The Funeral of WoW Gold

Online gaming worlds like world of warcraft
have quietly grown into some of the most powerful brands in the entertainment industry.
The fantasy game attracts more than 10 million paying customers worldwide, grossing more than a big budget Hollywood movie every single month.
But World of Warcraft ( Currency: wow gold ) and titles like EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies are still aimed at the kind of players happy to spend hours forming guilds and earning experience points.
The next wave of virtual gaming worlds are trying to appeal to the kind of mass market gamers that prefer a quick bash at Fifa, rather than the full fantasy role playing experience.
One of the first to go live, Football Superstars, opens its online doors to the general public in November after a long period of testing.
Its maker, Monumental Games in
Nottingham, plans to sign up 55,000 players by the end of the month and more than one million by 2010.
Road to glory
Rather than take the role of a wizard or knight, you start as a young footballer playing in a grass roots league and work your way up to Rooney-like superstardom.
New players start out with three-a-side games and progress to full 11-man teams, earning skill and fame points along the way.
Like other MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games), you play alongside other real humans sitting at PCs around the world.
The only computer controlled characters are the goalkeepers.
The man behind the game, Steve Marshall, said: “It’s the challenge of playing together as a team and winning.
“When you are facing a human opponent you just don’t know what they are going to do next and that’s the beauty of online gaming.”
As players get more experience they can move between clubs and divisions, earning virtual money for appearances and strong performances.

Outside matches, they can wonder around a Second Life-style virtual town, bumping into other players and spending their money in clubs, restaurants and bars.
Sponsorship
But while Football Superstars is similar to other online games in some ways, its payment system is very different.
Instead of a monthly fee, Monumental is making the basic game free to download and play.
Premium subscribers can pay extra to take over as managers, setting up their own football clubs and getting non-paying players to join.
Instead of earning fame and skill points on the pitch, players can take a shortcut and buy the points using real money charged to their account.
The game is also being sponsored by a number of big name sporting brands.
As well as advertising hoardings and giant billboards, players can buy virtual sporting goods in the game itself.
Wearing a certain pair of branded boots, for example, gives players an advantage on the pitch.
Virtual sports
Monumental might be the first game company to try a sporting simulation on this scale, but there are already signs that other big game companies are getting in on the act.
Electronic Arts’ latest ice hockey game, NHL 09, lets you play online with friends in a league and scout for new players.
The game’s online functions are more limited than a game like Football Superstars, but it’s a sign of things to come.
Meanwhile, Paris-based F4, is working on an online title that covers seven different sports.
Empire of Sports has been repeatedly delayed but is now expected to go online early next year.
Players can meet up and train their virtual bodies in the gym before trying out tennis, basketball, bobsleigh, track and field, downhill skiing and football.
Electronic Arts’ latest ice hockey game, NHL 09, lets you play online with friends in a league and scout for new players.
The game’s online functions are more limited than a game like Football Superstars, but it’s a sign of things to come.
Meanwhile, Paris-based F4, is working on an online title that covers seven different sports.
Empire of Sports has been repeatedly delayed but is now expected to go online early next year.
Players can meet up and train their virtual bodies in the gym before trying out tennis, basketball, bobsleigh, track and field, downhill skiing and football.
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LucasArts and BioWare officially announced the development of the oft mentioned, awaited and rumoured MMORPG - Star Wars: The Old Republic. The game will be story-driven and set during the timeframe of past hit Star Wars: KOTOR.
Star Wars: The
Old Republic is set thousands of years before Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, when war between the Old Republic and the Sith Empire raged. Players can choose to play as Jedi, Sith, or a variety of other classic Star Wars roles. Similar to other MMORPGs, players will be able to define their personal story and decide whether to follow the light or dark side of the Force.
Additional details for Star Wars: The Old Republic such as features, gameplay and release date will be announced at a later time. Whether this will prove to be a challenger to the World of Warcraft ( Currency: wow gold ) behemoth… only time will tell (Age of Conan and Warhammer Online have up till now proven ineffective in the siege on World of Warcraft for MMO supremacy).

Blizzcon 2008 Highlights
Blizzard Entertainment brought its gamers a third Blizzcon in October 2008. The 2-day convention was held at Anaheim CA and lasted from October 10thuntil the 11th. This event drew in thousands of Blizzard enthusiasts from across the country and all over the world. The admission price of $100 did not slow down 15,000 devout fans and within 15 minutes of announcing ticket sales the 2008 Blizzcon sold out. Blizzard overwhelmed with the response from fans decided to open a lottery sale for an extra 3,000 tickets. This made it the highest attended Blizzcon since 2005.
Ticket sales were in such demand that the servers that run the Blizzard store could not keep up with traffic. Many people at Blizzcon were asked about their experience with regards to the ticket sales and not many had positive comments. Most were just happy they were actually able to get past the login screen. I heard horror stories from many who got to the point to enter in credit card information and then had their session lost. Hopefully Blizzard will be prepared for their future events with respect to on-line transactions.
Blizzcon attendees came from all over the world. People representing 28 countries attended the sold out event and eagerly anticipated news from the games they frequently play and love. Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2 are two of the three games attendees came to hear about and demo. With over 10 million monthly subscribers for Blizzards’ World of Warcraft game, it’s safe to say most of the gamers were waiting for news regarding the upcoming expansion Wrath of the Lich King, which is set to release November 13, 2008.
Attendees were given a chance to interact with the game creators and artists during the panel segment. Each segment gave time for discussion to three different games Diablo 3, StarCraft 2 and World of Warcraft ( Buy wow gold ) . Fans were also given time for Q&A after the panel presented cut-scenes, sneak peaks and future plans for their upcoming games. Lines for gaming stations were long, extremely long. However, the 3 hour wait did not deter the avid gamer to finally get their hands on and try out a demo to their favorite titles. While some were playing games and walking around others stood in line for the Blizzard Store. This line is by far the longest line at Blizzcon, taking up to 5 hours to finally purchase items.
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Burlingame, Calif: Gary McGraw thinks the computing world can learn a lot from videogames. Just as massive multiplayer games like “World of Warcraft” ( Buy wow gold ) are distributed across a network of personal computers, software and services will soon reside on external servers–and they will also come under attack.
In pictures: The sorry history of E-voting security
McGraw, chief technology officer at security consulting firm Cigital and author of Exploiting Online Games, talked Tuesday with Forbes.com about how videogames model the future of software security issues.
Forbes.com: What is the big security threat in videogames?
Gary McGraw: Games are the world’s biggest, most populous, most distributed systems. What we’re talking about is a big giant glob of client software that every subscriber has [on his PC] that has a lot of the game functionality. If the gamer is a bad guy, you just gave them part of your functionality to screw around with.
This is what technical people call the problem of trust boundaries.
What problem do these trust boundaries pose?
In this case, the gamer is the attacker and what they’re doing is cheating in the virtual world to generate wealth that they can sell in a middle market. In “World of Warcraft,” ( Currency: wow gold ) when you wander around ?it turns out that the information about where your character is in the world is just X, Y and Z coordinates controlled by your PC. If you’re a clever attacker you can actually change those numbers on your PC [to] teleport around the virtual world. That’s just an example. Hacker boys discovered about four years ago that you could make money by cheating and the law is very ambiguous about whether it is actually illegal.
How are games a harbinger of the future of software security?
We can look at what is happening in online games as a bellwether for the sorts of attacks that we’re going to see in much more important software systems coming down the line.
We can study these games and play around and figure out how hackers cheat and how they do things like teleport around the world and generate virtual wealth, and we can learn really important lessons for the future of software security at the same time.

Can you provide an example?
In a [Department of Defense] situation, the entire network is going to be a trusted network. It changes the threat model pretty significantly. Going after the control system for drones would be rather silly. What you would want to go after–to really cause havoc–would be back-end office systems, things that get the food to the guys in Iraq.
Do games present a solution?
The vertical that is leading the charge is not games, it’s the financial industry. If you look at investment banks, Wall Street, the credit card consortia–those guys have been very much concerned with designing systems to resist attacks from the ground up.
So how do games link up with financial systems?
Their technology stack is the future here today. They’re already doing massively distributed systems. As financial service systems become massively distributed systems, they’re going to look more like games than they do today. The [financial industry] is ahead in their thinking about software security, but they’re not at the technical edge of where the game companies are.
How are game companies affected by people hacking into these systems?
There are some games where people actually stopped playing because cheating got so rampant. Everybody was cheating and pretty soon if you weren’t cheating it wasn’t fun. Cheating can also break the economy of a game.
Will game companies adopt the financial service industry’s security measures?
Yes, and in fact they are.
From a sociological perspective, you probably have to have some cheating in a game because there are a lot of people who want to play the game but they don’t want to “live” the game. So you need some level of corruption and graft in the system to satisfy those people. The real question is, how much of that is necessary? Clearly if you look at the real world there is crime, corruption and graft and that keeps the skids greased. We could wipe out all crime, but the world would be a police state.
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We have more with Blizzard producer J. Allen Brack about the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion.
October 22, 2008 - The second World of Warcraft ( Currency : wow gold ) expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, ships next month, and the development team at Blizzard is busy polishing and bug fixing the game before then. But members of the team emerged for a few days at Blizzcon earlier this month, and that’s where we had a chance to talk to producer J. Allen Brack about Wrath of the Lich King. (We posted an earlier story that had his thoughts about World of Warcraft in general.) One of the cool new features of Wrath of the Lich King is the new Death Knight hero class, the first hero class for the game. The Death Knight is something that Brack is definitely excited about, partly because it delves into some dark territory that World of Warcraft ( Buy wow gold ) hasn’t generally touched before. “When you start a death knight, you’re under the control of Arthus the Lich King, who is not a nice person. And so it’s really neat to see players go out and carry out the Lich King’s will and be really bad,” he said.
“We don’t really have bad things that players do [in World of Warcaft]; players will usually do things to further their own agendas that other people will see as bad, but they’re not bad in and of themselves. The death knight starting experience has players doing some things that are actually evil, so that’s a really neat thing. And there’s a climactic moment where the player actually breaks free of the control of the Lich King and that’s really exciting. And then they become a free agent and are very angry at having been made a death knight and want to seek their vengeance.” Another new feature is the inscription profession, which was implemented in the massive and recent Echoes of Doom patch for World of Warcraft. “It’s like enchanting for your spells. What you’ll be able to do is create these scrolls that have certain talents, certain abilities, like on this one certain spell you’ll some kind of additional effect to it,” Brack said. “We have major glyphs and minor glyphs. Major glyphs will affect your combat in some way. So, for example, as a priest your greater heal spell costs 20-percent less manna something like that. Then we have minor glyphs which are not combat affecting, like feather fall no longer requires a reagent.”

By the time Wrath of the Lich King ships in November, its predecessor, The Burning Crusade, will almost be two years old. When that expansion shipped in January of 2007, the World of Warcraft subscription base experienced a significant bump as former players returned to the fold.

A lot of content in Wrath of the Lich King will appeal to World of Warcraft ( Buy wow gold ) veterans, and the company does plan on a significant bump in players as fans return to check out the new content, but Brack said that he could see newcomers to the MMO enjoying it as well. “There’s not as much content that’s brand new for the new player, but I think that the new features that [we] add, or the new systems, always help the new player. The achievement system is a great example of that. A new player who comes into the world may not know of all the myriad dungeons that exist. The achievement system is going to help them track that and maybe say, ‘Hey, I want to make sure I go visit this dungeon, I want to make sure I complete these quests.’” The road to Wrath of the Lich King has been a somewhat windy one, too. “The way Blizzard does things is that we have a lot of ideas, and whenever it’s time to make a decision or come up with new ideas, we’ll bring out all of the ideas that we’ve had from the very beginning,” he said. “Obviously Northrend [the main area in Wrath of the Lich King] is not a new part of the Warcraft universe. Arthus is a huge part of Warcraft III. So even though we didn’t include Northrend at the very launch of the game, we always knew that we’d eventually get there.”
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October 22, 2008 - Illidan the Betrayer has fallen, and with the recent defeat of Kil’Jaeden, the Burning Legion stands leaderless. Who is left to challenge the heroes of Azeroth? Why, the Lich King himself, of course! Raiding has been a staple of end game mmo’s for years now, and the second expansion of the mega popular World of Warcraft ( Buy wow gold ) doesn’t plan to change that - it plans to perfect it. Although Arthas won’t be shipping initially with Wrath of the Lich King, there will be plenty of other PvE content to keep you busy until he is patched in.With the popularity of Karazhan in the Burning Crusade, many players rejoiced after hearing that all raids in WotLK will have both 10 and 25 man versions. Sometimes, however, less isn’t more. A major concern going into this expansion in regards to raiding is one of group flexibility, especially with the introduction of the first hero class, the Death Knight, who can both tank and dps. There are about 30 viable class specs, but only 25 raid slots - and thats in the biggest raid possible. Thankfully, Blizzard has acknowledged this problem, and is doing everything they can to ensure everyone gets a raid spot. Tom Chilton, the games lead game designer, said they went into world of warcraft online ( Buy wow gold ) ’s second expansion with the philosophy of “bringing the player, not the class”. Changing the classes enough so that everyone is viable in a raid can be tough, especially since you don’t want to blur the lines too much, resulting in all classes playing the same way. However, with the changes that Blizzard has made going into WotLK, it looks like everyone will get their raid spot.Firstly, Blizzard has made it so that buffs affect the entire raid, so that you don’t absolutely have to bring certain classes to every raid, for example, the old shaman totem mechanics, which only affected the shaman’s group. Also, Blizzard has made it so that there are multiple ways to get the same benefit of a certain buff, yet don’t stack, so there’s no need to take a whole bunch of one class. For example, in the Burning Crusade, the only class that could fit the roll of “mana battery” were shadow priests. In WotLK, however, both retribution paladins and survival hunters have similar abilities to shadow priests in that they can return mana to spell casters. By doing this, Blizzard has made it so certain classes aren’t pigeonholed into being a spec they don’t enjoy, as well as ensure that even pure dps classes bring some type of utility to the raid that will be of use. The other major change Blizzard has employed going into Wrath is the new stat, spellpower. Spellpower combines the old stats of spell damage and healing into one single stat. This idea of shared gear is not only great news for healers, as they won’t have to carry around 2 sets of gear, but it is also helpful for raids. Need a 10th person for Naxxramas? Why not grab a restoration shaman, who can heal just fine, as well as put out some pretty decent lightning bolts on fights that aren’t healing intensive. This stat really shines for the hybrid classes, and will definitely make certain specs that weren’t so popular in the Burning Crusade (such as the balance druid) much more viable, as they will be able to dps and heal, even if only specced for the one. Plus, Blizzard has announced that they plan to include some type of “dual-spec” feature, so people will be able to easily and quickly switch their specs without having to go to a capitol city and paying gold to a trainer. Of course, before you can start raiding at level
80 in Northrend, you’re going to need some entry level gear. The 5 man dungeons of WotLK are looking really great, and Blizzard ran us through two of the later level ones during their dungeons and raids panel - the Halls of Lightning and Ahn’Kahet. The Halls of Lightning is a level 80 dungeon located in the Stormpeaks. This dungeon is themed around the Titans, who were the beings that supposedly forged Azeroth. A few of the bosses include General Bjarngrim, a massive vrykul warrior, and Ionar, a wicked looking storm elemental. Ahn’Kahet: The Old Kingdom is an underground dungeon located in the Ancient Nerubian city of Azjol-Nerub. Featuring both indoor and outdoor terrain, and Nerubian architecture like that found in Naxxramas, Ahn’Kahet will face players off against a faceless one named Herald Volazj.Once appropriately geared, players are thrust into the first raid encounter of Northrend - Naxxramas. Ripped straight from Azeroth and tuned for both 10 and 25 players, Naxxramas 2.0 challenges players to defeat Arthas’ servant Kel’Thuzad. Originally the final 40 man raid instance before the release of the Burning Crusade, Naxxramas 2.0 will let players try out what Blizzard has called their best designed dungeon. Since only a small fraction of hardcore raiders ever got to Naxxramas in the original world of warcraft ( Buy wow gold ) , Blizzard decided to bring it back, and is comparable with Karazhan from the Burning Crusade.
The other two raid dungeons launching with Wrath are both single boss encounters, similar to that of Onxyia or Magtheridon. The first is the Eye of Eternity, where players face off against the blue dragon aspect, Malygos. The second lies within the secret convening area of the 5 great dragon aspects, known as the Chamber of the Aspects. Eventually, it will house 5 separate raid encounters (one for each dragon flight), but initially will launch with just one - the Obsidian Sanctum, featuring the black dragon flight. Here players will face off against Sartharion the Onyx and his three lieutenants, Shadron, Tenebron, and Vesperon. The cool thing about this fight is the raid can make it harder on themselves in order to win better rewards. For example, if the raid wants to kill each lieutenant by itself before engaging Sartharion, then the raid will receive the bare minimum of loot. If, however, they try and engage Sartharion whilst all three lieutenants are all still alive, then the raid will have to deal with all 4 dragons at once, making the fight significantly harder, but increasing the rewards drastically. This idea of risk vs. reward is definitely a welcome addition, and will ensure that guilds won’t just be farming the same encounter over and over again, since they can always make it more challenging by including a lieutenant or two into the fight.With the beta coming to a close soon, and the release of Wrath of the Lich King less than a month away, all of Northrend’s dungeons will soon be explored by millions of giddy Warcraft fans. The introduction of both 10 and 25 man versions of all raids make it so both the casual and hardcore can experience the end game content that Wrath will offer, and certain encounters like the Obsidian Sanctum will offer even more challenges for players, if they so choose. If raiding wasn’t your thing in the Burning Crusade, then there probably isn’t that much to draw you into Wrath’s raiding scene. However, if you enjoyed raiding in the least up until now, then world of warcraft ( Buy wow gold )’s newest expansion won’t disappoint - the early raids are looking great, and will definitely keep you busy until Arthas himself becomes challengeable. Until then, just relax, get some gear, and start working on those achievements.

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