Like it or not, gold buying, selling, and powerleveling have become rather lucrative businesses, particularly with the stratospheric rise in popularity of the MMORPG. *cough*WoW*cough*. So what is it? Is it legal? Ethical? Dangerous? Sally forth dear reader, and find out for yourself!

Game Developers Magazine is starting a new trend, and it's to list out the Top 50 videogame developers of the year - just to give back to the groups that made our lives a bit more exciting through their realized (and digitized) works of art. Want to know if your favorite game developer made the list? Hit the full article to find out!

Remember The Burning Crusade's launch? Surprise, that's exactly a year ago. One of the most epic launches in gaming history, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade is still one of the most epic video game releases in the history of forever. Check out the full article for more TBC reminiscing.

It's a bit stunning when issues about a certain MMORPG spills over to real life - and with rather unsavory consequences. Never does anyone any good, it it just creates a lot of drama for all the people involved. Such is the case, unfortunately, with the recent arrest of Tamara Broome, 31, World of Warcraft player and alleged kidnapper of her 17-year-old boyfriend.

Details are a bit scant at the moment, but what we know is this: Tamara was contacted by her boyfriend's parents with the simple request that they sort it all out. This meeting required a bit of air travel, as Tamara lived in Australia at the time.

On her way to her partner's home, however, she was met by three detectives and was arrested on the spot. Smells like a setup, doesn't it?

Having shared a deep and trusting relationship with her barely-legal boyfriend for more than a year now - at least, in the online realm of World of Warcraft - Tamara clearly didn't think before she leapt, the player now facing potential jail time of more than two years if found guilty as charged.

Tamara's flatmate, who wished to remain anonymous, maintained that it wasn't in Tamara's intentions to kidnap the boy at all, saying that it was him who wanted to fly over to Australia to be with Tamara in the first place. She also added that the boy's parents might have hacked into their son's account to find out about the details of their relationship.

Certainly shocking and saddening. What do you think, players and readers? Overprotectiveness on the parents' parts, or good parenting? Let us know by your comments.

 

This news is for you Australian readers out there. The folks of Blizzard seem quite happy that several musical selections from their hit MMORPG, World of Warcraft (what else?), is set to be performed by Australia's Eminence Symphony Orchestra.

For those of you who aren't aware, Eminence is an Australian Videogame and Japanese animation music performance group that specializes in live symphonic music. Their performance for this year, A night in Fantasia 2007, is set to feature professional musicians from several international symphony orchestras and international solo artists, as well as a full concert choir.

Be sure to head to Hamer Hall, Melbourne on the 27th of April to enjoy the music. For more information feel free to head to the official site of a Night in Fantasia via our "read" link below. For those of you eager to hear a sample of just what these eminence guys can dish out, feel free to click play on the video embed below.

Nice to see that musical events like this are getting support and exposure from companies like Blizzard.

We're sure somebody might benefit from this region-related discussion underway at the World of Warcraft Europe forums, so here goes. According to forum member Johnspartan from Australia, he's interested in playing his original character (a paladin) from the US/AUS servers in the EU servers.

The problem is, due to region restrictions, this means that he will have to install two different versions of WoW in his PC - one for EU,and one for the US. At 10GB HD space per game, that means he'll be allocating a total of 20GB just for WoW.

Blizzard spokesman Aeus replied with the following guide:

AfaIk the English client is one and the same. Copy your entire WoW folder and just change the realmlist.wtf in the WoW root. For EU it's set realmlist eu.logon.worldofwarcraft.com, so for US I guess it's set realmlist us.logon.worldofwarcraft.com. But I'm sure some helpful players with US/AUS accounts can help you there.

The limitation we'd like to point out is that this fix only works for English realms - JohnSpartan mentioned that the character he had in mind was in a French server. The fix in turn only displays English realms. Aeus hasn't replied to this latest language barrier complication, although thread member Fiskerdin came up with his own suggested fix:

So you might want to download the EU version, uninstall the US version and install the EU version, however you'll have to wait a day each patch day because the US get's their patch a day earlier.

If you feel technically inclined, you can also append -console to the the command line and use ` (Character next to 1) to access the console, from there you can write:
realmList us.logon.worldofwarcraft.com
realmList eu.logon.worldofwarcraft.com

Thus you can change the realmlist on the fly without closing down the client.

Guys having similar problems may want to check the thread out from time to time in case Aeus updates with more helpful hints on this matter.

For those who haven't booked a flight to Australia yet, then the people from Eminence Orchestra would like to remind you that you still have some time left to go ahead and do so. After all, one of the most popular video game orchestral performances is headed for Sydney and Melbourne in merely a week. That's right, in case you forgot, Eminence Symphony Orchestra's A Night in Fantasia 2007 - Symphonic Games Edition, will be making waves in the Land of the Koalas, via their proven musical talent as well as their skill in performing the music from video games that we know and love.

Set to make an appearance in Sydney on April 20 and 21, then in Melbourne on April 27, the 60-piece orchesrtra will be accompanied by a 30-piece choir and will be conducted by Philip Chu. Meanwhile, tunes that fans can look forward to will include classic video game themes from titles such as Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy XII, FF Tactics and the rest of the FF series, Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Shadow of the Colossus, Tales of Legendia, Metal Gear Solid, WoW: The Burning Crusade, Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda, to name just a few.

Those who want a seat for the show can either order their tickets online via TicketMaster, or those who will be seeing the Sydney performance can simply drop by the local Kinokuniya store.

Now, there's just one song request that I'd like to make... please, please, please play Radical Dreamers from Chrono Cross. Either that, or I'll be happy with whatever Chocobo theme that they put in there. So with the days ticking away until the performance begins, what song would you want to hear the Eminence folks play?

We've got the rankings on the top ten best selling games in Australia in the period ending March 18. Final Fantasy XII still sits atop while the Sims 2: Seasons and Sonic and the Secret Rings are second and third respectively. It may surprise some of you but Bratz Forever Diamonds is still riveted at sixth place while Happy Feet and Nintendogs: Dalmatians round up the top ten.

Here are the complete results:

 1. Final Fantasy XII
2. Sims 2: Seasons
3. Sonic & the Secret Rings
4. GRAW 2
5. WoW: Burning Crusade
6. Bratz Forever Diamonds
7. The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess
8. Cricket 2007
9. Happy Feet
10. Nintendogs Dalmations

It's pretty interesting to compare the Aussie charts to its UK counterpart. We ran an article on that yesterday and you can check it out by following the link.

Around the central area of Stranglethorn Vale lies Gurubashi Arena; here, some of the most intense combat found in the Eastern Kingdoms happen. It's a PvP area where every player not in the player's party can attack and be attacked. Every 3 hours, its grounds are blanketed further by blood of fallen warriors the pirate "Short" John Mithril places a chest in the middle of the arena.

This very environment is what inspired Bigfoot Networks for its latest competition. We quote their open challenge: "We're looking for some belligerent adventurers to let their artistic fury fly by taking screenshots of themselves doing what they do best, vanquishing their foes!" That means creating carnage, spilling blood then taking some photo opportunities. Of course, the most merciless and without heart wins the competition.

To the victor goes the spoils, says an old adage. Well, we say indeed. The grand prize winner will receive a package consisting of 2 Gurubashi Gold Coins (real collector's item 24k gold coins engraved with the World of Warcraft logo) which translates roughly to $ 1,000, a Killer t-shirt, and a network card with an approximate retail value of $ 279.00. The complete set of rules and prizes can be accessed here.

Winners will be chosen on October 22 and will all be notified through e-mail. The competition is open to all 13 years old and above and active subscribers in select locations (U.S.A., Australia, Canada but not Quebec, New Zealand and Singapore).

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.’s World of Warcraft, the world’s leading subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game, has surpassed the one million customer milestone in Europe, more than quadrupling the previously estimated size of the entire European MMORPG market since its launch in February 2005. In addition, World of Warcraft topped the sales charts for full-price PC games in Europe last year. Worldwide, the game has a growing audience of more than 5.5 million customers.

“It is extremely rewarding to see so many European players enjoying World of Warcraft,” said Mike Morhaime, president and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment. “The players have supported our belief in the European MMORPG market, and we thank them for helping us make World of Warcraft one of the most popular games in the world.”

Available in English, French, and German in Europe, World of Warcraft is operated by Blizzard’s local European office. Established in late 2003 and already comprising more than 400 employees and 22 different nationalities, Blizzard Europe – the second-largest Blizzard office in the world – has expanded rapidly to keep pace with the growth of World of Warcraft in Europe.

World of Warcraft has steadily grown in popularity around the world since its initial launch in North America, Australia, and New Zealand last November. Following successful launches in Korea, Europe, China and Singapore, World of Warcraft launched in the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.