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"Recently, the guild All Good Things on Kargath lost one of their longtime players. Feelan, one of their guild's holy priests, passed away from cancer in early December -- shortly after he was finally able to meet his online friends. Now the guildmates are wondering what they can do to remember their friend in-game. Kesryth suggests that Blizzard add Feelan's character to one of the floating islands in Nagrand, where he can stand and watch the sunset in his favorite zone."

"Regular readers know that I don't play many massively multiplayer online games, but it turns out you don't need to be a fan of the genre to get something out of Mr. Andrews' book. In addition to providing advice on how to forge a guild's identity, offering guidance in recruiting reliable people who are a good match for your guild, and giving tips on how to equitably distribute loot gained from raids, he also delivers insight into the people who invest significant chunks of their lives playing online games and the communities they create for themselves. "

"In the realm of online games, specifically massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs), leaders emerge that deftly navigate the motivational, emotional and social needs of their direct reports in a highly competitive, distributed, virtual environment. And there are many lessons to be learned."

"Massively multiplayer online worlds (e.g., EverQuest or SecondLife) constitute a new form of social life that is ripe for social scientific study. Inhabitants of persistent virtual environments spend on average more than twenty hours per week logged on."

"During the past year, nearly 16,000 people have downloaded a 40-page economic analysis of EverQuest, Sony's popular online fantasy world of Norrath. "Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier," by California State Fullerton economics professor Edward Castronova, is the No. 1 article in the history of the Economics Research Network, an Internet library of tens of thousands of professional journals and research papers in economics."

"This is short film directed by Gavin Kelly ( http://www.piranhabar.ie ) we worked on a while ago called "Avatar Days". What makes this one special is the fact that it was filmed, vfx'ed and comped all in just 4 days. It was made as part of the "4 day Film" catagory in the Darklight Film Festival. It follows 4 MMORPG players taking about their online persona's. As they tell their stories we see them go about their everyday lives against the mundane backdrop of city life...but as their Avatars."

"Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that the subscriber base for World of Warcraft(R), its award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), now exceeds 12 million players worldwide. This milestone was reached in the wake of the mainland Chinese launch of World of Warcraft's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King(R), and also as global anticipation continues to mount for the December 7 release of the game's third expansion, Cataclysm(TM). "

"PARIS, France - October 7, 2010 - Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that the subscriber base for World of Warcraft®, its award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), now exceeds 12 million players worldwide. This milestone was reached in the wake of the mainland Chinese launch of World of Warcraft's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King®, and also as global anticipation continues to mount for the December 7 release of the game's third expansion, Cataclysm™. "

"After the Lead Content Designer of World of Warcraft (WoW), Tigole, deemed a new set of rewards ''welfare'' epics, the WoW player community responded in a multitude of fascinating ways. Using rhetorical analysis, gaming studies literature, and a critical analysis of welfare discourse, four rhetorical strategies can be seen in the discourse produced by the playing community. From directly confronting Tigole's statements to lamenting a loss of avatar capital and analyzing the role the changes have on the multiplayer aspects of the game, the rhetoric of ''welfare'' epics offers unique insights into the importance of balance and scarcity in the normative structures of WoW, how players accept and perpetuate the belief that rewards in online games should be ''earned,'' and how WoW's system of rewards has been fundamentally altered since the game's launch."

"According to John Seely Brown, former director of Xerox PARC, massive multiplayer online games demonstrate ways in which groups can manage information and maximize learning. At a recent lecture as part of Stanford University's Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series, Brown said that World of Warcraft guilds can serve as models for entrepreneurs in understanding how to succeed in a knowledge-based economy. "

"MMOGCHART.COM is dedicated to my research in tracking the growth of subscription-based Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs). The menu on the left is updated each version with new figures, charts, graphs, and my analysis. My work is wholly independent and free; if you find it useful please consider making a donation via PayPal. If you have any questions, desire an interview, wish to provide numbers, or would like to hire me to consult on a MMOG project, please feel free to contact me."

"Instead of logging onto Blackboard to complete homework this spring, students in one class will enter the "World of Warcraft" and "Second Life" to study the culture of online virtual environments. "Discourses, Community, and Power in Virtual Worlds," or ENG 654, is open to students of all majors and interests. The course intends to adapt to an increasingly technological environment. "We want them to get the experience of playing together with different characters that have to take on different roles to really get an experiential sense of how complex game play is in that environment," said English professor Elisabeth Hayes, who will teach the class with law professor John McKnight. The class will meet in a physical classroom for half of its sessions and the rest will be held virtually in "World of Warcraft" and "Second Life.""

The National Science Foundation has given UC Irvine $100,000 to figure out why Americans go to greater lengths than the Chinese to modify "World of Warcraft," the hugely popular multiplayer online game produced by Blizzard Entertainment of Irvine.

A researcher at University of California at Irvine got $100,000 from the National Science Foundation to study how Americans play the popular online game World of Warcraft

"Kellen's auction is just one example of how increasingly popular online role-playing games have created a shadow economy in which the lines between the real world and the virtual world are getting blurred. More than 20 million people play these games worldwide, according to Edward Castronova, an economics professor at Indiana University who has written a book on the subject, and he thinks such gamers spend more than $200 million a year on virtual goods. One site, GameUSD.com, even tracks the latest value of computer-game currency against the U.S. dollar, an exchange-rate calculator for the virtual world."

"For 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, my colleagues and I are killing monsters," said a 23-year-old gamer who works here in this makeshift factory and goes by the online code name Wandering. "I make about $250 a month, which is pretty good compared with the other jobs I've had. And I can play games all day."

"During this year's Games Convention GamesIndustry.biz was fortunate enough to be able to spend some time with Frank Pearce, now senior VP at Blizzard, to talk about the progress of Starcraft II, working with online communities, the lessons learned from World of Warcraft's success, and how to keep secrets."

"From an economist's standpoint what's happening in these games is real," said Edward Castronova, an associate professor of economics at California State University at Fullerton. "You've got a distinct territory with specialization of labor, gains from trade, a floating exchange rate -- real economies are happening."