WoW boasts about 12 million subscribers so it makes sense for Microsoft’s search engine Bing to try and draw some attention from this segment of Internet users.<\/p>\n
Whether it’s the Chestplate of Septic Stitches, the Bloodvenom Blade, or the Ring of Rotting Sinew, the new Bing gallery lets players search, filter, and view images, videos, information, statistics, and links, as well as comments and blog posts, for the game’s most popular items.<\/p>\n
The Bing World of Warcraft visual search gallery<\/a> requires that Microsoft Silverlight<\/a> be installed.<\/p>\n South African users may also have to let Bing know they wish to view the US content by scrolling to the bottom of the Bing search page and clicking the ‘Go to Bing in the United States.’<\/p>\n Other than these minor annoyances, the gallery is pretty interesting to peruse. With over 3000 of the top WoW items listed, players should have no problem finding the right kit for whichever task they have at hand.<\/p>\n “Sometimes [WoW] wakes me up in the middle of the night, and I have to go play,” says Lise Brende, director of marketing analytics for Bing and MSN, who plays WoW about 30 hours a week.<\/p>\n “When you start to dream about it, you know it’s become part of your life. I’ve had dreams that people at work were chasing me with big axes. I have it so bad—it’s like my drug, honestly,” she says. Brende even named one of her characters after the search engine. Of her nine game characters at level 80, the one she’s proudest of is a paladin called Ibing.<\/p>\n Brende says that Bing plans to give the visual gallery a try and that they hope Bing will make future forays into the WoW realm.<\/p>\n She says she hopes that the millions of people pausing, midgame, to use an Internet browser to look up all manner of WoW information and items will turn to Bing.<\/p>\n “It’s such a huge group of passionate people, it would be awesome if Bing becomes the search engine for WoW players,” Brende concludes.<\/p>\n