WoW developer Jeff Kaplan this week revealed one of his influences in designing Wrath of the Lich King. Was it an obscure manga title? Perhaps some old-school science fiction, or underground fantasy novels? No, that influence turned out to be country singer Willie Nelson.

WoW fans uttered a collective “Uh, sorry, what?” when the Willie Nelson news broke. As is often the case, this turns out to be a rather humorous (and minor) affect on the game. There are some additional details here, and you can find Willie performing one of the songs that influenced the game right here (yes, really).

Perhaps the most depressing interview in years was granted this week by none other than Bill Roper, the designer/developer behind Diablo I and II and, more recently the, um, somewhat less successful MMO, Hellgate: London. It's a long piece, in which Roper (who's always been a good guy) describes his disappointment with the failures of Hellgate, the financial pressures of running a game company, and the necessity of dealing with the criticsim of players. Usually, interviews with Roper are upbeat, humorous affairs, but this eight page epic is more like a drawn-out Greek tragedy. I read most of it. I had to stop when tears smeared the ink on the page and, you know, I just couldn't go on.

The original interview (if you can bear it) can be found over at 1UP, and a somewhat lighter synopsis (with a bonus video, featuring Roper's musical group, the Poxy Boggards) can be found at here.

On a somewhat happier note, it appears that one of the new mounts in Wrath of the Lich King will, in fact, be a motorcycle. We don't make this stuff up, folks.

In what can be described as the most perplexing story in virtual space, it appears that a gold farmer has had his day in court, and won. A Chinese court has ordered that Zhou Xujun should have all his characters and items returned to him since it couldn't be proved he was actually a gold farmer.

And last, but not least, comes the story of what may be the ultimate mod for WoW. It's called the 'Your Mom' mod, and it pretty much acts as you might suspect. When you're asked any question in the game, when someone is pestering you, when a noob asks you for gold, or when someone is just smarting off, this mod comes to your rescue. With a simple press of a button the mod responds, “Your mom!”

Nicely done; I'm a big fan of innovative social mods in the game. :)

That's all for this week, folks. For day-to-day MMO news (with a nice thick slice of humor), you can check out our daily offerings over at WanderingGoblin.com. And next week, I'll have another write-up here at IncGamers dishing on all the latest, greatest, and quirkiest stories in MMO gaming. Ciao!

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