The Funeral of WoW Gold

Tired of intense gaming sessions not burning fat or toning muscle? Change is on its way, and Steve Steinberg has his ear to the ground.

Trainer Harley Pasternak tries out the Wii during the Wii Fit Moms event hosted by Garcelle Beauvais Nilon and Harley Pastern at the SLS Hotel on December 11,
2008 in Los Angeles. (JOHN SHEARER/WIREIMAGE)

It’s always cool to witness the birth of a new gaming genre. A few years ago, the idea of a “fitness” genre in gaming would have been laughable.

I was there the first time gamers got to use a primitive first-person view to take down Hitler and his minions, and I was there the first time gamers got to take to the air as a voyeuristic mosquito to suck the blood of cute animated Japanese girls.

Obviously, though, as Darwin pointed out in a 1997 letter to the editors of Electronic Gaming Monthly, the continued existence of a species comes down to survival of the fittest. Today, we have no shortage of ways to lay waste to a menagerie of nasties in first-person-shooters; yet the number of titles in the “perverted winged insect” genre remains at one. Some genres survive and prosper; some become extinct.

Gamers, it was assumed, were sedentary endomorphs whose only concept of strength, endurance or agility related to boosting these attributes to affect the killing power of their “World of Warcraft” warrior or their “Final Fantasy” “Chosen One.” Amazingly, though, the fitness genre has grown from a handful of novelty titles released haphazardly over the past decade to a shelf’s worth of disks and carts designed to raise the strength, endurance and agility levels of the person who’s actually playing the game. Heck, the genre has even supported a full year of my monthly “Health Meter” columns.

As far as console makers go, none did more to get gamers up and moving in 2008 than Nintendo. The movement-based gaming that had been around since the Wii dropped took a decidedly fitness-friendly turn with “Wii Fit,” which was released in the spring. The game — which shipped with the technologically crazy-cool Wii Balance Board — managed to attach to exercise that feeling of wanting “just one more try.” Attempting to set a new record in something as goofy as hula-hooping was just as compelling and time-consuming, and delivered the same “gamer’s high,” as attempting to take down the final boss in any action game or take first place in any racing game.

There was more good news in the fall when third-party publishers released games that supported the Balance Board. EA’s “Skate It” and Ubisoft’s “Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip” and “Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party” came up with creative uses for the peripheral. In 2009, there’ll be even more reasons to fire up your Balance Board. Konami’s and Hudson’s “Marble Saga: Kororinpa” — the follow-up to 1997’s “Kororinpa: Marble Mania” — will let gamers use their Boards to guide a marble through a world that’s just as bizarre and oddball as the word “Kororinpa”; and PlayLogic’s and Icon’s “Vertigo” will unleash the Board on the racing genre.

The biggest title on the horizon for gamers looking to get a real-life “health boost” is EA’s “EA Sports Active.” The game will support the Balance Board, but the primary mode of exercising will be with resistance bands. The game — which is looking to be the first “Wii Fit”-killer — comes complete with the blessing of Oprah’s health guru, Bob Greene. Oprah is, of course, a kingmaker. So, even if the game falls short of expectations, expect it get a whole mess of push from the Big O. Look for “EA Sports Active” to become “The Eckhart Tolle of Fitness Games.”

The House of Mario has also made some non-Wii-related contributions to the to the fitness genre. The Nintendo DS has become a fantastic piece of hardware for teaching and training. And no publisher took advantage of its power more than Ubisoft. The publisher released Quick Yoga Training which, along with Konami’s Let’s Yoga and Let’s Pilates, gives handheld gamers more than enough ways to get all bendy. It also released a pair of titles that should help out many follow through on their New Year’s resolutions. “My Weight Loss Coach” offers exercise and nutritional advice, and even comes with a pedometer that you can wear to count your steps and then attach to your DS to upload your step-count into your in-game profile. “My Stop Smoking Coach” was developed with the help of real-life “stop-smoking coach” Allen Carr. I don’t recommend that you start smoking to test if the thing works, but it looks like a more fun way to end your cigarette addiction than going cold turkey, hypnosis, or simply dying.

On the third-party peripheral scene, 2009 might be a big year for the British company Gamercize. It’s hooked up with a U.S. partner to get its fitness-based gaming controllers deeper into the U.S. market. It offers both steppers and cycles that can be attached to next-gen and last-gen consoles. Instead of just using your thumb and an analog stick to move your on-screen character, the devices force you to walk, run, or pedal to keep your gaming going.

While the good news is that it seems like the future will be full of great ways to slim down, get strong, and work on your balance, agility and coordination all in a gaming context, the bad news is that there will probably be a lot of lousy ways to do it as well. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but in the gaming world, imitation is usually a very insincere to way to rip off gamers with subpar knockoffs. With the fitness gaming genre starting to blossom and games like “Wii Fit” and, soon, “EA Sports Active” making headlines in the non-gaming press, you can be sure there’ll be a lot of folks looking to cash in. As the year goes on, I’ll let you know what is — and what isn’t — the real deal.

Kaneva has been quiet for the bulk of this year in terms of putting out announcements or public developments for its virtual world. In November 2007, Mike Dowdle left his post as VP of Business Development and the company put biz dev on hold while it developed the platform. In early 2008, COO Rob Frasca has left the company as well, but the company was still looking towards development through the year.

It seems like it’s now getting ready to make a bigger public push. Today Kaneva announced that its membership had grown to over 1.5 million people in the public beta and that it would be launching a new premium sponsorship model for brands.

The new offering, “Keep it Real!,” is set to launch at Engage! Expo next week, but the company says it is “already engaged in conversations with several large brands to add a 2D/3D experience to their online presence in 2009.” 

When Kaneva debuted in 2007, it was aiming at a mix of 2D social networks and a 3D virtual world, mainly targeting, as was more common then, the adult demographic. It’s big appeal, according to CEO Chris Klaus back then, was realism. For both consumers and brands, Kaneva was hoping that tying users’ virtual world activities to realistic environments (often) and identities. For users or brands who were turned off by Second Life’s anonymity and fantastical elements or World of Warcraft’s outright magic, the hope was that it would provide a more familiar touchstone.

It seemed to appeal to at least a few brands. In October 2007, Turner Broadcasting signed a one-year deal with Kaneva, and various other brands signed on as well. Now Kaneva is touting some of the same elements, its mainstream appeal and  safe, realistic, environment as reasons for brands to take on sponsorship options. 

The announcement isn’t specific about what “Keep it Real” offers, but it sounds like Kaneva wants brands to provide content for users, like clothes, furniture, and accessories. We’ve reached out for more explanation.

“We are opening up our doors and welcoming select consumer brands to engage with our growing member base and experience marketing in an entirely new way,” said Christopher Klaus, Founder and CEO of Kaneva. “With Kaneva, we push traditional online marketing campaigns into an interactive, entertainment world where brands have the opportunity to become content providers.”

WALNUT CREEK, Calif.–There probably aren’t very many people in the world who could inspire someone to stand up in front of a crowd of 800 strangers and admit to a World of Warcraft addiction.

It might sound like a joke, but in the case of Frank Warren, the founder and curator of the ongoing PostSecret project, people are always baring their souls to him, either via the privacy of an anonymous postcard or letter, or in the case of his many public speaking engagements, in front of hundreds, or even thousands, of people they’ve never met before.

For four years, Warren has been collecting the secrets people send him–about a thousand a week, he says–and putting the most interesting of them up on the PostSecret blog, as well as publishing them in a series of best-selling books. A major theme of the project–which has millions of fans around the world–is helping people unmask their personal pain through the simple step of letting the secrets they’ve held inside out for the first time.

Many of the people in the the sold-out crowd at the Lesher Center here Wednesday night cheered wildly when a 39-year-old woman stood up to admit to her WoW addiction, apparently thinking she was joking. But really, it should have come as no surprise that she was deadly serious.

“My secret really is that online gaming really is an addiction,” the woman said, “and it can destroy (families), and I think people should know that.”

Over the four years of the PostSecret project, Warren has become what some have called “the most trusted stranger” in the world. And over those years, despite the fact that his project has an extremely altruistic nature–there’s no advertising on the blog, even though its 220 million-plus page views would certainly earn a fortune, and the sales of the four best-selling books supports the National Suicide Prevention Hotline–many corporate entities have come to him asking if they could work together.

In almost every case, Warren has said no, regardless of the financial carrots offered him.

Most recently, HBO asked if it could use some of the secrets sent to Warren as part of a marketing campaign for its “Big Love” show about a polygamous family in Utah. But he said no, and since then, HBO has been operating its own site, called “Web of Secrets,” where people can anonymously post secrets, which are then sent out via a Twitter feed.

I’ve been watching that feed for a couple of weeks now, and though many of the secrets that come through every 30 seconds or so express the same kind of pain and anguish and longing and loneliness as the postcards that Warren puts up every Sunday on his blog, and which appear in the books, those that are part of “Web of Secrets” are missing something. They seem kind of fake, and it’s hard to believe they’re real, even though most of them probably are.

“Have the confidence to be vulnerable”
Warren said he wasn’t surprised when I told him that Wednesday night.

“You can’t replicate the trust I’ve been able to engender” over the last four years, Warren said. “As long as I don’t screw that up, I don’t worry about” other secrets projects.

It probably has something to do with the fact that Warren himself is someone who comes across as trustworthy, and as someone who seems to share the same kinds of pain that most of us feel. And there’s no way that entering text into a field on a Web site can replicate the personal expression of writing an emotional secret on a postcard and sending it to a Maryland address where an actual human being–Warren–will get it like he has so many thousands of others.

And that’s especially true when it comes to helping people feel safe opening up their hearts in front of sold-out auditoriums.

“My mantra is, ‘Have the confidence to be vulnerable,’” Warren said. “If I can do that, it gives people in the audience the confidence to be vulnerable.”

On stage, Warren comes across as extremely vulnerable, even though he’s been giving more or less the same version of his PostSecret talk for quite some time. He’s a gentle man, and during his talks, he tells several secrets of his own. He is funny, open, and yes, vulnerable.

A big part of his standard talk is to go through a series of his favorites of the secrets he’s received over the years, projecting them on a big screen from his computer. But backstage before getting up in front of the audience, Warren always spends time flipping through a tin full of postcards that he brings with him just in case.

“They’re special, and I always carry them with me,” Warren said. “They’re backups in case something goes wrong” with his Mac during the presentation.

But despite his preparation for Mac meltdown, Warren professed to being an Apple loyalist, and said he had, in fact, just bought two new Macs.

“One of the things I like about Apple,” he said in his backstage dressing room before his talk, “is (its products’) minimalism.”

Listening to the secrets of others
Due to a bit of a snafu, I ended up ticketless for Warren’s Wednesday night talk here, and so, after talking to a few people, I wound up sitting in a dark room backstage where I was able to watch him speak on a monitor and listen to him through large speakers set up in the room.

It was strangely disassociative, listening to his words, and then the words of the many people who came up to microphones in the auditorium to share their own secrets. I’ve seen Warren speak before, and watched as a couple of dozen people stood up, like the woman admitting her WoW addiction, and open up their hearts. Seeing them do it brings context about them.

But only being able to hear their voices, and not see them, was odd. It was like their secrets were on postcards and I was hearing them narrate those hidden words.

Warren said that he usually speaks in front of audiences measured in the hundreds, most of whom are women. Indeed, Wednesday night’s event here was just that.

But he said his biggest-ever audience was at last March’s South by Southwest Interactive festival, where about 2,000 people crowded in to hear him speak at the Austin (Tex.) Convention Center. And that talk, he said, due to the nature of SXSW, which is a technology conference, had the gender mix turned on its head.

I was in the room for that talk, and the emotions bared that day have stayed with me ever since.

One of the most beautiful things about it was that the first audience member who spoke surprised us all by publicly proposing marriage to his girlfriend. It was an awesome moment, and the woman accepted. Warren said there’s even a video of that moment on YouTube.

And then, witha big smile on his face, he told me Wednesday night that he got an e-mail from the man a couple of weeks ago, inviting him to the wedding.

According to most dictionaries, wow is defined as an expression of surprise. However, if you asked around 10 million obsessed teens and young people to define the word, they would come up with something completely different.

They would tell you that “wow” meant World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft, commonly known as WoW, is an award-winning video game from a company called Blizzard. Blizzard has managed to convince the equivalent population of
Belgium (around 10 million) into paying them around US$15 (NZ$20) per month to play this game.

The game was released back in 2004, and with the second expansion soon to be upon us, I will try to give those of you who haven’t already played a rundown of what the game is all about, why it is so successful and what you need to get started.

WoW is what is termed an “MMORPG” (massive multiplayer online role-playing game). It’s essentially Dungeons and Dragons on steroids in an online virtual world, where you play as a wizard or fighter or other character to slay monsters and complete quests. And there’s a whole lot of real people thrown into the mix.

You create your character/alter-ego from the startup screen. There is a whole raft of different choices for what abilities your character will have and how they’ll look, and you’ll also have to pick between the “good” alliance or the “evil” horde.

Once this is dispensed with, you can charge out among the denizens of Blizzard’s online fantasy world “Azeroth”, and quest/explore/battle other people or computer-controlled monsters to your heart’s content.

Ok. Sounds reasonably simple, right? Don’t know what all the fuss is about? Well, neither did I until I played the game. Consider this fair warning - once you play this game you will be totally sucked in. A common online nickname for WoW is “World of War-crack”, as the game is said to be more addictive than the drug.

The world that Blizzard has created for the game is truly enormous, majestic, exotic and it does not skimp on the detail. It also stays reasonably true to the fantasy lore of previous Warcraft games and books. Blizzard keeps their online world up to date via regular patches and maintenance, sometimes adding new content.

The loading times are remarkably quick for such a huge game and the simplistic interface and smooth controls mask the huge complexity of the game.

World of Warcraft is so successful because it constantly keeps rewarding players for time spent in the world. Obviously the more time spent, the greater the rewards will be.

For those just starting out in the game, the goal is to increase the level of your character, which lets you explore more lands and harder dungeons. Ultimately you will hit level 70 and will be able to do experience most of the content.

As many experienced players of the game would tell you; in World of Warcraft life begins at level 70. It is here that you can experience the toughest content, explore the deepest and darkest dungeons. Generally this requires a heck of a lot of work, and you will need the support and help of a whole bunch of players to do the more advanced quests.

This is where your Guild will come in. Somewhere along the way you should have joined a guild. My flatmate used to spend around 6 hours per night, four nights a week with his guild in the harder dungeons. These areas give you access to all the best weapons and items, which in turn allow you to dominate other players in combat, or explore still tougher areas with your guild.

But the ability to constantly improve my character and to attempt increasingly harder challenges or events was only part of the reason I kept paying my subscription fees.

The main part was the social interaction with people that I had spent time with over a period of months. I posted to online forums daily, watched videos (some funny, some tactical) about WoW in general or my characters’ role in the game, and chatted on voice programs with my guild-mates.

This combination of addictive game play, the multiple facets of the game, the thrill of consistently attaining goals and the social side to the game all combine to make WoW one heck of a video game.

To some people it has far more influence than any video game should, with husband-wife teams common in game, and events like IRL (in real life) guild BBQs taking place every weekend around the world.

So, you think all the good points outweigh the addiction and your probable lack of social life for the next 2-3 years and you want to start to play World of Warcraft? You can do so on most reasonable computers these days.

As long as your PC or Mac does not belong in a museum, you should be able to run WoW easily enough, provided your broadband connection is fast enough (be careful of your data cap too). You will also need to purchase both the original World of Warcraft game, and the expansion “The Burning Crusade” (about $80 for both in NZ stores, with a free online trail at www.worldofwarcraft.com).

An average player will need to spend anywhere from 1-5 months leveling up your character in order to play some of the more challenging and rewarding areas of the game. The other option is to purchase an account from somewhere like TradeMe and take advantage of someone else’s hard work (this is definitely outside of the terms and conditions, but it does happen).

Realistically at this late stage in the game it would take a huge amount of effort to get a brand new character ready in time for the upcoming expansion: Wrath of The Litch King.

Either way, you are in for probably the fullest and most immersive video gaming experience on any system. During the time in which I played WoW, I truly enjoyed the game and felt that it was well worth my US$15 per month. However, if you have a lack of time or a busy family/social life then stick to a more casual game.

Some interesting articles about MMO gold farming in the paper/online today. Rowenna Davis investigates the world of “playbourers” who make their living farming gold in World of Warcraft. One of the “farmers” Li Hua describes the working conditions:

The working conditions are hard. We don’t get weekends off and I only have one day free a month. But compared to other jobs it is good. I have no other skills and I enjoy playing sometimes.

Do gamers who buy this gold care about these conditions? The one interviewed for the feature didn’t seem bothered.

I don’t think about the workers. I think about the product. Do you think about factory workers when you put on your socks?

Perhaps unsurprisingly given the popularity of the game the
US seems to be the biggest market for gold farming.

Most of our customers are from America but they are all kinds of people – students, old, young – people of all ages and careers.

I’ve played WoW on and off since launch and have not yet been tempted to buy virtual gold. But then I’m not trying to keep up with hardcore players who have time to burn. If I was then the temptation would be there and clearly the market is a real and viable.

What do you think then? Any WoW players here been tempted to splash out for virtual riches? And if so, why?