From the World of Warcraft beta page (which I can’t link directly because the brainiacs at Blizzard don’t know how to create proper permalinks):

In September, Blizzard held a stress test beta for World of Warcraft to help tune the game’s network infrastructure. Over 100,000 participants signed up for the stress test beta and connected to our servers to help us analyze performance under heavy loads. In conjunction with that, we ran a small contest as a means of allowing a large selection of dedicated stress testers to continue on into the closed beta test. The 720 players listed represent the winning stress testers. These characters achieved the highest level of experience for their race and class, per faction, on the server on which they were created. Congratulations!

… why do gaming companies consider a beta account (read: an opportunity to work for them without pay) a reward? a contest prize? I guess it would be a reward for me if I considered, say … a stay at a labor camp a vacation.

Wynken de Word writes “‘In a move that could open a new vista of possibilities for advertisers, New York-based Massive Inc. today announces the launch of the first ad-serving network for video games. The company said it has so far signed game publishers UbiSoft, Atari, Universal and Konami as partners in its system, which enables marketing messages to be projected into the digital fabric of their online games.’ AdAge.com has the article (reg req.).” If you don’t feel like registering for AdAge, just read the press release or see the company website.
…excerpt from: Slashdot … will subscription fees be cheaper then? Or is this just an RIAA-like “We’re greedy bastards” type thing?

“I Love Bees is the latest and perhaps most ambitious of the growing genre known as alternate-reality games. In it, widely dispersed players coordinate to find and answer thousands of ringing pay phones all across the United States and provide correct answers…” …excerpt from: Wired … Is this the direction of the genre? Is this our future? Is this many ellipses necessary? (answer: no, but it’s weird enough to warrant a mention)