On the one hand, AOL clearly had no intention of profiting from World of Warcraft when they bought wow.com. On the other hand, that’s clearly what they’re doing with it now. It’ll be interesting to see how that shakes out in the long run.

I think MMO-Champions would be more the ones that would have to more worry about that.

Now if only we could find a dog like this one:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2010/may/06/greece-protest

Since this isn’t a political blog, I wasn’t planning on getting too deeply into the nuts and bolts of it, but they’re planning a flash mob tomorrow and another rally in parliament square next saturday (I might try to make that one again).

And I think Clegg was genuinely happy to see people demonstrating about something he cares about too. They presented him with a petition with about 20k signatures that had been signed since friday — that’s the power of the internet.

As Keane observes it really is great news for Blizzard that this info is leaked and people who would otherwise be canceling because they’re bored of 3.3 are staying subbed.

I think the games industry has discovered the “an anonymous source” technique beloved of Ministers in government.

I think your demonstration must have had a real effect on the mood of the people inside. Nick Clegg looked genuinely delighted and of course came out to talk to you in turn after LibDem officials had said he wouldn’t be coming out.

I found it utterly hilarious the rumour that Brown tried to bully Clegg into coalition. If it’s not true it ought to be, it seems so apt.

I was very sorry about GW and Warhammer Alliance. WAR, as you know launched without official forums and relied on the work of fan sites to support its community. It’s a real stab in the back for fans no matter who is making money off the IP. (As if orcs and goblins are GW’s property anyway – but that’s another rant).

Good luck to Free Realms and as for LucasArts – seems that sort of thing is business as usual in the large game corporates.

I dunno. This sounds like saying that it’d be better if developers gave their games away for free because it’d stop people from downloading pirated versions from warez sites that might be keylogging.

I do agree that there’s really no point them putting an NDA on this information if they’re going to have the client publically available for downloading though.

It boggles my mind that Blizzard hasn’t come up with some way of restricting access to the NDA-protected client yet. At this point, I don’t see how they can claim that they’re taking reasonable steps to keep the information private if they’re posting it on the web for anyone to download and datamine. Frankly, I’d rather have the leaks on reputable sites that aren’t keylogging people.

Because, really? Anything good will from Blizzard will get you will be gotten earlier by people leaking it to you.

That said, anyone who defends the paractice should probably be smacked upside the head.