To prepare for this Cataclysmic event I am not in over drive mode to get some of those achievements that arnt going to so easy to get when Deathwing knocks at our door. One of those is “Loremaster of Eastern Kingdom” and “Loremaster of Kalimdor”. This is a HUGE Pain but I’m pretty close to the end.

Since it is Hallow’s End at the moment I am struggling to get the “A Mask for All Occasions”. This is the second time around me trying to get this achievement which is all based on luck. I have only 3 more masks to loot yet I have had no luck what so ever. There is still a couple of days left so hopefully the ghost and ghouls of the underworld are kind to me.

So what are you doing reading this post!? Can’t you see we are all doomed? Get of there and enjoy the world you know and love because on December 7th 2010 Deathwing is going to smash it under his fiery claws while giving you the finger… It’s ok.. don’t cry.

Star Light Star bright,
The first star I see tonight,
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have the Quel’delar drop tonight.

These tools have created a side affect that no one could have ever suspected. We email instead of speaking on the phone, 45% of people now break up through text messages, and 32% of people admit they have flirted with someone else through text messaging while on a date with someone else. What does this all about how we now choose to communicate?

As the flow of everyday information becomes more predominate and easier to access, we are becoming our own gate keepers to our digital lives. We pick and choose who is allowed become our friends, who can see our updates and even how we choose for people to view and interact with us, all with no remorse or consequence. We have become the stars of our own digital world weaving through social networks and profiles trying to gain attention from a world over loaded with irrelevant information. Fame comes in many forms in the meta both good and bad. It can become a venue to catapult you to the next level or  become the platform where you are the next global joke that will forever live in the meta.

These new tools for communication should be used to enhance your real life and to expand your network on a global scale. But most people have started to use the meta as a defensive structure from which they shield themselves from real life situation and allowing them to experiment with different type of relationships with out any consequence. This has led to a the creation new personas, an online presents that doesn’t necessarily represent who they would be in the real world.

In one form or another this new entity that is born within the meta is an extension of that person. Somehow this new persona is fulfilling  a need that the person cannot fulfill within their real life.

We should all learn about our online personas and understand why it persists and how it interacts with and affects our real lives. Maybe in doing this we can bring some of that knowledge and self discovery back into our real lives to better ourselves.

Maybe in the end we will be able to just talk to a person face-to-face about an issue instead of sending a text message.

Now that our vacation to the port of Ashenvale was over, a fellow guildie and I dozed off and dreamt of the adventures we were about to embark on as we sailed deep into the Veiled Sea.

In the past virtual goods been over looked by many entrepreneur and big business but has recently started to turn heads and many company’s have started to scramble to jump on this growing marketing. According to a report by Inside Network, its estimated that the virtual goods market will hit $1.6 billion in revenue the U.S. in 2010. This is only a quarter of the estimated $4 billion in revenue that will be  generated this year in South Korea where the virtual good market started over a decade ago.

Facebook, Myspace, and others are driving this new market. Their massive user base have allow companies like Zynga, the creator of popular games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars, to capture audiences with there virtual offerings and has create a viable business model from which to profit from.  Max Lechin, CEO of Slide and co-founder of PayPal, in a recent interview told TechCrunch they now almost make all there money from virtual goods.

Even if you haven’t heard of Zynga or Slide, other big companies have started to ramp up production there virtual offerings in hopes of new revenue streams. Companies like Sony, Activision Blizzard, and even Microsoft have all started to expand or experiment with offerings in the virtual market by taping into there existing services and adding “premium content”.

You maybe thinking to yourself “I’ve never bought a pet for a game!”, but at one point or another you have bought some type of virtual good.

Virtual goods are not limited to just items for games for FarmVille or WoW, but can be found in places like Apples own App Store with there new in app purchase system. Apple is another example of seeing the potential growth of the virtual goods market and expanded their payment platform to include functionality to allow purchases of premium content and services.  Now that Apple has announced the iPad and there intent to keep with the iPhones App Store model virtual goods can be seen as the foundation of their new business strategy. Services like Xbox Live, Playstaion Store, Apple App Store and more will help ignite a virtual goods boom the the coming years.

But virtual goods have not always been at the for front of a companies business model. In the beginning they where uses to entice customers to buy a certain product and acted as a bonus.  Blizzard has been known to give vanity pets for there World of Warcraft game as a bonus to people who purchased a collector edition, usually tagged with a premium price. But in late 2009 Blizzard announced they would open up there online Blizzard store to accommodate 2 new vanity pets that could only obtained buy purchasing them at $10 each. Also a recent Blue Post stated Blizzard it intent to bring their in-game auction house online on World of Warcraft Armory portal and would be considered a premium service with a separate service charge.

So how do these new “goods” and services affect our real lives? At what point does the meta become an integrated part of life and is important enough to us to track, pay, and consume on a daily basis? What drives us to decided to pay for new cloths for our avatar, or to be granted access to these new tier of “premium content”?

For whatever the reasons maybe it is seemingly becoming clear that the line between our real lives and our life in the meta is starting to blur and become one.

Starting in 2008 I started to get back into online MMO’s and was hoping to find a game that was enjoyable and could distract me from the drama that real life brings. As the months progressed I found that some online communities just didn’t seem to fit my personality or were too complex. I figured it would be best to join the same communities that people I knew in real life were a part of. So I joined World of Warcraft since I knew of a couple of people who currently played it.

I had previously played WoW but never got too deep into it because I didn’t understand the complexities of the game nor did I have the time to dedicate to it. But knowing that I had friends already in game I was willing to give it another shot and dived right into this new online experience.

As time passed I wanted to learn more about the people in WoW community and their online experiences. To my surprise there was a large following with wikis, blogs, portals, movies, and even podcasts all dedicated to WoW. So wondered what drives people to create so much content and have so many discussions about a game? To try to answer my question I started to listen to different WoW related podcasts and blogs. One podcast really struck me, a podcast produced by a female WoW player named Alachia called WoWCast .

Her views on MMO’s and communities that revolve around a fantasy world  intrigued me and caused me to reflect on my life and experienced with in these worlds. She described these worlds as the meta, a fictional world with in our reality that we become attached to and try to make our reality. I dont want to go too much more into it but you can read Alachia’s explanation or look up the word on Wikipedia for more insight.

Come back to present day and I am still playing WoW and have become immersed in the community and the game itself.  But WoW is only a small part of my metaverse. The Internet itself fascinates me and has become my home. So with this website I hope to post my insight into this constantly changing and evolving online world that connects us all and even separates us. But we’ll talk about that in another blog post.