Just to let you, my friends, know, my latest article is live on WoW Insider.

What I’m doing is a two part series revisiting my old post about bear tanking strategies for multiple mobs.

This time, I decided to break it down, and the first article focuses solely on how threat in a party works.

The second article will deal with all of the goodies bear tanks can bring to the party.

To irritate TJ, I’ll let you know that “I’ve received thousands of emails asking me my opinions on bear tanking and holding threat”.

Actually, I’ve had like two. Maybe three. Over months.

Still, I think that WoW Insider gets enough of a mix of new player and seasoned veteran… and crank ass, that the posts will appeal to a wide variety of folks. And piss off even more, I’m sure.

 So go on over and check out how Threat works… as if any of my readers don’t already know.

Can I haz format wars?

Figures the biggest news on my first full day at the new site ain’t WoW related… it’s all about the inner geek.

Engadget just threw up the news (and if this is old to you, I apologise) that Toshiba has officially thrown in the towel and given up on HD-DVD.

That’s it folks, the evil empire has won. Blu-Ray is your choice, your only choice, and nothing but your choice.

Why is the word ‘choice’ even used in these things? From everything I’ve seen while following this battle royale, HD-DVD was a higher quality format, and their players were cheaper for consumers.

But Sony ‘leveraged’ (God how I hate that word, can we just be honest and call it ‘applied financial blackmail and intimidation’) their many different content licenses to ensure that the distribution networks were given a lot of incentives… both carrot and stick… to commit to exclusive agreements with Blu-Ray.

Well, it doesn’t matter anymore. Sony won. Blu-Ray is our only future choice for high definition disc content.

I was really hoping the multi-format discs, with HD-DVD on one side and Blu-Ray format on the other, were going to simply make the choice null and void. Let us choose which we liked in terms of hardware and format. Let us choose with our money as consumers, rather than take the decision away from us with behind-the-scenes backroom exclusivity agreements. Sadly, this was not to be.

But the good news, and it is good news, is that those of us that never committed to buying either format can now rest easy knowing that, if we want a high definition player, our choice is now “which Blu-Ray player or PS3 do I choose”, rather than “which format do I hope like hell will last more than one year”.

Maybe, if I start saving now, I’ll be able to afford a player to go with my HD TV in… hmmm… 2010?

Isn’t that when we make second contact with alien life?

Damn, I am behind the curve, lol.