Second Life- Economist Article

While visiting the in-laws, my father-in-law mentioned he had held aside for me an Economist article about Second Life (did I ever mention how with-it they were?) Unfortunately I left the article down with them. 

Fortunately, The Economist is with-it as well.

Some interesting data-points are mentioned within.

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WoW: Things I thought I’d never see

Last night I visited Molten Core with the guild, and we finished clearing all the way through to Ragnaros. This wasn't the guild's first time, but it was my own. And afterward I realized there have been a few things I've since in the last two months since returning that I never thought I would. Ever.

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Emergent Leadership

Upon returning to World of Warcraft after a nine month hiatus, I quickly realized the being focused just on Raiding wasn't going to cut it for me. Lots of reasons really, but the biggest one is Burning Crusade. With the increase in the level cap comes the increase in equipment one can get, both in soloable quests and small group ones. I don't mind the occasional Raid, but eventually it becomes a slot machine: you're just going through the motions until something drops.

So I decided to tip-toe a bit into PvP, specifically Battlegrounds. Oddly enough, being over a year late, I haven't been completely outclassed. And I'm playing what amounts to the least survivable template of a near-one-dimensional class.

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Supply and Demand at IGE

Over at Grimwell Online, Mank points to a post by Edward Castranova over at Terra Nova in which he mentioned IGE has stopped buying WoW gold. That post, and the thread at Grimwell, cover some of the significance of this.

I have some other thoughts.

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Planned sellout of Burning Crusade?

I've been to a few GameSpots over the past few days, because they happen to be in locations we take our family for shopping. I can't help myself though. I love playing dumb and asking the staff what they know about my genre. I never correct them either. I figure what's the point, they're there to the easy-to-sell console games anyway.

But I have learned two interesting things about their perception of WoW:

• Expected on-shelf date was November 28th. This means I was right. I love being right.
• Blizzard is only planning to ship 4 million units of Burning Crusade boxes.

Huh?

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MMOG: Prison Server

I received an email from the Spain-based MMORPG Prison Server yesterday. I had never heard of the game before, and there seems to be some interesting elements.

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Best played diversely

There's folks who play MMORPGs with a single-minded focus and dedication to rival a mercenary.

I'm not one of them.

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Leaks

This week seems to have been the official start of the Blizzard Alpha Test event, according to a few places. It took all of a few picoseconds before the entirety of the Alpha was leaked to the web.

Personally, this pisses me off enough for me to use the word "pisses" in a sentence. Doesn't anyone read and respect an NDA for an event to which they were a hand-picked invitee?

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Rose-colored glasses

It's funny how people can romanticize game systems they either never played, or remember many years later with a perspective skewed by time.

But it's also fun to see how the community in which they don their rose-colored glasses rises up to, err, remind them of what was.

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How much Immersion, Part 2

Well, I've answered my own question:

Just how much immersion do I want?

Less than I can have.

Continue reading How much Immersion, Part 2…