The Funeral of WoW Gold

World of Warcraft has announced a new “Recruit-a-Friend” initiative, designed to rope in those few people who still talk to their spouses and significant others after 8 p.m. instead of beating pretend demons with sparkly weapons. The deal is this: If a current player can convince someone to sign on for a two-month tour of fantasy duty, they get a free zhevra mount.
I should explain a couple of those words for the sweet innocents who have managed to avoid the tawdry, painted world of warcraft
.
First: zhevra. A zhevra is a zebra with a horn. Like a unicorn, but a zebra. That’s kind of a theme with Warcraft: Take a normal animal, paste on an extra body part or two, and give it a fantasy name. A zebra with a horn is a zhevra, a crocodile with six legs is a crocolisk, a two-headed buzzard is a bonestripper. There’s some fantasy precedent for this, but I’m going to be disappointed if the upcoming Warcraft expansion has me fighting three-eyed yaks (yakaboos) and nine-armed octopi (nonopi, or possibly octoplarghs).
As for the mount part, characters in Warcraft can learn to ride an animal, but not until level 30. Starting characters might be able to conjure fireballs or summon a demon, but put them in front of a horse and it’s like integral calculus to a sleepy stoat. “Horse, huh. How does this work? You … I go on top of it? Like above it? And it moves? I’m not … screw it, I’ll walk.”
Once characters reach level 30, though, they’re not limited to horses. Depending on your character’s race and reputation, you might end up riding a wolf, a ram, a dorky-looking bird, a dorky-looking mechanical bird, an elephant (sorry, elekk) or something even stranger. Get enough Warcraft characters together on their mounts and it’s like I Ran the Circus without the Three-Snarper-Harp.
So, to sum up: If you get one of your friends to shell out for two months of Warcraft, your character will get to ride a completely cosmetic zebra with a horn instead of whatever it’s riding now. It’s a sign of Warcraft’s unrelenting brain-grip that this is incredibly compelling.
World of Warcraft’s developers have mastered the unholy art of in-game bribery. They have discovered that players will do any number of stupid, tedious things in order to earn perks that have no effect on the game.
Just this week I’ve been fighting in battlegrounds — special areas where armies clash and 12-year-olds question each other’s sexuality — over and over just for a chance to win a tiny little flying dragon. This dragon doesn’t fight on my behalf or give me powers or anything. He just follows me around. In real life I try to avoid being tailed by parasitic flying creatures, but in the game I seek it out, even though I hate battlegrounds.
And really, what does my little dragon tell the other people in the game? The same thing it tells you — I spent too much time playing Warcraft.
This isn’t so bad, mostly because the other players spend too much time playing Warcraft as well. The zhevra mount, however, tells people: “Not only do I spend too much time playing Warcraft and too much money buying wow gold, I hassle those with enough wisdom to avoid it.” It’s sort of like helping out a drug baron, except at least drug mules generally get some cash out of the deal. This is as if someone said: “Hey, if you board a plane with this condom full of cocaine stashed someplace unmentionable, I’ll give you a stylish cravat.”
I can only hope that this will serve as a cautionary tale to those who, unlike me, have managed to resist the massively multiplayer siren song that Warcraft continues to sing. But if it doesn’t, and you decide to sign up for the game anyway, let me know. Those zhevra mounts are pretty boss.
Tag: wow gold, world of warcraft gold

Supports All Platforms Including Xbox 360™, PLAYSTATION®3, Nintendo Wii™ and PC’s.Gamertrainer.com, LLC, a leading provider of console and PC gaming skills training, announced the launch of its website and service, Gamertrainer.com™. The website serves all levels of gamers from novices to professionals and features tips, guides and hourly private lessons provided by highly skilled instructors or “Gamertrainers™.”“Gaming is now one of the fastest growing forms of entertainment in the world,” said David Williams, co-founder and president of Gamertrainer.com, LLC. “You have all age groups playing and many adults are picking up controllers and playing online for the first time. As these new gamers enter the market a real skills gap can occur, causing frustration and driving them away,” said Williams. “Our trainers help fill that gap, whether your goal is to win more online in Halo® 3, get started in World of Warcraft® or to finally beat your neighbor in Guitar Hero® we have trainers available to help you.”All training sessions take place over online services like Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE®, Sony’s PLAYSTATION®Network or PC based servers for games like world of warcraft
. Booking a training session is easy with an on-site calendar showing all the days and times available by game. Customers can book, purchase and complete a form describing exactly what they would like to learn and within hours they are contacted by their trainer and are ready to go. “One of our goals is to fill a very underserved niche – the beginner gamer,” said co-founder Bill Bates. “Take World of Warcraft, for example. For every world of warcraft
veteran there are thousands who have tried it and given up, unable to get past the myriad of choices, acronyms and terminology seasoned World of Warcraft players take for granted. Our World of Warcraft trainers help people get past the learning curve quickly and on to truly enjoying the game experience.”Gamertrainer.com provides private training sessions and training gift certificates for both experienced and beginner gamers on all the major platforms (Xbox360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii and PC) and a growing list of games including:• Battlefield: Bad Company™• Call of Duty 4®: Modern Combat™• Guitar Hero® III and Rock Band™• Halo® 2 and 3• Madden NFL 09• Rainbow Six® Vegas 1 and 2• Super Smash Bros.® Brawl• World of WarcraftAbout Gamertrainer.com, LLCAt Gamertrainer.com our goal is to help anyone become a better gamer. It doesn’t matter if you’ve just picked up your first controller or you’re a frustrated gaming veteran, we have a trainer that can help you “Unleash Your Game.” For more information visit www.gamertrainer.com
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Technology pushes society in new and exciting ways, some good and some bad. The world of online gaming isn’t immune from this either, with their being both upsides and downsides from the emergence of MMO games such as World of Warcraft and Everquest. Welcome to the wow gold-farm.
One of the strangest sidelines to these games is the virtual economy that has built up around them, with money to be made from building assets by playing the game and then selling wow gold to other gamers. By coupling cash-rich, time-poor players with slave wage workers in emerging economic countries, the people in charge can make big profits.
According to new research by the
University of Manchester in England, this virtual economy is big business, and despite efforts by games developers, is likely to keep on expanding.
According to The Telegraph, the research team, lead by Professor Richard Heeks, found that there are almost half a million people employed in these so-called gold-farms.
Large-scale virtual sweatshops in countries such as China, Romania, Indonesia, and Mexico, are employing thousands of young men and women to acquire wow gold, equipment, and skills. These assets are then sold to gamers desperate for an advantage over their fellow addicts.
The people employed in this industry typically work 12-hour shifts with just a short break in exchange for accommodation, meals, and an average of $150 per month. The people at the top of the multi-million dollar industry can make fortunes, but the employees are left with little money, and an addiction to an online game they cannot afford to keep playing if the gold-farms go out of business.
Where there is demand there will always be supply, and so this black market virtual economy is likely to keep on growing until the developers behind the MMO games manage to stop the practise completely.
Tag: wow gold, world of warcraft gold

Blizzard’s Tom Chilton and J. Allen Brack fill us in on the current status of the next WoW expansion.world of warcraft is the 800-pound gorilla of the massively multiplayer market. Other companies would be thrilled to capture only a small segment of Blizzard’s incredible success, but Blizzard isn’t a company known for resting on its laurels. Wrath of the Lich King is the second World of Warcraft expansion, and it’s set to bring far more new content and explorable areas than were introduced in The Burning Crusade.Many WoW players are already experiencing what’s to come in the massive Wrath of the Lich King beta test. We sat down with Lead Designer Tom Chilton and Lead Producer J. Allen Brack at Games Convention in Germany to talk about the current state of the expansion’s development and what we can expect as the adventurers who have conquered the challenges of Azeroth and Outland move on to the icy reaches of Northrend.GameSpy: Let’s talk a little about the differences in approach that you’re taking between what you did with The Burning Crusade and with Wrath of the Lich King.
Tom Chilton, Lead Designer: The biggest difference would be what we do for every different kind of player. We learned a lot with The Burning Crusade as far as how popular 10-person raids were, the 25s, and the daily quests for more wow gold. We’re trying to make sure that we come out with a game with things for everyone and for all the different players out there. We learned a lot of different angles and philosophies, etc.
GameSpy: What kind of feedback have you gotten regarding your new philosophy regarding the new party sizes for raid encounters?
Tom Chilton: The feedback we’ve been getting has been overwhelmingly positive, as far as people really liking the fact that we’re supporting 10- and 25-person raids. We actually expected a little more of a freak out regarding the 10- and 25-person raid cap size. Overall, people seem to really like the change.

GameSpy: What’s the status of development on the expansion?
Tom Chilton: Finishing and polishing is really where we’re at. The level cap will be bumped up to 80 pretty soon, and as soon as that happens, there’ll be very little content that won’t be available. We’ll have Naxxramas in the hands of the players very soon. Wintergrasp will be fully playable for the players very soon. Once that stuff is all online, then we’ll be at least content-complete. Right now we’re in our pass on balancing and a lot of tweak stuff we’re working on. Up until now we’ve just been getting everything in there. Now that everything’s in there, we can work on smoothing it all out.

Tag: wow gold, world of warcraft gold

On the surface, last night’s report was a winner. Total revenue surged 28% to $104.4 million for China ’s online gaming juggernaut. Earnings clocked in at $0.49 a share, well ahead of the $0.34 a share it rang up a year ago. Wall Street was looking for a profit of just $0.39 a share on $99 million in revenue.
Don’t break out the party hats just yet, though. NetEase’s results were peppered by a business tax refund that accounted for roughly a fifth of the company’s gross profit. In other words, analysts weren’t as far off as you may think in nailing the company’s bottom line.
Since Netease was the lone multiplayer game specialist to miss expectations in China three months ago, it’s only natural for investors to be skeptical this time around. Hiding behind a tax break isn’t helping, as the company didn’t formally break out its net earnings per share figure without the one-time windfall.
That’s probably as far as you should pull in with the cynicism, because there were plenty of things to like about the report.
Revenue growth accelerated during the period.
Online gaming is the key driver here, at 83% of the revenue mix, but online advertising through the company’s portal saw revenue there climb 60% higher.
The company’s coffers continue to grow, closing out the quarter with $722.4 million in cash, or $5.58 a share.
If that flurry of positive activity isn’t enough to warm up to NetEase, maybe a Blizzard will do the trick.
The wizards of Blizzard Shares of NetEase climbed 6% yesterday, ahead of last night’s report, bucking the trend of weakness at its rivals. The catalyst for yesterday’s gains was a deal with Activision Blizzard (Nasdaq: ATVI) to license several of its Warcraft and Starcraft games in China .
The deal doesn’t include the iconic World of warcraft
franchise. That is still The9’s (Nasdaq: NCTY) baby in China . However, it’s definitely a welcome form of validation when the world’s largest video game company chooses you as a licensee in the world’s largest nation.
The news also slammed The9’s stock, since so much of that company’s financial performance is dependent on Blizzard’s global online powerhouse. If NetEase is able to catch that kind of lightning in a bottle in any of its licensed releases, revenue growth that is already accelerating after a temporary lull can really get cranking.
The name of the game is value The most surprising aspect in all this is that the online gaming sector in China is trading at ridiculously low multiples. Peers like Perfect World (Nasdaq: PWRD), Shanda Interactive (Nasdaq: SNDA), and Giant Interactive (NYSE: GA) are all trading at low forward P/E ratios, despite the sector’s breakaway growth and chunky margins.

Price8/13/08
2009
EPS est.
2009
P/E
Perfect World
$24.79
$2.27
10.9
NetEase.com
$24.05
$1.66
14.5
Shanda Intl.
$25.16
$2.46
10.2
Giant Intl.
$9.95
$1.05
9.5
The9
$18.16
$2.22
8.2
If you like NetEase at less than 15 times next year’s earnings, you’re going to love its rivals trading at pre-teen multiples. Compare that to stateside behemoths Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: ERTS), trading at multiples of 24 and 21, respectively.
Obviously there are risks here. The Chinese government can be restrictive. It has cracked down on underage players and regulated the opening of Internet cafes in the past. This is also still a nascent industry. Who knows if China ’s youth will still fancy these multiplayer fantasy games in a few years?
However, when you see growth stocks fetching value stock prices, you tend to forgive the potential potholes. You look past the worst-case scenario. You forgive the business tax refunds inflating the bottom line.
It’s how you play — and win — the game.
Tags: wow gold，World of warcraft gold

Welcome to Eith’s (entirely non-sing-a-long) Wrath of the Lich King blog. A couple of days ago I was handed a shiny beta key so this blog will be my musings and impressions of Blizzard’s second expansion for the juggernaut that is World of warcraft gold
. There’s a lot to cover, including the introduction of the first ‘hero class’ in the game (Death Knights), new professions, new zones, new graphics, a new achievement system, even new hair. So, spoilers ahoy, and should you want to keep your eyes pure and virginal for the actual launch consider yourself warned.Do you smell something? I know a lot of people are interested in how Blizzard has decided to implement the new hero class so I rolled me a Death Knight and took her through the beginner zone. It’s really refreshing to have a brand-spankin’ new character and not be faced with the horror that is Stranglethorn or other zones that are a pain to get through, ganked or not.As far as initial impressions go this class is fun and in many ways (both lore-wise and game mechanics related) they function something like a corrupted paladin; extremely limited abilities at range, but an enjoyable blend of melee and casting when you’re in the thick of a fight.

member of the Scourge players begin in an instanced starting-zone-version of the Plaguelands as a level 55 Death Knight. Yes, it’s a lot of fun to have a new character appear withquite significant green items, but I wasn’t happy about my missing talent points. The developers, however, have come up with a pretty interesting way of handing out those precious points – quests. Each quest completed in the instanced zone rewards some wow gold and between one and six talent points to spend. The quests are also a lot of fun, in that evil Scourge way; there’s something inherently satisfying about riding a frostworm, killing humans by the hundreds and swooping down on a Scarlet Crusader so your dragon can eat him on the wing. Pure class. By the end of the zone you’re fully kitted out in blues and get a kick arse quest/event that ends the instanced zone and sends you out into the world and into your faction.Face-rolling funOkay yes, I admit it, in some ways the Death Knight seems overpowered – though perhaps that’s just the fact that you start out so much higher than a normal starting character. Time will tell whether the class normalises through levelling to 80.Death Knight talent trees come in three plague-ridden flavours; Blood, Frost and Unholy. I’m yet to try out the Frost (nominally the ‘tanking’ spec of this class) or Unholy (the PvP build) builds but Blood is face-rolling fun. Yes, you can roll your face across the keyboard and get a good result. Blood spec is fast and furious – little downtime and capable of taking on multiple high level mobs and surviving easily. Combined with the Rune Tap ability and Blood Strike to heal a Blood-specced Knight, this seems to create an efficient levelling machine.Death Knights grow runic power as they fight, much like a warrior pools rage. That runic power can then be tapped by different abilities from the Frost, Blood or Unholy trees – two runes of each type are available at a time. The UI’s representation of which runes are available or on cooldown is kinda small at this stage in the beta however. Death Grip a Fel Reaver… and dieAs expected, upon my arrival in Outland to continue levelling, I was faced with dozens of Death Knights. Also, as expected, general chat was flooded with talk about using the ranged pull ‘Death Grip’ on passing Fel Reavers. However, it seems even heroic classes aren’t up to the challenge of taking on a Fel Reaver at level 58.

a great mechanic, particularly as a ranged pull for a class that functions mainly as melee with limited local area spell capabilities. It has a great animation sequence that lifts your targeted mob into the air, pulling it towards you and forcing it to fight (I suspect this will also be great for retreating mobs, but I’m yet to confirm this).Blizz has taken some pity on Death Knight noobs as they make their way into the world – First Aid starts out at 275, which is helpful to say the least, but other professions have to be acquired the old-fashioned way.Recent (shocking) discoveriesI’m sure a lot of you run mods like Cartographer or similar, which open the world map and reveal areas even if your character has never actually explored that element of the zone. So, having recently dropped tailoring and enchanting to pick up the new Inscription profession while on the beta server, I sent my 70 mage (that would be Eithriel -ed) into Elwynn Forest to start herbalism, the matched profession.It was as I was running around following herb nodes on my map that the familiar ‘ding’ noise went off, and I learnt that I’ve finally, after 70 levels, explored all of Elwynn Forest. Phear my leet mage skills. So, that’s how achievements work – some will be automatically awarded on installation of the expansion as far as I can tell, for characters already of a certain level, but new characters can experience the joy of extra ‘ding’ noises as they complete 50 quests, for example. Hopefully next week we can get into the nitty-gritty of Northrend, where it’s frozen all the time but the quest givers keep asking you to go swimming. Oh hai, hypothermia.
Tags: wow gold,World of warcraft gold

Practically gold farming in real life
The owner of six of China ’s fastest privately-owned computers continues to rake in cash thanks to more than a little help from orcs and elves.
Video game publisher and online operator The9 said today it posted $66.3m in second quarter 2008 revenue, an immense 69 per cent increase from the same period last year. The lion’s share of revenue came from being the Chinese proprietor of the immensely popular online role-playing game, World of Warcraft. Revenue from running subscription-based games was $60.7m — contributing over 90 per cent of the company’s earnings.

“Our solid financial results were driven by the continuing growth of Blizzard Entertainment’s World of warcraft goldand Soul of the Ultimate Nation, despite our closing of all servers for three days on observation and respect for those impacted by the earthquake tragedy,” said The9 CEO Jun Zhu.
But Zhu is giving SUN way more credit than it’s due. That’s likely in order to shake off investor fears the company relies so heavily on one game alone.
But just look at the numbers: The9 reports that in Q2, it attained aggregate peak concurrent users (PCU) of approximately 1.3 million for games in commercial operation. WoW’s PCU, however, surpasses the 1 million mark in China .
In total, the company reports over 41.5 million total registered users.
Net income for Q2 was $16.9m, a 129 per cent increase from 2007. Not a bad amount of growth, and with China ’s expanding market of PC owners there’s more to be had. There’s also Blizzard’s upcoming expansion to WoW, Wrath of the Lich King. But right now the company is busy trying to diversify. After all, eventually World of Warcraft will be dethroned.
The9 said it’s continuing to focus on marketing itself to lower tier regional markets, expanding game licensing deals and bolstering its in-house game development team.
“Through our operational and strategic initiatives, we are gradually and relentlessly executing our business strategy, so as to generate sustainable and scalable long-term growth for the Company,” The9 said.
Tags: wow gold， World of warcraft gold

Blizzard Entertainment, makers of World of Warcraft, have posted details of their forthcoming BlizzCon 2008 event, taking place on October 10 - 11, 2008 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, Calif.
BlizzCon is Blizzard’s now-annual gathering of gaming enthusiasts to celebrate Blizzard’s popular games. Blizzard is the developer of World of warcraft gold
, StarCraft and Diablo game series. The company is developing new games or expansion packs for all three franchises, and they’re developing them all for the Mac as well. Tickets to BlizzCon 2008 cost US$100 each.
BlizzCon features tournaments for players who want to test their skills against others in Warcraft III and World of Warcraft. The top prize is $25,000 per player, and players and teams will be venturing forth from North America, Europe, Korea and Taiwan . There will also be a StarCraft Invitational.
Other events planned for BlizzCon 2008 include a costume contest for cosplayers who want to dress up like their favorite Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo characters, a diorama contest, original song contest, motivational poster contest, BlizzCon dance contest, “silly contest” and more. Attendees will also get a “goody bag” filled with exclusive stuff.
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