Blizzard gave The Make-A-Wish Foundation 50% of proceeds from the sale of Pandaren Monk pets in World of Warcraft, adding up to a $1.1 million donation. Fifteen Foundation kids also got an inside look at WoW, courtesy of Blizzard.
The Pandaren Monk was one of two pets introduced to WoW late last year at $10 a pop. Once summoned, the Monk follows the player everywhere and returns any /bows he receives. Sales of the pet between November and December 31, 2009 were used to calculate the Make-A-Wish donation — which means that Blizzard sold 220,000 Panderan Monks in that time frame.
Here’s what Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime had to say of WoW’s generosity in the official press release:
“We’ve had a long relationship with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and we’re proud to support the priceless work they do for children. This donation also reflects the spirit and generosity of our players – their enthusiasm for World of Warcraft and for supporting a good cause made this possible.”
At DICE’s first keynote session, Disney Interactive Entertainment president Stephen Wadsworth revealed the company’s direction this year, and the new games that will bring them there.
Stephen Wadsworth, the president of the Disney Interactive Media Group closed the first day of DICE 2010 with a keynote about his company’s evolving audience and the games being made to satiate them.
Wadsworth described the new audience currently consuming its interactive products. Today’s audience consists of master multi-taskers, media sponges, multiple platform users (including what Wadsworth dubbed “PlayStation Arc,” adding more fuel to that fire) and seamless communicators who are in immediate need of content, but also willing to share. This has led to a change in the way the company works to earn money from them, moving the traditional “Acquire, Monetize, Engage” dynamic to one where customers are brought in with engaging products, then given the opportunity to pay for the product via premium content or subscriptions. However, the core Disney values are still at the center products, as Wadsworth stated “Story and characters form the basis and heart of our products today.” In order to prove this, Wadsworth went through the long list of licenses the company, including Toy Story 3, Pirates of the Carribean: Armada of the Damned, Tron Evolution, and Epic Mickey. Wadsworth also brought up Disney’s recent acquisition of comic book company Marvel, providing more proof that Disney may start publishing superhero games sooner rather than later.
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Chaos Rising is the first expansion for real time strategy game Dawn of War II. We get a look at the new faction and a new multiplayer mode that redefines the meaning of “chaos.”
Fans of real time strategy (RTS) games like me are no strangers to expansions. The reason I never got into the first Dawn of War is because it had three heavy-hitter expansions that I needed to buy in order to keep up with my friends online — and this was even before developer Relic Entertainment announced a proper sequel. Now that DoW II’s been out for almost a year, though, I guess it’s high time for the sequels to start and Chaos Rising leads off.
I expected the usual laundry list of new maps, units, and campaign sections, but I was pleased to see that Chaos Rising adds a little pizzazz to DoW II in the form of the gruesome Chaos faction. These guys were Space Marines, but after a trip through something called the Warp, they’ve become something else – something corrupted and bloodthirsty (seriously, one of their faction heroes wears the skin of a Space Marine’s face as a banner — sick). The story behind the expansion campaign is that a planet lost in the Warp reappears a year after the events of the base game. As the Space Marine faction, you explore this icy, strange planet to find clues about where it’s been and what happened to the Space Marines who held it. The campaign introduces players to the Corruption System where certain events in the game corrupt units under your command depending on the player’s choices (which in turn changes their skill set and personal attacks). Presumably this is what happened to the Space Marines who held the missing planet after they went into the Warp, and this is where we get the flashy Chaos faction from.
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Over the years it has become a common practice for people to sell their virtual accounts online to other players. Most of the time people do this for MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft, Everquest, Runescape and Aion Online to name a few. Today people can sell Aion accounts on sites like MMOBay.net, a auction site where people can buy or sell their online characters. Not only can people sell or buy Aion accounts, but users can also trade their account with other gamers.
MMOBay.net is free to use after an initial signup fee which is used to validate the users account, making it a safe place for members to buy, sell and trade accounts. There have been over 200,000 listed auctions and currently has 43,000+ members. The practice of buying online characters will continue and if you are going to do it, you should do it in a safe place like MMOBay.net.
One of the few flight sims currently available on the Wii, Project Ace’s anime-based dogfighter won’t revolutionize the genre by any means, but it’s a solid title with some of the best aerial combat currently available on Nintendo’s console.
The Ace Combat team is no stranger to anime-based games. Having previously worked on the Japan-only mash-up Another Century’s Episode games, they’ve returned to the realm of licensed entertainment with Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces. This time, however, they’re playing more to type, crafting a game that plays like an Ace Combat set in an alternate World War II.
Based on the Mamoru Oshii’s animated film of the same name, Innocent Aces is a prequel of sorts. Like the film (and the series of light novels upon which it is based), the plot centers around a war organized by a pair of corporations and its young participants. In a departure from Ace Combat, there are no heat-seeking missiles or ultra-modern jet fighters. Instead, battles are close-range dogfights between variants of classic World War II fighter planes.
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