It appears that World of Warcraft in-game economies may be the latest victims of the worldwide economic downturn that started last year as a result of a meltdown in subprime mortgage markets. Economists tracking the flow of real world money in and out of the game have noted a sharp decline in dollars and euros flowing into the game, and a sharp increase in gold and items being put up for sale.
Initially it was thought that the troubles in the economy would be a boon for World of Warcraft server economies. Tightening budgets meant less discretionary income to be spent on subscriptions which, in theory, would lead to fewer players competing for items and an overall rise in the price of goods and services with a corresponding increase in player wealth.
Sony Computer Entertainment released sales figures earlier today showing that the Playstation 3 has become the best-selling console in Iran, news that is being touted by fanboys across the Internet that the Playstation 3 may finally be making a comeback after a year of poor sales figures and profit losses that have run into billions of dollars for Sony.
Most of the sales have been to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a group that has gained some notoriety in recent months after the Bush administration attempted to label them as a terrorist organization. All of the units are being shipped to an undisclosed facility hidden in the mountainous region of Iran, and no one in the country seems to be buying any games.
The ESRB rating on some World of Warcraft servers is about to change during gameplay in a big way. Blizzard announced that they will be releasing several new ERP “Erotic Roleplay” and ERP-PvP “Erotic Roleplaying Player Versus Player” realms that cater to the adult audience in World of Warcraft that’s more comfortable carrying on their sex life in a virtual world than in the real world.
Several old realms will be converted to the new ruleset to test the waters before new servers are opened. Ravenholdt, the server at the center of the ERP debate, will be the first to operate under the new ruleset. Blizzard stated in a blue post that they felt it would be better to try this new ruleset on a server that already has a large existing ERP population. They also hope that the new rules will attract more people to the server, which until now has been suffering from a low population made up mostly of horny blood elves.
World of Warcraft, US servers, Ravenholdt. This Realm seems to come up an awful lot in the news these days, and it makes you wonder why. Is it some sort of magnet for drama? Perhaps the fates decreed that the newest of the RP-PvP servers be destined for great things -- terrible, but great.
This journalist thinks otherwise. I think there is a certain pride held amongst the Ravenholdt denizens. A pride which lets them speak loud and proud and make themselves known to the world. A pride that creates guilds of people who revel in Roleplay on this server as well as Raiding and World PvP. A pride that lets them get angry when people tarnish their good name. This article is about a guild who did just that, and the just desserts said guild received months later, perhaps by the collective will of Ravenholdt, or even the actions of a single person. But I'm getting ahead of myself -- let me start from the beginning.
Representatives from the gamer organization Men Advocating the Normalization of Gaming In Non-traditional Avatars, or M.A.N.G.I.N.A. for short, are protesting the recent implementation of voice chat in World of Warcraft. The organization claims that the advent of ubiquitous voice chat in-game could ruin the lifestyle they’ve enjoyed in massive online games for the past few decades.
“Easy access to voice chat utilities will eliminate all of the ambiguity and anonymity that our alternative gaming lifestyle enjoyed in the days when the chat box was the primary mode of communication in-game,” M.A.N.G.I.N.A. Chairperson Kris Smith told Daily Gaming News. “How will we be able to dupe people into thinking we’re really girls if we hop onto party chat sounding like Barry White?”
Repair time for Xbox 360 gaming consoles suffering from the “red ring of death” general hardware failure are now taking so long that Microsoft is offering gamers the option of receiving a voucher that will apply the full cost gamers paid for their Xbox 360 system towards the next generation of Xbox hardware, whatever that happens to be.
The announcement came after Microsoft did the math and realized that the current average turnaround rate for repairing an Xbox 360 is starting to go so far into the future that they’ll be ready to buy whatever new console Microsoft is offering at the time and aren’t likely to be interested in their Xbox 360 any longer.
The drums of war are beating a little louder in the Middle East today after the Pentagon released intelligence they gathered from a recent raid on insurgents in Baghdad that allegedly contained “airtight proof” that Oil Ocean Zone has been providing financing, training, and weapons for insurgent groups for at least the past year.
The announcement couldn’t have come at a worse time. Relations between the United States and oil ocean zone were already at a historical low. A recent visit by Oil Ocean Zone president Dr. Ivo Robotnik merely fanned the flames of public opinion against the small Middle Eastern zone, with the dictator making remarks such as “There are no non-robotic living animals in Oil Ocean Zone,” and the president of Columbia University calling Robotnik a two-bit mad scientist with designs on taking over the world with his robotic minions.
The Farmers Guilds of both Canada and the United States of America are lobbying against Marvelous Interactive, the creators of the ever popular Harvest Moon video game series.
John Horton, spokesperson for the Farmers Guild of Canada spurred this cause in to action after witnessing his children avoiding chores at dawn -- instead devoting more attention to doing chores and farming tasks inside of the Harvest Moon world.
Human Rights Watch is protesting the latest in a series of human rights violations committed by the communist Chinese government. They have learned through a series of clandestine reports from behind the Bamboo Curtain that the Chinese are rounding up political dissidents and forcing them to work in gold farming operations in World of Warcraft, with all money earned from the operations going into the coffers of the Chinese military.
The government has been quietly rounding up dissidents in recent months in preparations for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Silencing politically unsavory individuals is just one part of a larger "Red Washing" campaign being undertaken to improve the communist nation's image on the world stage. Other attention grabbing efforts include shutting down every large industrial operation in the Beijing area months before the games to reduce air pollution.
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