I was reading an interesting article called “Doing good or doing well? Image motivation and monetary incentives in behaving prosocially”, which is basically a study by some prominent economists to understand what motivates people to invest time or money in charity work. The basic premise is that people do it to improve their image –…
Numbers Can Fool Us
Is WoW really a cultural phenomenon? Many people think so, spurting the “11.5 million subscriber mark“. Where does that number come from? I found it interesting that Blizzard stopped releasing where the subscribers came from in that press release. When Blizzard announced they hit 10 million, they clearly stated 2M from Europe, 2.5M from North America,…
Missed Marketing Opportunity – Take 2
I had a birthday over the weekend. Actually scaled back working a bit to enjoy it, and what was planned as a nice quiet dinner out with my wife, followed by some quality couch time (with our little one spending the night at Nana’s) turned out to be a full blown surprise party. It was…
Italicized!
Sorry for the main page. Not sure how it got that way, will figure it out. If you can’t stand italics, just click on the blog post and it presents as normal. Somehow only my main page is completely italicized. Must be from patch 3.0.8
Greatest Fantasy Movie Ever
The camera pans from a burning torch, and settles in on a group of weary adventurers. Their swords blood-stained, their armor indented with sword swings from fallen foes. Zoom in on a Dwarven Warrior wiping his blade. “Okay. In the next room lies Grinto, the evil giant. We must be well prepared as he is…
WAR Population Stats
Wow, just WOW! (About WAR though, not WoW.) Just found this post about Warhammer Online’s faction population balance. The crux of it?  Average of All North American Servers   Active Accounts Per Faction: 49% / 51% Relative Average Exp. Earning Rate per Time Unit: 50% / 50% Relative Average RP Earning Rate per Time…
Free Trials
The good Cap’n John shared his experience about taking a free trial in WoWÂ and it made me think about my own trials and tribulations in the “free” realm. I do them often. Welcome back weekends I boot up old characters, muck around for a few hours. Friends send me buddy keys to try something out…
Calvinomics
Non-Epic Fail, Content, and RMT – Oh My!
Last post I talked about having a peek at LOTRO again, the current darling of blognation. I was drawn to give it a shot because of the handy dandy free trial after their new expansion, Mines of Moira. I had no delusions of grandeur of seeing the new content, but rather was curious of the…
LOTRO – Worth a Second Look?
I had purchased the game when first released and played up to level 10ish but was immediately sucked back into WoW with the Burning Crusade expansion (I was a GM of a progression guild at the time. No time for two games!). Going through some old emails I found an old buddy key I had…
RMT – Food for Thought
Really, gaming subscriptions are just different ways to ‘eat’. 1) The Frozen Dinner: This sub option is any game that you pay for the box and pay nothing afterwards. The subscription cost is the cost of the box itself. The beauty of the Frozen Dinner is that if you can’t stand to eat another one…
I’m Sure There Is A Gaming Analogy Here Somewhere..
Regarding the current credit crunch, I did some digging and learned some lovely little nuggets about Canada. Less than 25% of house loans in Canada are securitized (by someone else, other than the banks) meaning over 75% are on the the banks balance sheets, making the banks accountable. The higher risk sub prime mortgages account…
KOTOR – A New Hope
I have bandied about my reservations on KOTOR MMO if it would be a subscription based platform, and took time to praise how it could be wonderful on the RMT platform, but actually haven’t discussed the game itself. How could I? There isn’t much known, afterall, and I refuse to get into speculation such as…
Donde Esta La Cerveza Por Favor
It sounds much prettier than it looks written, with my bastardization of the language. Taking the wife and child for 5 days to Mexico, leave at 3am to head to the airport. It is exciting as it will be my son’s first plane ride, first caribbean vacation, and first visit to the ocean. We’ll be…
Working Title : Crap the Sack
So I have a game design idea. It is a basic dice game, a game we discovered on vacation one year in Jamaica. A bunch of very wealthy guys were sitting around a table gambling with each other on it and we quickly became friends because they, and we, all owned Omega watches. Anyway, we took…
Outpost Kaloki
As a PC gaming enthusiast, I have decided to spread my wings and try some new things. PC gaming has been made famous not only by the huge budgets and blockbuster titles, but also by little shops/guys in basements who put out some quality (yet often limited) titles. They grab people, make them have a ton…
SWKOTORO – On the Defensive?
When I first read the Bioware’s Star Wars MMO based in the KOTOR universe (my apologies for making up yet another acronym for it) was going to be micro-transaction based – I rejoiced. I am still in rejoice mode. Doing the math, I spent about $1000 on WoW, between two accounts, two expansions, sub fees,…
Back from the Dead Zone
Miss me? I was on a corporate retreat last week, except it was more of a strategy session (retreat sounds so “relaxing”) and little did we know the remote bunker we were hunkered down in had no cell – or email – service. Needless to say it was rediculously stressful. I found an area that…
Blogdundancy
I have been introduced to so many exciting, fun, and new words since I started blogging. Blogosphere. Blognation. Bloggery. Blogkind. On and on. You could probably put the word ‘blog’ in front of any noun, verb, or adjective and create a fun new word. I could see how it would get a little redundant. I…
Marketing 010101
This is a cheap post. Just linking one of my older posts that wasn’t really ever read. Well, it WAS read, but only by people who were searching for rap lyrics on the internet. I was going through my google search links (always fun) to see what has driven people to the site and this…
Customer Support 2K9 – Updated
*I noticed some Google searches pushing people to this blog post. I DID find a solution (all on my own) and I posted it in my 2k9 forums thread – linked in the article below. GOOD LUCK if you are having the same problems!* Customers suck, right? We bitch and moan about EVERYTHING! Go read…
Left 4 Cool
I don’t really “review” games, and I am not going to start today either. Will keep it simple and sweet. If you like FPS’s, play L4D. If you like Co-op, it is well done. If you like opposing Co-op, it’s a great game. If you like Zombies, go buy it. If you like a base…
I’ll Take an Effexor Cocktail to Go Please.
Sheesh, where did the week go? It CAN’T be Friday already. I haven’t even started my week yet. I barely gamed all week, dabbling a bit in WoW, spent some good time in L4D, and attempted to workaround my Bioshock/Vista issue. Bioshock 2 – you will not be purchased. There are over 3000 replies on…
Monday Mourning – Nov 17, 2008
To be honest I don’t get what most people hate about Monday mornings. I tend to work weekends, so there is definitely no rest for the wicked at ihaspc. My to-do list on Mondays is as long as any other day but I tend to ease into everyone else’s typical work week – check blogs,…
Epic Win, Epic Fail.
Alternative title: So close yet so far. I finally got by the WoW queue on my server and was able to experience the Death Knight class. The hour and a half quest chain in the Death Knight area was without a doubt one of the best Blizzard gaming I have ever enjoyed. The quests were…