The Funeral of WoW Gold

Delsyn learns the true meaning of Christmas — or New Year’s — or something — over a game of Mario Kart.
By Allen ‘Delsyn’ Rausch | Jan. 7, 2009

We’ve been chatting for a few days about what we did over the holiday break. Finally away from the crush of assignments and deadlines, most of us had a chance to play games on our own terms. Gerald went after World of Warcraft with a vengeance.
Fargo cried over Castlevania. Me? I made a friend… or an enemy… or possibly both.

The first Tournament of Roses Parade was held in 1890 to showcase the warm winter climate of Pasadena, California. The famous Rose Bowl football game didn’t come along until 1902. Since then, the annual parade has become as much a New Year’s Day tradition as the ball dropping in Times Square has become part of New Year’s Eve.

Being a more sedentary type, the newer tradition of camping out on Colorado Boulevard the night before to watch the parade in person was not something I was particularly eager to be part of. But when the commander-in-chief of my household (i.e. my wife) speaks, the peons can only obey. The good news was that I was generously given permission to bring a pair of Nintendo DS systems in order to keep myself and the other two children in the household amused. It worked in ways I hadn’t really anticipated, including, of all things, defusing a potential fistfight.

We arrived at the front of our motel on Colorado Boulevard at 1:00 p.m. on December 31st. Pasadena police allow campers to set up chairs and blankets along the parade route as of noon, meaning that by the time we had checked into our room, the route was already lined with chairs, heaters, blankets, portable grills cooking hotdogs and giant boom boxes blasting the finest in hip-hop and Spanish-language radio. The plan was for us (us meaning me) to take it in shifts to sit with the chairs on the sidewalk while the rest of us (meaning my wife, the kids and some other friends and family members) used the hotel room for warmth and the bathroom.

Our first hint of trouble came when we started arguing with the large chucklehead who decided that having four chairs entitled him to claim half the sidewalk space in front of the motel. He was a large man with a thick beard and forearms that bore a startling resemblance to tree trunks.

“You can’t do that!” I argued. “If you haven’t got a chair or a blanket down, it’s open space.”

“I’ve got a lot of people coming!” the guy screamed back.

“I’ve got people here NOW!” I yelled in reply.

This led to lots of macho posturing and threats of various natures that might have ended up in a fistfight had our respective wives not worked out a compromise and screamed at both of us to back off. This didn’t sit well with either of us and both of us retreated as far away from each other as possible, sulked like Achilles in our tents and nursed our wounded male pride. We were going to be neighbors for the next 16-18 hours and already I felt like a Hatfield.

That might have been the end of the story had I not brought the DS along. My kids and I simply love Mario Kart for the DS, so along about 6 p.m. as it was growing dark, I put away the book I was reading and fired up some Mario Kart. After playing some single-player for a while, I checked to see if there was a multiplayer game in the area. I did it on a whim, not expecting to find one — yet there one was. “TomJ’s Race” with four other people already playing. I quickly asked permission to enter and was granted it.

Interestingly I never bothered to look around and see exactly who I was playing. I was conditioned by years of PC multiplayer to not be able to see the faces of my opponents and I was honestly just so excited to find a game that I was absorbed in playing. It wasn’t until the second race, a particularly heated contest between me as Luigi and “TomJ” as Yoshi that I heard a familiar voice say, “I am going to kick this Delsyn’s ass!” I looked around to see who had said that and realized with horror that it was the guy I had spent a good 25 minutes screaming at that afternoon. I was currently throwing red turtle shells at the guy I’d considered throwing punches at six hours before.

I’ve never considered myself a particularly religious person but somebody — call it God or Fate or Gaia or possibly the Galactic Emperor Xenu — had given me the mother of all vengeance opportunities. “Bring it on, pal!” I growled in a loud voice that even surprised me. I was rewarded with the gratifying spectacle of “TomJ” looking around and watching his face go from shock to horror to rage to an evil smile as he saw the small white DS in my hands. We quickly looked back down and got back into it.

Zach Franklin, a first semester art major at the
University of Georgia, announced today that he was forgoing the final 3.5 years of college to declare for the NFL draft, in a posting made on his MySpace page. Despite never playing a down of football in his life, Franklin feels college may not be right for him after being dumped by his high school girlfriend and having his brilliant comic book illustrations misunderstood to be crap.

Mel Kiper Jr. broke down what Franklin can bring to a team in a segment on his radio program.

“This guy brings a lot to an NFL organization. He has quite a collection of comic books, ironic t-shirts, goth jewelry, and many self-written scripts for movies about ninjas and schoolgirls. It’s going to be hard for opponents to prepare to face Franklin on the field, when they have to research his sad, sad background of no sex and many long World of Warcraft sessions. It’s such a pathetic story, anyone would have trouble hitting this kid.”

Other scouts critiqued Zach’s body, with some saying that he was built “like a skinny little pussy,” but with the potential to become “the kind of skinny pussy you don’t want to mess with, because he might be carrying a gun under his Hot Topic trench coat.” Some have even said he has the potential to be as good as Ryan Leaf.

Franklin created a YouTube video to showcase his talents to scouts, showing him doing “football-like activities” such as catching a toilet paper roll and horse-collar tackling his 11-year-old sister. Kiper said the video was very impressive, not because of the football-like activities, but because he also mixed together his favorite scenes from The Dark Knight at the end, and that is a really sweet movie.

When asked of the chances of Zach Franklin being drafted by an NFL team like themselves, a representative for the Detroit Lions said, “Sure, I can see it happening. He doesn’t seem all that much worse than people we have drafted in recent history.”

The big MMOs of our time, like World of Warcraft from Blizzard or Warhammer Online from Mythic, need to re-orient themselves to attract as much of the Chinese market as possible, otherwise they run the risk of becoming irrelevant.
A recent study from Interfax China, a business news organization and research group, says that the amount of money generated by the online gaming industry of the Communist state will reach 18.21 RMB or 2.67 billion dollars sometime in 2010. The report is called “China Online and Mobile Gaming 2008
-2010” and paints a picture of around 120 companies registered as gaming operators that are running about 200 online games. They made 1.5 billion dollars in 2007 and are set to reach 1.86 billion in 2008.

The biggest operators are Shanda, Giant Interactive, NetEase and The9, the company which has the right to operate World of Warcraft in China. Casual and web games are almost as popular as high budget MMOs in the country and they seem to have the biggest potential for growth.

Interfax says that “In-game advertising is a hot spot for generating revenue, which is especially true for the free-to-play online gaming model that has gained popularity among many Chinese gamers.” The report also states that “The government is concerned over the content of the games enjoyed by large numbers of China’s youth, which may contain violence, gambling and [mature content], and policy making decisions will likely focus around these issues.” Growth can only happen if the central Communist authorities are somewhat less strict in enforcing rules and regulations.

It seems that more women are now playing online games and more non-urban residents are playing using the Internet. This shift in the profile of players means that big budget games will also need to adapt to attract the new demographics.

Logitech’s G19 Gaming keyboard sports a built in secondary LCD display.

Gamers are a demanding bunch—they require peripherals that help them keep their attention on the blood-soaked battlefield. Logitech has heard their battle cry with the G19 Keyboard, which sports a built-in LCD display. Using the device is amazingly immersive—to see World of Warcraft  ( Currency: wow gold ) game stats, live chat sessions, or even the strength of your broadband feed, you can just glance down quickly at the secondary display (which requires the Logitech GamePanel software to link into stats and communication data).

There are twelve programmable “G-Keys” that help you fire off magic spells or an alternate-fire key. The keyboard has a soft-touch springy feel similar to previous gaming keyboards and includes two USB ports (handy for plugging in a Webcam).

The secondary display tilts into position for the best view. Unlike the display on the Fujitsu LifeBook N7010, which can display any information you want, the keyboard display taps into a proprietary data through the GamePanel driver. For more info, see www.logitech.com.

January 8, 2009 - While Activision’s stock dropped to its lowest point since 2006 on Tuesday, the videogame publisher’s stock was able to quickly bounce back. As of January 2, it was reported that Activision’s stock had dropped 6.5 percent; however, following word that financial analyst Piper Jaffary gave the company a “buy” rating, the company’s stock received a record 11 percent increase.

“Our checks suggest that Activision’s portfolio of ‘must-have’ titles performed well in the
U.S. and in International markets,” Jaffary’s firm noted to financial web site StreetInsider.com. With Activision having several titles in the top 20 best-selling games, the firm said, “We believe that Activision is taking share and has out-performed its peer group by a wide margin.”

Some of Activision’s more, recent best-sellers include the Treyarch-developed WWII shooter, Call of Duty: World at War, and Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft  expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.

Commanded by the controller

Jonathan Gates

At first glance, 2008 might seem like an unimpressive year in games, dominated mostly by sequel titles. The fourth quarter of
2008 in particular was commanded by the buzz surrounding many established franchises. At the top of this list was likely Fallout 3.

After a considerable hiatus following lukewarm reception of the 2001 release of Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel and many setbacks in the business end of game production, the series was picked up by Bethesda Softworks.

Bethesda, famous for their Elder Scrolls series going as far back to 1994’s Arena, did the series justice and returned the Fallout series to the top of its form with its signature post-nuclear war grit and a solid dose of Bethesda’s immersive world creation. This multi-platform release combines the Role Playing Game (RPG) and First Person Shooter (FPS) genres to stunning effect in the midst of a fully realized post-apocalyptic Washington DC.

An impressive soundtrack including Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Danny Kaye, The Ink Spots, Roy Brown and Cole Porter fleshes out the cultural space of the world. Notable voice talents such as Ron Perlman, Malcom McDowell and even Oscar nominee Liam Neeson were brought in to give the game extra oomph.

Fallout 3 is an expression of what gaming as a medium does best: it’s solid storyline is affected by the player’s actions, giving the player great freedom of choice.

But 2008 had much more to offer than just Fallout 3. There are many other titles that could arguably contest that top honor. And even those games that don’t challenge the top spot made pretty big splashes.

Those of you with loved ones who play World of Warcraft ( Buy wow gold ) may have noticed that they disappeared after Nov. 13 because of the release of the second expansion title for the world’s most popular Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game, World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King. There’s not much to say about this title other than that it expands on an already massively addictive game, giving your boyfriend or girlfriend more reasons to forget about your anniversary because there’s a 25-man raid going on.

The fourth quarter also saw a battle of the bands between Neversoft’s Guitar Hero: World Tour and Harmonix’s Rock Band 2. Harmonix, now owned by MTV and the company originally behind the Guitar Hero series, faced off against their old publisher, RedOctane who backed Neversoft in the production of the latest Guitar Hero installment. The result was two very impressive music simulation titles featuring many major rock music titles by such greats as Nirvana, Tool, Jimi Hendrix, and The Who to name but a few.

Though both titles put in a decent showing, Rock Band 2 came out on top due to more player friendly mechanics. Though the emergence of a song creation option in Guitar Hero: World Tour may bring something new to the music simulation genre, Neversoft’s first stab at it left something to be desired.

2008 also marked a bidding war between parent companies Activision (Guitar Hero) and MTV for the rights to use the Beatles’ music catalogue. MTV won and Harmonix expects to release a game based entirely around The Beatles’ music in late 2009.

In another impressive turn, the independent game scene made quite a showing in the mainstream with the physics-based puzzle title World of Goo, created by former Electronic Arts employees Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel, where you must build structures using sentient balls of goo.

Jonathan Blow’s Braid also made a big  impact as it came to wide release via the Xbox LIVE Arcade, two years after it had won the Innovation in Game Design award at the Independent Game Festival 2006. Both games display a developing sophistication in understanding of video games as not just a medium for occupation of time but for participation and expression. Blow has even publicly criticized the motives of the emergent MMO game trend.

“I think a lot of modern game design is actually unethical, especially massively multiplayer games like World of Warcraft, because they are predicated on player exploitation,” Blow said in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald following a speech at the 2007 Free Play conference in Australia.

Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, World of Warcraft (Buy wow gold ), Gears of War, and Wii Fit top store’s sales chart as retailer closes out 2008 with record-breaking stretch of game sales.

Times may be tough in the current economy, but at least one retail chain experienced happy holidays. GameStop updated investors today with record-breaking sales figures for the holiday shopping season.

From November 2, 2008 through January 3, 2009, the specialty retailer brought in more than $2.8 billion in revenue. That’s more than 22 percent higher than the roughly $2.3 billion it brought in during the same period the year before, with same-store sales averaging a 10 percent increase.

The retailer attributed the growth first to sales of new games, and revealed its top five sellers for the holiday period. Activision scored twice with Call of Duty: World at War and Guitar Hero World Tour among the best sellers, alongside Blizzard’s World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, Microsoft’s Gears of War 2, and Nintendo’s Wii Fit.

Hardware sales were also up more than 23 percent for GameStop, with the Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360 leading the way. Such success wasn’t unique to one territory, either. GameStop operates stores in 17 countries around the world, and the company said that sales were up in every region.

It wasn’t all good news, given that GameStop’s booming sales won’t fully translate to its bottom line. The retailer said that much of the increased revenue came from products with slim profit margins, such as hardware or games discounted for sales promotions.

The news spurred GameStop’s stock skyward, and shares were trading up $3.01 (more than 13 percent) to $25.62 as of press time. The retailer’s full-year sales data is expected to be released in mid-March.

Just when you thought you’d heard it all, IBM executive David Laux tells the BBC that video gamers make good employees. “We have found across the board, if you look at different categories of games, they all have the ability to develop unique skills.”

It gets worse: “That’s from the casual games which improve memorisation and the ability to discern details, to console games and shooter games that develop rapid decision making and to role playing games like the World of Warcraft ( Buy wow gold) that are very unique in producing leadership skills.” (emphasis added)

Now color me unconvinced, but I strongly reject the notion that sitting alone in your underwear eating Hot Pockets and drinking Jolt has anything to do with business — even it is combined with controlling a cluster of pixels designed to look like an imaginary creature bearing an axe you can use to buffet an Adlin Pridedrift.

On the other hand, an employer that can find someone lame enough to spend days cramped in his room without showering or talking to friends and develop a way to channel that energy into work might have an extremely productive employee on its hands.

But World of Warcraft as the breeding ground for the leaders of tomorrow? I doubt it.

In the world of MMOs the main record we keep seeing broken is the number of subscribers for Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, which now total over 11.5 million. But there is another MMO that keeps setting different, but equally impressive new records.

That game is Eve Online by CCP Games and it has just broken its own record for simultaneous players logged into the game on a single server, otherwise known as Peak Concurrent User (PCU). The new target to beat is 45,186 players.

The new record has been made possible by CCP’s continuing investment and development of the technology behind the game including the EVE64 and StacklessIO initiatives.

The staff of CCP are clearly very happy about the continuing success of the game after 5 years. In a posting to the CCP Manifest it said:

It is truly a testament to our loyal fans that 5 years into EVE’s existence we are still breaking records and more people are flying in New Eden than ever before … We know we’ll be trying to find leftover champagne from New Year’s EVE to celebrate. When we do, we’ll toast to you!

With a faint glow illuminating her 9-year-old face, Jalyn Skelly sits mesmerized in front of a computer screen, her eyes chasing a flittering cursor as she zips around a virtual world, playing and chatting with a gaggle of digital friends.

Instead of going outside after school, she goes straight to the living room, logging into the fairytale world of Elf Island, where she and her brother William, 12, join digital friends who are real children, too, but who are represented on the screen —- as these Kennesaw kids are —- by animated characters called avatars.

While playing, the siblings are chattering to each other and talking via typed messages to other avatars, staring into a 19-inch screen with an otherworldly look.

In this world, nobody knows anybody’s real name or address, only that everyone has a common goal: to help Habitat for Humanity build real houses in
Honduras. And the kids do this not with hammers and nails or donations, but by playing games in which they earn the virtual wood and bricks needed to build virtual Habitat houses.

After Elf Island’s thousands of “inhabitants” collectively build 10,000 virtual homes, the game’s Atlanta-based owners promise to donate the money to build a real Habitat house, says co-founder Liz Kronenberger.

One recent afternoon, the screen said 6,441 virtual houses had been built, and that 3,032 kids were playing. Thirty minutes later, 3,045 avatars were on the site.

The idea is that, with enough kids paying monthly subscription fees of $5.95 each, the company that owns Elf Island —- Good Egg Studios Inc. —- will make enough money to do good deeds like build Habitat houses and still turn a tidy profit.

Kronenberger says the firm has so far inked “partnerships” with Habitat and other nonprofits that will allow kids not only to build houses, but save sharks, protect polar bears and plant real trees in Niger, first virtually, then for real.

OK, so it may all sound a bit do-gooderish, but experts in the exploding universe of virtual worlds see the concept as golden, and green, as in the color of money, but in the environmental sense as well.

According to New York-based Robin Raskin, one of the nation’s top experts on virtual worlds, more than 120 companies like Good Egg have set out to capitalize on the idea that young people “want to do good things” while playing online.

And those known as “tweens” —- between 8 and 12 —- are increasingly going online for social networking the way grownups do with Facebook. They make friends with other avatars in a world constantly monitored by adults. And they chat with each other while a built-in dictionary blocks any attempts at naughtiness.

“These sites help prepare you for your life as a grown-up, and they help you explore and play in a safe environment,” says Raskin, head of a “summit” on kid-gaming to be held Thursday through Sunday at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Lisa Skelly, 30, enthusiastically agrees, which is why she let her kids join Elf Island after reading about it on a Web site for mothers.

“The kids can go in and do good things,” she says. “They have a mission, to build houses in Honduras. It’s monitored. It makes me feel good as a parent, ‘cause doing good is built into the games.”

Some of the sites like Elf Island —- which offers color-splashed vistas in which kids take on personas, chat and engage in teamwork —- “are going to be gold mines,” says Raskin, who runs the Raising Digital Kids blog. “Others will turn out to be fool’s gold. What we know is that there is a lot of money to be made by the ones that catch on.”

Players in virtual worlds, once just a niche within the video gaming industry, usually pay subscription fees for the right to personalize avatars, play and chat. On Elf Island, kids can explore secret passageways and shop in virtual stores.

Raskin, 55, says virtual worlds are attracting millions of dollars in venture financing, and that the winners will be those that offer “something extra,” like Elf Island, which gives kids a chance to have real impact.

On its site, a character named “Jorge” —- a real kid in Honduras —- pops up, urging players to work on virtual Habitat houses. And Good Egg’s nonprofit partners such as Habitat have motives of their own. By getting kids interested, the games spread altruistic messages that non-profits need money to make a difference, Raskin says.

Good Egg allocates funds to nonprofit partners based on the interest its games arouse in players, who, the company hopes, will talk up Elf Island and get other kids to join. Donations to non-profits, Kronenberger says, aren’t based on company profits, but are driven by the activity of paying members.

“We get tremendous value from 20,000 young people going to the site,” says Patrick Scanlan of Habitat for Humanity. “We want them to understand Habitat’s mission, the fact that people in many different countries… are in real need of housing.”

Its other non-profit partners include WildAID, which protects sharks in the Galapagos Islands; Polar Bears International, which hopes to protect their environment; and Plant-IT 2020, which plants trees in Niger. What the kids do in virtual worlds will determine if sharks and bears are helped and trees planted.

Elf Island claims to be the only virtual world to use gaming, storytelling and social interaction to empower kids to make a positive difference. And it probably is, Raskin says, but the virtual universe is growing so fast that it’s hard to say for sure.

Elf Island employs 15 people, and so far, thousands of kids have taken to its games, even though it only went online last month. Kronenberger and her husband Craig, who have 4-year-old twin sons, had an epiphany after learning that millions of youngsters spend countless hours online.

“If kids are flocking to the virtual worlds, why not create something where kids have fun and parents feel good about where they are sending their kids,” says Kronenberger, who’ll be one of the presenters in Las Vegas. “The premise and core to Elf Island is through ‘gaming for good’ (a term they have trademarked), which we believe is a new category in the virtual world space.”

Researchers who study kid-marketing say the possibilities for profit are good.

Scott Traylor, a Boston-based expert on virtual worlds whose company, 360KID, develops video software, says “social networking” sites like Elf Island have lots of potential. At least one, Club Penguin, has millions of subscribers.

“Kids are very savvy,” he says. “They are digital natives.”

And studies say kids are drawn to games that let them help others.

“You’re doing something for people in a place where people are poor,” Jalyn says.

“And,” William adds, “it’s a lot of fun.”

ONLINE GAMING

> 34 percent of American children and teens who use the Internet visited a virtual world at least once a month in 2008. That’s expected to rise to 42 percent in 2009.

> 71 percent of digital kids feel their virtual worlds are very important to them.

> 13 percent of adults say their children are spending less time with real friends and more with virtual ones

> 75 percent of youngsters said in a survey that they use the Internet to participate in communities tied to social causes.

> Virtual worlds like Elf Island, World of Warcraft ( Buy wow gold), Ultima Online, Second Life, Webkinz and scores of others allow players to interact with others worldwide. They are known as “massively multiplayer online games.”

> About 10 million people worldwide visit at least one virtual world often.

> A new three-year study funded by the MacArthur Foundation concludes that youngsters who play online are acquiring technical skills and “learning to be competent citizens in the digital age.”

> A survey found that digital kids have a hankering to “make a difference” and help the planet

Sources: University of California-Irvine, Center for the Digital Future of University of Southern California, Media Research Lab of Iowa State University, Just Kid Inc.