World of Warcraft Gets Bejeweled Next Thursday

Worlds collide as the addictive puzzler joins forces with the addictive MMO.

By Kris Pigna, 09/20/2008

In what will no doubt blur the lines for hardcore World of Warcraft fans even further between where the game ends and the real world begins, Wired's Game|Life reports that PopCap's ubiquitous puzzle game Bejeweled will be added into Blizzard's similarly ubiquitous MMO next Thursday. Yes, soon you'll be able to waste time playing Bejeweled while you wait for some sort of in-game appointment, just like you do in real life.

But as Game|Life reports, Bejeweled traveled a less than ordinary path to becoming part of Blizzard's ever-growing massively multiplayer hegemony. Bejeweled first became incorporated into WoW as a mod created by Michael Fromwiller, a student at San Jose State University. The mod, called "Besharded," eventually became noticed by Bejeweled developer PopCap, who -- rather than, say, sue Fromwiller as one might expect -- hired him instead.

"[Besharded] was cool and fun, but not very polished, so we reached out to the gamer in question and hired him to do an official version of Bejeweled for WoW," said a PopCap representative to Game|Life. But why did Fromwiller decide to make a Bejeweled clone for WoW in the first place? Apparently, simply to battle the frequent bouts of boredom that comes with in-game downtime.

"Thinking about all the add-ons that I used and what they could do, I decided that there was potential [in making] a mini-game to play within World of Warcraft," Fromwiller said. "I started with a simple game or two in order to see what type of games I could make. After I was satisfied with the results, I thought to myself: 'Hey! What about Bejeweled? I could probably make a clone of the original game for WoW and could cure plenty of hours of boredom.'"

It's a pretty neat story all around, and a nice inclusion to have in World of Warcraft. But it does make it worth reflecting that, when we eventually play Bejeweled in WoW, we will for that time literally be paying Blizzard a monthly fee to be bored in their game and play a different game instead. We're not sure exactly what that says about us, and we're not sure we want to know.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So yeah... he does bring up a very good point in the end.

He does make a good point..... Maybe WoW shouldn't be boring :)

Maybe people should learn to quit WoW. It's not THAT hard. But they are right, you don't quit WoW, you only take breaks. I'm about to jump head fisrt after well over a year when WOTLK comes back.

They need tower defence in the game.

They need more DOTA!

I just realized that this move is actually pure genius. By embedding the most addicting game of the world into the most addicting game of the world PopCap and Blizzard have officially created an unstoppable monster which will sow death and destruction for many years to come.

Very clever idea. I'm sure both business's will benefit tremendously from this.

I dunno. I'd say Tetris > Bejewled.

I say Frogger > Tetris & Bejewled

A friend of mine made a Gems mod for WoW a long time ago which did something like this. I'm sure this one will be much more professionally done.