which will likely be something similar. MAKE magazine predicted something of this ilk a year ago, and it looks like they were on the money. Now if they can turn our real world purchases into WOW money you can get that uber cool sword that costs a bajillion WOW dollars. Have fun storming the castle!

WOW and Guitar Hero 2 added to World Series of Video Games

The world of competitive gaming has traditionally been the realm of the first-person or squad-based shooter, but the World Series of of Video Games is changing that by adding World of Warcraft and Guitar Hero II to this year’s competition.

The addition of Guitar Hero really opens the competition up to a much wider audience, and should also make the event much more watchable for casual gamers–it can be hard to track the action of a fierce round of Counter Strike, but anyone can tell if you’re screwing up "Crazy On You." The PvP action of WoW will get a slight tweak for the sake of the competition: teams will be 3-on-3, as opposed to the usual 5-on-5.

Also on the roster are Quake 4, Fight Night Round 3 (o…kay….), and the obligatory Halo 2, Counter Strike, and Call of Duty. Here’s hoping they skip the ungodly stupid Miss WSVG contest this time, although it certainly did provide some amusing controversy and comedy last year.