In this day and age, thieves have gone high tech as well. Case in point: certain players of Blizzard's World of Warcraft have had their accounts hacked, and the hackers are apparently using virus-infected FRAPS. More viral news follows after the jump.

If you're tired of creating your own World of Warcraft AddOns on Notepad, then you'll be glad of this new application released by Microsoft to help budding developers design their ideal addons with more ease.

Based on Microsoft's Visual Studio, the AddOn Studio is a GUI-based editor that allows you to create your own custom AddOns compatible with the latest patch of WoW that you can use in the game. Check out AddOn Studio's features in the full article!

Some analysts are adopting an optimistic outlook towards the recent announcement from Activision and Vivendi Games of their merge into Activision Blizzard. One such analyst, Piers Harding-Rolls, gives a few good reasons why. Hit the full article to check it out.

If you've stuck through our previous coverage on how you can play Blizzard's World of Warcraft on the Xbox 360 console, then we've got more insider information on how the SwitchBlade software package works. In an interview with the VP of Business Development for Blue Orb, Inc., the company behind SwitchBlade, Aaron Levin talks about how the software works and the company's plans for the future.

Check out more details of the SwitchBlade software after the jump!

We posted an article one month ago that invited readers to do a little thought exercise. Here's what we said: "On the 5th of November we're going to post an article or two about video games, gadgets, technology, and general geekness ... the things about video gaming and technology that ought not be forgotten."

So here's our list of some video gaming and technology moments worth remembering. Hope this gets you thinking (and feeling nostalgic too!). And we look forward to your comments (and arguments). What do you remember and wish that the world will never forget?

Want to see how games fare in the land down under? Games Industry GfK Australia gives you the skinny on what games wins the Aussie's hearts - and wallets - with its list of Australia's top-selling games for the first half of this year. In this list not Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo wins the top spot, as it is now owned by an expansion of the epic online game: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.

The list clearly shows that the perennial PS2 is still going strong down under, with about 5 entries in the charts, including Final Fantasy XII. Sony snagged the half of the top ten slots, and for a country which gets the PS3 at a very expensive price (estimated to be about US$ 900), two games still managed to snag the 6th and 7th slots: Resistance Fall of Man and MotorStorm, respectively.

Nintendo, however, is the overall winner in dominating the entire chart with about 8 games making it into the Top 20. It's cute doggie simulation, Nintendogs: Dachshund and Friends, also found a place in Aussie's hearts and was able to hang on the 20th spot in the list.

As for Microsoft, it only had one entry in the whole chart: Gears of War, which landed on the 14th spot.

The winning Burning Crusade expansion also propelled sales of World of Warcraft, with the original game landing in a very comfortable 5th place.
Check out the numbers:

1. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, PC
2. Final Fantasy XII, PS2
3. Pokemon Diamond, Nintendo DS
4. God of War 2, PS2
5. World of Warcraft, PC
6. Resistance: Fall of Man, PS3
7. MotorStorm, PS3
8. Nintendogs: Dalmatian and Friends, Nintendo DS
9. Cricket 07, PS2
10. The Sims 2: Seasons, PC
11. Guitar Hero 2 bundle, PS2
12. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Nintendo Wii
13. Dr Kawashima's Brain Training, Nintendo DS
14. Gears of War, Xbox 360
15. Pokemon Pearl, Nintendo DS
16. SingStar Rocks! bundle, PS2
17. The Sims 2: Pets, PC
18. Nintendogs: Labrador and Friends, Nintendo DS
19. New Super Mario Bros., Nintendo DS
20. Nintendogs: Dachshund and Friends, Nintendo DS

(Welcome to the first issue of QJ.NET's weekly feature, QuickJump QuickPeek! This weekly-updated spot will run the top news of the past week, think of it as your own directory of sorts to the week's news breakers in our second home we like to call video gaming industry. This page could contain something as trivial as Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft bigwigs gathering together for an afternoon teaparty or as groundbreaking as that teaparty turning into a free for all, take-out-as-many-gaming-execs-as-you-can brawl. With that, we take you to this week's mover and shakers...)

We weren't treated to news of filthy rich gaming execs going at each others' throats this week, but we did have an equally gory debacle with the Manhunt 2 and Red Ring of Death bad rap. There's also the groundbreaking release of PSP homebrew hero Fanjita's Illuminati exploit (via Lumines UMD) that later on brought us the highly anticipated 3.50 downgrader. Throw in the talks about Nintendo's WiiWare and the PS3 firmware update and we have a really interesting week. Now for the QuickJump quick peek to the week's top stories...

The QuickJump QuickPeek awaits after the jump!

Italy's Gamestore Magazine has announced annual winners for the Italian Games Awards and it dished out laurels to all the areas of gaming be it in terms of products, communication and accessories. Here are the big winners for this year.

MARKETING AND COMMUNICATION:

1) Best Trade AD Campaign
Electronic Arts - Fifa 07 Evolution
2) Best Print AD Consumer Campaign
Nintendo - Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training
3) Best TV Spot
Microsoft - Gears of War
4) Best Radio Spot
Electronic Arts - The Sims 2 Pets
5) Best Online Campaign
Vivendi - World of Warcraft
6) Best Packaging
DDE - Guild Wars Nightfall Collector’s Edition
7) Best POS Material
Vivendi - World of Warcraft
8) Best Budget Line
Activision - Best Of Activision
9) Best Launch Event
Scei - PS3 Dome
10) Best Co-Marketing Activity
Konami / Halifax - PES 6 with Gazzetta dello Sport
11) Best Charity Iniative - Ex Aequo:
Nintendo - Nintendo for Abio
Halifax with Bible and AMREF

The winners were selected by consumers and industry insiders according to the organizers. QJ congratulates all the winners and we're hoping to see even greater stuff next year!

You can check the whole roster behind the Full Article link below.

 

Some players have complained about a problem with regards to the handshaking process in World of Warcraft. Those who have been affected by it shouldn't despair though as Bloodshot from the Death and Taxes guild and Triselly posted a fix on this for users who use XP, Macs, and Windows Vista. Sorry Linux people, if you're being plagued by the handshaking problem, just flush your DNS cache and hope for the best. Anyway here's the fix:

For Windows XP:

1. Close the game.
2. In Windows click Start, run..., in the window type cmd and press enter.
3. In the new window type: ipconfig /flushdns

Alternate Fix: Go to "My Computer" -> "Control Panel" -> "Network Connections" -> right click your LAN or Wireless Connection -> Select Disable, then re-enable it.

If you are still unsuccessful, reset your modem/router, then perform the instructions again. As explained below in the thread, some ISP's hold the cached DNS data for longer periods of time; therefore, this will not work for you, YET. There isn't much you can do apart from trying again later.

Mac version (Triselley)

1. Close WoW.
2. Open Terminal.app in /Applications/Utilities
3. Type: lookupd -flushcache

For Windows Vista:

1. Click the Microsoft Vista Start logo in the bottom left corner of the screen
2. Click All Programs
3. Click Accessories
4. RIGHT-click on Command Prompt
5. Select Run As Administrator
6. In the command window type the following and then hit enter: ipconfig /flushdns

That said go forth and play your problems should be solved. If not, then you'll have to contact Blizzard on this one. Keep checking back here for more news on World of Warcraft.

It's relatively common nowadays when people refer to MMOs, they immediately think about World of Warcraft or the MMO-king has-been EverQuest. But the first pioneers of MMO gaming know that the virtual worlds available online never started as a glorious 3D game. The first MMO was a MUD.

Short for multi-user dungeon, the MUD was the first online interactive community that offered virtual worlds, without the graphics. Until the likes of Microsoft's Asheron's Call, the MUD was preferably text-based. Worlds were described through words, and those words sparked imagination. Dungeons & Dragons was most enjoyable on a MUD.

It was in this respect that Dr. Richard Bartle, co-creator of the MUD, spoke about imagination being key to the success of the massively-multiplayer online game in a keynote speech at the 2007 Indie MMO Game Development Conference. To him, it wasn't enough that everyone followed the typical (orthodoxical) path toward fantasy-based realms that are threatened with apocalyptic destruction.

Telling Indie MMO developers how to succeed in the industry, Bartle emphasized that games that strive to be "amazing" never last forever. Aside from bringing new ideas to the MMO gamer's desktop, imagination also invites new ways of circumventing the current "World of Warcraft" title from keeping the MMO throne forever.

He is hopeful of the current generation of developers, who are in touch with creativity rather than orthodoxy, because "designing virtual worlds is fun." He stresses that similarities in games are unavoidable, but the way those ideas are presented are often different than competitors' ideas. Bartle said, "the details will be different. Dark Age of Camelot is not the same as Avalon, even though they're both set in Arthurian Britain."

He also wants developers to know that games don't have to be bleeding edge in graphics. "Don't worry about not having state-of-art graphics. So long as what you've got is professional, it doesn't have to be amazing. And even if it is amazing it won't be for long, because other peoples' will be better than yours," Bartle wisely said.

The "dinosaur in virtual world history" requested at the end of his speech that the new independent game developers rise to the occasion and put Bartle, the dinosaur, to rest.