If you think the “living out” conditions of embattled NBP detainee Gov. Leviste is lavish and that the poor prisoners have it up to their necks living in sqaulor, think again.
Some Chinese jail officials have turned their correctional facilities into a virtual sweat shop to farm and resell gold for World of Warcraft. OMG!
Sharing with you a good article by business site Forbes.com
The story tells a tale about two top executives who started out as gamers. Among them is Elliot Noss, chief executive of domain name provider Tucows, and 20-something Stephen Gillett, a gamer who became chief information officer of Starbucks. Both have applied leadership principles acquired through their own video game experiences.
After filing cases against Sony for various reasons such as violation of his rights to the First Amendment, his broken Xbox360 caused him “undue stress”, and for the Nintendo Wii for interfering with his “right to pursue happiness”, Erik Estavillo of San Jose, California is at it again. This time, he has turned his attention against Blizzard and World of Warcraft. Estavillo claimed that the game has a “harmful virtual environment” with “sneaky and deceitful practices.”
He recently filed the $1M suit against Blizzard for causing him undue mental health.
Despite government, civic groups and media features, the Chinese gold farming industry - with online game World of Warcraft as the primary vehicle, continues on.
Some proponents of the underground industry are adamant that the supply is still huge. They think that gold farming will continue to exist because players will continue to look for it and pay for it. “The reason people buy gold is the same reason they pay people to wash their car – they would rather spend money than do it themselves”, said one anonymous Chinese gold farmer.
Let’s take a look at the current state of the Chinese gold farming industry and take a behind-the-scenes-look at 2 actual employees.
One more click, sir…
Posted in General, MMORPG News, Musings, Online 
Tags: china, chinese, farming, General, gold-farmers, MMORPG News, Musings, Online, Online Games, WoWBBC reports on the massive scale of gold farming for WoW. To most Chinese, it’s a full-time job. With a population of over 1.3 billion people, the growth of the gaming population has been incredible. From just around 22.3 million players less than a year ago, this has ballooned to 147 million. A growth of 559%.
Blizzard has began a crackdown on these operations which has been closely monitored by the blogosphere.
Second Skin, by Purewest Films (www.secondskinfilm.com) is new, movie/documentary about online games and MMORPGs.
What’s interesting here is they take 7 gamers whose lives changed forever because of virtual worlds. The movie tackles identity, community, economy, love, addiction and many other facets of this growing worldwide “boom”. The movie states that 50 million people play MMORPGs – your friend, relative, officemate, classmate or even your mom could be a gamer.
Their official movie site details the film more: “Second Skin takes an intimate look at computer gamers whose lives have been transformed by the emerging genre of Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs). World of Warcraft, Second Life, and Everquest allow millions of users to simultaneously interact in virtual spaces. Second Skin introduces us to couples who have fallen in love without meeting, disabled players who have found new purpose, addicts, Chinese gold-farming sweatshop workers, wealthy online entrepreneurs and legendary guild leaders – all living in a world that doesn’t quite exist.”
Trailer follows
WoW is simply wow!
They already made comics, a couple of great commercials and even a cool line of action figures
They commissioned White Wolf (makers of the famous “worlds of Darkness”, Vampire and Werewolf tabletop RPGs) to make the official World of Warcraft pen-and-paper RPG
THis has been a long-time dream of mine. The closest thing perhaps was being editor-in-chief of the Ragnarok Ultimate Game Guide. So I guess I can understand the “ardous” part of the process that Luke Johnson of White Wolf and the guys at Blizzard experienced.
Ey, friends… Happy New Year!
For the first post of 2008, let’s all talk about comics (and MMORPGs). One of the legends in the biz and also a fav of mine, Jim Lee, recently made the cover for the official World of Warcraft comicbook
The comic is being produced by DC Wildstorm. It was released last November. There’s also a free online version of issue zero. So go check it out.
Here’s Jim’s cover art:
More after the jump
The marketing guys at Blizzard have struck a jackpot with a series of TVCs starring Mr. T and William Shatner.
Although Kiven already posted this at his site, it’s worthy of replicating it here.
I really think that tri-media and especially TV ads are not normal marketing channels, it’s certainly an exception if you’ve got the money and the nice product – like WoW.
Check out Mr. T’s “Night Elf Mohawk!!!”. Really funny.
More details after the jump…
Blizzard, one of the giants in the gaming industry, through its parent company, Vivendi has just announced that they are merging with Activision to form a new company called Activision Blizzard.
This new company is “expected to have approximately $3.8 billion in pro forma combined calendar 2007 revenues and the highest operating margins of any major third-party video game publisher. On closing of the transaction, Activision will be renamed Activision Blizzard and will continue to operate as a public company traded on NASDAQ under the ticker ATVI.” said their official press release.
This Combination Brings Activision’s Best-Selling Video Games, Including Guitar Hero®, Call of Duty®, and Tony Hawk, Together With Vivendi Games’ Portfolio of Leading Franchises, Including Crash Bandicoot and Spyro, and Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft®, Diablo® and Global #1 Subscription-Based World Of Warcraft®
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