Forum Surfing

I found two threads in the World of Warcraft forums that might actually qualify as intelligent discourse. First, “Priests the only class with forced spec”, which isn’t entirely true, but is true enough to generate some tasty commentary. Go on, put that in your mouth, it’s delicious. Lastly, this monster thread titled “The best post. These guys deserve a nod!” about a player (Dredd GaRyn, NOT HIS REAL NAME) from the Feathermoon realm. Mr. GaRyn (NOT HIS REAL NAME) was recently diagnosed with cancer and his guild pulled together donations and other support to aid in his treatment and recovery. Now stop that! I know you’re skeptical already. And I know … how many cancer and heart surgeries have we heard about on gaming forums? More than we can count. Frankly, the freakish and fraudulent fails to catch our notice anymore. (Warning: Today is vacuum out the servers day, so the forums may load slowly or not at all.)

Google, Yahoo, Warcraft and You

If you’re a Google calendar user like I am (because I want Google to know everything about me, and some day, if the government needs to compile a Foton dossier, they can just go to Google and pinpoint the exact location and time where I’ll be so they can serve me with papers), you probably know that you can subscribe to any number of public calendars, which will add their events to your giant calendar too.

For example, below is the World of Warcraft Google calendar containing the Darkmoon Faire dates and locations, the PVP battleground holidays and the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza. The calendar could really use the raid instance reset dates, especially Onyxia, but eh, can’t have everything. (The subscribe link is at the bottom.)

Several guilds have set up their raid schedules in Google, as have a few Everquest raiding guilds — not mine however, we don’t want the government to know our raiding schedule, nosey bastards.

On to Yahoo. If you’re widgetized — the desktop doohickeys — there are a few Warcraft widgets available (gallery of Warcraft widgets), including an RSS Breaking! Warcraft! News! feed, item search widgets connected to Thottbot or Allakhawhatsit, and several realm status widgets. Not available yet: a World of Warcraft in-game weather widget or a World of Warcraft Faked Patch Notes widget.

I didn’t find any EverQuest widgets, but there are a couple for Second Life — an auction widget, a brothel location search and news feeds. Not available yet: a Vanguard in-game Beta Cam (view the vast and empty landscape) or an EQ Day/Night Clock for noobs without adequate monitors or night vision.

Bringing this all full circle: a Yahoo widget for your Google calendar. (Note: a new version is expected shortly as the current one is … bug-riffic.)

Harness the power of the new technologies so that wherever you are, whatever you’re supposed to be doing (but aren’t), know what’s going on in your better other world.

Massive Magazine has Game Creds

I haven’t found, or looked for either, that new ad-rag Massive Magazine, but I have read article excerpts on their website! Looks like they do a lot of “this person doesn’t exist but if they did, they would do or say this” kind of stuff. Also, they have a lengthy piece on “virtual property brokers”, which is what we all call ebay and IGE (or RMT if you’re a Poindexter), and once you’ve covered a topic as edgy and NOW! as virtual property brokers, you’ve got game creds. Here’s something you won’t read in Massive, unless they steal it or actually log into a game and play for more than 30 minutes, my guild has a throwaway account just for laundering IGE, et al, gold. It’s not talked about openly of course, but if someone needs a little extra scratch for an alt’s epic mount or resist equipment materials and they’re nervous about exposing their primo Warcraft account to the roving band of Blizzard investigators, the throwaway is available to them, including some very rudimentary methods for laundering the gold. We’re a full service guild that way.