I finally was able to get a tauren named Carne in World of Warcraft. I've always thought that would be a good name. His last name is, of course, Asada. Damn, now I want a burrito.

I am such a geek. Help me!

Jane Pinckard asks the question Is World of Warcraft the new Golf? in an article over on 1UP.com.

Overheard, at brunch: two tech entrepreneur types discussing World of Warcraft. What server are you on? What guild? Oh yeah, me too, I heard it's a good way to schmooze.

Is that true? Has logging in to the world's most popular massively multiplayer online game replaced a few rounds on the links as the way to make the right business connections in a tech-driven culture?

The particular Guild discussed by the brunchers above was started by Joi Ito, who became a WoW fan after embarking on the game to do some research on social networks. Joi, the money-and-idea guy behind internet companies PSINet, Digital Garage, Infoseek Japan, and social software like Moveable Type, Technorati, and Socialtext, has quite a few hangers-on who hit him up for advice, money, or access to his Rolodex. [1UP.com]

The fun thing about this is that the guild I'm a part of, We Know, is the guild Joi started. It's become a fun group of people with more than a few people from various other startups and internet companies. It's kind of fun knowing that the person you're questing with could be the CEO of some company you've heard of for ages.

Is it the new golf? I'm not sure about that. Maybe it's like the new paintball instead.

Edit: It's even hit Slashdot.

Joi's been playing quite a bit of WoW and has posted some of his observations.

As you may have noticed, my blogging has been a bit light these days. This is partially due to the rigor in which I have taken on my research into the World of Warcraft (WoW). I'm still level 36 (out of a maximum of 60) so I am still a "newbie" but I thought I might share some of my observations. [Joi Ito's Web]

It's fun watching others find various fun things in the game. Things that really don't do anything besides add atmosphere. Pets you can buy for yourself. Recipes for food that turn you into a ninja or a pirate. Potions that shrink you down to mini size.

I've actually been limiting my WoW time a bit. I used to be on quite a bit, now I try not to log in before 3 in the afternoon and not stay up late just to play. Though I have been having more fun again because I've been adventuring with friends more.

Been a nice day for World of Warcraft. We got a new patch today with much goodness. Blizzard finally relented and put up two Role Play-Player vs Player servers. People have been asking for these forever and Blizzard had made it sound like it wasn't going to happen. On the downside, they only put up two servers and the wait for them was an hour last time I looked. I recreated my original RP character over on Emerald Dream and will be playing a bit there also. Look for Parfait if you go there.

And last but not least. A link Kynn paged me with about the perils of cybersex on World of Warcraft that made me laugh out loud.

Last night Joi IMed me and asked me to come by Khadgar server and join his guild. I hopped on over and am now one of the first members of "We Know". It seems like a decent group of people so far. Now I need to get up to his level so I can adventure with him.

Okay, a lesson for you kids out there. It's very possible that your parents have more than a clue about computers these days. It's not like my generation where most of them have no idea how to do things like "lob on". From joystiq:

Kid busted by WoW-playing mommy

It used to be that a boy could play his favorite game all night and mean old Mom would be none the wiser about it.

But when WoW’s so popular that Mom’s playing too, Junior runs the risk of getting busted. In the thread linked below, little boy Brion makes a rather innocent-sounding forum post at 3:30 AM. Trouble is, his mother notices because she reads that same forum. She responds:

”Pardon me for hijacking the thread, here..  But, Brion - if you don’t want your mother to know you were up and on the computer at 3:29 in the morning - DON’T post on a forum that she reads. Busted. Grounded.”

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Joystiq reports an ad by Blizzard and Coke for World of Warcraft and Coke. It's pretty nifty. It would be cool if we got some ads like that.

Joystiq and Game Girl Advance both reported on Blizzard banning accounts that were used for "Gold Farming" over the weekend. For those of you not familiar with the world of MMORPGs, Gold Farming is big business. People go around, and just kill monsters for high priced items and sell it off to make in-game money. They then sell the in-game money on places like ebay for real money. This is also done with rare magic items. The practice has been going on for ages. I remember hearing about people doing the same with Ultima Online and Evercrack.

The thing I'm finding baffling about both the posts on this is they seem to be coming down hard on Blizzard. Joystiq asks:

So, you pay for the game, pay your monthly subscription, only for Blizzard to say "you did something we don't want you to do, goodbye", and they kill your account. That's $50 wasted since, as was reported a while back, you can't transfer the serial number. Once it's used, it's used. Where should the line be drawn on what you can and can't do in a game you pay for initially, and continue to pay for every month? If people are stupid enough to buy a game's currency for hard cash, why shouldn't that be a legitimate activity? [Joystiq]

The answer is simple. You are breaking the policies that Blizzard has set forth for how they will run their game. This was not some secret policy that nobody knew of. On the World of Warcraft Policy Page it's right at the top of the announcements link. They even say what they will do to people they catch doing it (Of course, this gets to an even larger rant I have about how people don't read any of the game policies when playing). If this had come out of the blue I'd be able to understand complaints, but it didn't.

What do people think? If you are providing a service, should you be able to set the rules for the use of it? Does it matter if it is a game or something like an ISP? Or should having paid money immediately mean you can do what you want with that service, regardless of any Terms of Use?

I decided that I'll try and post a World of Warcraft screenshot every few days as I get ones I like. This one was found while wandering around deep inside one of the instances.

One of the things I love best about World of Warcraft is its sense of humor and pop culture references. I started a new undead character today and while running through starting area ran across three zombies. Their names: Daniel Ulfman, Karrel Grayves, and Stephen Bhartec. Every once in a while Daniel says things like "You really couldn't blame him...", "No one lives forever...", and "Where's the rest of the guys?"

I couldn't stop chuckling about it the whole time I was playing. Brilliant.

Edit: And I just had to kill Samual Fipps.

The New York Times had an interesting piece on Blizzard and their game World of Warcraft the other day. The game has blown away all sales projectections. As a result, Blizzard is having to scramble to do a level of expansion they'd plan to do over a year all at once.

It was in the evening, right before the game was formally released on Nov. 23. Blizzard had arranged for producers and designers to sign copies of the game at midnight at a hangar-size Fry's Electronics outlet in Fountain Valley, not far from Blizzard's base in Irvine, 40 miles south of Los Angeles. The company had set up a similar signing for an earlier strategy game, Warcraft III, and about 700 people showed up. Planning optimistically, the company had about 2,500 copies of World of Warcraft on hand.

"So I planned to roll over there around 11 p.m., and as I tried to get off the freeway I look over and I see this gigantic, dark, surging mass around Fry's, and I'm like, 'What in the world is that?' " said Paul Sams, 34, Blizzard's senior vice president for business operations. It turned out that the pulsing was more than 5,000 people.

"The cars were backed up on the off-ramp," he said. "I parked like a mile away, and when I get there the line is looped around the building, and then looped around the parking lot. It was like a football tailgate, with the R.V.'s and barbecues in the lot and everything."

By the end of that first day, about 240,000 copies of the game had sold across North America, Australia and New Zealand, the product's initial markets. The game has now sold almost 700,000 copies in those markets, and at peak hours about 250,000 people from those areas are playing the game simultaneously. [New York Times - Technology]