Good Afternoon, Shack. I got my World of Warcraft Collector's Edition for Mists of Pandaria today and if you are familiar with Blizzard, then you know the usual inclusions in a CE. You get a cool coffee table art book, a mouse pad, a soundtrack, a behind the scenes video and the game on DVD. And when you finally enter your special decoder-ring serial number, you will log into the game and find each of your characters has a special in-game mount and in-game pet, perfect to test out with the new pet battle system.

Read more: A Chinese dragon for pet battles »

Good morning, Shack. It's the end of another week, and it is ending on somewhat of a high note. The Wii U launch date and price were announced yesterday and, unless you slept the day away, you were probably inundated with stories and features about Nintendo's new console (staying with Shacknews first, I hope).

Read more: Deadline day for various game projects »

Good morning, Shack. We'll kick the morning off right with an "I was wrong." I had speculated in yesterday's column that the new Obsidian game teased on their site was Dungeon Siege 4 based on the icon of a dragon eating its tail surrounding the number four. But it was indeed a countdown timer Obsidian is using to prepare for an announcement sometime on Friday. Speculation now revolves around a new IP, based on some Xs and dots embedded in the source of the page. No more guessing for me, but if I do turn out to be right, I will gloat later.

Read more: A better action-RPG and MMO mod tools »

Good morning, Shack, and happy Tuesday. I want to kick things off by pointing you too the latest juicy tidbits on Blizzard Entertainment from author David Craddock. For those who have been focusing more on NWS stuff instead of cool stories, David has teamed up with Shacknews to release new Blizzard stories every Monday to tease the upcoming week of content we will have on October 29 to help promote his book, Stay Awhile and Listen. In this latest entry, we find that Blizzard North seriously considered creating a Sports Division, and that the studio formerly known as Condor could have had a different owner.

Be sure to tune in for a new episode of Real Game Developers of California next week.

Read more: Wing Commander or Privateer? »

It was a bad weekend, Shack. Not that I should have expected any different from my perennial losers of sports teams. As a long-suffering Cleveland fan, my Browns and Indians lost late, and I fully expect my Cavaliers will regret choosing Dion Waiters with their first overall draft pick this year. The good news is all my teams should have high first round picks in their respective drafts next year. Cleveland would probably have better luck in Madden NFL 13, NBA 2K13 or Major League Baseball 2K12. I'm just so disgusted.

And now for some real gaming news.

Read more: Which World of Warcarft class should I play? »

It's Friday, Shackers, and a slow one at that. So it's time for another edition of the Friday Feeding**, where I open the floor for any topic you want to discuss. It can be anything from things in the industry to things on TV to what's going on at Shacknews. I'll kick things off with a few observations, and you readers can take it from there.

Read more: In support of Galactic War »

Almost to Friday, Shack, and as we get started, I want to give a special shout-out to Ubisoft for such wonderful goodwill they show to players when they make mistakes. And, when I say wonderful, I'm being sarcastic. On Friday, Alice was doing her usual look for Weekend Deals, and we came across the UbiShop's deal of the original Assassin's Creed for free. Since I had never played the original, I jumped on it, downloaded it and started playing. Pretty fun experience ... until yesterday.

Read more: Ubisoft's mistake costs me »

Good Morning, Shack. You may notice that your daily dose of gaming caffeine is a bit off the mark time-wise today and it is because I was doing some research late into the night regarding a topic that appeared in yesterday's column. I had queried readers about what studio they missed most, referring ideally to studios that had closed and no longer exist. One reader (EricZBA) commented, however, that he missed BioWare and Blizzard, noting that the companies aren't the same as the ones that brought us classics such as Knights of the Old Republic and Warcraft II.

Read more: Memories omit the flaws »

Welcome back from the long weekend, Shack. Hope you had a relaxing Labor Day. While I was supposed to have the holiday off, I still got a few hours in yesterday on a project I have been working on for more than two months, and you finally got to see the start of it yesterday.

Read more: Behind-the-scenes of a story »

Welcome to the Friday edition of the Morning Caffeinated, folks. Read it for your you morning jolt of gaming goodness to get you through the day leading into the glorious weekend.

I don't know about you, but the season premiere of Doctor Who is looking really good for tomorrow evening. If you've been in Chatty, then you know I've been enjoying the Pond Life prequel episodes. From the good Doctor alarming Rory and Amy into a sleepless night or the "Ood on the loo" (as Ambient80 so eloquently put it), they have been pretty entertaining and a good tease for season 7. The last one is up today and is a bit more ominous than the last four. Will be interesting to see how it all ties together with the Daleks tomorrow night.

Read more: Greenlighting more email »

Another morning, Shack, and only one more day until Friday. I'll start the day off with a hearty congratulations to the folks at Uber for getting Planetary Annihilation Kickstarted, and they are closing in on a cool million dollars. I hope they make their stretch goals because the funding stream has slowed a bit from the initial run of pledges, but the good news is they still have 15 days left. If you want to know why I'm excited, look no further than the massive interview we did on the project earlier this week.

And off we go, hitting on a subject that has always frustrated me: forced multiplayer.

Read more: Do your research on multiplayer »

It's Wednesday morning, Shack, and a hump day. First off, I want to offer a happy birthday to the gaming industry we know and love. It was around this date 40 years ago that the first home gaming system, the Magnavox Odyssey, was sold. Some good memories there, but I must admit that when I think I used to put things over the TV screen to simulate different venues for a little white square going back and forth, I cringe a little at my naivete. But fun is what we make it, right?

Some good topics today, but we'll start with how stupid some gamers can be.

Read more: Don't do this in Guild Wars 2 »

Good morning, Shack.

For those slightly confused by the name, don't be. This is still your Morning Keefinated, just rebranded for the folks who haven't yet started visiting Chatty and may not understand the history, but in the end, it's the same old stuff, same wrapper, same owner, but now with a word people will recognize.

I'm going to kick things off by telling you the tale of two interviews.

Read more: Wii U date? Oops »

Good morning, Shack!

It's the start of a new week, and time for the launch (or reformatting) of the Shack morning show. I'll be up bright and early each morning to bring you a Keefinated dose of sunshine, so put a cap on that coffee and get comfortable.

For those reading this for the first time, the Morning Keefinated has been appearing regularly in Shack Chatty for two weeks, and irregularly since I started in March. Now you get easy indexing, a list of tags (at the bottom) to quickly access popular Shack features and my semi-coherent rambling on a variety of topics, some of them being game-related. So let's get this rolling, albeit on a sad note.

Read more: So long, Commander Shepard »