The World of Warcraft GMs are watching and listening to you on their servers to help maintain fair and quality play, but in a recent incident the GM’s role went above and beyond. As learned from Loot Ninja today, a teenager was chatting with a WoW GM online recently and the teen made suicidal comments in an effort to play on the GM’s sympathies hoping to get some loot.

A 17-year-old Fairfield Twp. teen pretended to be suicidal when he became frustrated with an online video game, Fairfield Twp. police reported.

The teen…typed that "he was suicidal and that the game is the only thing he has to live for," according to the report.

The company representative called 911.

The GM did the smart thing and called the cops in the off-chance the kid was truly suicidal, so of course the police and paramedics show up at the young man’s home.

The juvenile told police it was a joke "to try to get what he wanted for the game," according to the report. He was then handcuffed and placed in a patrol car.

Isn’t this just sad?

Let’s hope the young man has learned his lesson that you have to work and invest something of yourself to get ahead in the world, that part of growing up is trying and failing, learning from your errors and growing from it. But it really seems that this teen’s attempt at ‘pity loot’ is a classic symptom of the typical "Trophy Kids" (aka "Generation Y") that have been raised to think everyone is a winner and even losers deserve a trophy.

Well, the loser of this story has won himself a minor criminal record.

The news article originates from the Middletown Journal and has the full story.

A punter for the American Football Team Minnesota Vikings says that he loves playing World of Warcraft so much that he’s tossed around the idea of changing his name. His name (for today at least) is Chris Kluwe, his teammates know of his love of WoW and they’ve already given him an appropriate nickname but he is considering taking that name to the next level.

Here’s his discussion of the topic on his weekly radio program (original article from Star Tribune):

“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.”

He’s doing pretty well for himself. He recently renegotiated his contract for $8.3 million over the next 5 seasons.

According to his wikipedia page, he plays a troll rogue on the Kil’jaeden sever, keep an eye out for him. It’s unknown whether he plays a female or male char

[via Gaming Angels]

I’ve seen several different DIY posts for changing the LED color of the Blackberry Pearl trackball.  Some informative, some not very much so.  After some experimentation on my own, I managed to make a simple modification to my Blackberry Pearl 8130 trackball to change the LED color.  I must say it looks rather nice, and adds some flair to an otherwise drab looking smartphone.

My Blackberry Pearl 8130:

Before attempting this mod, I would recommend that you power off your phone!  First step is to remove the trackball assembly.  Use a pair of tweezers to hook into a small slot in the chrome retainer ring, located directly above the #2 key on the keypad.  Gently pry up the ring until the ring pops loose, and remove it, exposing the trackball assembly underneath.

Set aside the chrome ring, in a safe place.  It is plastic, so make sure not to bend or break the catches on the underside.  Use the tweezers to remove the trackball assembly - it’s self contained, so don’t worry about it falling apart.  Set the assembly aside along with the chrome ring.  Now you should see this:

Now comes the easy part!  The LED that lights up the trackball is on the lower right, indicated in the picture by the bright red circle.  Grab yourself a fine tipped permanent marker (I used a Staedtler Lumocolor fine tip in Red) and lightly coat the LED in your chosen color.  As a side note, you can apply several coats of the same color to achieve darker shades of the same color to your desire.  Just make sure you give a few minutes to dry between each application.  I applied four coats to give myself a nice scarlet red color.  After your final coat dries, put everything back together!  Make sure you settle the trackball assembly in all the way, and align the Chrome ring in the socket the same way it was when you removed it.

That’s it!  Turn your phone on, and you should see something like this:

Congrats on your newly modded phone :)  I personally really like the dark red color because it gives me that “HAL 9000″ type feeling!  Now if you want to change the color, follow the same steps as before, and use a q-tip with a light application of rubbing alcohol to gently remove the marker ink.  Let dry, and apply the new color of your choice.

If you try this, be sure to tell us about your experience!

What is this, you ask?  Some lame attempt at chauvinism?  An awesome codex of life for your fellow man?  No, my friends.  This is a book that carefully details the rules that all Bros must live by; a subtle collection of clarity and wisdom passed down through the ages by your fellow Bro, and all contained within the pages of a single book.  This lexicon of empowerment can help you solve such situations as “A Bro will, in a timely manner, alert his Bro to the existance of a chick fight.” or “A Bro only claims a fart after first accusing another Bro (Exception: “Pull my finger.”).”

I asked my wife to get this for me during the recent holidays, because I felt it was time to rebolster my “Inner Bro” - He has been beaten down and oppressed for a while now, and now I feel it is time to let him shine through!  Women, buy this for your man!  Men, embolden yourselves, and claim your Bro status for all eternity

Based off the musings of Barney Stinson in “How I met your mother” TV show.

Buy this at Amazon.

Here’s one of the best machinima videos I’ve ever seen: “The Craft of War: Blind“.

I don’t have much in the way of constructive criticism other than the transition in music early on didn’t seem appropriate, but the song used for a majority of the vid (Hide & Seek by Namie Amuro) added to the vibe the animator was trying to set.

The lighting was spot on, the use of WoW models was brilliant, the SFX are great, the plot had me hooked and I’m anxiously awaiting to see more on this assassin vs. Dragon theme.

The Craft of War: BLIND from percula on Vimeo.