Did you want to have World of Warcraft trailers on your iPod? (Really. Who wouldn’t?) These can now claim the title “Most Embarassing Things on My iPod”, usurping both “Bennie and the Jets” and the Moulin Rouge soundtrack. (shut up.)
A short while ago, World of Warcraft began their Guild Relations program, an invitation-only guild think tank. We had told one of our officers to check into app’ing, aka auditioning, for this — he probably didn’t — no matter, doesn’t seem like a lot of benefit to participating. However, there is one good thing that has sprung from this program: The Guild Relations forum, which is just about the only forum with thoughtful game discussions. Inside the 234,678th thread about the evils of DKP, I found this study of DKP loot distribution versus /random loot distribution in a (hypothetical?) raiding guild of 150 members. If you look at the “Lady Luck is a Bitch” /random chart, the one hypothetical member attended almost 50 raids before scoring some loot. This is how I know the /random chart is simulated: that guy would have quit after the tenth raid or so.
I must have been really busy in August 2004 that I missed this tangentially gaming-related crime: Four dudes, seeking to recover the one dude’s Xbox, beat six people to death with baseball bats. From the Wired article: “Investigators said they (the victims) had been terrorized for several days over the Xbox, which Victorino (the one dude) had left at another Deltona (Flordia) house where he had been squatting. The game system was taken by Belanger (a victim) when she cleared Victorino’s things out of her grandparents’ winter house.” Few lessons for us all here: someone starts terrorizing you over property (i.e. inanimate objects), give it back … at least pitch it out on the sidewalk … and, not to impune the victims here, but socializing with squatters is a bad idea. For one, they’re prone to overstaying their welcome at your house.