So It Can Suck To Be A Gamer, Who Knew!

I, like a lot of gamers, am subscribed to a couple of gaming podcasts. Namely the KOXM podcast and the Australian Gamer Podcast, and from listening to them i heard a couple of news stories that I felt needed bringing to light. Now I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while now, but never got around to it so I apologise if you’re already aware of the stories. I’ve also included links so you can read the full stories.

Only in America

First up is the story of an American man, Alfred Hightower, who was wanted by the police for drug trafficking. Before I carry on though I feel I need to clarify, when I say trafficking I don’t mean a large scale drug ring, it’s a guy who sold some weed to a friend, as well a couple of other “low level” drug offences. From a quick wiki Google, I discovered that selling of weed was the worst offence he had done.  But this isn’t a blog about the American Drug Classification System, so the police were tying to find Hightower however he remained elusive until the Deputy Sheriff and the US Marshals, found out that Hightower was an avid fan of World of Warcraft. The Deputy Sheriff, then put a call into Blizzard Entertainment, who eventually came back with enough details for the Sheriff and U.S. Marshalls to be able to get location for him and be able to go and catch him.
Blizzard Helps Cops Nab Drug Dealer Via WoW


Orc Story

Our second WoW story concerns merchandise, in particular a 6ft tall Orc Statue, and its owners ultimatum. Robert Cushnie had owned the statue for nearly 6 years, unfortunately when it came to moving in with his newlywed, she gave him the choice of me or the Orc. Robert made the right decision and chose his wife; however the story doesn’t quite end there, the Statue wasn’t just given away, he was given up for adoption. The “lucky” adoptees were a middle aged couple in Aberdeen, who both along with their 16 year old granddaughter love the statue. I can’t make too many comments on this story as I do own a 4 and a half foot tall promotional Cardboard cut out of a character from Warrior Kings Battles.
Husband chose wife over 6ft orc statue

Aion Roll Back

Imagine you had lived a day of your life, and were then told you had to re do it. Now imagine that on that day you went to the bank in the morning and found 34 Trillion quid in there. What would you do? Probably the same as everyone else reading this, you’d spend it. Send it to your friends. Now imagine that this was in a game, and you’ll probably feel something similar to the users of Aion, a MMORPG. Due to a glitch a small handful of users found 34 Trillion ‘Kinah’, the in game currency, and they did what anyone else would do they spent it and shared it effectively ruining the in game economy. When NCSoft heard about the glitch, 14 hours later, there was only one way around this and that was to roll back the servers. I don’t know about you but if I have to replay 2hours or more I’m pretty grump, in fact stroppy would probably be a better term for it. I do feel sorry for the poor bastard that was playing for 7 hours or more and hadn’t seen any of the money “Sucks to be you dude!”
Aion players get 34 trillion kinah in glitch

DLC dilemma
According to a recent survey about Downloadable Content (DLC) there are 3 types of gamers;

Those that know of and purchase DLC

Those that know of but don’t purchase DLC

Those that are unaware of any DLC

The survey goes on to say that only 15% of the people surveyed are in the first category, know of and purchase DLC, 42% are in the second category, which leaves a staggering 43% of gamers surveyed didn’t know DLC existed.

I have several issues with this survey, first of all the number of people that were surveyed, they only asked 800 gamers. The article I read didn’t specify where it took place only that it was done by a media consultancy firm. Apparently according to the results most of the people who were in the 3^rd category were typically playing consoles that don’t actively promote DLC for example the PS2 and the Wii. I used to think “This can’t be right?” however with the amount  or games that I’ve played recently a few check for DLC before you even start, i.e. Fallout 3 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. So maybe this is an issue, although I’m not sure if InfinityWard wouldn't agree what with the popularity of the Map Packs for the Call of Duty Franchise!
Nearly half of gamers dont know about dlc