WoW

Filed under: Opinion, Virtual worlds, MMOS XMMOS X is a bi-weekly column dedicated solely to gaming on the Macintosh natively. "Running Boot Camp or Parallels" is not an option here. This column is for people who want to get the most out of their Mac gaming, as meager as it is.Originally, this week's column was going to be a technical how-to, but a series of snafus -- not the least of which included me slapping my head and going, "You moron, combat logs changed after patch 2.4. That's why this new analyzer you are looking at is barfing on your Karazhan logs from February." However, my focus changed when, like many of the Faithful, I turned my attention to the West Monday to see what our Leader had to say.Frankly, all I wanted Jobs to say was, "with iPhone 2.0, now you can sync iCal tasks to the iPhone." I didn't get that. Instead, I got a bunch of technical jargon that went over my head. Really, who did he think he was talking to, a bunch of developers or something? When a couple of game developers got up to show off their new iPhone apps, a light bulb went off for this week's late column.Continue reading MMOS X: How the MMOs and the iPhone can meet. Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Video, Cinemassively, Machinima, HumorFor some videographers, machinima can be a lucrative business. Myndflame, the creators of the Illegal Danish series, have made a full time living for over a year now producing machinima for clients. Using World of Warcraft, they've recently released a commercial for Slim Jim, the beef jerky stick. In the ad, they focus on a knight that has problems rescuing a fair maiden until the product is introduced.While WoW is a popular machinima platform, Blizzard has imposed a Fair Use Guide that restricts how machinimators can profit from their work. In the case of this specific video, Slim Jim most likely received a content use license from Blizzard.[Via Warcraftmovies.com]If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them. Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

The surprise announcement of the impending merger of Activision and Vivendi Games that was announced in December 2007 caused shockwaves throughout the industry that are still being felt now, in mid-2008, as the deal rolls towards completion.

Many of us have been enjoying for hours Warcraft 3 campaigns, or been touched with its history with such different characters that composed such a rich world. After many unforgettable battles at Battle.Net now you have the opportunity of living in first person in the world of Warcraft. With World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment has taken the great step towards the field of the games based on persistent worlds and, although being a newbie, it has excellently succeeded.

According to Michael Zenke from Massively, Age of Conan has sold 400,000 copies, out of 700,000 boxes they put on the shelves. Not bad for the first week. And, kudos to Funcom, the release launch went a lot smoother than the beta or early access. The reception of AoC in the blogosphere was a mixed. Keen and Graev already cancelled their accounts again. Tipa from West Karana sees AoC challenging WoW. The Ancient Gaming Noob correctly points out that "MMOs are a long haul proposition" and reserves judgement until having played it more.

I haven't played all that much World of Warcraft this weekend, I'm feeling a bit burned out for the moment. Having problems finding groups for 5-man dungeons, the only thing I did with my level 70 characters was doing a couple of daily quests for the Shattered Sun Offensive with my mage. I reached honored with them, and bought the two enchanting recipes you get from them at that level, one of which is Void Shatter, which transforms one cheap void crystal into two expensive large prismatic shards.

After their great success in selling people a completely equipped level 70 character on an arena server for $20, Blizzard nevertheless received countless complaints that the freshly bought characters were only

useable for arena PvP. Battlegrounds and all forms of PvE are disabled on the arena servers. Sensing a business opportunity, Blizzard reacted and will introduce micro-transaction servers: These work exactly like a normal

Details have slowly been trickling out about the next expansion for World of Warcraft through the official site, game conventions, interviews, and staff comments on the always busy WoW forums. Here's a quick

summary of what we know about Wrath of the Lich King so far.
Are there going to be new classes added to the game?

Yes, Blizzard’s partner in China, The9, put out a press release to announce that World of Warcraft hit a concurrent play record with one million players logged in and playing on their servers.
While perhaps not the hottest news bite of the day, it is quite a feat.

Only CCP releases similar numbers, and I think the last number for EVE Online was around 40,000 concurrent players. (But all on one server!)