American McGee's Grimm continues on GameTap this week with The Girl Without Hands -- yup, it's getting darker. Same as every week, the episode is free to non-subscribers for the first 24 hours after release. The service also gets into the drug trade by adding the addictive Puzzle Quest.

• Grimm: The Girl Without Hands (Windows) - Katamari Grimm-acy do your thing!
  
• Puzzle Quest: Challenge of Warlords (Windows) - It's time to finally play this game if you've somehow missed out on it.
  

There aren't any additions to GameTap's gratis games lineup this week, but the full list of free-to-play titles can be found after the break.

Speaking with the Associated Press, Spore creator and bona fide master game designer, Will Wright, seemed surprisingly ... okay with the various "Spore-nographic" organs creatures people have made using the Spore Creature Creator. "Some of it's really good for what they were shooting for. It's amazingly explicit, especially when those creations are animated," Wright said.

On the topic of giving creative power (and lots of it) to players, Wright explained, "When you give players creative control, you have to expect they're going to do the unexpected," but he was quick to add, "We just have to make sure those people aren't messing up the experience for others." To this end, Wright told the AP that there will be a system in place whereby players can "ban" content from ever appearing in their own Spore universe. Elsewhere, we fully expect there to be entire universes populated solely by undulating naughty bits.

When a company has one of the most successful MMORPGs games of all time, the last thing anyone there wants to do is throw a wrench into what the customers' rigs can handle. To that end, the Blizzard team explained in a few interviews last week that World of Warcraft's graphical updates will happen over time with expansions. Don't go expecting something like World of Warcraft 2 or a major graphics overhaul, which might hurt the customer base.

In an interview with VideoGamer.com, Blizzard's Rob Chilton explains that "usability" has always been more important to the company than technical prowess. Obviously, Blizzard's judgment on how to run Azeroth, compared to those who yearn for a full-blown graphics overhaul, has paid off in million billions for the developer.

Source -- Brack clarifies graphical update plans (WoW Insider)
Source -- WoW graphical reboot may never be necessary (VG)

Perhaps the vagaries of reality have finally taken hold and you've done it. You've canceled the WoW account. Now you're back together with the Mrs., you've re-memorized all your kids' names, and you've got something that approximates steady work. Life, it would seem, is perfect. Then you heard the siren call of Wrath of the Lich King and – what is this? – you shut it out. Fine ... be strong.

But can you shut out the opportunity to drive your Sword of a Thousand Truths deep into the spotted fur of Bambi's mother? Sure, you cried during Bambi like everyone else did, but can you really resist transforming sweet, innocent Bambi(na) – spotted in Wrath's Northrend – into the crazy-eyed "Vengeful Bambina"? Blizzard's hoping you can't. But what if the kids see what you've done? You'll lose it all! Again!

[Via WoW Insider]

Games Convention generated a ton of new HD trailers for upcoming PC games and we have them ready to download, along with a ton of original content and news stories. Indeed, there were a lot of new PC games announcements this week (more than at E3). Take a look at all of them on our site:

Exclusive Features

• Reviews: Check out our reviews of the PC version of Bionic Commando Rearmed and the latest chapter of American McGee's Grimm.
• Hands-on previews: Check out our hands-on impressions of Aion, Battleforge and Battlefield Heroes
• BigVersus: Our latest game comparison column takes a look at the PC and Xbox 360 versions of Bionic Commando Rearmed.
• Big Iron: Our latest PC hardware column takes a look at power . . . power supplies for your rig that is.
• Big Ideas: Our latest column on themes in gaming takes a look at the so called "new games journalism."
• Alt-Tab: Our newest column takes a look at RTS gameplay conventions and how Relic could change them with Dawn of War II.
• Freeware Friday: Our latest look at free PC games is the classic Nethack.
• BigCast: It's our regular podcast with team members chatting about all things PC gaming.

This week American McGee's Grimm retells the story (in Grimm's special way) of the anthropomorphic Puss in Boots. The episode is free for everyone the first 24 hours after release and will be available only to GameTap subscribers after that time.

• Grimm: Puss In Boots (Windows) - Cats are evil and Puss is no exception. Dogs rule!
  
• Patrician III (Windows) - How to describe ... how to describe? Oh, it's like playing "Medieval Tycoon."

There are no new additions to GameTap's free games lineup this week. As always, though, the full list of free-to-play titles can be found after the break.

Blizzard announced today that World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King's opening cinematic will premiere at the Leipzig Games Convention. The clip will be shown this Thursday, August 21, at 1PM German standard time (7AM Joystiq time).

We'd speculate about what Blizzard has in store for a big reveal at Blizzcon, but with Diablo 3, Starcraft 2 and WoW in play, who knows what the company could announce. We'll see what happens on October 11.

[Via WoW Insider]

Fans of J.K. Rowling's uber-successful series of wizardly novels received some heartbreaking news Friday -- the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has been delayed from its initial release date of November 21, 2008 to a distant July 17, 2009. Electronic Arts has yet to announce how this major delay will affect the release window of their similarly titled video game adaptation of the film/book, though many gaming industry analysts, such as Signal Hill's Todd Greenwald, are predicting that EA will follow suit, with hopes that the film will whip up a Half-Blood frenzy that will boost sales of the game.

The repercussions of a Potter game delay could be bad for Electronic Arts, as both their holiday profits and fiscal 2009 revenue could take a hit without the title -- however, it could mean good news for those waiting on a truly stellar Harry Potter video game. Greenwald claims the title is "pretty much done and ready", meaning a delay would give EA an extra eight months to perfect the movie tie-in. We'll let you know what EA decides to do once they make an official statement.

We have had a busy week at the PC centric Big Download site. As we approach two big gaming events (next week's Games Convention and Labor Day weekend's Penny Arcade Expo) we should have even more to write about in the coming days. In the meantime let's look back at the week that was:

Exclusive Features

• Reviews: We review a number of games this week including Space Siege, the latest American McGee's Grimm episode and the first chapter of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People.
• Big Ideas: Our latest look at game themes takes a look at gender roles in games.
• Freeware Friday: This week our free game is the strategy title Battle for Wesnoth.
• BigCast: It's our seventh edition of the Big Download podcast.

Downloads

• Unreal Tournament 3 patch: Grab the 1.3 patch for Epic Games' latest shooter title.
• Strong Bad Episode 1 demo: Check out the free portion of Telltale Games' latest episodic title
• Romance of the Three Kingdoms Xi demo: Try out a portion of Koei's PC port of their strategy game
• Star Trek Online trailer: Check out the first gameplay trailer from Cryptic Studios' MMO
• Empire: Total War trailer: Check out some naval battle action from the upcoming historical RTS game.
• Aion trailer: Check out this trailer for NCsoft's upcoming MMO

News

• EA to publish new Epic Games/People Can Fly title
• Team Fortress 2 Heavy update due next week
• Spore has gone gold
• Carrier Command: Gaea announced
• New Sword of the Stars expansion announced
• Codemasters unveils plans for Overlord II
• Bionic Commando PC gets extra content after all

Blizzard president Mike Morhaime has issued a public apology on behalf of the company for the recent BlizzCon fiasco -- the "Wrath of the Ticke-Ting" -- which left thousands of F5ers empty-handed after two days of strenuous clicking. "As a result of this week's events, the excitement that many of you felt about the show has turned into dissatisfaction and disappointment," Morhaime writes in a statement posted on various Blizzard-operated sites. "Due to these circumstances, we've reevaluated our convention hall space and come up with some solutions that will allow us to offer 3,000 more tickets for sale."

We don't know where Blizzard plans to squeeze the additional load of freaks and geeks -- worst case scenario: dump some mobile buildings in the parking lot and load 'em with free diet soda and chips ... and dip -- but we do know that the only way to become one of the fabled "3,000" is to sharpen your Sword of Last Resort and spill some virgin blood upon the Alter of Actilizzard toss your name into a hat and hope it gets pulled. That's right, "To avoid the issues many of you faced this week, we'll be selling these 3,000 via a lottery," Morhaime explains (read: the servers still can't handle the force of 10 million clicks). Further details will be posted once Blizzard figures out how it's gonna work. Suggestions?

Calling all gamers, non-gamers and militant atheists alike, Will Wright's years-in-the-making "Sim Everything" Spore has passed through its cell, tribal and civilization phases and has gone gold. The game is set to make its previously announced PC and Mac release date of September 5 for North America and September 7 for Europe. We now look forward to breaking even more Sporepedia milestones in our quest to collectively become 84% God. In the meantime check out our exhaustive Spore Q&A with Maxis Producer Thomas Vu from last month's E3.

Fun fact: Spore's original release date was Fall 2006.

As of 3:50 PM ET according to the World of Warcraft forums, Blizzard reinstated the BlizzCon ticket sales after "murloc failing" the first time earlier this week. But within 30 minutes the Blizzard store was listing the tickets as sold out ... then it came back up ... and now it's sold out again. Additionally, there are a few unverified reports of credit cards being double- and triple-charged without even receiving confirmation of a ticket.

While you shake your Epic Fists of Anger (with +2 fire damage) at them for yet another botched launch, our calmer friends at WoW Insider remind us that Worldwide Invitational tickets sold in multiple rounds and that more BlizzCon tickets -- with hopefully less technical malfunction / malfeasance -- could be given out at a later date. For a more detailed chronicling of the BlizzCon ticket drama, check out WoW Insider.

Update: A WoW forum poster is reporting that a billing service rep is telling her that the tickets are being sold in phases at the moment to keep up with order processes and that it's going to cycle between "sold out" and "available" repeatedly today until they really do sell out. When you're not busy refreshing the Blizzard store listing, practice typing in your account information really fast.

Update 2: Blizzard has posted an official statement on their website: "The bulk of the BlizzCon tickets we had available were sold out within minutes of ticket sales going live again this afternoon. We have a small reserve of tickets left -- to make these available to some of you who might not have had a chance to purchase yet, we will be releasing the remaining reserve tickets for sale tonight, August 12, at 8:00 PM PDT. We appreciate the enthusiasm everyone has shown, and wish we were able to accommodate even more attendees at this year's BlizzCon."

Blizzard.com briefly crumpled under the weight of its epic-sized fan base this morning, as visitors stormed the site eager to secure passage to BlizzCon 2008. Tickets went on sale exclusively through the new Blizzard Store today, but we've yet to receive confirmation of anyone making a successful purchase.

Posting on the WoW Forums, Blizzard urged frustrated clickers to ease off the panic button -- "Billing and Account Services and the In-Game Support Department will be unable to provide assistance" -- and dropped this vague reassurance: "Our Web Administrators are working as quickly as possible to remedy the issue, but I'm afraid there is no ETA at this time." While both Blizzard.com and the store have since reappeared, users attempting to purchase BlizzCon tickets are still slapped with the "Failoc" (pictured above) upon credit card authentication. We'll keep you posted.

Update [1:33 pm ET]: Blizzard writes, "This is top priority right now, and we are still actively looking into this issue. I can tell you that we have confirmed that no tickets have been purchased at this time, so no one should fear that they are going to be sold out while they are refreshing."

Update: Check WOW Insider for the latest updates.

Wow. Our coverage of E3 was pretty extensive but that doesn't mean we have been lazy since then . . . far from it in fact. Check out our extensive original features (including our QuakeCon 2008 coverage), new downloads and important news items from the past couple of weeks:

Exclusive Features

• QuakeCon 2008 coverage: Big Download went to Dallas for the annual free gathering of gamers sponsored by id Software. Check out our round-up of all our extensive coverage of the event, which includes new info on Rage, Wolfenstein, a QuakeCon picture gallery and a case mod gallery.
• GOG.com Interview: We chat with Tom Ohle on their upcoming digital download gaming site that will offer classic PC games that will be DRM free and sold on the cheap.
• Hinterland Interview: Tilted Mill's Chris Beatrice chats with us about their first original downloadable game.
• ECA Interview: We talk with Hal Halpin, the president of the Entertainment Consumers Association.
• PAX 2008 Interview: Robert Khoo gives us the 411 on their plans for the 2008 edition of the Penny Arcade Expo.
• Champions Online Preview: We go hands-on with Cryptic's upcoming super hero MMO.
• Oosah Impressions: We look at a new web site that makes uploading screenshots for games easy.
• TOJam 2008: We look at the winners of the recent indie games competition.
• Big Ideas: Our latest look at gaming themes takes at look at indivdual identity in games.
• 5 Reasons to love Fallout 3: Our latest gallery feature takes a look at the reasons we want to play the upcoming RPG.
• Freeware Friday: We take a look at the recent free racing game Trackmania Nations Forever.
• BigCast: We have Episode 5 and Episode 6 of our regular podcast ready for a listen.

How many DVDs does it take to screw in a light bulb? ... Are we talkin' a Mega Texture light bulb that casts penumbra shadowing?

In an update to id Software's data dilemma, John Carmack tells Tom's Games, "We're pretty much resigned to the fact that we're going to make [Rage] fit onto two DVDs on the 360." In other words, Microsoft isn't about to write off the steep royalties that allegedly add up with each additional game disc. The good news is you'll only have to whine for mom to swap your Xbox 360 discs once. The bad news, as headlined last week, is that Rage for Xbox 360 will supposedly look worse than the PlayStation 3's Blu-ray version due to data compression. But how much worse?

"All of the key scenes, the things anyone is going to take a screenshot of are going to look exactly the same on both platforms," Carmack explains. "They'll get the high quality compression. But if you go into some areas in the wasteland, like behind a fence where nobody will typically go and explore, this is where the 360 version may look a little blurry compared to the PS3." We hear id's been sweeping some artifacts under the rug too. And watch out for those jaggies hiding beneath the bed!