The Funeral of WoW Gold

It’s a credit crunch nightmare.

The chief executive of the world’s biggest corporation gets a phone call in the middle of the night. Thanks to industrial espionage, the company has been bankrupted, assets stripped, bank accounts emptied. When trading starts the next day, even the company name will be gone.

If this were real life, the executive might consider jumping out the window. But in the online game of EVE Online, it’s all part of the fun.

“It is another challenge,” said Par Molen, the leader of the “corporation” Band of Brothers (BoB), who got the late-night call.

“That’s what we live for.”

Mr Molen and his online colleagues had spent four years building BoB into the dominant force in a game where 200,000 players battle it out in an online galaxy of spaceships and planets.

Unlike other multiplayer online games like the hugely popular World of Warcraft, which is split into smaller groups, the thousands of EVE players are in it together.

In one virtual galaxy, players build, fight, and trade, joining together to form “corporations” to gain control over sections of the huge starscape.

This creates a complex society where anything can happen, and often does. Rules are few, and all of the lying, cheating and stealing that occurs in real life can also happen in the game.

A player called “The Mittani” is the shadowy spymaster who runs dozens of agents for his corporation - GoonSwarm. He got the call of his career when a disgruntled BoB director contacted him to say that he was thinking of switching sides.

With the director’s access to BoB’s internal workings, the pair were able to disband the corporation and steal all the assets they could lay their hands on.

To add insult to injury, GoonSwarm then re-registered the Band of Brothers name for itself, leaving the former alliance nameless and broken.

It’s a finale that has been compared to “Apple dissolving Microsoft”, and led to some players calling for the game’s developer, CCP, to “roll-back” the game to the previous day and cancel the change.

“Any one director should not have the power to destroy the work of so many people for so many months and years with two mouse clicks,” wrote a player called David on an EVE-related blog.

But CCP is well-known for keeping its hands off action within the game. Since no rules were broken, the changes stood, and thousands of BoB members woke up to a very different world.

Scams in space

This is not the first time that rogue bankers and credit fraud have made EVE Online seem more like the financial pages than a space cowboy video game.

In January, a player absconded with over 80bn ISK, the game’s virtual currency, from an in-game bank. Although the 80bn is only worth a few thousand pounds if exchanged for real money, it represents hours of in-game toil.

In an online echo of the real-world banking crisis, the bank’s chairman issued a statement to calm a run on deposits, writing: “Dynasty Banking will get over these times and we will continue to strive to earn the public’s faith as one of the leading banks of Eve Online”.

Another scam on an epic scale beyond the fantasies of real conmen was perpetrated in 2006, when a player ran off with 700bn ISK from another EVE bank.

“Think of me as a space Robin Hood—steals from the rich and gives to himself,” wrote the perpetrator in an EVE-related internet forum.

Such swindles left some players in awe of EVE’s potential for realism, whilst others called for a stronger code of ethics in the game.

But spymaster Mittani scoffed at calls for in-game morals, noting that without dirty tricks, GoonSwarm would have had no chance of toppling a more established corporation like BoB.

He wrote: “We don’t have any advantages, so we can’t obey your stupid ’space bushido’. We’re going to spy, we’re going to use defectors, we’re going to lie, cheat, steal and be bastards.”

Gamers tend to hang out with friends and family, not random strangers

Massively multiplayer games can be a global melting pot. Hop into “World of Warcraft” or “Guild Wars” and your North American warrior can rub shoulders with an Australian healer.

But more often than not, online gamers are more apt to hang out with people in their neighborhoods than people on the next continent, says a new study. The analysis, which tracked the playing habits of 7,000 people in Sony Online’s “EveryQuest II,” says gamers game with people they know: friends, friends of friends and family.

That’s not to say that people don’t meet new folks playing “EverQuest II,” says Dmitri Williams, one of the study’s investigators. But the research shows that the Internet — and online games — are used mostly as a way to stay in touch with friends and family.

“These aren’t necessarily the new weirdos, these are the weirdos that you already knew,” says Williams, who is an assistant professor of communications at the
University of Southern California’s Annenberg School.

It is true that online-game players tend to connect to nearby servers, which results in faster gameplay. But unlike “World of Warcraft,” which has tons of servers to accommodate its 11.5 million monthly subscribers, Sony Online has a couple dozen English-speaking servers and five foreign-language servers for “EQII.” So it’s less likely that players would find themselves randomly playing someone down the street, just because of server distribution. These players, says Williams, are taking their offline relationships online.

To administer the study Williams and three other investigators studied server logs from the game, which were provided by Sony Online.

The logs were divided into three categories: action (what players did and made), interaction (who players interacted with) and transaction (what they bought and sold). The team could tell who was going on quests with whom, who players grouped with, who was fighting what monster.

The National Science Foundation and the Army Research Institute funded the study, but Sony Online gave the research team access to the logs because it was interested in the study’s findings as a way to better understand their players, says company spokesperson Courtney Simmons.

Nothing personal
But Simmons stresses that Sony Online didn’t want to know too much — or let the researchers get too personal. The team didn’t have access to players’ names or any personal information, says Noshir Contractor, another one of the study’s investigators and a social sciences professor at Northwestern University. All the data was made anonymous.

Sony gave the research team the ability to link a survey in the game and an optional battery of questions that asked players how much they played, who they played with, levels of depression and even sexual preferences.

Again, the responses were anonymous, but the team was able to map the 7,000 survey respondents with their actual activity within the game without knowing who the people were.

Players underestimate play time
One finding that isn’t terribly shocking: Players tended to underestimate how much they play. But women significantly lowballed their guesses: Women self-reported, on average, 26 hours of weekly play and their actual average play time was 29 hours. Men, by contrast, were off by only an hour.

Williams says that while there are more men playing than women, women are the hardcore players. “That, to me, was a definite myth buster,” he says. “And then the other weird finding, that the players were healthy.”

Blizzard is one of the biggest game developers out there, being responsible for a lot of iconic franchises like StarCraft, Diablo or the recent runaway success that is World of Warcraft. With over 11,5 million paying subscribers every month, you can definitely be sure that the financial resources of the company can fully accommodate a lot of projects.
One such project is the often teased and speculated next online game that the company will be doing. While some key executives said that it wouldn’t be a sequel to World of Warcraft, as it would possibly kill the game, the mist is still very thick around it. We have just learned that the lead designer of the hugely successful MMORPG has switched jobs and will now lead the team in charge with this new project.

Jeffery Kaplan, the man who has been responsible for WoW ever since it was just a small project at Blizzard, has announced this move on the official forums of the game, saying that it was a true pleasure to work with the great team on that project and thanked the user base for all the support and the suggestions they have sent to his former team.

“When all is said and done, WoW is still my favorite game. I play it every day. None of that passion is gone. If anything, it fuels the challenge of making our next MMO even better. We know we have some big shoes to fill. So thank you to everyone who has been so supportive over the years, and likewise, thanks to those who have given us pointed feedback on all areas of the game. Without all of the feedback and participation, WoW would not be the game that it has grown to be. Azeroth truly belongs to you and we’re lucky to have shared in your journey.”

While this may seem like bad news for WoW fans, it definitely shows that Blizzard will shift its focus from the popular MMORPG to this new online project. Hopefully we will get to see some new details in the immediate future, but, knowing Blizzard and its “quality first” strategy, we will have to wait until it begins to shape up.

guess I should have told my parents I was learning the whole time. At least thats where Microsoft’s train of thought is headed. The company, who makes the popular Gears of War series, is conducting a study that observes gamers to see if their skills on the console carry over to the classroom.

We want to figure out what’s compelling about the games, if we can find out how to make the games fun and not make them so violent, that would be ideal.

said John Nordlinger, head of gaming research for Microsoft.  They have shelled out $1.5 million to produce the Games for Learning institute in conjunction with NYU and other colleges around the country. The want to see if video games can draw students into fields that are math, science and technology based. Microsoft however, is not the first company to do this. Students at
University of Wisconsin did a study that found that playing World of Warcraft boosted scientific thinking. It was noted that gamers used mathematical skills to deal with problems in the game.

Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief researcher believes gaming can help people develop “a higher-order cognitive ability” .

Many shooter games force players to track how many bullets and bombs and missiles do I have, and how do I spend and where do I go get more of them.

While there does seem to be some support behind the research, there are some skeptics. Vince Repesh, a counselor at the University of Minnesota at Duluth, would be one of those people. He fears gaming is replacing education, not contributing to it. He recalls students that have fell into the World of Warcraft black hole. One of his students had gone from A’s to failing out.

I accused him of coming in loaded from smoking dope, he looked so bad, turns out he had been up for 28 hours straight playing the game.

Shelby Cossette, 17,  joined a new video gaming club at Fargo South High School. She wanted to socialize with other gamers and felt it would compliment her school work.

I’ve played a lot of puzzle-solving games and they actually help sharpen my brain, my reaction time has actually gone up, thanks to playing video games.

The club was started by teacher Chuck Lang. He believes Microsoft is doing a positive thing in researching the potential of games, even if it might benefit the company through increased sales. How do you feel about this issue? Would you support it in your school?

While there is dispute about whether video gaming can lead to addiction, there’s evidence to suggest that, in rare cases, some players exhibit behaviors similar to those of a pathological gambler

A lot of people I know, online, in real life, they will actually take time off work.

They’ll plan it.

(They say) ‘I’m not going to go to work for these three days … just so I can play straight through, literally.’

And I know people, they would play and play and play, probably over 20 hours, sleep three or four hours, then get up again and play and play and play.

Anya Starr knows they’re out there. People who are lost in time, their minds streaming through a virtual world but their bodies perched elsewhere, sleepless, hungry and alone.

The 28-year-old Dubuquer started playing “World of Warcraft” three years ago, navigating the dozens of game levels with millions of other players.

Though some of her friends play hours at a time, she wouldn’t classify anyone she knows as “significantly addicted.”

Experts are divided over whether “video game addiction” should be qualified as a

mental

disorder. The American Psychiatric Association does not include such an

affliction in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Researchers often use the term “video game overuse,” but some called it an addiction after observing behaviors similar to those of a pathological gambler, according to a 2007 report to the American Medical Association’s Council on Science and Public Health.

The general definition for an addiction is something that disrupts your life in a significant way and throws everything out of balance: health, social life and work. The question is whether compulsive gaming fits under the definition.

‘Zero to Hero’

Anyone who plays video games is at risk of being a compulsive gamer, but researchers seem to agree that it is most common with those who play an “MMORPG,” or massive multiplayer online role playing game. These games allow the user to join a complex virtual world, create an avatar (a computer-generated character that can be made to resemble the user) and compete with many other players in real time.

About 9 percent of gamers play MMORPGs, and younger players and females are increasingly attracted to such games, according to the AMA report.

Ben Johannsen, 25, of
Dubuque, said he plays “World of Warcraft” for several hours a day to keep in touch with friends from college. He doesn’t consider himself a serious player.

He says some friends have been “sucked into the game.”

“It’s taken over people’s lives,” he said.

Someone who feels “somewhat marginalized socially, perhaps experiencing high levels of emotional loneliness and/or difficulty with real life social interactions” might be vulnerable to compulsive gaming, the AMA report states. Some believe they can have more control over their social relationships online, rather than in real life.

Johannsen called it a “zero to hero” phenomenon.

“You go from a kid nobody likes in school to the top ‘guild master’ on your server,” he said. “They associate it with, ‘I’m no longer a nerd. I actually mean something.’”

Serious consequences

Talk to any serious gamer and they can tell you horror stories about people who have lost marriages, jobs and friends.

Roger Meyer, director of Counseling Services at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, said some students have stopped going to classes and have risked dropping out of school due to gaming. It’s an “under the radar” problem that often doesn’t rear its head until a student already is in danger of failing school, he said.

“They’ll stay up all night, doing video gaming, and they fall asleep and crash and miss all their classes,” Meyer said.

School counselors and professors will work with a student to get them back on track, provided the student is willing to make changes that might include quitting altogether.

“There’s not only an increase in the opportunity for online gaming but also the sophistication of the games and the high visual quality. They’re very enticing, they’re magnetic. Students can get very easily involved with the games,” he said.

The symptoms of any addiction, which include depression and thoughts of suicide, can apply to a gaming addiction, said Coleen Moore, Coordinator of Resource Development at the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery in Peoria, Ill.

“Someone who is addictive, we see it as a disease. And how we would define that disease is that it’s chronic, it’s progressive, it’s fatal, but treatable,” Moore said. “We’re seeing the same thing with gaming. There’s definitely a progression that someone goes through within the behavior.”

The more time one spends absorbed in a game, the less a person connects with those around them. The neglect can lead to social anxiety, hopelessness and the loss of control over one’s life, Moore said. Some have turned to suicide.

“It has been fatal,” Moore said. “We know of individuals, their families have reached out to us. They have taken their own lives as a result of where their progression led them in their gaming.”

A concern,

but not a disorder

In 2007, the APA announced that it might consider including video game addiction as a formal diagnosis in the 2012 DSM, but current research does not support its inclusion.

“Psychiatrists are concerned about the well-being of children who spend so much time with video games that they fail to develop friendships, get appropriate outdoor exercise or suffer in their schoolwork,” the APA announced. “Certainly a child who spends an excessive amount of time playing video games may be exposed to violence and may be at higher risks for behavioral and other health problems.”

University of Dubuque professor Alan Garfield, who chairs the computer graphics and interactive media department, said many assumptions don’t have enough evidence to back them up.

“When you talk about video games, in people’s mind’s eye, they think of pimply-faced high school ‘goths’ who are downstairs in the basement, who don’t talk to mom, dad or sister, they don’t even kick the cat, and they do these nasty things, and they’re going to go deeper and deeper into this social malignancy,” Garfield said.

Not true, he said.

Garfield asserts the biggest assumption is that video games lead to youthful aggression. However, federal crime statistics show violent crime among youth is decreasing, even as the video game market expands. Most studies on the link between gaming and aggression find a correlation rather than a casual relationship, which could indicate that aggressive people like aggressive entertainment, Garfield said.

The same argument could be extended to video game addiction, that perhaps those with a predilection for compulsive behavior cling to video games because gaming is one option among many, he said.

“I don’t think it is an addiction,” Garfield said. “There are preferences, I don’t think people are addicted. I think kids just love to do it, and if mom and dad let them, it develops into perversion, perhaps, but I don’t think it’s addiction.”

‘Can this really

be a problem?’

Despite skepticism about gaming addiction, the number of people seeking help at the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery is growing. The clinic has treated 25 people for video game addiction since 2003, Moore said, but 20 of those patients entered the clinic after 2006.

“There is significant denial with this form of addiction,” she said. “Usually it’s the family members that call us … They’re kind of thinking that they’re crazy. ‘Can this really be a problem?’ “

Treating video game addiction is similar to other addictions, Moore said. The center employs a 12-step program, inspired by Alcoholics Anonymous, and offers stays for up to 90 days.

The most important aspect of the program, she said, is that someone stops playing.

“Addiction is addiction, no matter what they’re coming for,” Moore said. “The thing that’s unique is the whole concept of abstinence.”

Gamers who check into the clinic no longer have access to a computer. But when they check out, or for those who seek help outside of an inpatient clinic, the incorporation of computers into everyday life poses a constant threat of relapse, Moore said.

“We have told individuals that if they use the Internet, and that was their source of gaming, then we’ve recommended for individuals to take their computer out of their home,” she said.

Connie Sprimont, a gambling treatment counselor for Substance Abuse Services Center of Dubuque, said she faces the same struggles with clients who seek help for online gambling.

“I can’t remove a computer from someone’s home,” she said. “We can ask someone to help monitor them, but wanting help is the biggest step.”

Back to the real world

Researchers haven’t pinned down whether compulsive gamers experience withdrawal symptoms when they’re cut off. Some users say they don’t get “cravings” to continue playing, while others find it nearly impossible to tear themselves away from the screen, according to the AMA report.

On the pathological gambling front, Sprimont said some of her clients have reported physical manifestations of withdrawal after they quit gambling.

The best way to help people through such an experience is to “retrain the brain,” Sprimont said.

“We help them develop better social skills, reconnect with old friends, find activities they used to enjoy. The brain forgets what they used to do,” Sprimont said.

A video game addiction clinic in Amsterdam now emphasizes such a strategy to treat clients. Smith & Jones Centre head Keith Bakker told the BBC News in November that while compulsive gamers might resemble other types of addicts, most of his clients will re-enter society successfully once they develop social skills.

“Many of the symptoms they have can be solved by going back to good old-fashioned communication,” Bakker said. Bakker has recently rebuked the term “addict” because he said it takes away the element of choice a compulsive gamer has to walk away.

Josh Staudenraous, 28, who owns Comic World in Dubuque, said he and many of his friends play MMORPGs. Staudenraous might joke about being addicted, but he remains skeptical that people can become seriously addicted. Even so, he said he took steps to cut back after realizing how much he played.

“When I first started playing, I probably played too much at times. I’d even bring my laptop to work and play for hours,” Staudenraous said. “People would yell at me.”

Choice and luck

Anya Starr said she chooses to play “World of Warcraft” instead of drinking every weekend, or doing other activities that also could turn into addictions.

“Some people can drink socially, and it never becomes a problem,” she said. “There are other people, they drink everyday, or they binge on the weekends, and it can become a serious problem.”

Starr said the same thing can be said of video games. But she warned that just because someone plays every day doesn’t mean they’re addicted.

As for her friends who stave off sleep, Starr said their lives return to normal after they make it to the top level.

“That’s almost more like a personal achievement to them, to be one of the first ones to hit the top level,” she said, “I don’t know if that’s so much addiction than somewhat of a narcissistic thing.”

The community asked, and Rumay “Hafu” Wang answered. Wang is the star female WoW player from team Fnatic/Orz, winner of the 2008 MLG Dallas and
Orlando tournaments. The World of Warcraft community will be watching closely to see how Wang fairs in the 2009 season. Wang has agreed to answer questions from the GotFrag community.

How are you adjusting to the new class (death knights)? - outplaced

Haha, I’m barely adjusting. There’s not much that I can adjust to, when plague strike alone counters resto druids. However, the “remove hots” portion is getting nerfed, or so MMO-Champion says, so hopefully things will get better :).

How do you manage to survive the ridiculous burst damage that is going around in arenas these days? - lolols

Well I see a lot of druids go feral/resto for the survivability talents. To be perfectly honest, I’ve only gone that spec once, ever, and for two arena matches total ^^. Although I’m a fan of feral charge, I feel that going full resto (yes, that means sitting in tree form a lot ~) is much more useful in arena. Although it seems like that you would be pretty squishy, it seems that natural perfection and the armor you gain from tree form is enough for now. Furthermore, tree form healing is absolutely ridiculous, (although mana is still vastly a problem).

What kind of skills did you learn in The Sims that translated over to WoW? - hinochi

Really dude?

How do you feel about the state that arena is in? Do you like the new point system? - dglmstr

The new point system is pretty sweet as it makes team-hopping a possibility. However, for me personally, arenas aren’t as enjoyable as they used to be. It seems like to be viable, I have to play a boring spec (full tree), and sit there in tree and try to heal drink as much as possible.

How hard was it to transition from druid to shaman? - namdnas

Not hard at all, although shaman got a lot easier to play from 70 to 80. Having shock off global cooldown makes it amazingly simple. Furthermore, in threes, you’re basically a heroism/purge bot.

Is fnatic still going to be attending every event this coming season? - blizzind

Yes that seems to be the plan so far. Fnatic is wonderful to us. We are very grateful to MSI for the amazing laptops, Steelseries for our hardware, Coolermaster, Ugame.net, and Bestpoker.com

What do your parents think of you being a professional WoW player? - LckE

They don’t think much of it, but they’ve been supportive in the sense that they’ve let me travel around to all these tournaments. They also came to watch me play at the Blizzard North American regionals since it was in the area.

Outside of WoW, what do you enjoy doing?

I love to go shopping (especially now that I have money of my own to spend), and spending time with friends and family. I’m also addicted to Literati, an online yahoo scrabble-like game.

As some classes are broken in terms of damage (mostly warriors and warlocks), do you see them getting huge changes / buffs in the next patches? Or do you think all the other classes will get huge nerfs? - venom2

I think warlocks and warriors are fine. In fact, I think it’s some of the other classes that need tuning down rather than everything getting tuned up. Arcane mages and rogues already got nerfed a bit, hopefully next turn around is DKs and Hunters. I think it’s disheartening that Blizzard is giving Paladins an earth-shock type of thing (exorcism in the next patch).

How have the top competitive arena teams adjusted to the large increase in burst damage? - strifeee

Most of the competitive teams just rerolled to more viable classes it seems, and it’s obvious that druid healers have died down since 70 (However I will continue to be stubborn!). I know that Sodah still plays a druid, although he has a priest alt. Vorrent is also still doing quite well with a hybrid balance/resto spec.

How do you feel about all the new updates within the game? Do you think Blizzard is making the game ridiculously easy? - jMs

I think it’s fine. Although interrupting has become much easier, it allows you to focus on other aspects of the game. I think that the first few weeks at 80 were pretty stupid, and any faceroll arcane mage team could do extremely well. It’s a bit better now that everyone has most of the arena gear that they need. Obviously there needs to be some tweaking for balance, but I think they will come around eventually.

Are druids still a very viable class to play in 2’s and 3’s as it was before in season 3 and prior? - raf0x

I wouldn’t say “very viable”, certainly not to the degree that they were at 70. However, I have found success in 2s with a hunter/warlock/rogue and warrior so far. All of the comps are pretty powerful, but have a great bit of trouble with any DK team (I wonder why *cough* plague strike is stupid).

As far as 3s go, I’ve played a great bit of WLD, and some RLD. I’ve played with a few other comps, but it seems like almost any composition is powerful if you have good players.

How do you feel about plague strike on death knights being a direct hit towards resto druids? How have you managed to cope with healing through them? - zubin_101

Haha, I’ve been pretty blunt about it so far in the interview. It’s ridiculously overpowered, and should be removed from the game. The fact that it ignores subtlety (our 30% dispel resistance), and can remove a full stack of lifeblooms (1500 mana) without making it bloom is unbalanced. I honestly haven’t coped with them. They can run all over me in any bracket.

Do you think plague strike was put in the game generally because Blizzard was tired of resto druids in season 3-4?

Probably not, although who knows what Blizzard is ever thinking, really.

Terminator: Salvation also spotted in DC Direct’s Unlimited line.

February 18, 2009 - Based on the award-winning massively multiplayer game, DC Direct’s World of Warcraft action-figure line comes from its DC Unlimited branch. Unlimited features properties which exist outside of the standard DC world, and folks like the Gnoll Warlord (Gangris Riverpaw to be exact) and the Succubus Demon (a.k.a. Amberlash) certainly fall into that area.

The line is going strong for DC, with a fourth series of action figures as well as the first series of premium figures hitting in May. A deluxe collector figure of Lady Vashj arrives in April.

Also on display in the DC Unlimited room were Terminator: Salvation busts which, alas, we were not allowed to photograph. They looked quite nice, though, and featured Kyle Reese, Marcus Wright, Blair Williams, and a T-600. A top-secret “T-Rip” piece is also in the works.

Check out the photos below from the DC Direct showroom, and then be sure to click on any image to be taken to the full gallery of over 100 shots from DC’s 2009 Toy Fair presence!

Dalia Rawson of Ballet San Jose has many talents, but she cannot speak Hungarian. That’s why, when Rawson decided on the title “Fèm” for the piece she was choreographing for the company’s upcoming “Hidden Talents” program, she chose better than even she herself realized.

“Fem” is the name of one of 18 piano etudes by Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti that helped inspire Rawson’s piece. Ultimately, she set her work to four of Ligeti’s etudes (including Fèm) as well as two capriccios by the composer.

Rawson was drawn to the word fem because its spelling suggested a feminine association. “The word means`a brightly colored metal’ in Hungarian,” Rawson says. “When I saw it, I thought it was

related to`femme’ and I thought it meant woman. I like that association; I want everyone to have that association with the word, and the idea that women are like metal, they’re strong. That’s the reason I chose it for the name of the piece.”

This dual meaning would also be a particularly fitting description of Rawson, who returned to Ballet San Jose in fall 2007 after battling Stage IV Hodgkins lymphoma. Rawson no longer dances, but Fèm brings her artistic presence back to Ballet San Jose’s stage in a new and different way by highlighting her choreographic prowess — which, as it turns out, she’s been honing, in a sense, from a surprisingly young age.

“Fem” is one of five world premiere works in Ballet San Jose’s

latest program, “Hidden Talents,” which showcases choreography by five company members who are best known to the ballet’s audiences as dancers.

The ballet presents “Hidden Talents” Feb. 26-March 1 at the
San Jose Center for the Performing Arts, 255 Almaden Blvd. The performance also includes original pieces in a variety of styles by Preston Dugger, Karen Gabay, Tiffany Glenn and Alexsandra Meijer.

Rawson’s “Fem” is a contemporary abstract ballet for nine dancers that uses classical techniques.

“When she found that I had asked the dancers to choreograph, she bounced right in and told me she, too, had aspirations to make ballets,” says Ballet San Jose artistic and executive director Dennis Nahat. “That was yet another grande jete for Dalia because now she had created a very exciting work.”

Rawson, who grew up in Saratoga, discovered her love of ballet in dance classes. Around age 5, she knew she wanted to be a ballerina — although for a short time at that age, Rawson says she aimed for dual careers: to be a ballerina and a farmer.

By the time she was 8 or 9, Rawson clearly had a passion for ballet in its every aspect: not only dancing, but also choreographing, and putting together sets and costumes for her own ballets that she would stage with ballet school classmates. Their repertoire included “The Nutcracker,” Coppelia and “Peter and the Wolf.”

“I choreographed at home, just with my friends on the weekends. We would have sleepover parties, and I would invite over all the girls from my ballet class and I would make them rehearse all night. We would perform at 4 in the morning with our neighbors — anyone we could drag in off the street — in my parents’ living room,” Rawson says. “We did tons of little ballets that I would’ve spent a year on, making my notes and drawing some diagrams.”

Once, Rawson and her fellow dancers pooled their allowances for “special effects” in their own production of Swan Lake. This performance was to be presented for their parents at the Campbell studio of the Gloria Mohr International Ballet School, where they took classes.

Although they had envisioned a scene in which the maidens transformed into swans behind a cloud of dry ice, the young dancers’ allowances wouldn’t purchase enough dry ice for the desired effect — nor could they afford to test it out in rehearsal.

“So we had a bucket on the floor, and we put the dry ice in, and then you had six girls trying to change costumes behind the bucket with a little fog,” Rawson recalls.

Following her many “sleepover” productions in elementary and middle school, Rawson continued to study dance, attending the San Francisco Ballet School and the Joffrey Ballet School. Rawson graduated from Lynbrook High School in 1991 and soon after auditioned and became a member of the San Jose Cleveland Ballet, which was then based in Cleveland, Ohio. As a California native, she found the Ohio climate took some getting used to, especially the much harsher winter.

Rawson lived in Cleveland for about nine years, visiting friends and family in the Bay Area when the ballet company would come to town for its San Jose performances.

She returned to the Bay Area full time when the Cleveland half of the company ceased operations and the organization relocated to San Jose.

Over the years, some favorites among Rawson’s numerous roles included Swanhilda in “Coppelia,” the Cowgirl in Martha Graham’s “Rodeo,” the Pianist in Flemming Flindt’s “The Lesson” and Maria and the Tsarina in Nahat’s version of “The Nutcracker.”

She was seen in performances on TV, dancing in the PBS production of “Nahat’s Blue Suede Shoes” and on “The Drew Carey Show.”

Upon the company’s move to San Jose, Rawson also began teaching at the Ballet San Jose School.

Through fellow Ballet San Jose company member Beth Ann Namey, Rawson met Gareth Hughes, a software engineer originally from Australia, who works at NVIDIA in Santa Clara.

“He started coming to dancer parties, so I asked [Namey] who her Australian friend was, and eventually we met each other alone, when we both weren’t dating other people,” Rawson says. “The stars aligned and we were engaged about three months after that.”

Rawson says that the software industry and the dance world have proven to be surprisingly similar, and complementary.

“You’re really doing what you want to do, not what you need to do, and you’re really doing whatever it takes to get it done. I think just that similarity in culture makes it easy for us to get along. He gets it if I’m here until midnight,” Rawson says of Hughes.

Rawson had just finished a demanding run of dancing the lead roles in “The Nutcracker,” when in early 2006 a seemingly routine visit to her chiropractor for a stiff neck led to a concerned referral to a specialist, a biopsy and ultimately a diagnosis of advanced Hodgkins lymphoma.

The news came as Rawson and Hughes were planning their wedding. Rawson began an aggressive treatment regimen at the Stanford Cancer Center, and so she and Hughes postponed the big event they had planned, but married in a small civil ceremony just after Valentine’s Day, in February 2006.

“We didn’t want to put off being married even though we had to put off the big party,” Rawson says. “They said I was in remission in June, and then in September we had our big ceremony, which was wonderful, at the San Jose Museum of Art,” she says.

Scarcely a week after the September wedding doctors found that the cancer had returned, and Rawson went back into treatment, undergoing a bone marrow transplant in December 2006. Because her immune system was suppressed, Rawson was hospitalized for 28 days and allowed few visitors.

Recovering at home for months after, she was nearly sequestered. “I got completely addicted to [the online video game] World of Warcraft — I still play,” Rawson says with a laugh. “I made fun of it before I got sick, but I couldn’t leave the house for months, and I played a lot of World of Warcraft.”

During her second round of treatment, Rawson also became one of the first Hodgkins patients to receive targeted cellular therapy, which takes stem cells harvested during the bone marrow transplant and uses them to attack the Hodgkins cells. “That’s how they should cure cancer, because there are no side effects, no nausea, no nothing. That’s the best treatment,” she says.

By fall of 2007, Rawson was cleared by her doctors to return to teaching ballet.

She credits the support of her family — especially her husband, mother and father — for getting her through. Rawson’s mother came to every doctor’s appointment and was at the hospital every day. “My mother and I have always been close, but she’s absolutely my best friend. My husband, too,” Rawson says.

And now, a little more than two years after the bone marrow transplant, reports from doctors are promising. “I’ve had totally clean scans for two years now,” Rawson says. “Two years — that was a big one because I don’t have to go every six months for scans anymore; I only go every year. And after five years, they admit that I’m cured.”

The cancer did mean that Rawson had to retire from dancing, and naturally, there are some aspects of the art form that she especially misses. “I miss jumping. I had a good jump. I can say that — I’m retired,” she says with a smile. “I miss performing as well, of course. I miss learning new choreography. I miss the whole life of dancer. But I’m here and I’m still involved, and there are lot of things I don’t miss. I don’t miss the pain. And I love going to the theater now to watch ballet.”

Rawson and Hughes recently celebrated their third wedding anniversary. The couple bought a house in Willow Glen about a year ago. “I love everything about it,” she says of the community.

Last Halloween, Rawson enjoyed giving out candy to the neighborhood children and admits to giving extra candy to those dressed as ballerinas; those trick-or-treaters who could pirouette got extra goodies, too. “We’re not above bribery,” she jokes.

Since her return to Ballet San Jose in 2007, Rawson has worked as the ballet mistress of the Ballet San Jose School, and it’s clear that she takes great pride in watching her students progress. She works closely with school director Lise la Cour, and she teaches all levels of the school’s professional division classes. She choreographed a performance for the professional students last season. This year, she will see the first class of students that she has taught from the school’s youngest level reach high school graduation age.

“I started teaching them nine years ago, so they were like 8, and now they’re 17, 18 and graduating from high school. Just to see them become dancers is amazing. It’s so fulfilling,” she says.

Soon, she will start preparing some of her students for their parts in Ballet San Jose’s upcoming spring production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

In addition to working as the school’s ballet mistress, Rawson is Ballet San Jose’s rehearsal assistant. She helps the company dancers learn choreography and aids the choreographer by taking notes during rehearsals.

It was Rawson’s work at rehearsals that helped give rise to her piece Fm, which she describes as having been inspired by the dancers themselves.

“I spend a lot of time in the studio just sort of observing the dancers, and I really was inspired in just sort of the way they interacted with each other,” Rawson says, “and how their professional life is going on and their personal life is going on, but they put it all aside for what they’re doing in the work.”

“Fem” will be the first work that Rawson has choreographed for a professional company. “It’s an absolutely incredible opportunity to work with professional-caliber dancers,” she says.

The first element of the piece she chose was actually the music, which initially shaped the choreography.

Rawson says she picked Ligeti’s études and capriccios because she has always liked the composer’s work. The music is complex and modern, and it’s also famously difficult to play.

“The music is just wild,” Rawson says. “I like to search on YouTube for people playing it. People post videos of themselves playing it to prove that they can do all these things.”

Audiences at “Hidden Talents” will have chance to see just how wild the music is, with respected pianist Michael McGraw playing Ligeti’s music, in view of the audience.

“Choreographers create what they mostly have experienced — or at least that the best way to create — and Dalia has come up with a tour de force that will set a very high standard for herself,” Nahat says. “As a first work to select the difficult music of Gyorgy Ligeti — she starts with music that propels her into a style that forces her to create the avant-garde, yet she has stayed within the classical ballet technique.”

With Rawson setting the bar — and the barre — so high for her first professional choreography, it seems Ballet San Jose audiences have a lot to look forward to, as she reveals more of her hidden talents.

Here’s a new approach to teaching financial literacy: a video game in which you play the business manager of a free-spending celebrity, trying to satisfy her wish list while keeping her out of the red.

The game is no World of Warcraft. It’s a simple, mildly-amusing Flash job of the Chimgam ilk that eats up countless working hours nationwide. And it appeals primarily to an audience of women age 18-35 (studies show that women play even more of these “casual games” than men do). The creator of the game, the nonprofit Doorways to Dreams Fund, has a video showing real testers, and they seemed to have a good time with it: “I thought it was wack and you were never going to keep me interested in it,” says one tester. “And then I started thinking about the game when I was at home and I was like, I want to play it again!”

Testers showed a 15-30% increase in confidence in their financial skills, and a 55-70% improvement in knowledge of concepts like credit limits, credit vs. debit, APR, and finance charges.

Peter Tufano, the financial management professor at Harvard who helped develop the game, is a kinder, gentler money guy. His work focuses on the best policies, regulations, products and education to help especially lower income and less-educated people cultivate healthy financial habits. (I wrote about his work on savings promoting products last fall.) Financial responsibility is a tough sell, and Tufano’s chosen tactic is engagement rather than coercion.

“We can design the best curriculum in the world, but if nobody is willing to spend time on it, it won’t work,” says Tufano. “Our goal in all of these things is to find something people will voluntarily do.”

This is the first of a sequence of video games Doorways to Dreams is developing to teach various financial skills. They’re hoping employers and colleges will like the game enough to distribute it. And the concept is catching on elsewhere, too. MTV has a similar initiative called InDebtEd–they just closed a contest that asked students to develop their own game to teach financial literacy.

Every now and then when I feel that I’ve managed to ’settle down’ a bit in my life, something comes along and disrupts it in such a way that I end up being unable to return to my previous incarnation. Atlantica Online was such a disruption. Don’t get me wrong, AO is a fantastic MMO, but it was certainly a different kind of MMO from the sort that I was used to. The real problem is that now, having become somewhat used to its interesting ways, I find myself craving more MMOs like this; unique in creation and unique in delivery. We’ll call Atlantica Online a good disruption - and I’m here to tell you why.

First of all, for those of you who are safely ensconced within your World of Warcraft, Vana’diel or Norrath, you might be wondering what Atlantica Online is. While you can read about developer commentary here, here, here and here, I’d like to talk about it in my own words. Developed by the Korean Company, NDOORS Corporation, Atlantica Online is a free to play MMORPG that’s set on an alternate Earth. The MMO incorporates a lot of elements of steampunk (a blend of fantasy and steam era technology) and fantasy while blending together characters from all sorts of collective myths (Pirates, Spartans and… Napoleon? Oh my.).

Character creation and development in Atlantica Online is deceptively simple. The basic idea is that players choose a ‘main’ weapon (of seven weapon choices), and then, along the course of their AO lives, they pick up 8 other mercenaries (of 20 unique mercenary classes) to complete their traveling brigade. This 9-man (or woman) unit is then used to engage in PVP battles (typically 1v1) or go dungeon crawling. PvE encounters can have up to 9 monsters per unit, but sometimes other enemy groups can join and transform the thing into a ridiculous 27v9 situation. To combat this, players can also band together to end up making some really huge 27v27 battles, but typically combat is 9v9.

In terms of combat, Atlantica Online is very proud of its unique turn-based combat system, and it goes like this: one side has up to 30 seconds to complete its turn by left clicking an enemy unit to attack with their currently selected mercenary/main, or pressing specific hotkeys to launch / prepare volleys of delicious magic. While this appears to be very simple at surface level - if a little bit boring (except the Unicorn slaughtering!) - further explanation is warranted to really open your eyes. I’ll explain later.

Atlantica Online also boasts a very community based structure, in that a significant portion of advancement relies upon communication and interaction with the player base of AO. The way in which they approach the “massively” portion of MMO is really interesting in this regard, because actual fighting is usually done with three other individuals. Where other MMOs almost always tie in combat (one of the most important aspects of any game) with lots of other players, AO has chosen to connect players together through the economy, guilds and crafting. Allow me to elaborate.

The Atlantica Online economy is completely player driven. While there are NPCs who sell specific crafting items, most items are found by farming monsters and opening little treasure boxes. As well, a significant amount of equipment is crafted by other players, and these crafters dictate how their portion of the economy works. There are a few NPCs who sell items for set prices, but there are no NPCs who purchase things for anything above 10 gold. Basically, if you want to make any money, or have any gear for your mercenaries, you’re going to have to participate in AO’s fluctuating economy. This leads me to the next part of the economy, and one that I found really interesting: crafting in AO.

Crafting in Atlantica Online, as I’ve noted before, is what completely drives the economy. Players must ‘queue up’ a specific craft to complete, and then they have to go out and kill a set amount of monsters to complete the workload necessary to finish the craft. Don’t ask me why slaughtering phantoms is necessary towards creating my bullets, but it’s definitely a different direction from most other MMOs that require you to step away from combat for the entirety of your crafting session. Do note, however, that AO does offer the ability to ‘auto-craft’ at later levels, which basically allows you

to toddle off while your character slowl y fulfills the ‘workload’ required to craft the item. What is really neat about crafting, however, is not the fact that the AO team has thrown these two systems together in a vaguely cohesive manner, but it is how crafting advancement in Atlantica Online takes place.

The thing about AO is that there are very few NPC crafters (one) that ‘teach’ you how to make your stuff. I attempted to look up the residence of the only NPC gun crafter in the world of AO, and discovered that he lived a solid hour (that’s a real life hour, mind you) away from my current location. Boggled by this, I wrote out a carefully constructed inquiry (I whined) to my in-game guild, only to have a little message pop on my screen: “____ is about to teach a skill. Do you want it?” As it turns out, crafters in Atlantica Online operate in a symbiotic manner. Essentially, each level of crafting requires a specific amount of “crafting experience” to be fulfilled before you can advance to the next level. In order to advance to the next level, however, you do not simply level up every time you hit the pre-requisite experience; you can only advance to the next level if you pay a fee to trainer who lives halfway across the world from you, or if you are ‘taught’ a level up from any higher level artisan. For the upper level crafters, the benefit from teaching their newbie brethren comes in the form of additional crafting experience for them, thereby helping them push towards higher crafting levels of their own (which would be granted to them by even higher level artisans). In this way, high level crafters are constantly trying to help lower level crafters, and lower level crafters are advancing by helping anybody who’s lower than themselves. This aspect adds a unique dimension to the crafting community of Atlantica Online and it creates a sense of participation to crafters of all levels.

Guilds in Atlantica Online are, like any other MMO, plentiful. The unique thing about Atlantica Online is that when guilds have enough members and support, they can submit bids to take over towns. The bidding in this case utilizes guild points, and these points are accumulated by entering guild dungeons and decimating monsters, or crafting guild items, or even by maintaining a high attendance. Once a guild takes over a town, they gain many economic benefits, as well access to unique dungeons and other bonuses. Towns taken by guilds can band together to form a nation, and can subsequently go to war on other nations. During war is the only time when 3v3 PvP can take place, but war also has its own negative aspects, as players who lose in combat have a chance to drop a piece of their equipment. When we’re talking about gear that costs incredible amounts of money, it becomes a difficult choice to go to war and risk losing an item that you spent weeks trying to get.

In many ways, Atlantica Online may seem like a very traditional Korean MMO with turn-based fighting, but there are some very well developed ideas at play here that hint at a deeper game. The combat system in Atlantica Online, while it seems simple in its turn-based antiquity, introduces great synergies that utilize your entire mercenary force. As well, skill development per mercenary is limited, so no two teams are ever the same in execution or strategy, even if they utilize the exact same mercenaries. I really enjoy games that make me think - even when I’m not playing the game - and Atlantica Online is one of those games. Even when I wasn’t at the computer toddling around with my team, I would often space out, imagining the various ways in which I could develop killer strategies and coherent matrices. Some gamers may prefer an easier approach to their game, but I would certainly have it no other way.

Another way Atlantica Online is unique in its approach is that it rewards philanthropy and good will, but does not make them mandatory aspects of the game. There are several little ‘title’ awards that give neat bonuses for players who give 25 gifts to new players, or give cash donations to other crafters. Guilds gain bonuses for taking good care of their villages, high level crafters gain bonuses for helping low level crafters, and the NDOORS Company is planning to implement rewards for players who volunteer their time to mentor newer players. All of this speaks towards a game that’s focused upon community involvement rather than self-involvement.

The only real complaints I have for this game are its generally clunky user interface and controls. Despite the game involving a fair amount of interaction, the chat boxes and interface generally make it very difficult to communicate with other people. To date, I don’t think I’ve managed to discover a method of quickly and easily sending whispers / messages to other players. In combat, there are many situations where I’ll want to target a specific monster, only to have the game think that I was really attacking something else. At the same time, I’m unsure if this is a glitch that is unique to my own computer, but every now and then the camera will zoom ridiculously close to the monster I’m attacking, and render me unable to continue my combos. There needs to be a simplified monster box on the screen that allows me to quickly and easily click my targets, instead of having to manipulate the camera like a madman. As well, call me picky, but my shoulders don’t move when I run . It creeps me out.
 
The final problem that I have found with Atlantica Online - and for me, it’s not really a problem - is the lack of human participation that is required for combat. For myself, I think it’s fantastic that there is an incredibly low headcount requirement for any monster mashing, but other individuals may find that low player participation means a sterile world. I ingrained myself within every social aspect of this game as soon as I began, so I did not feel like I was completely alone. Your social mileage may vary, I suppose.

Yes, AO generates its revenue via micro transactions, and a significant portion of the game is based around questing for experience, but I can honestly say that Atlantica Online is one of the first MMOs I’ve played that hasn’t tried to ‘remix’ the World of Warcraft style. When a market is so completely eclipsed by a single juggernaut, it becomes difficult to think outside of the genre box; we ultimately end up believing that the behemoth is the genre. In this case, Atlantica Online goes out of its way to definitively prove that they can create a unique game that falls within the “MMO” category while still providing a highly entertaining and a richly complex game. AO shines as a game that was developed out of a passion for the craft, as opposed to a quick method of tapping the gaming industry. I really hope that others will take this as an example to be just as innovative and daring when they create their own MMOs.