Rock Climbing in Second Life

While residents in Second Life can usually teleport or fly to high places, what about being able to climb one's way up? at a place called Nitida Ridge, one can do just that. Just click on the sign at the place for some special equipment, and you'll be able to make your way up the cliff. And unlike real life, you probably won't panic with that look down.

Read the story in Design.

SL Video: "Give Love Away"

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By Deborha Patten, "This film was created during the 2011 "9/11 Stairclimb Tribute in Honor of the Fallen Firefighters of September 11th" in the virtual world of SecondLife.

"You can donate to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation at http://www.firehero.org/

"Give Love Away by Nance Brody, Canadian songwriter and singer.

World of Warcraft Numbers Soar to Over Ten Million

Over time, "World of Warcraft," the world's most popular Multiplayer Online Game, has declined in numbers since it's peak of twelve million in 2010. It's numbers would briefly climb after an expansion, then fall again. While still the envy of other game companies, by June 2014 numbers had fallen to 6.8 million, about half of it's peak.

It was known that the latest expansion "Warlords of Draenor" was providing some boost, as 600,000 gamers signed up ahead of time. As it turns out, far more did. On November 19, Blizzard announced that the number of people subscribing to their game had passed ten million. "Blizzard Entertainment today announced that as of the first 24 hours of the expansion’s availability, more than 3.3 million copies had sold-through^† and the game’s global subscriber base had passed 10 million, with growth across all major regions." Blizzard had not seen these numbers since early 2012.

Mike Fulter of Game Informer commented, "I strongly suspected WoW would rebound, but not by this much. Whether Blizzard can hold onto these returned players in the long-term remains to be seen. Even if numbers start to trail off once more, it shows that there is still great interest in new content for the decade-old MMO." The magazine also mentioned that day that Activision, which is part of the same corporation as Blizzard but exists as a separate entity, settled a lawsuit concerning a buyout a year ago.

The opening day of the fifth expansion of the game was plagued with technical problems, blamed in part due to a Denial of Service attack traced to China. The size of the numbers of people signing up suggests that the problems were at least somewhat less due to hackers, and somewhat more about the expansion being a bigger success than Blizzard expected.

Sources: PC Gamer, Game Informer, Blizzard 

Bixyl Shuftan

SL Video: "Give Love Away"

(Click Here if you can't see the video)

By Deborha Patten, "This film was created during the 2011 "9/11 Stairclimb Tribute in Honor of the Fallen Firefighters of September 11th" in the virtual world of SecondLife.

"The Aero Pines Park Fire Department is part of the http://VirtualFireFighters.org Training, Practice, and Education Resource Facility that takes place in an online 3D virtual world. The program involves real life active, retired, and student firefighters and EMTs. They recreate this event yearly in SecondLife and open it to the public for participation. http://AeroPinesPark.com

"You can donate to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation at http://www.firehero.org/

"Give Love Away by Nance Brody, Canadian songwriter and singer."