<i>South Park</i> gets hooked on World of Warcraft

In Comedy Central's teaser commercials for the first of a new batch of South Park episodes, the series' four main characters--elementary school kids Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny--gaze slack-jawed at computer screens, morbidly obese and riddled with zits. While the portrayal is a bit of a caricature of the typical massively multiplayer online role-playing game addict, it doesn't take a genius to guess that the show is turning its gaze toward the genre and its current standard-bearer, World of Warcraft.

That guess has been confirmed by the official World of Warcraft Web site, which proclaims that the MMORPG will be featured in the first episode of the 10th season. (It's actually the eighth episode of the season, as Comedy Central ran the first seven episodes this spring, then took a break before showing the rest this fall.)

This is not the first time South Park has dealt with the world of gaming. The boys previously got caught up in the Chinpokomon craze and went to great extremes to reclaim their stolen Okama GameSphere. Kenny even camped out to get a PlayStation Portable on launch day, then used the system to decide an eons-long war between the forces of light and darkness.

The first episode of the season's back half, "Make Love not Warcraft," will premiere this Wednesday, October 4, at 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific time.