Ask your average gamer to name a MMORPG and odds are the name World of Warcraft will be blurted out. WoW is and has been the most popular MMORPG around for years and it continues to gain popularity as new expansion packs are released.

The second expansion pack for WoW is launching next month and is called Wrath of the Lich King. Blizzard Entertainment says that WoW has now reached 11 million subscribers worldwide just as the beta for the next expansion pack is ending.

I am a big fan of racing and driving simulation games. Titles like GTR, Need for Speed and more are some of my favorite games. I am all for anything that makes for more realism when playing, especially things like force feedback wheels and racing seats.

Fanatec already offers a force feedback Porsche branded racing wheel and a budget wheel stand for driving sim fans. Fanatec has now announced a new racing cockpit for the truly hard-core racing sim fan. The product is called the Renn Sport Cockpit and is designed especially for force feedback racing wheels.

The casual gaming market is huge and one of the fastest growing of all gaming genres. We have all probably played casual games before when the boss wasn’t around or on a break for those who don’t smoke. One of the most popular casual games came from PopCap and is called Bejeweled.

PopCap has now introduced a new version of Bejeweled called Bejeweled Twist. Rather than simply moving one jewel on the game board at a time like the original the new game lets player move a 2×2 section of the screen to make matches of three or more blocks.

Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips has built imself an awesome looking Guitar Hero guitar mod that marries a Korg Kaoss pad, working GH controller and a white Gibson double-neck guitar. He’s even using this beast to film an 8-second spot for NBC. Okay, so why did he create it? Because of those damn kids. “there’s a lot of kids out there that think this is actually how you play guitar now — that you just press a series of four or five buttons and and sort of different sort of sequences and it makes every sound that the guitar can make,”

You can check out a video here. The Kaoss pad is used to control a synth tone that can be modulated by the five colored neck buttons. No word on whether he’s using it on tour or not, but it will be playing the three-note NBC chime in a promo spot. Pretty cool.

Faux rockers have waited long and hard for this day. At long last, Activision’s next installment of the Guitar Hero franchise is officially available. With Activision’s formal announcement, you’ll be able to pick one up and once again rock out. There’s a few different bundles that range from the game alone which will cost $49.99 to $59.99, the game and guitar together will be $89.99 to $99.99 and the band kit will run you $179.99 to $189.99. Since most of you already rock a plastic Axe, it will be a choice between the first and the last.

Video games are a big business with top-tier video game sales often outdoing the hottest films box office take. When the video game industry started getting large back in 1995 the inaugural E3 or Electronic Entertainment Expo was launched.

For most of its life E3 was associated with massive booths, tons of games, game geeks everywhere and hoards of booth babes. Then in 2007, E3 changed for the worse. Only journalists could get in and even then journalists had to be invited by a game firm showing at the show.

These days it’s unusual to hear about a new game console that isn’t from Sony, MS or Nintendo. But it looks like we have a new contender from Envizions Computer Entertainment. This is their first console, the Evo “Smart Console” which is available for pre-order. Interestingly, the console itself is basically a Linux-based computer.

Some specs include an overclocked Athlon 64×2 5600 processor and an ATI Radeon 3200 graphics card. Envizions sees the console being used as a development platform with a “cloud” computing system. What that means is that developers would have to make games specifically for the Evo “Smart Console.” Could that happen? They think so. The new console should ship on November 20th for about $600 and you can pre-order one now with a $100 deposit.

Like any geek that was young in the late 1970′s and early 1980′s I was a huge Star Wars fan. Over the years, the newer films in the franchise and most of the games based on Star Wars left me unsatisfied. At points, it feels like George is whoring out our childhood icons.

The one video game that I have played in the Star Wars universe that I really liked was Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. LucasArts and BioWare have announced that they are developing a new MMO game based in the same time span as Knights that will put players in the shoes of different Star Wars characters.

When BioShock first hit store shelves for the PC and Xbox 360 it proved to be one of the most popular games around. The PC version of the game had its share of early bugs, but the game overall was great. It offers fun play and a very original storyline.

2K Games has announced that BioShock for the PS3 is now available to purchase. The PS3 version may be late to the game, but 2K promises some exclusive PS3 content to make up for it. One of the exclusives are challenge rooms that will be available for download at a later date.

Over the summer, an unknown company called GoLive2 announced what at first glanced sounded like a cool product called Stix. Stix was basically Wii-like motion controls for the PC. I tested a set of the Stix 200 controllers and found they weren’t that good.

GoLive2 is back with a new MMO racing game designed for the Stix controller titled GoLive2 Racing. Let’s be honest about this, the chances of the game being decent are slim to none when you consider how poorly the Stix controllers themselves functioned.

Some of us miss the days when you had to actually venture out of the house and head to the arcade to play games. Ah, brings back memories of poorly lit, smoke filled rooms filled with the beeps and blips of virtual deaths and level starts. Quarters flowed like wine, which we did not drink, but poured willingly down the slotted throats of our electronic masters. The Optime Strategies video gaming table will take you back in time my friend.

It’s powered by a built in PC and comes preloaded with over 1700 vintage games including all your favorites like Donkey Kong, Pac-Man and Frogger, all made possible by software developed by a group called MAME. It’s the real deal. The graphics and music files have been downloaded directly from the original arcade versions making them 100% authentic. The only way it gets more authentic is if you spill some beer on it and add a cigarette burn. The price is the only thing that is lame at $5,180.

September games sales actually showed the first decline since March of 2006 according to the NPD Group, however things are still not looking too tough for the gaming industry. September of 2007 saw a huge hike in sales due to the release of Halo 3 which is contrasted by slightly lower sales this last September of 2008.

The drop is sales was not the only change of events for September, either. Due to the price cut of the Xbox 360 models, Microsoft saw a significantly noticeable boost in sales for its console from 195k units sold in August, to 347k units sold in September of this year, bringing it ahead of Sony’s PS3. Microsoft dropped the price to $50 less than the Wii and half of what the PS3 costs, making it the least expensive current-generation game console on the market.

Meet the new arcade driving cabinet named Octane 120, from Dream Arcades. It comes with a built-in keg-o-rator, the beer tap placed conveniently on the dash next to the steering wheel. Yeah, that’s a great driving habit to cultivate. That way when you get into a real car, you’ll be good and ready to drunk drive, your skills having been honed to perfection. Seriously, most of us aren’t that stupid, but there is that 1% out there that somehow haven’t been purged from society from eating lead paint and the like.

This thing is great for video game parties and would be the center of attention. Your game throne if you will. You get a 120-inch projection screen, a home theater PC with 12 racing games pre-loaded, a PS3-compatible steering wheel if you want to hook one up, and a 5.1 surround system all for $7,000.

Your game console makes you pay long after the initial purchase and it’s not just the cost of games. It’s an energy hog. That’s why Energy Star is finally ready to lay down some guidelines on energy consumption for gaming consoles. If a console wants to earn the Energy Star logo/sticker of approval, it will have to use less than one watt when turned ‘off’, and less than 5 watts in standby mode.

The devices are also required to automatically power down after sitting idle for an hour. To top it all off, set-top boxes and DVD/Blu Ray playback functions have to come within 10% of the current Energy Star requirements. Energy Star is a joint effort of the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy. The manufacturers aren’t required to meet those standards and frankly I can’t see them losing sleep over it.

This must be how Stormtroopers get their game on, since it matches their armor pretty nicely. It really is a nice piece of work. Created by Hailrazer on the Ben Heck Forums in about 90 hours. He used a kids toy called “Lazer Doodle” for the case.

It reminds us of what used to be. And it reminds us of the Dreamcast’s short life-span and the untimely demise of what some consider to be one of the greatest video game systems of all time. It features a Sony PSOne 5″ LCD screen, an InterAct Quantum Fighterpad controller, stereo speakers and a battery pack which lets him play for about 2.5 hours per charge. Nice!