That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. Our own Nicholas Deleon hit level 75 with his Blood Elf Warlock yesterday in World of Warcraft.

Only five more levels to go until, “I’ll have nothing to do anymore,” said Deleon.

Deleon played for roughly 11 hours yesterday, “with maybe a 15 minute soup break.”

His in-game player, Garrinchao, “is supposed to be an allusion to a famous soccer player, Garrincha. Turns out it’s the name of a bird in Brazil, a Garrinchao,” quipped Deleon.

Needless to say, we’re all very proud.

Garrinchao @ Aggramar [WoWArmory.com]

Short version: A comfortable mouse whose main gimmick will take hours upon hours of dedication on your part to fully exploit.

Like a dork, I looked up the word “naga” in Wikipedia, and it turns out that it refers to “a deity or class of entity or being, taking the form of a very great snake—specifically the King Cobra, found in Hinduism and Buddhism.” That would explain the snake-like logo of the Razer Naga ($80, available now), a new mouse that’s aimed at people who play MMOs, specifically World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online. The biggest feature: 12 buttons on the left-hand side of the mouse.

Unlike last year’s SteelSeries World of Warcraft Gaming Mouse, the Razer Naga doesn’t come with the full Blizzard licensing. If that matters to you you’re a fool. And also unlike said SteelSeries mouse, the buttons here don’t stick like an old Sega Genesis controller after using it for a few hours.

It works, out of the box, with both Windows (tested on Windows 7) and Mac OS X (tested on Snow Leopard). Thank you, Razer. No need for my fellow Mac users to spring for a third-party driver just to use the mouse!

So let’s do this. I tested the mouse using World of Warcraft over a period of two weeks. That may seem excessive, but this mouse absolutely has a learning curve. The documentation that comes with the mouse—I actually read the instruction manual!—says to expect up to 18 hours to get used to the mouse. Yes, 18 hours. As Doug said in our chatroom, you might as well learn Russian.

The mouse’s raison d’être is the 12 buttons on the left-hand side, where your thumb would normally rest. The 12 buttons are designed to replace any number of keyboard keys that you’d use to play the game. You know, 1 is regular attack, then 2 through whatever for your spells and whatnot.

My latest character, an Affliction Blood Elf Warlock, has the following key-mapping:

1: Shoot

2: Shadow Bolt

3: Immolate

4: Corruption

5: Curse of Agony

6: Life Tap

7: Drain Life

8: Health Funnel

9: Drain Soul

0: Rain of Fire

-: Fear

=: Howl of Terror

These spells and abilities are mapped over to the 1-12 buttons on the mouse.

Razer has created an AddOn for both games that rearranges your on-screen icons, à la Bartender, to better visually correlate the 12 mouse buttons to your spells and abilities. (Here’s a screenshot of the interface AddOn. It’s the squares on the right-hand side.)

As I said, using the 12 buttons effectively will absolutely take you several hours, especially if you’ve been playing the game for a long time. It’s like trying to write your name with your left hand when you’re a righty.

I had gotten used to running close to a mob, then taking taking my middle finger off the “W” key, then hitting 4, 5, 6, 3, and 1 till the mob died. (See the above key-mapping for what those numbers translate to.) Now all of a sudden your left hand stays on the WASD keys, while your right thumb has to navigate the little button patch on the mouse.

After about of week with the new playing scheme, I had more or less acclimated myself. I now quest with the 12 buttons just fine, but I still find myself going back to the ol’ keyboard when PVPing. I find that the frantic nature of PVP doesn’t really lend itself to the 12 buttons. Practice makes perfect, of course, and you may be more patient than I am, but I couldn’t get used to PVPing with the 12 buttons even after several days.

And to allay a fear I read somewhere, no, I really didn’t find that pushing one of the 12 buttons would cause the mouse to move a great deal, if at all. It’s not as if you need to exact an incredible amount of force on the buttons to get them to click.

So it’s a fine mouse, yes, but you really do need to be prepared to fully re-train yourself on how to play the game.

Is it any better than using the plain on’ keyboard keys? Meh, I wouldn’t say so, and I expect that many of you are already used to your current setup. Still, it’s a fine mouse in its own right, and its use to you is 100 percent dependent on your willingness to learn how to effectively use it.

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Ultimate WoW Guide

Have You Heard Of WoW?

World of Warcraft or WoW as it is more commonly known, is a MMORPG which is an acronym for “Massively Multi player On-line Role-Playing Game”. In an MMORPG, thousands of players from around the World exist in the same on-line game world at the same time. They abandon the real world to undertake heroic quests in a land of fantastic adventures

The game has two warring factions: the Alliance and the Horde. When you have decided which side to play there are nine classes of character to choose from: Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock and Warrior.Each class has its own unique set of talents and abilities. Depending on the build you choose for your character, their talent tree can be DPS, tanking or healing.

There are 10 races to play: Dwarves, Gnomes, Humans, Night Elves, Draenei, Orcs, Tauren, Trolls, Undead and Blood Elves and many professions your character can play: Engineering, Mining, Skinning, Tailoring, First Aid Fishing, Herbalism, Leather working, Jewel crafting, Inscription, Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Cooking and Enchanting. (Note: Within the Rogue class there are two unique secondary professions: Lock Picking and Poisons).

There are thousands of quests to complete with many different kinds of weapons and transportation. In addition, there are four types of Realms which will be the very first decision you will have to make before playing World of Warcraft. The aim of the game is money and reputation which will enhance your power and skill. A good place to start is to get the excellent WoW Ultimate Guide to help you through this mystical world.

Within the game itself there are two “modes” of character:

• Player Characters (which are controlled by real people)

• Non-Player Characters (which are controlled by the games’ software)

So you can find yourself playing a “real” person as well as the games created opponent.
Your character can earn copper, silver or gold to fund your adventures. In addition you will need to work on the different skills for your character.

There are a whole host of guides around and all do pretty much what they claim but some do it better by having additional features such as forums and members areas which help you level your character from 1-70 more easily. Many also have detailed gold guides and the latest up to date information on, for example, Wrath of the Lich King which takes you up to level 80! However, with that said, players are more than free to progress at their own pace and pit their skills against multiple on-line opponents. But if you would like a Best WoW Guides or more information on where to find WoW resource’s just click the link.

World of Warcraft is Blizzard Entertainment’s 4th game in the Warcraft series and is now played by over 10 million people world wide! It starts 4 years after the setting of Warcraft III in the world of Azeroth.

The Horde and Alliance are opposing factions locked in a struggle for control of the land – and neither side is backing down. Alliance and Horde players maybe able to do battle with each other, but they cannot trade or even talk to each other so if you have friends that would like to play, make sure you belong to the same factions!

A good place to start your World of Warcraft quest is to get a good guide: WoW Levelling Guide.

Really, really big news today for World of Warcraft players. Today’s the day that Zygor’s leveling guide hits version 2.0. Leveling guides are used by players to hit level 80 (or, soon, 85) as quickly as possible so they can more quickly enjoy the endgame content. Think of them like GameFAQs or the old school Brady Games or Versus Books strategy guides.

I’ve used a handful of guides over the years, and I’ve liked Zygor’s the best. Granted, I’ve never hit 80 yet on any of my characters—my latest alt is a level 49 Blood Elf Warlock—so what do I know, but the Zygor guides were pretty handy for automatically updating quest objectives as you moved along. Handy map markers, detailed directions, etc. It’s a fine guide. A bit pricey at $60 for Horde or Alliance (they’re sold separately, I’m afraid) but if you’re committed to dinging 80 then it’s not a bad investment.

So what’s new in version 2.0? Well, judging by the Web site (I haven’t grabbed the new version yet since the Internet connection at the TechCrunch office in New York is hot garbage, and I don’t have the game installed on my laptop)

• It’s updated to include content (quests and the like) up to patch 3.2.2a (the most recent one, of course)

• There’s some sort of new UI that’s customizable

• A talent advisor. Sort of, “what talent build should I use when I’m grinding/when I’m running an instance?” etc. (Not sure if that’s a pre-order bonus or not)

• Totally complies with Blizzard’s add-on rules. It’s just a leveling guide, no different than Quest Helper or anything!

I think that’s it. Like I said, I can’t try it out till I get home late tonight, and that’s provided the Web site comes back online so I can download it in the first place!

I’m pretty excited, I have to admit. I want to ding 80 before Christmas, which should be easy enough (again, level 49 right now) but my play schedule is pretty wacky.

Yes, WoW is more or less the reason I get out of bed in the morning. Sad but true!

It was only a few days ago that I gently chided Apple fans, telling them to “hold their horses” with respect to Snow Leopard’s release date. One Blizzcon later, not only have I re-rolled another character (a Warlock), I’m now trolling message boards, comment pages, and the like looking for more and more information about Cataclysm, the upcoming expansion pack. The most important bit of information still eludes me: its release date.

Watching Blizzcon—thanks to my Uncle Justin, wink-wink—you got the feeling that Cataclysm is a lot further along than Wrath of the Lich King was when it was first announced, back at Blizzcon 2007. (My, how time flies!) The game was already on display in playable form, allowing conference attendees to experience its joys some time before its release.

That’s just the thing, though. If the expansion is already this far along in development, and with Wrath of the Lich King’s storyline set to terminate with a rapidly approaching patch, 3.3, which is currently rumored for a Christmas/New Years release, then how long do we have to wait till we can roll Worgen?

Blizzard has already said “2010” (along with StarCraft II) when asked when the expansion will debut, but “2010” is awfully vague. If you assume that Blizzard doesn’t want to wait much longer than the average 3-4 months in between patches, then that leaves you with a first-half 2010 Cataclysm release. That is, three to four months after the release of the storyline-ending Wrath of the Lich King 3.3 patch.

There’s other reasons to believe in a first-half 2010, and it has to do with other games. What would Blizzard gain by letting WoW grow stale when there’s games like Star Wars: The Old Republic on the horizon? We can’t have other games taking away mind share, if not market share, now can we?

As it stands, provided a giant meteor doesn’t smash into the planet, or the sun doesn’t unexpectedly run out of hydrogen, I sincerely would like to attend Blizzcon 2010 now.