World of Warcraft : wow

The billion dollar question: Why is WoW so popular?

jake039 — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 02:27:54 GMT

In this opinion piece Growling Dog Games Blog responds to a recent article posted on the Gamasutra site. Excerpt below:

"With over 10 million subscribers World of Warcraft has made Vivendi an awful lot of money. So how did Blizzard do it? How did they break out of the MMO niche and conquer the Holy Grail of PC gaming: the mainstream masses? For every aspiring game developer that’s the billion dollar question…"
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Can WoW teach the US Government about Terrorism?

Kody — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 02:25:30 GMT

I really don't know where to begin with this one. On one hand, there are some resemblances in acts within the game, but actually comparing it to taking hundreds or thousands of lives? Lives that don't come back? No resurrection to recover from a wipe? Yeah... that's a bit much, honestly.

According to this article on Wired, the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies "thinks the game could provide a powerful new way to study how terrorist cells form and operate."

"The main strength is that [Warcraft] involves 'real' people making real decisions in a world with some kind of [controllable] bounds," said Blair, who said studying players' actions could prove useful to military intelligence analysts. "To put it academically, you have both dependent and independent variables."

A Yale University terrorism expert commented in the article by saying the following, which seems to make more sense than the initial foray into mild insanity.

"This is very interesting and relevant to the times," he said, "though I wouldn't base a new counterterrorism strategy on the nuances of a videogame."

What are your thoughts? Will the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies find something useful, or are they barking up the wrong tree?

A Guide to the Holy Paladin

Kody — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 23:40:50 GMT

Recently the Curse.com team has had the privilege of bringing on a new member, Zyuu, who has an incredible amount of experience with World of Warcraft -- especially the Paladin class. We were very excited to hear that he wanted to share some of that experience with everyone, and we gladly published his Holy Paladin Guide here on Curse.

It was also featured initially in The Curse Word -- our weekly newsletter -- so if you want to be one of the first to see some of the cool content we have in the works nowadays at Curse, then be sure to sign up!

Zyuu has done everything in the game, and he wanted to give some insight back to the WoW community with this guide. Whether you want suggestions of talents, gear, macros, addons, or general play style, it's all there.

Check it out, it's definitely worth the read.

Search for your Realm on Facebook

Tarinth — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 03:51:39 GMT

The WoW Import tool for Facebook (developed by GuildCafe) has been updated to version 2.0. In addition to importing WoW characters from the Armory and into your Facebook profile, you may now search on your realm to find other members of Facebook who have characters on the same realm as you. Find out about who you've been playing with!

Import WoW Armory Characters to Facebook

Tarinth — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 05:29:54 GMT

You can now import World of Warcraft characters to your Facebook profile. This uses the new Facebook Platform technology, and seamlessly gathers character information from the Armory. No additional accounts beyond your Facebook login are required.