Over the years of covering the virtual worlds industry, one of the highlights has been seeing grass-roots fundraising efforts. Using my own country of Australia as an example, significant amounts of money have been raised for the 2009 Bushfires and this year's series of calamities in Queensland. There's already planning under way for events to support those affected by the … [Read more...] about Virtual worlds and social good: a striking example
Gaming Worlds
Hard to find places in World of Warcraft Cataclysm
Now that Cataclysm has launched, I thought I might document key parts of the new content that have got me stuck, and the solutions. Apologies to regular readers who are non-WoW players - nothing to see here ;) For everyone else, I've divided the issues by each region and am assuming you have at least followed your map to the rough location. Hyjal The Ruins of Lar'Donir … [Read more...] about Hard to find places in World of Warcraft Cataclysm
World of Warcraft’s Cataclysm: lessons for virtual worlds
I've covered my experiences with World of Warcraft a couple of times here, and I've now been playing for more than three years. Even if you don't play, you may have heard that Blizzard Entertainment are about to release the third expansion / fourth instalment for World of Warcraft, called Cataclysm. It's a fairly standard formula now for MMOs - release an expansion every couple … [Read more...] about World of Warcraft’s Cataclysm: lessons for virtual worlds
True names: identity, safety and Blizzard’s Real ID
Identity is a perennial sort of a topic, and Activision-Blizzard’s Real ID programme has brought it back into the limelight. Unless you’ve been hanging out under a rock (which would, you know, be fine – especially from a sun-protection perspective) you’ve probably heard about A-B’s programme which is the first phase of tagging your time in Blizzard games (like World of Warcraft … [Read more...] about True names: identity, safety and Blizzard’s Real ID
Three reasons social gaming on Facebook is declining
Over the past couple of weeks there's been some focus on the fact that Zynga, maker of social games such as Farmville, had a big decline in users during May. Back in January we predicted some fatigue with those games, albeit in the context of ongoing big growth. The decline for Zynga and its flagship Farmville tend to shine a light on a number of issues that need to be … [Read more...] about Three reasons social gaming on Facebook is declining