Crave

(Credit: Sanrio Digital)

Believe it or not, Kitty White (aka Hello Kitty), has been aging along with the rest of us, and Saturday marks her 34th birthday. Judging from her look, however, it seems the alternately much-loved and much-reviled feline icon hasn't really grown up much and is still an appropriate representation of childlike cuteness.

To help celebrate this occasion, Sanrio Digital has organized a week-long in-game celebration in the Hello Kitty Online massively multiplayer role-playing game. The event includes a series of quests and events, including an in-game guild contest that lets players convert online efforts into real cash donations for charity.

Based on the popular Sanrio characters, Hello Kitty Online transports players into the cute and cuddly world of Sanrio Land and is fully integrated with official Sanrio social Web site SanrioTown.com, which utilizes blogs, e-mail, video sharing, games, and more to create a digital and social experience accessible at any time, even in-game.

The game is currently in a closed beta phase and will shut down on November 8 to allow the development team to continue work on the game and prepare for the open beta version. Current players, however, will retain their characters and certain benefits in future versions of the game.

Earlier this month, Sanrio organized a massive in-game event where gamers could participate in the building of virtual New York city.

After three years of running its own system to let some players of EverQuest II conduct trades of in-game assets for real money, Sony Online Entertainment is turning it over to a new partner, Live Gamer.

In 2005, SOE, the publisher of the groundbreaking online game, EverQuest, as well as EverQuest II, Star Wars Galaxies, and other titles, decided to try an experiment that took its industry's traditional approach to players buying and selling in-game assets for real money and turned it on its ears.

Previously, the industry standard was to scream loudly that such activity was illegitimate and prohibited and that players caught doing so would be banned. Of course, thousands of players ignored the warnings and conducted such trades on sites like eBay, IGE.com, and elsewhere, usually with little or no repercussions.

But with the launch of its Station Exchange service that year, SOE decided to embrace the so-called "real money trade," at least provisionally, and see where it might lead. The company allowed such trades to take place on two EverQuest II servers, and gave players the choice of being on those servers or not.

Over the first year of the service, SOE said it made about $250,000--with almost no costs--and reduced the kinds of customer service complaints that it said came regularly from players claiming they'd been defrauded in under-the-table transactions outside the company's auspices.

Since then, Station Exchange has hummed along, neither making big waves nor disappearing. And for the most part, the online game industry has stayed away. No other big publisher of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) has gotten onboard, though Linden Lab's Second Life--a very different kind of virtual world from, say, EverQuest II--has long allowed real-money trades.

Now, SOE is turning the operation of Station Exchange over to Live Gamer, a start-up that launched in 2007. The move is expected to be complete by the end of March and should mean that the resulting service, to be called Live Gamer Exchange, will be entirely Web-based.

What this means for players is unclear. It also doesn't appear that the move means SOE is abandoning the experiment, though it does mean the company will not have to expend as many resources on Station Exchange going forward.

What isn't clear is where the revenue generated by commissions on trades will go. But one can assume that by taking over the service, Live Gamer will probably be getting a big piece of the pie.

Is this a good thing? A bad thing? I'd say neither. I'd say it's an interesting move on SOE's part. It's probably about them deciding they don't need to run it anymore, but that they liked the experiment enough to continue allowing their players to engage in real-money trading.

As before, the big question is whether any other publishers, most notably Blizzard Entertainment, which makes World of Warcraft, will ever follow suit. And so it will be interesting to see how Live Gamer runs with this. It may set a precedent that would be hard to avoid following.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

With Thanksgiving over and the biggest shopping day of the year under way, Power Downloader decided he would avoid the throngs of people and have a quiet day at the Powerlair. After going through his usual maintenance tasks to speed up his computer and check for spyware, Power headed over to Download.com to find a new game to play.... Read more

The average video game can give you anywhere from eight to 80 hours of solid, fun playtime. You pick it up, pop it in, play it until you're done, and put it away (or trade it in for far too little in-store credit). Some games can pull in gamers for far more time. They're called MMOs, massively multiplayer online games, and they offer a persistent online world for gamers to explore and conquer with each other. They're the digital equivalent of crack, and can easily turn the eight-to-80 hour playtime of a normal game into an easy 800 hours of obsession.

World of Warcraft comes to mind, but it's hardly the first. The crystal meth of WoW was preceded years before by the cocaine of Everquest, the LSD of Ultima Online, and even the opium of text-based MUDs. MMOs have gotten some major changes over time, but every one has shared some common features that make them undeniably addictive. These features are often very subtle, but they're the reasons I've seen friends of mine go on 72-hour marathon benders in Everquest, eight-hour blinkless raids in World of Warcraft, and 20-month burns on Ultima Online.

I have to confess that I'm a recovering MMO addict. I got hooked on World of Warcraft and quit the game three times before it finally took. I've been free of buffs and loot for eight months now. Before that, I dabbled in City of Heroes, Anarchy Online, and even an old, obscure sci-fi MMO called Earth and Beyond. I've been playing with Lord of the Rings Online lately, but I have it under control. Really. Honest.

Anyway, now that that's out of the way, here are the secrets to just how MMOs hook people in so thoroughly. I can't explain why or how, but these commonalities are what turn a normal, well-adjusted gamer into a sleepless online junkie.

Mad loot: Nobody knows why, but one of the strongest draws in an MMO is collecting stuff. Whether killing countless nameless goblins for a randomly dropped magical helmet or going on an obscenely long mining quest to get the materials for a flaming orange sword, you will go to any length to get the best items. In WoW, a raid of 20 to 40 people will spend hours in a dungeon just for the chance that one or two of their members will get one of the items to let them get into an even bigger dungeon with more items.

Exploration: A single-player game only offers you so many places to go. Even in huge, sprawling, role-playing games, you're going to eventually hit a wall of plot and geography. Expansions and patches can help add content, but they don't offer nearly as much ground to cover as MMOs. Whether it's a zone that requires a level 70 character or a raid dungeon that requires forty level 70 characters, you will feel compelled to see it all.

Camaraderie: It's easy to give up on single-player games after a while because you run out of things to do. Even in normal multiplayer games, you can turn them off after a while when everyone's tired and doesn't want to protect the base/capture the flag/kill each other anymore. A big enough MMO guild can ensure that there will always be a handful of friends online and ready to adventure with you, no matter what time it is. These friends make it all the more difficult to stop playing, whether it's for the night to get some sleep, or forever because you don't want to pay the monthly fee anymore.

The monthly fee: Strange as it might sound, paying a company $10 to $15 to play its game only makes that game more addictive. Single-player games mean you can still put them down for months at a time, and pick them up when you feel like it. When Blizzard or Sony or NCSoft is charging you every month, you feel a need to play the game, to justify the money. And when you justify playing because of the money, you end up justifying the money to play it. After all, a $50 game can only offer eight to 80 hours of fun; $15 per month for 80 to 160 hours of fun every month is a steal, right?

Being all you can be: Maxing out in characteristics is one of the biggest draws in the game. You start by getting your levels up to the cap, but you can't stop there. Now your level 60 character needs to max out his levels in crafting. Now your level 60 character has 300 points in mining and blacksmithing. But that's still not enough. You still can't go everywhere and get all the great items unless all the factions like you. So now your high-level master craftsman needs to become exalted to all friendly factions. But then an expansion comes out. Now the level cap is 70, the profession cap is 375, and there are twice as many friendly factions. Time to get to work again.

Know the warning signs of addiction when playing any MMO. They can be fun, they can also be dangerous. Now if you don't mind me, I need to get my level 70 Blood Elf warlock up to Revered with the Thrallmar so I can transmute skyfire diamonds.

Just kidding. Really. I'm not putting my WoW discs back in. I'm not. I'm not...

World of Warcraft has been a goldmine for Blizzard, but that can't be all it's working on. Back before WoW ate countless lives with its grinding, raiding, and leveling, Blizzard was known for awesome strategy games such as Warcraft and Starcraft, awesome action RPGs such as Diablo and Diablo II, and even awesome platform-puzzlers such as The Lost Vikings. All of these games seem to have been left at the wayside while Blizzard focuses on keeping its WoW servers up and running, and its players chipping in their monthly fee.

That can't be the whole story. Rumors abound about Blizzard's numerous, purely hypothetical projects. Kotaku recently reported about Blizzard hiring for a "next-gen MMO," and that a Korean Web site claimed that Blizzard will be announcing their next big project in May. All we have are rumors right now; Blizzard is indeed hiring new talent, but they might just be put to work on even more World of Warcraft content.

Still, rumors are fun, and it'll be interesting to see just what Blizzard might be working on. The company has a few great universes and a superlative back catalog of games. Here's a look at what Blizzard might be developing. Keep in mind that this is all speculation and shouldn't be taken seriously until Blizzard coughs up some concrete information.

World of Starcraft
The pitch: Terrans, Zerg, and Protoss continue their war with each other across different planets in a sci-fi MMORPG with plenty of cross-faction PVP action.
The case for: Starcraft is one of Blizzard's most beloved properties, and to this day it's an incredibly popular game. Tons of sci-fi fans would probably love to see Starcraft get the World of Warcraft treatment. Blizzard already has MMO infrastructure in place, so it probably wouldn't be nearly as complicated or time-consuming a development process as World of Warcraft.
The case against: Sci-fi MMOs tend to be tricky, with a lot more high-tech stuff that would be difficult to translate from RTS. Blizzard will have to get pretty creative with missions, since there are only so many Zerg holes a marine can clean out before he just gets sick of it.
The likelihood: Pretty good. Blizzard's already proven it can translate a great RTS property into a great MMO, and World of Starcraft would eat up all the Star Trek/Star Wars/Stargate nerds who are turned off by Warcraft's fantasy setting.

Starcraft 2
The pitch: Starcraft returns to the RTS form with better graphics, more units, deeper strategy, and possibly an additional faction or two.
The case for: The game is nine years old and people still play it to this day. A zerg-rushing celebration with modern graphics would be a sure hit.
The case against: Command and Conquer 3 and Supreme Commander are already wrestling for to billing in the sci-fi RTS genre, a genre that has shrunk in popularity in the last decade. It'll be pretty crowded in there, and Starcraft 2 will be showing up late to the game.
The likelihood: Pretty good. If done right, Starcraft 2 could completely bowl over Command and Conquer 3 and Supreme Commander and reclaim Blizzard's former title as king of the RTS.

Diablo 3
The pitch: The forces of hell are trying to take over the world once again, and you need stop them by creating a hero from a wider selection of classes and specialties, with bigger dungeons and more complex quests.
The case for: Diablo II was one of the most popular games of its time, and the addictive properties of leveling up, collecting equipment, and hacking through hundreds of demons simply doesn't get old.
The case against: Most of the developers of Diablo and Diablo II are working on Flagship Studios' Hellgate: London. Blizzard might not be able to make the same Diablo we knew and love.
The likelihood: Slim. World of Warcraft already satisfies most gamers' need for grinding, killing, and item collecting. Diablo 3 would add a little more action to the same basic, polished formula, probably without the lucrative monthly fee.

Warcraft 4
The pitch: Like World of Warcraft, only an RTS game.
The case for: There's a big fantasy RTS-shaped hole in today's game market that would easily be filled by Blizzard's biggest IP, Warcraft. It started as an RTS and would make sense to continue as one.
The case against: It would break WoW players out of the game with the inevitable major, world-changing storyline. Warcraft's story is already evolving through WoW's updates and expansions, and the sort of changes Warcraft 4 would probably make to the Warcraft universe would seriously unbalance that.
The likelihood: Slim, for now. When WoW starts to run down and Blizzard gets to work on World of Warcraft 2, it will be more likely for a Warcraft 4 to bridge the two MMO worlds.

The Lost Vikings 3
The pitch: Time-traveling Norsemen Erik, Baelog, and Olaf are back, and they're still trying to get home.
The case for: The Lost Vikings were awesome.
The case against: It's not Blizzard's most recognized property, and they've already gotten a respectable cameo in the Uldaman dungeon in World of Warcraft. It probably wouldn't translate well to 3D and modern graphics.
The likelihood: Not gonna happen. They might keep on making cameos, but we're not going to see a new, modern Lost Vikings game any time soon. Maybe a remake or two on the Nintendo DS or PSP, but that's the best we can hope for.

And before any of you ask, I didn't list Starcraft: Ghost because it's cancelled. It's not coming out. You're not going to be able to play it. It is not fated to be released on any platform. That is all.

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade

(Credit: Blizzard Entertainment)

Just a reminder that Blizzard Entertainment will be releasing "World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade" on January 16 in North America and Europe. The expansion pack for WoW will be available for about $40, with a special collector's edition for $70. Auctions of the collector's editions on eBay have already began to solicit bids of up to $200 at last look.

Blizzard will be extending its technical support hours and staying open for two consecutive Saturdays in order to accommodate possible issues or questions that may arise from installation of "The Burning Crusade," the company announced Tuesday. From its January 16 release day through January 26 WoW technical support will be open 9:00 AM to 7:30 PM PST Monday through Saturday.