Today is a momentous day in World of Warcraft history as myriad changes are being implemented in preparation for the upcoming November 13 release of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. After a rather rocky start yesterday, the "Echoes of Doom" patch seems to be up and running for all servers.

Read about the top ten changes after the jump.

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"Hey, wait, go back. Kill me again."

I was pranking my friend with the falling invulnerability I'd unlocked. I got it by base-jumping. You can open your parachute during a long fall and then try to steer yourself into a target area. He missed his target. I hit mine. As a reward, I got invulnerability from falling damage, no matter how far the distance. I am unbreakable, at least when it comes to gravity. But I didn't tell him.

Which is a good thing, because it's how I found one of the coolest features in Saints Row 2.

Read about it after the jump.

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Dead Space opens with you strapped into the seat of a space ship while a few crew members walk around the bridge, John McCain-like, delivering exposition about how you're all going to rescue an outpost that's gone mysteriously incommunicado*. Then the ship crashes into the outpost in question. Oops. You get out and walk into the outpost and which point the game starts. There, in the very first room, someone has left 2500 space bucks (!) sitting on a shelf. Which you pocket, of course. There isn't a player alive who isn't going to take that money.

It strikes me as clumsy that your first act in Electronic Arts' horror game is looting. In front of other people. Who say nothing about it. Before there's any sort of economy in the game. What are you even going to do with this money? Is it a lot? A little? Did it belong to the couple in the picture sitting next to the space bucks? Was it money they were saving to send their children to space college?

Dead Space was obviously built to immerse you in the world, without a layer of stuff between you and the game. But nothing screams, "Hey, you're in a videogame!" like 2500 space bucks of seed money just sitting there waiting for you to press A to take it.

I'm not very far into Dead Space, and I don't mean to make too much of an issue of the 2500 space bucks. But since then, I've hunted for a key card, used bullet time, and salvaged space ammo from the bodies of space monsters. Maybe Dead Space gets less gamey as it goes on. But if you want to see how a videogame can effectively remove the usual layer of stuff between you and the game, you're going to have to wait until next week's Far Cry 2. There's not a game out there that couldn't learn a thing or two from Far Cry 2.

* Man, if I had a nickel for every time that happened...

IGN seems to have gotten a look at the "micro-expansion" for Sins of a Solar Empire, the superlative sci-fi RTS and a shoo-in for one of the best games of the year. I was pretty skeptical about the concept of dribbling out little $10 expansion packs, but it's a bit reassuring to read some of IGN's observations.

For instance, I'm pleased developer Ironclad isn't just piling in new defences, apropros of the subtitle, Entrenchment. They're also adding new ships to counter the new defenses, as well as a few tweaks to the bonuses you can earn by controlling planets. Whereas the original game was all about fleets, it seems like Entrenchment is shifting a bit of emphasis tot the map itself. And I'm glad to read that the new starbase system seems to take a page from the strategy game, Galactic Civilizations II, which is never a bad thing:

[Starbases] are massive space structures that can be upgraded and specialized in numerous ways. They positively dwarf the capital ships in the game. And the twist is that you can build them almost anywhere if you deploy a deep space heavy constructor. Starbases can be built next to stars, around gas giants, near wormholes, and even in enemy space. They have construction ability, so they can churn out frigates and cruisers. They can be outfitted with an array of weapons, and they can target multiple ships simultaneously. And they're extremely durable.

Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment comes out on November 18th.

I live in California, in the hills just north of Los Angeles. Yesterday, there was an orange glow in the distance and grand plumes of smoke rising into the sky. At first, I thought they were from the brush fires we've been getting. But now I've been told these were instead from the people who've been rioting because they've been unable to log onto their World of Warcraft server after the latest mega-patch went live. The patch primes the game for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion in addition to, uh, changing a lot of other stuff, I guess. I think it even makes a bunch of your stuff disappear, which must be how they balance the game, like nerfing wizards or some such thing.

I'm not exactly a World of Warcraft authority, so we'll have a guest writer from the Sci Fi Channel filing a more detailed report on all the turmoil later today.

Saints Row 2 is awfully friendly with the save games and checkpoints. Otherwise, I would probably just charge through this mission to get it done. But it's divided into stages, and whenever I fail, I just start back up at the last checkpoint with all my health and ammo restored. Easy enough.

I'm in a trailer park. I have to first find a map that designates the trailers I have to destroy. The map is the back room of an office, behind a short gunfight. After that, I get free satchel charges to play with. Plant them with the right trigger, pull the left trigger to detonate them. The first time I try to take out the trailers one at a time, I get killed by all the armed folks defending the trailer park, many of them more than happy to run over me with their pick-up trucks. The second time I try, I'm more careful to plant two charges at once and then detonate them at the same time. But as I get to the last trailer and come to a rise overlooking the entire neighborhood, I have a better idea. So I trigger a satchel charge at my feet to go back to the checkpoint.

This time I carefully work my way through the park, setting one satchel charge at a time, but not detonating it. There's a bit of cat-and-mouse among the trailers and scrap metal sculptures of spiders and snakes (these people are awfully artsy for white trash). After planting the last charge, I climb up the rise and look out over the scene. The sun is going down. Skyscrapers are twinkling in the distance. Pedestrians amble around the dirt paths. Sorry, pedestrians.

Each pull of the left trigger detonates a satchel charge. I fire them off in quick succession. The explosions start back near the office where I started, and they work their way through the idyll towards me, retracing my steps with a grand explosion at each waypoint, closer and closer to where I watch. …boom…boom…Boom…BOOM…BOOM.

Saints Row 2 isn't built from the nicest looking engine out there. It certainly pales in comparison to Grand Theft Auto IV. But I figure any game engine that can make me retry a mission just so I can sit on a hill and watch explosions in the sunset is getting the job done just fine.

Tomorrow: co-op deathmatch with a helicopter and a Lamborghini

In case you didn't get a lifetime supply of brooding Spider-Man from the second movie, there's always the launch trailer for the latest game. It takes a really sensitive superhero to struggle with the nature of good n' evil while listening to the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, standing on its own two legs without a movie release, will be out next week. The trailer is here now:

As I've said before, I suspect what people do with Little Big Planet will be far more interesting than the game itself (it seems very Spore in that regard). Here's another example: a Little Big Planet marriage proposal. It apparently worked out well for the fellow, so congratulations are in order. But I find it curious that he ends his level with a horrifying plummet and a massive cash grab.

Thanks Evil Avatar.

Kotaku has sifted through the publicly available financial details for game publishers to see which Presidential campaigns they've supported over the last year. Being part of the entertainment industry, it's no surprise that game publishers love them some Democratic candidates. What is a surprise is how much Activision and Valve love them some Ron Paul.

Meanwhile, as noted on a Halo machinima site, Obama's campaign is giving back a little of that money. A representative of Electronic Arts confirmed that the Obama campaign is indeed buying ingame advertising (pictured above).

Our sister site DVICE found one of the niftiest case mods I've seen in a while, complete with a sexy little movie to show off some of its features. Yeah, sure, the docking bay, exhaust ports, CD window, and sliding side panel are cool, but my favorite bit is the working DRADIS display.

Fun fact of the day: While looking up the spelling of DRADIS, I found out it's an acronym for "Direction, RAnge, and DIStance" and not "Draedis", who I presumed was some Greek god or other. That show never fails to throw me for a loop!

The Saints Row games love stuff about pimps and hos. The "snatch" activity from the first game is back, whereby you round up hos by liberating them from their pimps. There are plenty of prostitute related minigames, including a really weird activity that presents the carnal act as a lockpicking minigame. Go figure.

But today, I did something new. I put down a prostitute uprising. With a flamethrower.

This is a perfect example of the sense of humor in Saints Row 2. Prostitute uprising? Funny. Putting down a prostitute uprising? Funnier. Doing it with a flamethrower? Saints Row 2.

(Tomorrow: Trailer park idyll)

The big bombshell dropped at BlizzCon this weekend was the news that StarCraft II isn't just StarCraft II. It is instead StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, and StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void. The sequel to the most successful real time strategy game of all time is being milked split into three separate games, each sold separately, each with a different single-player campaign based on one of the races, and each with unique multiplayer features.

Although the official Blizzard line is that the storyline is too epic for a single game, it seems obvious to me that Blizzard is pulling a Miramax. In other words, why make one movie when you can make more than one movie?

But to dribble out the release of a real time strategy game based on the idea that the storyline is too big for a single game? I don't buy it. I can't imagine this is anything but a business decision. I know Lord of the Rings. I have seen Lord of the Rings. You, sir, are no Lord of the Rings. Frankly, I'll be surprised if you're even a Kill Bill.

It wouldn't be a convention without people in costumes, most of which are some variation of cleavage and bare midriffs. Here's a video of some of the contestants for the BlizzCon 2008 Costume Contest, and below is the winner, Amanda Hosler, showing off her creation before the thunderous roar of the approving crowd.

However, isn't she sort of cheating? That's no costume. That's a float! In this interview with World of Warcraft site Allakhazam, Hosler explains that the turtle was built using an electric wheelchair as a chassis. She also reveals the sacrifices she had to make.

Allakhazam: So what's next for you?

Amanda: We'll I'm going to go back to raiding. I had to quit raiding during the whole process.

Allakhazam: So you scaled down the amount of time you play World of WarCraft to build this?

Amanda: Yep, for the last four weeks I haven't been able to raid and that's been depressing.

Allakhazam: Has your guild known about what you've been doing?

Amanda: Oh yea! They didn't understand the complexity of this costume when I told them that I couldn't raid anymore.

Allakhazam: Well hopefully this will ensure you get some extra DKP.

Hosler was also the winner of the 2007 contest.

Here's how you announce a patch! Electronic Arts has slapped together an appropriately splashy video to promote the just as splashily named "Total Payback Update" for Mercenaries 2, the open-world everything-is-destructible game set in Venezuela. Mostly, the patch lets players from different countries play online with each other. I'm not sure why EA was so isolationist about multiplayer in the first place, but it warms my heart to think that the children of America can join the children of non-America to blow the crap out of Venezuela.

There are also new character models and presumably a fix for the fact that Fiona back at the base simply would not shut up. The patch will be available for the Xbox 360 today, but Playstation 3 owners -- the poor saps -- will have to put up with Fiona until next Monday.

The situation for your wallet looks dire this week. There are plenty of potentially interesting titles that raise interesting questions. Is Dead Space (pictured above) the next System Shock or the next The Suffering? Is Sony shooter SOCOM: US Navy SEALS Confrontation (now with even more capital letters than S.T.A.L.K.E.R.!) the Halo-caliber Playstation 3 exclusive that Resistance: Fall of Man and Haze were supposed to be? What will happen with Rock Revolution, Konami's attempt to catch the Guitar Hero/Rock Band bandwagon that ran off without them even though they were there first? Will the guys at Bungie who goofed around for years with Pimps at Sea April Fools Day jokes be able to deliver an actual game with Age of Booty, available for download from Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Store? And what on earth is World of Goo, downloadable for the PC and Nintendo Wii, that it's got so much good buzz?

But at this point, the only confirmed threat is Saints Row 2, which is easily the best Grand Theft Auto since Crackdown. It constitutes a clear and present danger not just to your wallet, but to about forty hours of your life.