Don't walk. RUN! Go get signed up for a chance to be in the WotLK beta. Here's an official announcement. ----
Today we opened the Wrath of the Lich King Beta Opt-In program, which gives players a chance to win an invitation to the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King beta. For The Burning Crusade beta, we randomly invited players from the entire World of Warcraft community. With the Opt-In, our goal is to strengthen the beta-testing process by inviting only those players who have expressed active interest in participating.
Keep in mind that opting in doesn’t guarantee you’ll be selected for the beta. And players who’ve previously been promised beta access through a promotion or contest (such as by purchasing the Dell XPS M1730 World of Warcraft Edition notebook) don’t need to worry -- you’ll still be entered into the beta automatically when the time comes.
To opt in to the Wrath of the Lich King beta, visit the link below:
The Blizzard Authenticator was announced only a couple of days ago and it's already sold out. Based on the famous Secure ID tokens, the device is actually pretty simplistic. It merely displays a six digit number changes every minute or so.
When logging in users will now be presented with two password fields. The second password field is for the six digit number displayed on the token and will help provide an extra layer of protection for hacked and stolen accounts. Only physical access to the Authenticator will allow someone to get connected.
No doubt scams attempts will pop-up, users will get IM's or phone calls from people pretending to be from Blizzard and asking for the current password on the Authenticator. But over all this will drastically reduce the number of scams.
These Authenticators will actually be very hard if not nearly impossible to hack. They are used heavily in any industry and in Governments to create secure connections to remote servers, or to provide a fairly simple but amazingly robust authentication scheme. Better yet, throw into many wrong attempts and the cards automatically gets locked out.
Each token is originally setup with a complex mathematical equation that is based off the serial number AND the number that is on the Authenticator when you call to activate it. When the number changes, that number is entered in on the server side by Blizzard and the Authenticator is then activated. This makes it impossible to login in with a different Authenticator as the passwords simply will not match.
Since the Tokens are serialized and only good for one account, this will actually help make account trades or buying/selling accounts safer as a physical item will now need to be shipped with each account. With the addition of tracking a package charge backs should be a thing of the past as users will no longer be selling "just a virtual item."
In my opinion, any serious account buyers and sellers should start demanding this step. It's only $6.50 (plus tax and shipping,) and will add so much to the security of an account that it'll be pretty hard to loose the account to a scammer from now on.
Blizzard Entertainment® announces highly anticipated sequel at 2008 Worldwide Invitational in Paris
PARIS, France - June 28, 2008 - Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today revealed Diablo® III, the newest entry in its critically acclaimed action role-playing-game franchise. The announcement was made during the 2008 Blizzard Entertainment® Worldwide Invitational at the Porte de Versailles Convention Centre in Paris, France. A cinematic trailer and an extended gameplay demonstration with commentary from the development team introduced the game to the thousands of players in attendance.
"We've wanted to expand on the epic story and gameplay elements of the Diablo universe for some time now," stated Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We know that players have also been long awaiting a return to the series, so we're very excited to be sharing this announcement with Blizzard gamers here in Paris and around the world today."
Diablo III will pick up the story twenty years after the events of Diablo II. Mephisto, Diablo, and Baal have been defeated, but the Worldstone, which once shielded the inhabitants of the world of Sanctuary from the forces of both the High Heavens and the Burning Hells, has been destroyed, and evil once again stirs in Tristram. Playing as a hero from one of five distinct character classes, players will acquire powerful items, spells, and abilities as they explore new and familiar areas of Sanctuary and battle hordes of demons to safeguard the world from the horrors that have arisen. The first two characters classes -- the barbarian and the witch doctor -- were shown as part of the announcement at the event today in Paris.
Diablo III will feature a custom 3D-graphics engine to render lush indoor and outdoor areas of Sanctuary with a high level of detail and vivid special effects. The game's physics-enhanced environments will be interactive and destructible, offering traps and obstacles that create added danger for players and monsters alike. These elements, along with a new quest system and random scripted events, will be integrated into the game's random-level generator, giving Diablo III the ultimate combination of dynamic gameplay and replayability. Cooperative and competitive play will be available online through an upgraded version of Blizzard Entertainment's renowned online gaming service, Battle.net®.
Blizzard Entertainment is developing Diablo III for simultaneous release on the Windows® and Macintosh® PC platforms. Further information about the game, including details on the other character classes, major new features for the single-player and multiplayer components, system requirements, pricing, and availability, will be announced as development progresses. To learn more about Diablo III, please visit the official website at www.diablo3.com. With multiple games in development, Blizzard Entertainment has numerous positions currently available. Visit http://www.blizzard.com/jobs for more information and to learn how to apply.
We asked Paigan about how he likes to play naked characters. As you've heard him say before. He plays a lot of WoW. He's now broadcasting his play on FreeGameCam. There is a link on the left menu where the light flashes blue when someone is broadcasting live. Paigan can be viewed daily here: http://www.freegamecam.com/users/viewuser.php/Paigan
The images are live. If you play on his server you can stop in and say "Hi" to him in game.
I just wanted to take a moment to mention that we today hit 80,000 members. Thank you to all of you that make this a great place to hang out and buy, sell and trade accounts.
Lots of people have stated that they play World of Warcraft and are older than Paigan. Most of those comments have been bull. We encourage you to put up your own video of you playing WoW as a reply. If you need help getting your video up on to YouTube. Ask your grandkids. lol
Actually many people still see RMT (Real Money Trading) as evil. But something interesting is changing. Last year when we went to the Online Game Developers Conference in Seattle. We were a bit afraid to tell people that we worked in these secondary markets that spring up around games. The reason was that some of the game developers and publishers were very hostile towards us.
So last year we sat back and listened to developers and publishers concerns. We listened about how games can be destroyed by these secondary markets if they get out of control. Especially when some sort of dupe or exploit is found and people abuse the hell out of it. For our company we shifted things a little bit to try to reduce any impact on the games while still working in these markets. That may sound like an oxymoron statement. But here is a belief I have.
I believe that when a game has an in game item or items that people want to trade. If people have any ability at all to trade it outside of the game for real world value then they will. I see this as a fact and there is no way around this. Many games have tried to combat this by making items untradable or worthless. But that can affect the fun of the game. There there is always the fact that people will provide services. Such as power leveling, escorts or information such as guides. No matter what the game this external market always springs up.
Move forward to present day. The Online Game Developers Conference this year was renamed to ION. We attended with several of out staff. We were hearing something new this year. We knew that a few of the US game companies were embracing the sales of in game items as a way for their game to earn revenue. Asian game companies have already been doing this for several years. They in fact brag about how much money is going through the external markets around they games. It's a big cultural difference between North American (Western) and Asian game companies.
Here in the North American market game companies have finally figured out that no matter how hard they work at it these external markets spring up. So what are they to do? Well... Some of them are starting to look at how they can embrace it. Why embrace it? The facts are that more than one game company did studies about their North American markets and found that the external market is a whopping 8x larger that their own sales. What this means is if the game generates say $100,000,000 in sales in a year through retail sales of the game and subscriptions. The external markets selling those services, gold, items and accounts did around $800,000,000 in sales. While game publishers may be internally conflicted about the sales of stuff in the games they can not deny how much money is being left on the table.
We tried to get our sources for this information to go on the record. But both companies that did very similar studies and came out with similar results declined to make any official statements. They state that they did not ever intend on making these results public. Clearly though this is a huge thing to them as they are very excited about the possibilities in this new market.
"RMT" changes to "Second Market"
RMT has become a nasty word in the industry. It often brings up images of Gold Farmers and other stuff that can be harmful to games. Now that several game companies are looking to embrace these secondary markets if they can they have made up a new name for it. For the game sales and subscriptions they are calling this "First Market". for the sales that are happening external to the game that are not necessarily under their control they are calling this the "Second Market". Really it's very close to RMT. Except it's a newer name that says the same thing without some of the undesirable baggage associated with RMT.
On to the future
Now that game companies have seen the light we will start seeing more ways of the game publishers themselves tapping into this second market. New companies are springing up to try to officially support these markets with the approval of the game companies. There are two new player to player trading networks in development. ( http://www.playspan.com and http://www.realitybridge.net ) Playspan already has a large number of games on board and is in beta testing right now. Reality Bridge has had their first round of beta testing and is also getting ready to open to all players of all games. Both of these companies have different approaches as to how to support all of this trading and to provide payments or royalties back to the publishers. I have seen how both of them will be working and I think that both of them are going to be very successful.
Next year at this time I think we will have seen several games published by Western publishers that have adopted the Asian style of free or lo cost to start the game and then pay for certain items in the game to help your advancement.
For those of you that have been the black sheep in these markets for so many years. Your experience in RMT is about to pay off in these new Second Markets. We of course will be in the front lines of these new markets and we are glad that our experience here is starting to pay off in ways that the game industry sees as legitimate. I think for those with experience and who have a long history of honest business. You are about to see a big change in how your company is viewed. I know that for our company personally we are already seeing this change and it is opening up many new opportunities.
I knew it had been quiet for a long time. No big ban waves for the last few months that I can recall. Well today the ban hammer fell for thousands of players.
Check out this 3 monitor surround setup from Matrox. It's the TripleHead2Go with World of Warcraft. I saw this and thought it was so cool. It really adds to the game play and immersion into the game.
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