Still in search of the march, I wandered out the front gates of IF and found a couple of avatars sporting "RP Revolution" guild tags. This must be the place! The bulk of the marchers were assembling on the hilly road leading up to IF. I estimated 200+ characters in line. Many bore names that related to Ron Paul in some way. The organizers seemed to be at the head of the line and were trying to get everyone into single file.

So in case you guys haven’t heard Activision who has brought us such amazing games like Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero, and of course Call of Duty, Blizzard whose name to fame is of course the ever popular World of Warcraft, and Vivendi who brings out the family friendly games such Crash Bandicoot and Spyro, have decided to merge business now aside from making this an $18.6 billion dollar company, they will now also be the largest video game only company to exist. The new company name will be Activision Blizzard and Vivendi will then have a 52% stock share in the company.

Considering the list of games that these companies have produced, you can guarantee that over the next year this company will be a true force to be reckoned with. Will this be the final deal for the new founded gaming giant? Or will they be like a growing shark eating up any little fish that makes a name for itself? Only time will tell, but until then one thing remains true, we can expect big things from the new multi-billion dollar company in the near future.

"We wish them good luck and look forward to the competition," Ramsdale told Eurogamer. "We believe that EA still has the industry's strongest portfolio of game franchises and we're always at our best when we have a clearly defined competitor."

Accrue World of Warcraft gametime at the rate of 1% of every dollar in qualifying purchases. The World of Warcraft Rewards Visa is the only card that pays you to play.

The sales of the expansion, which dwarf those of even successful stand alone PC titles from other companies, totaled more than 1.9 million copies in regions that play on North American realms (which includes 100,000 copies in Australasia). An additional 1.6 million copies were sold in Europe.

The eagerly awaited expansion sold almost 2.4 million copies worldwide in its first twenty-four hours – more than any other PC game has ever sold in its whole first month.

As a whole World of WarCraft's worldwide subscriber based has now reached 8.5 million users – an increase of 500,000 in under two months. The Burning Crusade has also recently launched in South Korea and the company is currently working to localize the game into Simplified and Traditional Chinese for mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau - for release as soon as possible.

More than 7 million avatars play "World of Warcraft", and approximately a half million players are within "Second Life" and the "Entropia Universe."

"A few of those people are going to die unfortunately," Jacobs said.

And sometimes those in the virtual community can be left in the dark about the real-life fate of a fellow gamer.

"If a gamer dies in the real world, no one in the virtual community has a way of knowing what happened to their online friend," said Spaight, vice president of game developer Rapid Reality. "Does it just blink out of existence? Gamers will eventually need to think about what should happen to their avatar if they die in real life."

Less than two years after its introduction, World of Warcraft, made by Blizzard Entertainment, based in Irvine, Calif., is on pace to generate more than $1 billion in revenue this year with almost seven million paying subscribers, who can log into the game and interact with other players. That makes it one of the most lucrative entertainment media properties of any kind. Almost every other subscription online game, including EverQuest II and Star Wars: Galaxies, measures its customers in hundreds of thousands or even just tens of thousands.

And while games stamped "Made in the U.S.A." have often struggled abroad, especially in Asia, World of Warcraft has become the first truly global video-game hit since Pac-Man in the early 1980's.

The game has more players in China, where it has engaged in co-promotions with major brands like Coca-Cola, than in the United States. (There are more than three million players in China, and slightly fewer than two million in the United States. And as with most video games, a clear majority of players worldwide are male.)

There is a rabid legion of fans here in South Korea, which has the world's most fervent gaming culture, and more than a million people play in Europe. Most World of Warcraft players pay around $14 a month for access.

As for making a name for themselves in the market, Sullivan feels that some of the biggest competition comes from MMOs, not because they are competitors in the genre, but because people simply enjoy playing them so much.

"For retail PC games, I think the biggest problem is World of Warcraft," Sullivan said. "It is such a compelling MMO game that it sucks up a lot of money and time that would normally be spent on other retail PC games."

The map utilizes the Google Maps API and therefore behaves just a like a Google Map. Clicking on the controls on the left side of the map will let you zoom in and out. Dragging the map around lets you scroll the map and view different areas. It's that easy.

Use the menu to the right of the map to select resources and labels that you wish to display. Currently you can display herbs, ore, treasure, zone names, and city names. There are over 15,000 data points covering 69 resources with their exact map location in our database. The bottom of the menu provides quick links to popular locations in the game. Found a great area that you want to share with your friends? Go to the location on the map, click on the "Link to this Location" and then copy the URL.

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. and Legendary Pictures today announced that they have entered into an agreement to develop a live-action film based on Blizzard Entertainment's award-winning Warcraft® universe. Based on the terms of the agreement, Legendary Pictures has acquired the movie rights for the best-selling game universe, and both companies are now focused on translating the high-quality Warcraft entertainment experience to the big screen.

"We searched for a very long time to find the right studio for developing a movie based on one of our game universes," said Paul Sams, chief operating officer of Blizzard Entertainment. "Many companies approached us in the past, but it wasn't until we met with Legendary Pictures that we felt we'd found the perfect partner. They clearly share our high standards for creative development, and because they understand the vision that we've always strived for with our Warcraft games, we feel there isn't a better studio out there for bringing the Warcraft story to film."

"One of our goals at Legendary Pictures has been to bring heroic stories to life in groundbreaking ways, and it's inspiring to work with a company such as Blizzard that takes that approach with each of its products," stated Legendary Pictures chairman and CEO Thomas Tull. "The Warcraft universe is possessed of such a rich mythology and, as such, serves as an ideal platform as we go about translating that universe into what we intend to be a major event film."

For Legendary, which is developing a live-action version of "Paradise Lost," the game fit the branded fantasy bill the company was seeking.

"We were looking for worlds that are rich in mythology and theme, that were branded in some way, and partners who could help in the translation of making something that was going to be seen as standing above and beyond some of the other translations from game to film that have not worked," Legendary chief creative officer Jon Jashni said.

The Hollywood Reporter and Variety reported today that Chris Lee will be president of Legendary Pictures, a new production company headed by venture capitalist Thomas Tull and backed by $500 million in private equity. The company just inked a 25-picture 50-50 co-financing and distribution deal with Warner Brothers. Legendary is expected to be based on the Warners' lot.

Legendary's investors include a host of VC outfits like ABRY Partners, AIG Direct Investments, Banc of America Capital Investors, Columbia Capital, Falcon Investment Advisors, and M/C Venture Partners

Rain and other inclement weather had been promised to the millions who play "World of Warcraft" since the massively multiplayer online PC game's launch in November 2004. A rotating team of developers at Blizzard Entertainment actually worked on creating a weather system for five years. Only last week, however, did the game's developers find a way to patch it into the game in a way the meets their expectations — and that they hope will meet fans' as well.

In the course of preparing that weather, developers have to make decisions about what video game weather should actually be. Should it just be something to look at or should it have an impact? When should it rain and where? And if game designers could decide the time and date of a rainstorm, should they?

"Coming up with the weather system for a world is fun," said Jeff Kaplan, 33, lead designer at Blizzard Entertainment's Irvine, California, headquarters, where the real-life lack of precipitation resembles the old weather-free version of his game. The falling-from-the-sky possibilities are broad when you're designing weather for a video game. "We've talked about how cool would it be when you killed the blood god, that it rains blood."

Blood storms aside, Kaplan said that Blizzard is approaching the change in climate modestly. Last week, three types of weather were introduced to "WoW": rainstorms, sandstorms and snowstorms. They have a chance of occurring in just 11 of the game's 40-plus realms and will crop up with a frequency that has been designed to err on the side of too little.

The contest involves entrants producing movies using the Blizzard Entertainment MMORPG World of Warcraft game engine to create imaginative movies in the three main categories of Dance, Comedy and Drama. Five prizes will be awarded for each category. An additional ten prizes will be awarded for special categories including Best Music, Best Dialog, Best Action Scene, Best Pun or Line, and Best Editing and Special Effects. A special prize will also be awarded to a selected movie among all valid contest entrants. Entries must be submitted by Monday February, 6th 2006 12:00pm PST.

A recent posting on RootKit.com suggests that Blizzard installs software that watches the personal information of people playing their game. The software is designed to hunt for cheat-ware, but reads the title headings of any window open, regardless of its relation to WoW. The poster reports that he, "watched the (program) sniff down the email addresses of people I was communicating with on MSN, (and) the URL of several websites that I had open at the time."

In his death throes Hakkar hits foes with a "corrupted blood" infection that can instantly kill weaker characters.

The infection was only supposed to affect those in the immediate vicinity of Hakkar's corpse but some players found a way to transfer it to other areas of the game by infecting an in-game virtual pet with it.

This pet was then unleashed in the orc capital city of Ogrimmar and proved hugely effective as the Corrupted Blood plague spread from player to player.

Although computer controlled characters did not contract the plague, they are said to have acted as "carriers" and infected player-controlled characters they encountered.

What Blizzard's finalized response to the plague remains to be seen, but if their message boards are any indication, it's thankfully tongue-in-cheek. "It appears that the hotfix remedy concocted to combat the recent Azerothian outbreak has not yielded desired results," says one moderator on the official forums. "At this time, our medical staff is continuing to develop an effective cure. We look forward to ensuring the health and vitality of the citizens of Azeroth in the near future."

World of Warcraft recently surpassed the two million mark for paying subscribers. Already the largest MMO in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe, Blizzard expects to see even greater growth with the recent commercial launch in China on June 7, 2005. Anticipation for World of Warcraft was already at an all-time high in China, with peak concurrency during the open beta test topping 500,000 players, nearly equal to World of Warcraft's peak concurrency in all three current markets combined. Blizzard expects to see the new mark of two million subscribers shattered quickly with the arrival of players from China in the coming weeks.