The Funeral of WoW Gold

Men often play the part better than women
Following a modestly successful article about approaching female gamers in social games, some might wonder why I would be following up two weeks later with something pertaining to the same subject.
Not quite.
I’ve been playing my current MMO of choice more than usual these past few days because Blizzard is dangling that proverbial carrot in front of my face from a very long rod. When or if I ever get that carrot is irrelevent, however, in light of our topic this evening. For those of you who do play these MMO games, voice chat is not always an option and even when it is, not all players utilize it. So how can you be sure if the person you’re grouping with is a guy or girl?
You can’t.
In the past, various communities have taken it upon themselves to conduct research in futile attempts to document the men to women ratio in such massively popular MMOs (not to be redundant) such as World of Warcraft. Even games that dwell in its shadow are suspect to this vague territory, such as ArenaNet’s Guild Wars.
There’s really no need to go into the experience of being a true female gamer in these situations, as most major points were touched upon in a previous Sunday Special. Rather, let’s talk about the guys who gender bend for wow gold and goods. As a fairly serious gamer, most of my friends and acquaintances are of the male variety, and I’ve learned that quite a few of them do in fact play one or more female characters (or “toons”) in MMOs. Most of the time, I hear them justify the choice to virtually crossdress with, “The girls just look better.”
You can tell how long ago this was taken based on our armor.
Sounds reasonable enough. Everyone knows these developers can’t ignore their own base instincts, and I’ve been known to make a few male characters myself here and there — mostly on account of not wanting to watch my poor Ranger run around in a bikini made of twigs and leaves, or observe pole dancing every time I hit “/dance.” Aesthetic preferences aside, there is the undisputable fact that females get free stuff. This universal truth has become a deciding factor for many male gamers when creating a new toon, and it only adds to the shady gender aspect of MMOs.
Having played the gender bending game myself in these virtual worlds, I know from personal experiences that in most cases, other players will be nicer to you on a general scale, even before you announce your true sex. That’s not to say they’re meaner to a male character, just less attentive and generous. No, I’m not the kind of person to ask for wow gold or items, and you’ll find that most real females don’t outright beg. No, we subtely hint that we need a new weapon or more money for a certain mount (or just a little help with a quest), and if someone responds, wonderful.
I find that men (and boys), whether playing a male or female toon, show much less tact when it comes to getting what they want. Even when pretending to be a real girl, the charlatans tend to lay it on pretty thick and bluntly. If they want something, they’ll outright ask for it or dance naked (as naked as the game will allow) in a populated region.
The funny part is that their fellow guys often fall for it, and maybe when that false affection runs dry, they’ll turn around to complain about how manipulative women are. Aside from the fact that these “women” are usually men as well, the duped party is likely to repeat such altruistic behavior over and over again until they’re blue in the face. It appears that most gamers know the general ratio of men to women in MMOs, often joking about it themselves; so why do they keep falling for that pretty face with the pointy ears and glowing eyes? In games that allow characters to marry, these situations can get pretty ugly.
Now if you’re an aspiring MMO con man (or woman) who is looking to pick up the art of in-game crossdressing, there are plenty of resources you can turn to for help. I’ve included one below for your benefit. Enjoy, have fun, and just remember to keep it clean!
Tags: wow gold，world of warcraft gold

The wait to demo the Upper Deck’s highly anticipated World of Warcraft Miniatures Boardgame quickly approached the 2+ hour mark. So while it was clearly the most anticipated game at the convention, I wasn’t willing to miss a significant chunk of the convention to check it out. I can say, the buzz from happy gamers post-demoing was very positive.
Instead, because there was no wait, I demoed last year’s hot topic–Upper Deck’s the World of Warcraft Collectible Cardgame.
I approached this game with skeptical optimism. I’ll go on record as an avid avid fan of the Word of Warcraft (wow gold) multi-player video game. Could the elements that made WOW such a tremendous success as a video game be translated into a collectible cardgame?
Like the video game, the focus of the card game is building up the skills and talents of your individual fantasy hero. All WOW classes and proficiencies are represented by striking character card artwork. Your card deck randomized your resources–weapons, allies, quests, etc)
There are a lot of elements similar to the hugely popular MAGIC THE GATHERING collectible cardgame, including the necessity to “tap” your cards to spend resources. Quests from the world of warcraft game double as “resources” in ways similar to the Magic game.
I had some quibbles with some rules. Attacks can come at you one enemy at a time (in other games, all attacks must be declared at once so that you can choose which enemies you want to block), making defense a tricky matter. Your base character, before it earns a weapon, has no combat skills whatsoever–an aspect that not only contradicts the video game, but contradicts real life common sense as well. My character, a trained warrior, should be able to deal out some sort of unarmed damage against an opponent. (Anyone want to tell Chuck Norris he can’t hurt anyone without a sword or gun?)
I played a two-person combat round from beginning to end, which took roughly an hour. Without the learning curve, I suspect an average play time of 20-40 minutes.
Bottom line–Quibbles aside, if you enjoy the RPG, you’ll find a lot to love here. The game embraces the character-building aspects that make the videogame a huge hit. Overall, a very successful adaptation that won me over.
Tags: wow gold，world of warcraft gold

Market Prices at the auction house are constantly fluctuating, two of the base products of wow goldgrinding in the outlands can almost double in value in the space of a few hours. This can leave you kicking yourself if you sold something only for it to appear at twice the price of what you put it on for in an hours time.The auction house isn’t the only way though, sometimes you can sell a large amount of something (10+ stacks) for near the auction house value and without it taking its cut. It is always a good idea before selling anything on the auction house to advertise it in the trade carpet steam cleaner for the price or maybe even a little more than you where going to put it on the auction house for. You will get a few annoying people offering you ludicrously low amounts, just ignore them and stick to your guns, it will pay when someone wants to buy all you have for more than you were going to sell it for in the first place.
Netherweave Cloth.
This drops nearly everywhere in the outlands, its price varies widely, however on most servers it fluctuates between
4g and 10g, a good time to consider selling this on any server is between 7-8g, it might not be the best price you could get for it, but you wont lose precious wow gold in auction house deposits. The best part is that there is always a high demand for Netherweave Cloth, so you can nearly always sell this in the trade channel. To pick up Netherweave Cloth upholstery cleaner killing the Trolls in the Warmaul Compound in North West Nagrand, There are plenty of mobs to kill and you generally get 1-3 pieces of netherweave per kill, plus you get some Warmaul Beads, which are excellent for getting your rep up with both Kurenai and the Consortium.
Sunfury Signets & Arcane Tomes
Both these drop very regularly in Shadowmoon Valley, these both go for large amounts in the auction house especially since scryers is currently an overplayed ffaction, so many more people are buying these over the Aldor. You can pick up a lot of these grinding just west of the Scryer town in Shadowmoon Valley, between the two bridges there is a road heading south, there are two paths, one has a huge amount of the blood elves in groups of three and close together that you need to kill, it may be easier to do this in a group of two or three, however if you are soloing take the ms memory loss a little further on, up towards Eclipse Point, here the blood elves are spread out, and not in groups, Not only will you pick up silver, netherweave and the two Scryer hand ins for these but you will also notice a high drop rate of greens and even the occasional blue, all these can usually be sold on the auction house or even disenchanted.
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The
Orange County Register
SANTA ANA, Calif. — Some unwelcome news for “World of Warcraft” fans who have been following the plight of young Ezra Chatterton: the 12-year-old game player has suffered a stroke.
Ezra was diagnosed with brain cancer in spring 2007. The Make-A-Wish Foundation granted his wish to spend a day with Irvine, Calif.’s, Blizzard Entertainment to develop his own character for the game.
Last week, Ezra suffered a stroke that for a time left him unable to wake fully or communicate, his father, Micah, said.
The tumor that had been shrinking is regrowing quickly. Ezra’s on a high dose of medication and still has pain, vision problems, lethargy and right-side weakness. His situation is looking grave but Ezra remains optimistic.
Micah Chatterton said Thursday:
“Up until last week, Ezra was doing as well as he’d ever been, and one of his favorite pastimes was to try to work out every conceivable talent combination for our Ephoenix and a few of our other characters once “Wrath of the Lich King” (a ‘WoW’ expansion) comes out. As soon as he’d settled on one build, and weighed all the arguments for and against it, a new beta would come out, and the process would begin again. ‘WoW’ has been a consistent comfort to him through his cancer, something that he can devote himself to mentally, whether his body agrees or not.”
If you want to send Ezra a personal note, e-mail him at ephoenixearthlink.net

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Doesn’t turn you into a slobbering antisocial troll

UNLUCKY, PARENTS, yet more research shows that video gaming is good for us.
The INQ has already uncovered the fact that the best surgeons are the ones who play games, now the good news keeps coming - it appears now that simply talking about games can have a positive effect.
The
University of Wisconsin at Madison researchers studied a sample of 2,000 chat room posts about the biggest online role playing game ever, World of Warcraft( with wow gold as its currency).
Results show that the game encouraged scientific thinking, as chats involved using math and testing to investigate problems systems and making use of models for understanding situations.
The researchers found that 86 percent of the participants shared their knowledge to solve problems and 58 percent used a systematic and evaluative process.
Unfortunately, with every piece of good news, there must be some bad.
Further studies have shown that students who played violent games showed more unfriendly, hostile behaviour and those who play more entertainment games show poorer grades in school and are more at risk of obesity.
Don’t get too excited though, angry cotton wool-wrapping parents, these findings are the vaguest reported.
So, if you want to ace maths, and encourage your scientific thinking, get gaming people.
Tags: wow gold，world of warcraft gold

chatting about computer games like World of Warcraft can improve your ability as a scientist, say (gaming-mad) scientists.

Boffins from
University of Wisconsin (probably trying to explain why they were on WoW forums all day) used codes based on benchmarks for scientific literacy, to analyze online discussions about World of Warcraft.

They looked at a random sample of nearly 2,000 discussion posts to see what types of conversations took place, such as social bantering versus problem-solving, that classified as scientific reasoning.

It was concluded that the forum and game-based learning could supplement textbooks and science labs in fostering scientific thinking and problem-solving ability.

“These forums illustrate how sophisticated intellectual practices to improve game play mimic actual scientific reasoning,” said researcher Sean Duncan.
“Gamers are openly discussing their strategies and thinking, like how to gain and use wow gold creating an environment in which informal scientific reasoning practices are being learned by playing these online video games.”

The codes used in the research analyzed, reasoning using systems and models, understanding feedback, predicting and testing and using math to investigate a problem.

The majority of participants (86 percent) were found to have shared their knowledge to solve problems and more than half the participants (58 percent) used systematic and evaluative processes indicative of scientific reasoning.
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2007 revenues coming from operating World of Warcraft (its currency is wow gold ) in
China, The9 (NCTY) must renew their WoW license or lose much of their earnings power. Their license is set to expire in June, 2009.
If they can renew this license, and simply maintain their current earnings level - they have a very attractive valuation. With a Market cap of $518M, $300M in cash, no net debt, and earnings of $16.8M last quarter, they are great deal, even ignoring the fact that they have a fabulous growth record.
On August 13, shares of The9 fell 20% on news that Netease (NTES) had licensed various games from Activision Blizzard (ATVI) (Starcraft II, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne™, and Battle.net® platform) for the China market. (See here.)
While the Starcraft and Warcraft series of games are entirely different types of games from World of Warcraft (they are play once type of games with groups of up to 12 people vs. WoW being massive multiplayer games - or MMORPGs), it is easy to understand the concern investors have that Activision is working with Netease now and may not renew the the WoW license for The9.
So now the big question is - will Activision renew the license for The9? I believe they must.
First of all - if they give the license to someone else (for example, Netease), all of the million+ regular players will lose their World of Warcraft accounts with The9. These users have invested years of time in developing their characters and status in the game, and will have to start over from scratch. With significant competition from game operators competing for players, many customers will decide to go to a different game, rather than start from scratch with World of Warcraft. Since Activision gets a 22% cut of player revenues, they would take a huge loss on the reduction of players.
Now, there is no chance another operator will be able to take over The9’s player base and generate the same per player revenues. But, if they are able to offer a significant upfront fee to the extent that Activision won’t care about per-player license revenues, then Activision might consider the switch. But that would then send a really bad message to future licensors. It won’t make sense for companies to fully commit to licensing from Activision with the fear that even if extremely successful Activision might backstab them in the end.
So I see Activision trying to diversify their China offerings a bit with the Netease licensing, and delaying their renewal with The9 for as long as possible to try and get a higher percentage of license revenues, but in the end, it makes sense for them to give in and renew the license with The9.
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Its recent merger with Activision created the biggest player in video games. But Blizzard is much more than its mega-hit World of Warcraft
“Why does Blizzard succeed where others don’t?” asks Jay Wilson, a lead game designer with a shock of spiked hair and a wry disposition. “It isn’t a magic trick. We work at it, and if a product isn’t good enough, we cancel it.”
Blizzard Entertainment, of course, is the
Irvine (Calif.)-based maker of the world’s most popular and profitable online game, World of Warcraft (its currency is wow gold), which boasts nearly 11 million monthly subscribers around the globe. The company is also at the heart of the recent $18.9 billion merger with Activision, primarily a maker of console titles such as Guitar Hero and Call of Duty. Born in early July, the newly combined entity, Activision Blizzard (ATVI), is now the industry’s biggest player, with projected annual revenues of nearly $4.5 billion.
But Activision is acquiring much more than world of warcraft
. Blizzard is behind a string of best-selling, industry-shaping PC games including the StarCraft and Diablo series, which have sold nearly 10 million and 20 million copies, respectively. The new company is also tapping into a corporate culture that champions creativity, both productive and experimental, inspiring enduring devotion from paying players.
Company Changed Hands Several Times
Blizzard began life in 1991, founded by UCLA graduates Allen Adham, Frank Pearce, and Michael Morhaime, currently the firm’s CEO, as a group of coders-for-hire toiling on other companies’ games. The 1994 release of Warcraft vaulted the company toward becoming one of the most admired and profitable game makers in the world. (That year, the company was purchased for $10 million by distributor Davidson & Associates and changed hands a number of times before finally coming under the control of Vivendi Universal (VIV.PA) in 1998.) Like Disney’s (DIS) Pixar animation studio or electronics impresario Apple (AAPL), Blizzard has stayed ahead of competitors.
Indeed, the 250-person outfit has become one the games industry’s leading innovators, creating games that players crave and profitable new businesses that rival executives envy. “[They're] essentially design geniuses, making games easy enough for casual players and deep enough to attract and hook hard-core players,” says Jeff Green, editor-in-chief of online gaming magazine 1Up.com. “Simple to learn, difficult to master is the holy grail of game design,” he adds. “Blizzard does this every single time.”
As Wilson suggests, Blizzard’s purpose is simple: to make fun games. Sounds easy enough, but the task is complicated by the nature of modern video games, which can require development budgets rivaling those of blockbuster Hollywood releases or major corporate product rollouts. As the games industry has emerged as a serious business, Blizzard’s hallmark has been its effective and persistent effort to remain in touch with players.
Learning from Criticism
It’s also learned to feed on criticism. Betas of future expansions to World of Warcraft include reporting software that allows players to offer instant feedback like the need for wow gold from within the game. Employees endlessly play and replay games both on and off the clock, constantly looking to make improvements. At lunch, “strike teams” play concentrated sessions of games in development to provide feedback. “You know a game is ready when management has to send e-mails out after lunch begging people to get back to work,” jokes Wilson. Some designers even plan vacations to coincide with major release dates in order to play alongside regular consumers.
And the company has boldly canned numerous products, even nearly finished games it deemed “not fun enough.” An adventure spinoff based on the Warcraft franchise was ditched in 1998 despite widespread press coverage and high consumer anticipation. Blizzard executives make a habit of listing the many games that never made it out the door, including a long-delayed StarCraft-themed game for consoles that was first announced in 2002 but put on hold indefinitely in 2006 as the company grappled with the difficulties of the different platform. New games, meanwhile, are announced with ship dates of “when it’s done.”
These days, Blizzard presides over an ever-expanding universe composed of not only blockbuster games but also action figures, novels, manga, board games, pen-and-paper role-playing games, apparel, and conferences. In South Korea, where competitive video gaming is a televised sport, Blizzard’s decade-old game StarCraft inspires such fervent loyalty that tournaments still draw some 700,000 spectators a year, nurturing a niche industry worth $40 million annually. Legendary Pictures, the studio behind blockbuster comic book adaptations like Batman Begins and 300, is currently working on a big-budget, live-action film based on WoW slated for 2009.
Bringing Together Two Well-Oiled Machines
Unlike other mergers, aimed at bolstering sagging businesses or nabbing market share, analysts widely deem Activision Blizzard to be the rare union of two well-oiled machines. Steve Bailey, an analyst with London market research firm Screen Digest, notes that Activision’s console expertise could help Blizzard make the jump to the dedicated game systems produced by Microsoft (MSFT), Nintendo (7974.T), and Sony (SNE). According to Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities in Los Angeles, the deal should insulate Activision from the more seasonal console market, which peaks in a parental buying frenzy at Christmas. Instead, some of WoW’s profits—as much as $600 million annually—can be put toward new products.
But for all the ink spilled over the Activision-Blizzard mega-merger and the attention paid to World of Warcraft—the game has been used in Toyota (TM) truck ads and parodied by South Park—the company’s biggest releases could lie ahead. Executives have committed to releasing one new WoW expansion pack every year to keep the title competitive and to keep players paying the $15 a month subscription fee. Last year, it announced StarCraft II, a sequel to the firm’s science-fiction strategy game. And, in June, the company showed the first footage of Diablo III, another highly anticipated sequel in development since 2005.
Some fans howled at Diablo III’s public unveiling, complaining that the art direction too closely resembled that of world of warcraft. The flap, to which designers quickly responded with an open letter explaining their choices, is evidence that Blizzard could yet stumble. Now, the game maker must deliver on its widening roster of games while making inroads into new genres and markets—all without abandoning the methods that, to date, have made it a darling with players and executives alike.
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CARROLLWOOD — It’s well past closing hours, but the lights are on at one of the stores in an
Ehrlich Road strip mall.
Inside Anthem Games, men and women 14 to 50ish assemble at white plastic folding tables to play an intense round of Magic the Gathering, a strategic card game with mystical, medieval themes.
A recent premier of the game’s latest edition, Eventide, drew a crowd to the game store, which opened in May.
Competitors chatter and stare intensely at the intricately illustrated playing cards and colorful pieces.
Nothing much distracts from the tournament at hand. Anthem sells candy and playing cards in a display case up front. Role-playing games (known as RPGs), board games and modeling kits line the shelves.
The comic books, toys and collectibles typically found at businesses specializing in hobby games are nowhere to be found.
“We’re all about the games,” owner James Caudill, 31, said. “We appeal to people who are looking for a place to socialize outside the bar scene, people who need an outlet for their creativity and who like solving problems and puzzles.”
Role-playing games are a big part of Anthem’s business. They go beyond the typical warriors and wizards of Dungeons and Dragons, with themes ranging from World War II (Axis and Allies) to superheroes (Mutants and Masterminds) and colonization (Settlers of Catan).
Caudill and co-owner Scott Clark, 30, have been friends for 15 years and played Magic the Gathering together.
Both are high school dropouts who carved out careers in information technology — Caudill in the Air Force and Clark in the corporate world. They went into business together to get paid to play the games they enjoyed while slacking off at work.
Caudill had come into an inheritance and bought the store to realize his dream of providing a social headquarters for games that traditionally keep people at home and at their computers.
Anthem is not the only game-hobby store in the area, but Caudill says it’s a statewide headquarters for “singles,” or individual cards not in a set.
Events change daily, from Scrabble to Yugi-Oh to world of warcraft.
Why play the games at Anthem? Aside from meeting new people, prizes are awarded at the end of the night. They include entry fees as store credit, play mats, T-shirts and foil premium cards.
Personal touches abound. A humorous sign on the fridge reads, “Snax and Dranx,” where bottled water costs $1; canned soda, 75 cents; Li’l Debbies, 50 cents; and Fla-Vor-Ice, 25 cents. An old-school Street Fighter II arcade game can be played in the back.
Each night highlights a different game tournament. Caudill moderates as a rules judge and helps customers while Clark joins in the tournaments. Caudill plays tunes from his MP3 collection, which includes Flaming Lips and Drive-By Truckers.
Anthem’s owners say they broke even in the first few months of operation, virtually unheard of in the mom-and-pop shop world, and are beginning to turn a profit. There are no expansion plans, but Clark is working on an online store for the Web site.
Does a hearty round of Scrabble or Magic ever get out of hand?
“There’s a high degree of trash talking among friends, but that’s it,” Clark says with a laugh.
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During the Ultra Mobility keynote, Anand Chandrasekher demonstrated the capabilities of the Intel Atom processor by playing World of Warcraft and a 1080p video stream on an OQO device.Chandrasekher said that the MID featured a single-core 1.86GHz Atom processor, but I wasn’t convinced by either demo.First of all, the world of warcraft
demo was of a character running around in an empty room and even then the framerate wasn’t exactly smooth – the frame rate was choppy and performance was poor. What’s more, I’d hate to see how the game ran in some of the more intensive PvP zones where there are actually other players running around.Secondly, there was no mention of what video codec was used for the 1080p video stream. Yes, it was smooth, but I doubt that it’s encoded in h.264 based on the testing we’ve done in the labs with 720p h.264 video on an Atom processor. With high-bitrate streams, we found that the Atom processor could barely handle 720p, never mind 1080p.During a roundtable with Chandrasekher, we asked what codec was used in the on-stage demo. He wasn’t 100 percent sure, but he was adamant that the chipset (and processor) can decode 1080p h.264 streams… with no mention of bitrate.I can’t help but feel that Intel is clutching at straws with the current MIDs – they’re too bulky because, even though they’re pretty frugal when it comes to power and heat, they’re not frugal enough. To make matters worse, every device we’ve seen so far just doesn’t really have a distinct usage model – the best we’ve seen has been the Rugged Panasonic, which has no intention of targeting the consumer market.We’ve seen nothing to suggest that Intel has really moved forwards since the advent (and failure) of the UMPC platform. Current MIDs just seem like more of the same with a slower, less capable processor to boot.If anything, what we really need is Moorestown because at least when that arrives, there’ll be the opportunity to make devices that are sleek, stylish and could potentially replace a smartphone. For me, carrying an additional device that’s loosely classed as ‘pocket sized’ to get a rich and uncompromised Internet experience doesn’t wash – I’d rather just live without the Internet when I’m on the move.
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