Professional football player Chris Kluwe, punter for the Minnesota Vikings, recently raised his love for World of Warcraft on his weekly radio program. So much so, he floated the idea of changing his name to Chris “World of Warcraft” Kluwe. In fact, he adds, people have come to start referring to him as Christ “Warcraft” Kluwe, a nickname I personally think sounds a hell of a lot tougher. Kluwe plays a troll roge on the US Kil’jaeden server, though I’m not sure if it’s a male or a female. Kluwe’s remarks from his recent show:

“I think more people like to hear me talk about playing video games than football,” said Kluwe, an expert at many video games. “I’ve played video games since I was 4 years old. I play them a lot more than I kick a football. I kick the ball about 45 minutes a day. I play video games about five or six hours a day. But that’s OK. I don’t watch TV.”

“Back when [Bengals receiver] Chad Johnson changed his name to Ocho Cinco, I told the guys at 93X that I was going to change my name to Chris ‘World of Warcraft,’ ” Kluwe said. “They said that’s too long. So they started calling me Chris ‘Warcraft.’ I could make a lot of money if I changed my name to that.”

So the big news this past week was undoubtedly the announcement of Star Wars: The Old Republic, the upcoming MMO based on the Knights of the Old Republic franchise, developed by Bioware and LucasArts. SWtOR takes place a few hundreds years after the end of Knights of the Old Republic, but continues the Stars Wars storyline in no doubt great ways, considering Bioware’s talents at developing massive storylines with quality gameplay, we can only imagine where they could take such huge possibilities as an ever-expanding world based on the Star Wars backstory.

But with the forthcoming release comes some big questions. First, what about that other Stars Wars MMO? What was it again….oh yeah….Star Wars Galaxies. Is it sticking around? Yes states LucasArts exec Tom Nichols, who sees no reason the two games can’t exist together. It seems they still have big plans for Galaxies, plans they wish to pursue aggressively should The Old Republic be a big enough hit to revive the original Sony-backed Star Wars MMO.

But then comes the whopper of a question. Can SWtOR really take on World of Warcraft? EA games president Frank Gibeau believes so and we certainly think World of Warcraft will be in a run for it’s money.

“Just look at the base of Star Wars fans, plus what BioWare can do. Trust me: we want to win. EA’s reputation is for wanting to win. This is going to be a powerful category and there’s lots of ways to compete in this category. [Blizzard] created a much larger opportunity for everybody else, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to stay that way.”

The crazy folks behind Mana Energy Potion wanted to know what it would be like to the same distance in the real world, as they do in World of Warcraft, so they did what any self-respecting geek would, they hooked up treadmills to their computers and thus WoW. Lots of duct tape, computers, custom scripts, sore legs and wacky costumes later, they blessed us with their video documentary, following their trip through Azeroth.

Toyata goes Viral, by placing a Toyota truck into World of Warcraft and overdubbing it with a humorous homage to Leeroy Jenkins. I wonder though, how many level 70 mages would drive a Tundra 4×4?

In an interview early last week, Senator Ray Tenorio, a republican representative on Guam’s 15-member unicameral legislature, revealed that he is an avid gamer, specifically online role-playing games, starting his gaming career with Diablo 2, later switching to World of Warcraft. Currently playing a level 70 Dwarf Priest named Paleray on the Silvehand server. He also pros in Herbalism and Alchemy, but, Guam? Also, I’d be anxious to learn of Mr. Tenorio’s stance on the current anti-gaming sentiment which is tearing through the United States political machine (of which Guam is ‘protected’ by).

Read more: Senator from Guam, lvl 70 priest

Blizzard today announced its second gaming convention, BlizzCon 2007, giving addicts World of Warcraft fans everywhere collective wood over what convention-only pet they can get this year. Taking place August third and fourth in Anaheim, California, attendees can expect discussion panels with Blizzard developers, autograph sessions, competitions, tournaments and lots of people dressed as elves and orcs. All I’m waiting for is some form of new announcement regarding Starcraft 2 (beta rumored to be announced in South Korea soon) or maybe World of Diablo? Hmmm HMMMMM???

Read more: Blizzard announces Blizzcon 2007

Rupture, the social network for World of Warcraft players run by Napter-founder Shawn Fanning has gone live, allowing users to meet with real life people who play the most popular MMO in the universe. Rupture allows you to automatically publish your character and guild profiles to your profile page, as well as share pictures, chat with friends and recruit new people into your fold.

Read more: Rupture

World of Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment today announced that worldwide subscriptions to it’s monster MMORPG have surpassed the 8 million mark. A fitting announcement 1 week before their much anticipated expansion, Burning Crusade, which debuts on January 16th. Prediction: expect a global meltdown of servers as users attempt logging into Blizzard servers all at one time. Have fun!

Read more: World of Warcraft surpasses 8 million subscribers worldwide

Oh how I wait anxiously for a Battlestar Galactica MMORPG, but, until that highly unlikely day dawns, I’ll have to live with user-created machine in order to live those dreams out. Here, we’ve got the opening credits of the amazingly sci-nerd television show, recreated from within World of Warcraft. I especially love the multiple cyclon clones and the “Six” model.

See more: World of Battlestar @ Machinima

Many, many, many, many many people are losing their shit in anticipation of World of Warcraft’s upcoming expansion, The Burning Crusade. Dropping January 16, 2007 in the US and EU, The Burning Crusade is increasing the level cap to 70, the killer feature will most certainly suck WoW’s certainly reverse WoW’s slowly increasing burnrate, along with many new spells and talents for each class and two new playable races (Blood Elves and Draenai), among many other additions.

Watch Blizzards somewhat recently released intro for The Burning Crusades after the jump..

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