The Funeral of WoW Gold

70 Unleash your inner Warlock

“MMOs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) are a nice place to unwind when you get some free time, or after a long day—the rules are different and you can lose yourself in a new world.”

Marc Zephyrin , 22, a ‘World of Warcraft ’ Orc hunter called Slink.

71 Air your dirty laundry to the world

A preliminary 2008 study conducted by the Swinburne University of Technology in
Melbourne, Australia, found that among its sample of Internet users, people who “started blogging” were “better adjusted” and “lived healthier, happier social lives” because “blogs are open to dimensions of social support, friendship and positive interaction”.

Blogspot  is a good bet. Another service, Livejournal India (community.livejournal.com/lj_india), has a great community.

72 Play with paper

Origami, the Japanese art of folding paper, is known to allow “effective development of motor, intellectual and creative abilities”, according to a 2000 study by Katrin and Yuri Shumakov, psychologists based in Toronto, Canada. But if mastering the intricate folding patterns doesn’t fit your crazed schedule, try Papercraft models instead. These freely downloadable PDFs offer detailed folding instructions. All you need is a printer, a pair of scissors and a bit of patience. Start your doll collection at

www.papercraft-world.blogspot.com

73 Ogle at animals

While there’s no scientific evidence to back up the claim that fuzzy animals equal bliss, founders of Cute Overload and Upside Down Dogs  might beg to differ. Thousands of viewers check in daily to get their fill of adorable furry little animals in ridiculously saccharine-sweet poses.

74 Turn to the funny pages

“Say you’re having a crappy, bored-outta-my-brain day at work, and then along come these little nuggets of awesomeness in convenient little boxes,” says Reetika Joshi, 22, a research analyst at a Pune-based firm, about Webcomics, free graphic comic strips on the Internet. “I guess what I like most is the simplicity of it all. How someone can draw just stick figures and scribbles, and it’ll still be the best thing you see all day.”

Start your Webcomics viewing spree with the popular but geeky XKCD  or the irreverent Cyanide and Happiness. Careful, the stick figures do get a bit graphic.

75 Go Ga-Ga over goo

A 2006 study on the “Cognitive Health Benefits of Digital Gameplay” by the Games for Health Project, a US-based non-profit organization that studies the use of videogames for health care, monitored the effects of videogames on thinking patterns and found that—surprise, surprise—certain types of games could potentially contribute to a healthy, agile mind. World of Goo! is a new, independently produced game from 2D-Boy, a new indie game studio. It’s a lovely puzzle solver, leaving you to figure out concepts of physics and architecture while couched in an impossibly cute and addictive game. The game can be bought online for $20 (around Rs1,000), and is available for PC, Mac and Nintendo Wii.

76 Tweet often

“Twitter is very different from mail, chat or Facebook. It keeps you up-to-date with friends’ happenings in your day-to-day life,” says Harish Ravindran, an IT professional who uses the popular service with gleeful abandon, having clocked 249 updates since December 2007.

While keeping your friends in the loop of your daily banalities might not seem like the most profound of activities, once you get into the Twitter groove, a strange wibbly-wobbly feeling of what technology commentator Clive Thompson calls “ambient awareness” starts to kick in. It’s like a peripheral awareness of what’s going on with all your friends at all times, making you feel much more connected to them, no matter where you may be in the world.

Orlando, FL, December 30, 2008 –(PR.com)– DSO Gaming Clan LLC (DSO Clan) announces a bold move into competitive PC gaming: a World of Warcraft Division. DSO Clan’s new Guild, ClanDSO, will be competing in Blizzard Entertainment’s most popular game, World of Warcraft (WoW), a massive multiplayer online role playing game, or MMORPG, in upcoming seasons through tournaments such as BlizzCon, Major League Gaming (MLG) and Championship Gaming Series (CGS).

Progressing into the competitive PC gaming arena by establishing the ClanDSO Guild on Battle.net for World of Warcraft, DSO Clan’s reputation and sportsmanship appeal is reaching far beyond the console gamers playing Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 on Microsoft’s Xbox 360. PC gaming is an exciting new experience to DSO’s community.

“DSO’s Guild opens up the world of PC gaming to current and future members of DSO Clan,” says Guild Leader Kelli Arron, known as Wicked Fate DSO. “According to Blizzard Entertainment, over 11 million subscribers play World of Warcraft （ Buy wow gold ）each month. DSO intends to be a large part of that world. The recent release of the WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, allows DSO to compete world-wide, while bringing DSO’s reputation and philosophy of fair play to the table.”

Guild members will have the opportunity to explore the entire World of Warcraft experience. Newcomers and veterans of all skill levels are playing and learning together. DSO’s Guild will include Player vs. Environment (PvE), Player vs. Player (PvP) arena teams and end game content. DSO hopes to send individuals and teams to compete in WoW in events around the country.

DSO Clan is actively recruiting serious female and male gamers with great attitudes. The guild offers playability in the original World of Warcraft and its expansions, The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King.

About DSO Gaming Clan LLC: DSO Clan is an Organization of Professional and Casual Gamers designed to provide a safe, competitive and enjoyable gaming experience for all Gamers everywhere. Membership is open to gamers worldwide, of all types on multiple platforms. They applaud, encourage and develop skill and place a higher value on professionalism, attitude and enthusiasm.

About Blizzard Entertainment: A division of Activision, Blizzard develops and publishes entertainment software. Blizzard’s online-gaming service, Battle.net®, has millions of active users.

The growing popularity of the indie game, World of Goo earned it the No. 1 rank on Amazon’s top ten best-selling PC games recently, albeit temporarily, among giants like World of Warcraft, Spore, Left-4-Dead, and Fallout3. This independently developed game’s success illustrate the changes that are taking place in the video game and digital content distribution landscape. How appropriate, as we end this year and look for changes in the next.

A physics-based puzzle game for all ages, World of Goo is filled with varying species of dynamic goo balls that form the building blocks of  bridges, towers, and constructions, the whole point being to navigate around obstacles and reach an exit pipe. Sounds simple enough. But some levels will leave you frustrated and determined to create (or, in my case, recreate) a goo structure that might actually hold up. The game environment, including the music produced by Gabler, definitely has a dark, Tim Burton-esque feel to it that contrasts well against the quirky, upbeat goo balls. Whether it’s the actual science of building towers or figuring out the mystery behind the odd semi-involved characters (e.g. the painter, MOM, the Goo Corporation) that interests you, this game will definitely make you wonder. (Here’s a video description of it).

The story behind the making of the World of Goo is compelling. It’s the product of two guys, no money, and lots of hard work. The ex-Electronic Arts designer-developer duo, Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel, don’t even have a garage. Their game studio, called 2DBoy, is based out of any Wi-Fi enabled coffee shop in
San Francisco they can squat in for the day. According to Carmel, World of Goo has been built with a budget of just $10,000 dollars, all of which comes from personal savings.

“We never sat down and made a budget, but if we had, it would have included rent for our apartments, meals, coffee, and kitty food,” Gabler said.

Compare that to the sky-high development costs of Left-4-Dead or WoW that also sit in Amazon’s top ten. These are the games that symbolize the traditional gaming industy: big investments, expensive hardware, large teams, extensive publishing and marketing networks, and protracted development timelines. These aren’t bad things and it’s definitely unfair to compare indie games like WoG to hits like WoW, which now has 11.5 million subscribers. At the same time, it is remarkable when the two can share a place, side-by-side on America’s largest online retailer.

The indie movement in games goes through constant expansion and contraction. The indies are good about developing creative titles, but game costs keep rising and that makes it hard for the indies to stay afloat. Activision was formed after a group of developers broke away from Atari; CounterStrike grew from a user modification of Half-Life. Games like Portal and Braid (one developer with a budget of $180,000), not exactly traditional, have also become immensely popular recently. Costs of game development are certainly falling — the specialized hardware and software that was so costly and prohibitive in the past pose less of a barrier than they used to — but that’s not what is causing the tipping point.

What’s new is that there has been a shift in how games are getting to players. Platforms like the ones offered on Facebook and the iPhone, as well as new digital distribution channels like Steam, Nintendo’s Wiiware, and the XBox arcade have created a route for small developers to gain access to large audiences in a way that wasn’t possible before. This has brought costs way down and attracted so many people that gaming is no longer a niche market. It has also widened the selection of games, allowing the good ones to organically gain market share and the bad ones to fade away.

2DBoy actually attributes the viral success of WoG to their blog and early web presence. After the game won awards at the Independent Games Festival at the Game Developers Conference last year, a snowball effect helped the game land publishers and other distribution deals. Suddenly, publishers who didn’t respond to earlier requests now wanted to publish the game. The duo also capitalized on every public relations opportunity that presented itself. According to Kyle, WoG is a good example of how focus on detail and quality results in a game that markets itself. Gabler isn’t talking about raising institutional funds but did hint at future growth, “the game industry is ripe for some big changes and we have a couple of ideas that would require external funding.”

The marked changes in video game distribution are part of a larger trend. We’ve already seen what’s happening with distribution of digital music (think iTunes) and video (think Netflix Instant Queue). Now it’s happening with video games too. The trend is worth watching in 2009.

If this trend continues I believe we may very well all need law degrees simply to play the games we love so much.

When you start playing games on your Nintendo Wii, your Microsoft Xbox 360 or even your computer, you might not realize the thorny legal and business issues behind the amazing graphics and the gripping musical score. Digital gaming is one of the world’s fastest growth industries—up 26 percent last year, even with the economic slowdown—and it is no surprise that where there is money, there is lawsuits.

One of the trickiest areas is the intersection of intellectual property law and virtual worlds. One example is the recent $
6M settlement between Blizzard Entertainment and MDY Industries. Blizzard Entertainment makes the popular online game called “World of Warcraft （ Buy wow gold ）.” 

World of Warcraft is competitive, with thousands of people from all over the world participating at any given time. The longer people play in the game world, the more powerful their game characters become. A company called MDY Industries created a program called “WoWGlider,” which would “play” for the gamer in World of Warcraft. When gamers came back, their characters would be more powerful because of the time “played” by WoWGlider. Blizzard sued MDY for copyright infringment last year, and settled in late September after a summary judgment holding from the United States District Court of Arizona.

MDY made a simple argument: WoWGlider itself did not copy or modify the World of Warcraft game—instead, it only interacted with the game software by simulating a human player. MDY admitted that use of WoWGlider was prohibited by Blizzard’s terms of use. It simply argued that WoWGlider did not infringe Blizzard’s copyright, because it never did anything more than communicate with the World of Warcraft software.

To win, Blizzard advanced a novel copyright argument. Blizzard noted that any time software is run on a computer, a copy of the software loaded into the computer memory (the RAM) so that the computer can execute it. Blizzard argued that this “RAM copy” was authorized when a human was playing the game, but prohibited when WoWGlider was playing the game in violation of Blizzard’s terms of use. The court held that violating the terms of use exceeded the copyright license granted by Blizzard, making the RAM copy of the game infringing.

Blizzard and MDY aren’t alone in arguing about the legal ramifications of digital games. “Cutting-edge graphics and great storytelling aren’t enough to keep this industry going,” according to Dr. Peter Raad, executive director of The Guildhall at SMU, a graduate-level educational game development program at Southern Methodist University.   “Successful publishers and independent developers know that video gaming is a business first … a very big business. The legal issues are enormous for this industry. The only thing growing faster than this sector is the need of legal specialists who understand it fully.”

Digital gaming businesses need to juggle the demands of intellectual property, licensing, user-generated content, free speech, online ownership, revenue recognition, employee rights and new business opportunities.

Business issues also surround digital gaming. Last year, overall U.S. industry sales (which include not only software, but also accessories and hardware) were $18 billion, a new record, according to the NPD Group. NPD analyst Anita Frazier said this month that the U.S. is on track for sales in the $21-$23 billion range in 2008.

To further explore the legal and business issues surrounding digital gaming, The Guildhall at SMU, SMU Dedman School of Law and The Center for American and International Law have announced plans to hold Game::Business::Law, an international summit on the law and business of video games on January 14-15 in Dallas.

 Mitch Lasky, general partner at Benchmark Capital, will lead the first day’s panels as keynote speaker. Mitch has spent more than two decades in the video game, new media and interactive entertainment business. Mike Hogan, chief marketing officer of GameStop Corporation, the world’s largest video game and entertainment software retailer, will be the keynote speaker on the second day of the conference.

“In some ways, we are only in the very early stages of understanding how the law applies to digital worlds,” says Xuan-Thao Nguyen, professor at the SMU Dedman School of Law. “So many of the rules in the law carry the implicit assumption that everything is physical. What happens when that assumption isn’t true?”

One example is the idea of trademark rights in virtual worlds. Brand owners are looking to extend their rights into these virtual worlds to protect “authentic” digital replicas that are created within the virtual worlds and to stop “unauthorized” digital replicas. In fact, many physical world brand owners have established a presence in one virtual world known as Second Life to advertise or sell “authentic” digital replicas of their physical products. 

Additionally, brands for virtual products are being created and maintained solely within the virtual world of Second Life, and these brand owners are looking to protect their rights within the virtual world, perhaps with the intent to expand into the physical world. As these two worlds collide, the traditional notions of physical world infringement will be put to the test. And, while some early lawsuits have been filed involving unauthorized digital replicas within Second Life, and attempts have been made to protect virtual brands, these issues still remain unanswered and untested.

The only certainty in the new business of digital gaming is that it will be a hotbed of legal and business activity—it literally is a whole new world. For example, the Game::Business::Law summit will be examining business models for digital games, including the effect of In re Bilski on business method patents; game finance and venture capital; game-related litigation, and regulatory and free speech issues in games. 

Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe was probably just thinking out loud when he said it, but he made Internet headlines when he said he could make a lot of money if he changed his last name to “World of Warcraft （ Buy wow gold ）,” after his favorite video game.

Kluwe hosts a talk show on
Minneapolis radio station 93X and recently told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, “Back when Chad Johnson changed his name to Ocho Cinco, I told the guys at 93X that I was going to change my name to Chris World of Warcraft. They said that’s too long. So they started calling me Chris Warcraft. I could make a lot of money if I changed my name to that.”

Kluwe never said he was serious about the name change, only that he was serious about video gaming.

“I think more people like to hear me talk about playing video games than football,” Kluwe said.

“I’ve played video games since I was 4 years old. I play them a lot more than I kick a football. I kick the ball about 45 minutes a day. I play video games about five or six hours a day. But that’s OK. I don’t watch TV.”

Trivia time

Who holds the Vikings’ franchise record for career gross punting average?

He isn’t Mr. Popularity

How much damage did Brett Favre do to his reputation by coming out of retirement to quarterback the New York Jets for the 2008 season? Listen to Jets running back Thomas Jones during an interview with New York radio station WQHT-FM.

“We’re a team and we win together . . . but at the same time, you can’t turn the ball over and expect to win,” Jones said. “The other day [in a season-ending loss to Miami], the three interceptions really hurt us. . . . If I were to sit here and say, ‘Oh, man, it’s OK,’ that’s not reality. The reality is, you throw interceptions, I’m [ticked] off, I don’t like it. You know what I’m saying? I don’t like it, I know everybody else on the team doesn’t like it.”

Meanwhile, an anonymous Jets player told Newsday, “There was a lot of resentment in the room about him. He never socialized with us, never went to dinner with anyone.”

This is what happens when you win one of five games in December.

A 17 year-old boy was arrested on Monday for pretending to be suicidal over the video game World of Warcraft. The
Middletown, Ohio teen is being charged with a first-degree misdemeanor for “inducing a panic” after patrol officers and paramedics rushed to his home.

The boy was speaking to a Blizzard Entertainment representative (the makers behind World of Warcraft) when he make the suicidal remarks. According to the Middletown Journal, he typed that he was “suicidal and that the game is the only thing he has to live for.”

The Blizzard representative called 911 after the boy made the remark.

Middletown Police reported that the boy said it as a joke to attempt to get free virtual items from the Blizzard representative. Instead, the stunt yielded him no free items, but did land him in a patrol car.

Market Prices at the auction house are constantly fluctuating, two of the base products of wow gold grinding 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 press release distribution sites it in the trade channel 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 annual report press release trade channel. To pick up Netherweave Cloth I suggest 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 press release boilerplate or three, however if you are soloing take the path 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.

World of Warcraft is huge in terms of player base and fans, and that bunch is pretty tech savvy as well. It makes perfect sense to see a new World of Warcraft Today theme being made available for the BlackBerry Curve, as fans of the MMORPG will now be able to get in-game graphics and icons on their communications devices, and they certainly don’t need a reminder to tell them that it is time for that guild raid right after work. Well, we think this would be more of a distraction than anything else since it will keep the user thinking about what they are going to do in World of Warcraft instead of concentrating on the task at hand. Horde and
Alliance themes ought to be concocted as well to satiate the hardcore.

Ten Creative Projects Using Free Microsoft Software

Sebastopol, CA - infoZine - How would you like to build an Xbox game, use your Wiimote to create an electronic whiteboard, or build your own peer-to-peer application? Coding4Fun (O’Reilly, US $39.99) by Dan Fernandez and Brian Peek, helps you tackle some cool software and hardware projects, using a range of free Microsoft software. You can code for fun with C#, VB, Lua, ASP.NET, WPF, XNA Game Studio, and Popfly. If you love to tinker but don’t have time to figure it all out, this book gives you clear, step-by-step instructions for building ten creative projects, including:

Alien Attack: Create a 2D clone of Space Invaders with XNA for the PC, Xbox 360, and Zune

LEGO Soldier: Create an action game using Popfly with a custom-built virtual LEGO character

World of Warcraft （ Buy wow gold ） RSS Feed Reader: Use WoW’s customizable interface to have feeds pop up while you’re gaming

InnerTube: Download YouTube videos automatically and convert them to a file format for off-line viewing

PeerCast: Stream video files from any PC

TwitterVote: Create custom online polls on Twitter

WHSMail: Build a website with ASP.NET for Windows Home Server that lets you view the messages stored on a computer with Outlook

Wiimote Controlled Car: Steer your remote-controlled car by tilting the Wii Remote controller left and right

Wiimote Whiteboard: Create an interactive whiteboard using a Wii Remote

Holiday Lights: Synchronize your holiday light display with music to create your own light show

Coding4Fun shows you how to use your programming skills in new and fun ways.

Dan Fernandez started the Coding4Fun Web site in 2004 and built it into a powerhouse, with over 1 million page views per month and viral YouTube videos seen by millions. Dan was also the Lead Product Manager for Visual Studio Express and Popfly.

Brian Peek is a Microsoft C# MVP who has been developing in .NET since its beginnings in beta form0. In 2005 he developed the software for The Finalizer, the world’s first .NET-driven battlebot, showcased at TechEd 2005. He has developed demos and content for various events Microsoft has participated in including Mix and Maker Faire. His Wiimote library is currently the most viewed and downloaded project on the Coding4Fun site.