It’s a new victory for recursive gaming. PopCap has put a game inside someone else’s game to promote their own game.

The casual game sensation Peggle just branched out into a new platform: World of Warcraft. By installing the addon, you can play 12 themed levels while you’re doing those obnoxious old-world quests that make you fly all over the place.

This isn’t the first time PopCap has published one of their games in World of Warcraft. Bejeweled is already out in addon form. I’m still impressed they managed to recreate a whole game as an addon with what is ostensibly just a UI modding language.

Blizzard prohibits addon makers from asking for money for their creations, something that rankled some developers, so PopCap won’t be getting revenue from this directly.

This version has a few WoW-centric twists. For one thing, you can earn Warcraft-like talent points to help with your random Peggle ball bounces.

Most creative is the introduction of the /peggleroll command. Normally in Warcraft, when a piece of loot is up for grabs, eligible players generate a random number between 1 and 100, with the the highest number winning. By typing /peggleroll, the players get a quick Peggle challenge screen, and to the victor go the spoils.

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