Silicon Valley may have discovered the perfect business: charging real money for products that do not exist.

These so-called virtual goods, like a $1 illustration of a Champagne bottle on Facebook or the $2.50 Halloween costume in the online game Sorority Life, are no more than a collection of pixels on a Web page.

But it is quickly becoming commonplace for people to spend a few dollars on them to get ahead in an online game or to give a friend a gift on a social network.

Analysts estimate that virtual goods could bring in a billion dollars in the United States and around $5 billion worldwide this year — all for things that, aside from perhaps a few hours of work by an artist and a programmer, cost nothing to produce.

“It’s a fantastic business,” said Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners, a venture capital firm that has invested $10 million in several virtual goods companies. “Because it’s digital, the marginal cost for every one you sell is zero, so you have 100 percent margins.”

The companies that create and sell virtual goods, including Zynga, Playfish and Playdom, three online gaming start-ups in the San Francisco area, say they are recording significant revenue and profits, which have been elusive for many Web companies.

Virtual goods have been popular in Asia for years. In the United States though, only ardent video game fans spent money on them, mostly for swords and spells in virtual fantasy realms. That is rapidly changing, driven by the popularity of widely appealing games for social networks like Facebook and mobile phones like the iPhone.

“The people playing these games on social networks don’t define themselves as gamers — they are just killing time, having fun,” Mr. Liew said.

In Restaurant City, a game by Playfish on Facebook, 18 million active users manage their own cafe and stock it with virtual casseroles and cakes. In Zynga’s game FarmVille, 62 million agrarian dreamers cultivate a farm, plant squash seeds and harvest their crops with tractors.

These games and many others have casual gamers reaching for their wallets, along with a few rationalizations, as they make the peculiar purchase of pixels on a computer screen.

“It’s an experience, like going to the movies. That’s how I describe it,” said Sara Merrill of Parsonfield, Me., who plays Pet Society on Facebook with her two young sons five times a week.

Recently, the family used a credit card to buy $20 worth of the game’s currency, then bought items like a haunted mirror and a potion that helped their pet, Demon Baby, grow bat wings. “It’s still cheaper than taking the kids to Target where they will ask for a toy,” she said.

For outsiders, the selling of virtual goods — items with no actual value in the real world — might seem the very definition of a swindle.

But often, strong — and somewhat rational — motives are at work. Users of social networks can buy one another gifts, like images of flowers and birthday cakes, typically for a dollar each. Facebook recently expanded its gift store to allow other companies to list their virtual wares, like greeting cards.

“It’s not about the good itself, it’s about the underlying human emotion or desire,” said Moshe Koyfman, a principal at Spark Capital, which has invested in two virtual-goods start-ups. “The recipient knows the person took time, picked something meaningful and spent money on it.”

Most of the momentum in the virtual goods market comes not from gifts but from social games, where people buy items to improve their performance in the game or just to build up a collection that will impress friends.

Unlike traditional games, social games are generally free, and the vast majority of players never spend any money. In Zynga’s games, less than 3 percent of players pay for something, said Mark Pincus, the chief executive of the company.

Players can also earn virtual currency by signing up for subscription services or installing pop-up advertising software. But some social gaming companies have cut back on such offers after criticism that they were misleading and in some cases defrauding players.

Zynga says direct purchases of virtual currency and goods will account for most of its more than $100 million in revenue this year, and that the company is profitable.

Game creators talk openly about their strategies to make people pay for virtual goods: get them addicted, then steer them to purchases that speed up the pace of the game and help them succeed. In FarmVille, for example, the tractors’ gasoline tanks replenish themselves slowly over the course of a day. Instead of waiting, players can pay to buy gas — something that might be considered cheating in more traditional games.

“You put intentional friction in, and a small number of people who value their time and want to play at a faster pace can spend money,” Mr. Pincus said.

Players of the games have competitive reasons to buy, too. Wendy Pickering of Columbus, Ohio, plays Sorority Life, a game in which players create and dress groups of co-eds, and then, rather violently, pit them against one another until the most glamorous house wins. She discovered very quickly, she said, that she would be trounced in every showdown if she didn’t have enough fashionable items.

Ms. Pickering has paid more than $30 in the last few months to buy the game’s virtual currency, called Brownie Points, which she has used on items like the Miss America tiara and hair, and the Cinco de Mayo party outfit, which included a sombrero.

“That is about as much as I’d be willing to pay for a game off the shelf in a store,” she said.

Some game fans claim that in some cases, virtual goods can be better than the real thing. Jamie Kwong, a 13-year-old in Altadena, Calif., spends hours a week on a “paper doll” site called Stardoll, buying dresses and handbags. She created Juillet606, with brown eyes and hair to match her own. Unlike the actual paper dolls she used to play with, the tabs do not rip off.

“With Stardoll it all stays on there, my brother can’t get on it, and everything is good,” she said.

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The adventure is set in the mining settlement of Torchlight, a
boomtown founded on the discovery of rich veins of Ember – a
rare and mysterious ore with the power to enchant or corrupt
all that it contacts. This corruptive power may have dire
consequences however, and players set out into the nearby
mountains and depths below to discover the full extent of
Ember’s influence on the civilizations that have come before.

Players will choose from among three character classes, and
venture from the safety of the town of Torchlight into
randomly generated dungeon levels, with a huge variety of
creepy monsters, endless variations of loot to find, and
quests to complete. The endless randomization ensures a
long-lived gameplay experience.

Randomization – Our level layouts are randomly created, so
each adventure is unique. Monsters, treasures, puzzles, and
items are also different each time you embark on an adventure.

Easy, approachable interface – Torchlight is designed to be
easy to play right from the beginning. The intuitive interface
gives players easy access to a rich and varied world.

Retirement System – Once characters are sufficiently leveled
up, they can “retire” and bestow specific benefits and perks
to new characters.

Pets – Players will choose a pet to accompany them. Pets can
level up along with the player, and will help in battle, carry
items, and perform a variety of helpful services.

Character Classes – Players will create and customize a
character from one of three classes available, and choose an
animal companion. Through cosmetic choices, skill path
decisions, and the treasures they acquire, each character will
be custom-tailored and different.

Fishing – Players can take a break from the high-energy pace
of adventuring to visit one of the fishing holes and relax and
see what they can catch. Fish have interesting benefits for
the player and pet, and other rewards can also be discovered

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As a result, game worlds are creating virtual economies.

With the global recession impacting consumer spending — and the sales of video games — a research group is using Sony Online Entertainment’s “EverQuest II” as a case study to explore how virtual economies mirror real-world economies.

Researcher Edward Castronova, professor of telecommunications at Indiana University, said researchers can learn almost anything about human society in games as they really are human societies.

However unlike real society they can be observed and tweaked.

“We can do controlled experiments in virtual worlds, but we can’t do that in reality,” said Castronova.

“Controlled experimentation is the very best way to learn about cause and effect. We are on the verge of developing that capacity for human society as a whole.”

Researchers found the average age of “EverQuest II” players is 31 compared to 35 for the general population. Eighty percent of players are male versus 50 percent for the general population and they skew more white than the overall population.

“Everquest II” players are also wealthier than the general population with an average mean household income of $84,000 versus $57,000 for the general population.

After studying 314 million transactions within the fantasy world of Norrath in “EverQuest II,” including trading in-game goods like armor, shields, leather, herbs and food, the researchers were able to calculate the GDP of one of the game servers (the back-end computer that hosts thousands of players in one world).

As more people opened accounts and flocked to Norrath, spending money on new items, researchers saw inflation spike more than 50 percent in five months.

Fellow researcher Dmitri Williams, assistant professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, said the rapid economic changes may not be due to the economy being virtual but as it has volatile elements.

“We have seen that kind of volatility during times of war and in developing nations in the real world,” said Williams. “Our own economy has turned out to be less stable than we’d all assumed.”

The real-world recession has also sparked a rise in the number of gamers going to free-to-play MMO games like Nexon’s “Maple Story,” NHN Games’ “Soldier Front,” and Sony Online Entertainment’s “Free Realms.”

Rather than charging players to buy the game and pay a subscription, revenue is generated through the purchase of in-game items.

“I think as the economy has experienced its ups and downs, we’re seeing business models reflect those changes giving people more choices, and that’s a good thing,” said John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment.

“We’ve gone from box-only products with free play components to monthly subscription models, and now we’re seeing an evolution to hybrid models that are very similar to the great number of choices seen in the music industry.”

Source: Reuters

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The Diablo II 1.13 patch is on temporary hold while we investigate potential impact on the Battle.net service. As we moved closer to launching the patch concerns grew that an increase in the player stash size (a feature in the patch) could compromise the Diablo II Battle.net service. The hardware and configuration could potentially not handle the increased stash size gracefully under heavy load. Currently we’re investigating potential impact as it is one of the larger content features in the patch and we’re hoping it can remain a part of the release. If it does have to be removed it will require additional time to remove it, generate new patches, and test, which will add time before we can go live on the PTR.

We’re hoping to have our diagnostics and a final decision on how we’ll be moving forward decided by early next week and we’ll have an update for you at that time.

Source: Blizzard

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2 of them are for Goblins masks – Helm_Mask_Halloween_GoF and Helm_Mask_Halloween_GoM
2 of them are for Worgens masks – Helm_Mask_Halloween_WoF and Helm_Mask_Halloween_WoM

Even if the Goblin texture would make sense as an addition to the game, adding Worgens texture out of nowhere is definitely a sign that the 2 new races of the expansion will be the Worgens (most likely for the Alliance) and the Goblins.

I know that a lot of people will love to argue with that over hundreds of replies. I would just like to add that it usually takes a lot to make me post something on the front page and I don’t think I’ve ever been wrong everytime I did. Hopefully Blizzard will react fast enough and add tons of new masks in the next build just to pretend that it was intended. (Suggestion: Pandarens please)

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“In addition to its ongoing crackdown on Internet porn, the Chinese government has declared that virtual currency cannot be traded for real goods or services.

Virtual currency, as defined by Chinese authorities, includes “prepaid cards of cyber-games,” according to a joint release issued by China’s Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Commerce on Friday.

“The virtual currency, which is converted into real money at a certain exchange rate, will only be allowed to trade in virtual goods and services provided by its issuer, not real goods and services,” the Ministries said.The Chinese government estimates that trade in virtual currency exceeded several billion yuan last year, a figure that it claims has been growing at a rate of 20% annually. One billion yuan is currently equal to about $146 million.

The ruling is likely to affect many of the more than 300 million Internet users in China, as well as those in other countries involved in virtual currency trading. In the context of online role playing games like World of Warcraft, virtual currency trading is often called gold farming.

The most popular form of virtual currency in China is called “QQ coins,” a form of virtual credit issued by Tencent.com.

Tencent.com, which has about 220 million registered users — about as many as Facebook — is quoted in the Chinese government news release as “resolutely” supporting the new rule. The government justifies its ban on virtual currency trading as a way to curtail gambling and other illegal online activities.

The extent to which the Chinese government will apply its virtual currency rule to online role playing games remains unclear. A report in the English-language China Daily says that in-game gear is not considered virtual currency, so selling virtual items may be allowed to continue.

The trading of virtual currency for real cash employs hundreds of thousands of people worldwide and generates between $200 million and $1 billion annually, according to a 2008 survey conducted by Richard Heeks at the University of Manchester.

He estimates that between 80% and 85% of gold farmers are based in China.

“[M]any online games have a virtual economy and an in-game currency,” he states in his survey. “Gold farmers can play in-game to make some currency. They then sell that for real money — typically via a Web site and using the PayPal payment system — to other players of the game.”

Game companies typically forbid gold farming but committed virtual currency traders find ways around such rules. Some game companies have recognized the futility of trying to ban the practice and have built virtual commerce into their game infrastructure.”

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Nethaera wrote:

Faction-Change Service in the Works

We wanted to give everyone a very early heads-up that, in response to player requests, we’re developing a new service for World of Warcraft that will allow players to change their faction from Alliance to Horde or Horde to Alliance. There’s still much work to do and many details to iron out, but the basic idea is that players will be able to use the service to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm. Players who ended up creating and leveling up characters on the opposite factions from their friends have been asking for this type of functionality for some time, and we’re pleased to be getting closer to being able to deliver it.

As with all of the features and services we offer, we intend to incorporate the faction-change service in a way that won’t disrupt the gameplay experience on the realms, and there will be some rules involved with when and how the service can be used. The number of variables involved increases the complexity of implementing this service, but we plan to take the time needed to ensure that it lives up to expectations before officially rolling it out. We’ll go into much more detail on all of this here at http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com as development progresses. In the meantime, we wanted to let you know that because this type of functionality requires extensive internal testing well in advance of release, you may be seeing bits and pieces of the service in the test builds we use for the public test realms moving forward.

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Karune wrote:

Battle.net Map Making PTR

Following our temporary fix to address the recently identified Warcraft III exploit, we have begun preparations to implement a permanent resolution of the issue on Battle.net. As a consequence of this fix (which prevents the possibility of malicious software being spread through Warcraft III maps), we do anticipate that some functionality in current maps will need to be adjusted before it will work properly. Before deploying the fix, we’ll be working closely with the makers of some of the most popular maps to ensure that their maps continue to stay playable on Battle.net with little to no interruption. In the meantime, we’ll be hosting a Public Test Realm (PTR) for map makers to test their maps beginning on June 9th, 2009. We will also be hosting online guides to help map makers make the transition into the new patch during this process. Throughout this process we’ll keep everyone posted on any updates leading up to the release of the patch.

FAQ
Will I be able to play my favorite custom maps online on Battle.net?
We’ll be working closely with the map creators of many popular custom maps on Battle.net to ensure that they’re consistently playable online throughout this process.

Will my computer catch a virus while playing on Battle.net right now?
Our temporary fix has addressed the immediate issues that have been identified on Battle.net, but we still recommend that players avoid downloading maps from unofficial sources or websites they do not trust — be aware that corrupted maps may share the same name as other popular maps.

How do I know if my map will work with the new patch?
The PTR will be going live on June 9th, 2009 and you will be able to test your maps there.

How do I fix my map if it does not work properly on the PTR?
A guide will be up on Battle.net shortly giving more technical details on how to fix many of the issues that may cause certain features on the map to malfunction. A link to that guide will also be updated in this forum thread as well when available.

For Map Makers – Transition Guide into v1.23b
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=17730193178

Note: Only english-US builds will be allowed to connect with Westfall

Source

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Study researchers from the Iowa State University in Ames say that not only are children spending too much time playing video games, but how their activity interferes with success in school, interacting with friends and families, and even brings health problems.

“What’s most concerning to me is really the total percentage, just the vast number of kids that are having real problems in their lives because they play games, and they may not know how to stop it,” said study leader, psychologist Douglas A. Gentile.

Video games as alcohol

Gentile believes that “we’re at the same place now with video gaming as we were with alcoholism 40 years ago”. Alcohol was not listed as a disease, and dependence on video games has not been listed as a psychological disorder.

The next edition of the Manual for mental disorders American psychiatric society will be the 2012th, and Gentile hopes to do it could redefine the term dependence on video games.

The study is based on data from a national survey that included about 1200 children and adolescents throughout the United States and aged between eight and 18 years.

Respondents answered questions like “Have you ever played video games to escape from the real world” or “Have you ever lied to family and friends about how much you play games.”

Questionable methodology

Gamers were classified as pathological players if they exhibited at least six of the 11 criteria. Pathological players play games more often and longer, get worse grades in school, and often notice problems with the monitoring of school attendance of non-pathological players. They have a greater chance of having attention.

His critics doubt the methodology, and ask how the 8-year child is able to adequately fill out the survey. They said that a pathological dependence on video games is only a symptom of deeper problems.

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