Sorority Overclocking

I found a great new person on MySpace! Her name is Natalie, she is a graduate of Seattle University, and a sorority girl from the school as well. One of her main hobbies is that she is really into extreme computer modifications and overclocking. She seems to be really cool, you should read more about her!

Look here!

Final Wiki

Here is a link to my final version of the Gaming Keypads Article on Wikipedia.

New Wiki!

Wikipedia just got better!

I added my first new article, check it out!

Gaming Keypads

Larger Edit on MMO Wiki Page

I expanded my edit to the MMO article on Wikipedia. For ease of reference and documentation, I will post my exact edit as follows:

Virtual Economies

Within a majority of the MMOs created, there is virtual currency where the player can earn and accumulate money. The uses for such vitual currency are numerous and vary from game to game. What becomes very interesting, is there is an economy that is created from this development of virtual money. The virtual economies created within MMOs often blur the lines between real and virtual worlds. The result is often seen as an unwanted interaction between the real and virtual economies. This practice (economy interaction) is mostly seen in this genre of games. The two seem to come hand in hand with even the earliest MMOGs such as Ultima Online having this kind of trade, real money for virtual things.

The results of this interaction between the virtual economy, and our real economy, which is really the interaction between the company that created the game and the third-party companies that want to share in the profits and success of the game. This battle between companies is defended on both sides. The company originating the game and the intellectual property argue that this is in violation of the terms and agreements of the game as well as copyright violation since they own the rights to how the online currency is distributed and through what channels^{[citation needed]}. The case that the third-party companies and their customers defend, is that they are selling and exchanging the time and effort put into the acquisition of the currency, not the digital information itself. They also express that the nature of many MMOs is that they require time commitments not available to everyone. As a result, without external acquisition of virtual currency, some players are severly limited to being able to experience certain aspects of the game.

The practice of acquiring large volumes of virtual currency for the purpose of selling to other individuals for tangible and real currency is called gold farming. Many players who have poured in all of their personal effort feel violated that there is this exchange between real and virtual economies since it devalues their own efforts. As a result, the term 'gold farmer' now has a very negative connotation within the games and their communities. This slander has unfortunately also extended itself to racial profiling and in-game and forum insulting and verbal abuse.

The reaction from many of the game companies varies. In games that are substantially less popular and have a small player base, the enforcement of the elimination of 'gold farming' appears less often. Companies in this situation most likely are concerned with their personal sales and subscription revenue over the development of their virtual economy, as they most likely have a higher priority to the games viability via adequate funding. Games with an enormous player base, and consequently much higher sales and subscription income, can take more drastic actions more often and in much larger volumes. Blizzard Entertainment and their wildly successful World of Warcaft, are not afraid to publicly announce that tens of thousands of accounts that have been banned due to violations regarding currency selling^{[citation needed]}. This account banning could also serve as an economic gain for these large games, since it is highly likely that, due to demand, these 'gold farming' accounts will be recreated with freshly bought copies of the game.

My First Wiki

As I mentioned last week, I have an interest in adding information to the Massively Multiplayer Online Games article, specifically in regards to the involvement of the virtual economies.

The edit I made is as follows:

Virtual Economies

Within a majority of the MMOs created, there is virtual currency where the player can earn and accumulate money. The uses for such vitual currency are numerous and vary from game to game. What becomes very interesting, is the economy that is created from this development of virtual money. The virtual economies created within MMOs often blur the lines between real and virtual worlds. The result is often seen as an unwanted interaction between the real and virtual economies. This practice (economy interaction) is most seen in this genre of games^{[citation needed]}. The two seem to come hand in hand with even the earliest MMOGs such as Ultima Online having this kind of trade, real money for virtual things.

Thou Shalt Wiki with Honor

There are some spoken and unspoken rules to adding and doing editing to the Wikipedia. Unfortunately, there was no internet Moses that came down from Mount St. Helens outside of Seattle with such rules etched in silicon tablets. Sorry to disappoint. However, Bill Gates and some Microsoft employees were seen worshiping a golden effigy of Windows Vista, but that is another story for another time.

Back to the matter at hand, when you are assisting the Wikipedia community, it is best to do so with some observed courtesy, etiquette, and decorum. So without further adieu, here are the Ten Commandments of Wikipedia (or for those of us who prefer a more casual position, some Do’s and Don’ts).

10 – Do not cut and past information from somewhere else, unless it is your own work.

9 – Everything that you post should be true and able to be verified for its accuracy. When possible, provide references and links to where the information came from.

8 – Always give credit to the sources that you are using to assemble the knowledge on the subject.

7 – Write in a professional tone. The writing should be free of foul and obsene language and unnecessary explicit references.

6 – Writing should be proofread prior to final submission to avoid any obvious spelling and grammatical errors.

5 – Write in as neutral and unbiased voice as possible. Entries and edits should be free of personal opinions.

4 – Do not vandalize sites by intentionally corrupting the information already written or adding aggressive, false, or hateful information and opinions.

3 – Do not create sub or sister topics that are too closely related to a topic under creation. It is much better to add a section within an already created topic if the new information is very closely related.

2 – Make use of the document outlining and formatting to make the topics as easy to navigate and read as possible.

1 – Donate to the Wikipedia Foundation, even if you think your contribution is small. Each little amount adds up and allows the Wikipedia to continue to operate.

And contrary to popular belief (which is why it was not in the list of commandments) you are allowed to Wiki to your heart’s content naked. Yup, that means the next time you are adding knowledge to the Wiki, you can do so in the complete buff.

(This is, of course, assuming that you are not in a cyber café, and that you are in the privacy of your home… with the curtains drawn… unless you are Jessica Alba, then we must insist that all web activity be done with the curtains open just as god intended.)

Now that you are oh-so-much smarter, go off and contribute to the public knowledge bank known as Wikipedia.

Wiki-Wiki

So I set off on an adventure through the world of Wikipedia this morning, trying to locate a subject that could really hold my attention. This sort of trip is always entertaining, as there are so many things to explore and learn once you pull up Wikipedia's page. It always seems like you could pour hours in just clicking all the embedded links in each article and have them take you to all sorts of places to learn new and exciting things. I have done this before, and within a dozen clicks, it's interesting to see that you are on a topic that may be quite different from the one you originally started with.

Today I came to the topic of Massively Multiplayer Online Games, which are also known as MMO's or MMOG's. The article so far is quite thorough and provides a great deal of information. Although with the size of these games and the immense populations they are beginning to create, I think there could be a lot more provided here.

One area that I thought initially could be beeefed up a little, was the economies these games have created and how those affect the real economy outside of the game.

I think I will gather some more information and facts regarding this and see if I can't update this article to provide more information on these economies.