With the economy in the tank, it seems that beggars can be choosers. According to gamesindustry.biz, some employers are now filtering out World of Warcraft players from their eligible ranks. The rationale is simple: WoW eats up sleep and mindshare that could otherwise be devoted to the job at hand. So, with such an abundance of desperate employees in the job market, why settle for the ones who aren’t obsessed with the job?

The news bit started down in the message board trenches, so take it with the grain of salt it deserves, but the corporate reasoning has a certain verisimilitude. This, along with the fact that the blog that originally hosted this story has been suspended does raise some questions. However, it is too early at this juncture to rule out accusations of libel or simple excessive traffic as explanations for the blog’s disappearance.

There are no recovered addicts, just people who die before they relapse. Research from Blizzard (via gamesindustry.biz) shows that about half of Warhammer expatriates and nearly 70% of those who left for Age of Conan have returned to the warm embrace of Azeroth.

Players haven’t necessarily cancelled their other accounts, but the time demands of MMORPGs don’t exactly encourage playing multiple games unless you work at Massively. So it’s probably fair to guess that those players have actually shifted from game to game.

Player recidivism coincides with the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion, which will hit stores this week. Coincidence? Um, no.

28 minutes later
Image by
Katie McKiernan

The travel brochure says “Don’t eat the food” and it’s not kidding. Crates of infected grain have been delivered to all the major cities in World of Warcraft, spreading the same scourge that created the undead and ultimately the forsaken faction. Taking a cue from Resident Evil Outbreak, players infected by the scourge become zombies and can then attack and infect other players. Of course, other players and guards can reciprocate the aggression, though they run a risk of infection if they do. There’s a brief incubation period where the players can be cured, but clusters of bodies near the healers indicate that things could be going better.

The last time a plague ran rampant through Azeroth, it was a little less scripted. The introduction of the Blood God Hakkar propagated a disease called corrupted blood that killed any characters who had not yet reached endgame instantly. Epidemiologists tracked the spread of the disease through the game’s transit networks and used it to develop disease transmission models that may one day be useful for real world outbreaks of fatal contagions.

While the current oubreak is a bit more controlled, it does have one distinguishing feature that makes it different than the corrupted blood epidemic. The world narrative calls for increasing urgency in the outbreak, a fact that Blizzard has chosen to simulate by gradually decreasing the duration of the infection debuff.

Put another way, you used to have 10 minutes to find a healer. Now you have two.

The combination of Warcraft’s dense server populations and the gradually decreasing incubation period make the scourge an interesting source of modeling data. Shorter incubation means less chance to travel, but also means more rapid spreading in denser populations. Whether epidemiologists take notice or not, players can hope to see resolution of the disease plot line in the upcoming expansion: Wrath of the Lich King.

If you thought you were ripping Blizzard off at $15/month, worry not! The developer has worked out a way you can give something back. Bloggers at WarCry are reporting a button in the assets of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion beta labeled “Paid Character Customization.”

Though reluctant to comment on it at Blizzcon, WoW production director J. Allen Brak eventually conceded that the button was real and would be implemented in the future. Just when you thought you were safe from micropayments.

Anybody out there willing to pay cold hard cash to change your character’s hair color? Equipment? What would it take to make you part with an additional $2 for your favorite MMORPG?

WoW widows should get ready to become real widows, because Bejeweled is coming to the World of Warcraft and your raid-obsessed sweetheart will never have a reason to stand up from the computer again.

The breakout casual game from PopCap will be arriving in the form of a mod–user-installable code that adds layers to the Warcraft core. Bejewelled will be a more professional version of the Besharded mod, a clone created by Michael Fromwiller. In a pleasant deviation from cease-and-desist as usual, PopCap actually hired Fromwiller to further polish his mod and add PopCap branding after noticing that it existed.

With Namco jealously guarding the patent on minigames during load screens, it’s nice to see that developers are making headway where they can to fight sandwich gaming.

The BBC is reporting a recent study from Manchester University that estimates that there are 400,000 workers farming gold and being paid $500,000,000 for their trouble. If you do the math, it comes out to about $100 each month for each worker. Of course, that number drops as different geographical regions are willing to work for less to generate more work.

Take a long look at that epic mount you just bought using farmed gold. Does it make you happy?

Coming hot on the heels of an update that reduced the levelling time between levels 30-60, warcraft has made a play to further compress the grind. By signing up a friend, you can reap 90 days of: tripled experience gain, an hourly ability to summon your friend to you, a free level for every two levels your friend gains, and a shiny new Zhevra mount. All that comes on top of the free month you used to get for doing Blizzard’s marketing for them. While this will no doubt engender fanboy rage at being cheated out of a portion of their lives, it should help ease the pain of helping a new friend to the level cap.

It appears that World of Warcraft has a hard maximum on the gold you can accumulate, and the number is 214,748. Considering the most current mean value of 1,000 gold is about $48.60, this means that the fattest possible pocketbook is worth about $10,436. So, if you were ever wondering how long you can play Warcraft and still break even, the number is about 58 years at 14.99 per month.

Better get to farming, though.

Edit: I suppose that’s the longest time you could play a single character. Multiply by 8 per server for a hard maximum

Sick? Tis the season. We’ve all been there–too sick to get out of bed, not quite sick enough to pass out, and boredom stretches the passing minutes until they’re so taught they could snap. You’re not in the mood to read, and if you see those same DVDs again, you may just throw up on principle (don’t even think about daytime TV). Besides, sick time is just about the only free time you get any more, so this is the perfect opportunity to catch up on your gaming.

What to play, though? Your reflexes are slowed, your brain is foggy and anything that makes your heart race is right out. In your condition, a Treasure shooter is more likely to be an exercise in exhausting frustration than an exhilarating blast-fest. You need something fun and engrossing to while away the hours, but it can’t be too demanding. It shouldn’t matter if you pass out midway through a play session, and you shouldn’t be harshly penalized for an unplanned rush to porcelain succor.

So here’s a brief list of the ways to game while you’re ill and a good game for each to nurse you back to health. This is by no means a complete list, but hopefully there should be enough here to keep you happy until your immune system wakes up and actually pulls its weight.

As of patch 2.3, Burning Crusade has thrown enough paint on the World of Warcraft gameplay to make it look new again. However, no amount of superficial tweaks to the same underlying gameplay can change the fact that this game is best recommended to disinterested casual players and deeply invested hardcore. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing; how wrong can nine million people be?