It appears that World of Warcraft in-game economies may be the latest victims of the worldwide economic downturn that started last year as a result of a meltdown in subprime mortgage markets. Economists tracking the flow of real world money in and out of the game have noted a sharp decline in dollars and euros flowing into the game, and a sharp increase in gold and items being put up for sale. Initially it was thought that the troubles in the economy would be a boon for World of Warcraft server economies. Tightening budgets meant less discretionary income to be spent on subscriptions which, in theory, would lead to fewer players competing for items and an overall rise in the price of goods and services with a corresponding increase in player wealth.

Sony Computer Entertainment released sales figures earlier today showing that the Playstation 3 has become the best-selling console in Iran, news that is being touted by fanboys across the Internet that the Playstation 3 may finally be making a comeback after a year of poor sales figures and profit losses that have run into billions of dollars for Sony. Most of the sales have been to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a group that has gained some notoriety in recent months after the Bush administration attempted to label them as a terrorist organization. All of the units are being shipped to an undisclosed facility hidden in the mountainous region of Iran, and no one in the country seems to be buying any games.

I took some time off in October and early November to get married. If you're interested in the details then you can click over to the blog and read a longer post about it all there. I'll resume updates on DGN next week. My apologies for my sudden disappearance, and thanks to everyone who stuck around.

The ESRB rating on some World of Warcraft servers is about to change during gameplay in a big way. Blizzard announced that they will be releasing several new ERP “Erotic Roleplay” and ERP-PvP “Erotic Roleplaying Player Versus Player” realms that cater to the adult audience in World of Warcraft that’s more comfortable carrying on their sex life in a virtual world than in the real world. Several old realms will be converted to the new ruleset to test the waters before new servers are opened. Ravenholdt, the server at the center of the ERP debate, will be the first to operate under the new ruleset. Blizzard stated in a blue post that they felt it would be better to try this new ruleset on a server that already has a large existing ERP population. They also hope that the new rules will attract more people to the server, which until now has been suffering from a low population made up mostly of horny blood elves.

World of Warcraft, US servers, Ravenholdt. This Realm seems to come up an awful lot in the news these days, and it makes you wonder why. Is it some sort of magnet for drama? Perhaps the fates decreed that the newest of the RP-PvP servers be destined for great things -- terrible, but great. This journalist thinks otherwise. I think there is a certain pride held amongst the Ravenholdt denizens. A pride which lets them speak loud and proud and make themselves known to the world. A pride that creates guilds of people who revel in Roleplay on this server as well as Raiding and World PvP. A pride that lets them get angry when people tarnish their good name. This article is about a guild who did just that, and the just desserts said guild received months later, perhaps by the collective will of Ravenholdt, or even the actions of a single person. But I'm getting ahead of myself -- let me start from the beginning.

Representatives from the gamer organization Men Advocating the Normalization of Gaming In Non-traditional Avatars, or M.A.N.G.I.N.A. for short, are protesting the recent implementation of voice chat in World of Warcraft. The organization claims that the advent of ubiquitous voice chat in-game could ruin the lifestyle they’ve enjoyed in massive online games for the past few decades. “Easy access to voice chat utilities will eliminate all of the ambiguity and anonymity that our alternative gaming lifestyle enjoyed in the days when the chat box was the primary mode of communication in-game,” M.A.N.G.I.N.A. Chairperson Kris Smith told Daily Gaming News. “How will we be able to dupe people into thinking we’re really girls if we hop onto party chat sounding like Barry White?”

Repair time for Xbox 360 gaming consoles suffering from the “red ring of death” general hardware failure are now taking so long that Microsoft is offering gamers the option of receiving a voucher that will apply the full cost gamers paid for their Xbox 360 system towards the next generation of Xbox hardware, whatever that happens to be. The announcement came after Microsoft did the math and realized that the current average turnaround rate for repairing an Xbox 360 is starting to go so far into the future that they’ll be ready to buy whatever new console Microsoft is offering at the time and aren’t likely to be interested in their Xbox 360 any longer.

The drums of war are beating a little louder in the Middle East today after the Pentagon released intelligence they gathered from a recent raid on insurgents in Baghdad that allegedly contained “airtight proof” that Oil Ocean Zone has been providing financing, training, and weapons for insurgent groups for at least the past year. The announcement couldn’t have come at a worse time. Relations between the United States and oil ocean zone were already at a historical low. A recent visit by Oil Ocean Zone president Dr. Ivo Robotnik merely fanned the flames of public opinion against the small Middle Eastern zone, with the dictator making remarks such as “There are no non-robotic living animals in Oil Ocean Zone,” and the president of Columbia University calling Robotnik a two-bit mad scientist with designs on taking over the world with his robotic minions.

The Farmers Guilds of both Canada and the United States of America are lobbying against Marvelous Interactive, the creators of the ever popular Harvest Moon video game series. John Horton, spokesperson for the Farmers Guild of Canada spurred this cause in to action after witnessing his children avoiding chores at dawn -- instead devoting more attention to doing chores and farming tasks inside of the Harvest Moon world.

Human Rights Watch is protesting the latest in a series of human rights violations committed by the communist Chinese government. They have learned through a series of clandestine reports from behind the Bamboo Curtain that the Chinese are rounding up political dissidents and forcing them to work in gold farming operations in World of Warcraft, with all money earned from the operations going into the coffers of the Chinese military. The government has been quietly rounding up dissidents in recent months in preparations for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Silencing politically unsavory individuals is just one part of a larger "Red Washing" campaign being undertaken to improve the communist nation's image on the world stage. Other attention grabbing efforts include shutting down every large industrial operation in the Beijing area months before the games to reduce air pollution.

The Daily Gaming Newscast is back. Erron and I are recording new episodes on the weekend, and updates can be accessed by clicking on the button at the top of the site or scrolling down and clicking direct links to posts in the handy feed on the left. At the podcast site you can listen in your browser, download it directly, subscribe in your favorite podcast feed reader, or subscribe in iTunes. Click over and listen to the latest episode of the Daily Gaming Newscast.

Police working in the case of Madeleine McCann, a 4-year old British girl who went missing from her hotel room in Portugal when her parents left her there alone with her 2-year old sibling while they enjoyed a nice evening dinner away from the children in a hotel restaurant. Authorities now believe that the girl was abducted from the hotel room and spirited away to another castle by famed international kidnapper King Koopa, alias Bowser in several parts of the world. Portugese police revealed previously unknown details from the crime scene, including a large reptile claw found in the hotel room, scorch marks that they believe came from a large fire-breathing animal of some sort, and a large painting hung on one of the walls of the hotel that hadn’t been there previously but that police couldn’t enter until they had collected at least three stars from paintings in other areas of the hotel.

A generation of Xbox Live gamers are starting to remember just how frustrating Sonic 2 multiplayer was back in the day when two players controlling two characters at the same time on the same screen was still a revolutionary new idea, and splitting the screen so that two players could face off against one another was so mind-blowing that several Sega fanatics went into comas when they popped Sonic 2 into their Genesis and powered it up for the first time. “This reminds me of playing Sonic 2 with my little brother back when we were 10 years old, except a lot of the idiots on Xbox Live have higher pitched voices and shitty attitudes,” one frustrated Sonic fan told Daily Gaming News after downloading the game and trying the online multiplayer for the first time.

The FBI, working in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security, raided Valve headquarters early this morning, detaining several developers who work directly with the popular “Counterstrike” mod. Authorities also confiscated computers used to program the game. The developers are currently being held on charges of domestic terrorism at an undisclosed U.S. prison that may or may not be inside the United States. “Intelligence agencies working with law enforcement have discovered a vast and troubling network of gamers working together within our country training themselves in strategies and tactics that could potentially be used by domestic terror cells,” Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff told reporters at a press conference held in the White House shortly after the raid. “We have detained the instigators of this domestic terrorist training program, and further arrests will be forthcoming as we track down individuals using this "Steam" network.”

Sources close to Indiana University junior Philip Howe are reporting that the 22 year old World of Warcraft addict may have seen a pair of breasts without first giving out his credit card information for the first time in his life. Unconfirmed reports at the location of the incident, the dorm room of 19 year old freshman Tricia Denton, indicate that Howe may have even touched the breasts in question before Denton’s roommate arrived home early from a party and ruined the alcohol-induced moment. Howe is best known amongst his friends as a mighty warrior in the World of Warcraft on the Emerald Dream server, where he has leveled 6 characters to 70 and raids or PvPs regularly with each of those toons.

The White House announced a major change in its Iraq policy earlier today when it was revealed that President Bush has dispatched the four Warriors of the Light to Iraq to quest for the fabled Orb of Democracy, a mystical object that, according to myth, was lost in antiquity and is the only thing that could truly bring democracy to the Middle East. The coming of the Light Warriors was foretold in Reagan’s Prophecy, spoken as the former president was leaving office in the late 80s. The prophecy states that at the Republican Party’s greatest need, four mighty warriors would appear and solve all of America’s problems by retrieving the Orb of Democracy and restoring balance to the Middle East and oil prices through the maintenance of heavy U.S. ground forces in the region.

Scandal is rocking the once family friendly world of Nintendo after nude photographs of Princess Peach, the 21 year old co-star of the wildly popular Super Mario Bros. video game franchise, surfaced on the Internet. The photographs were allegedly taken by Peach for her current boyfriend, fellow Super Mario Bros. franchise star Mario Mario while she was under the influence of several controlled substances at a party in the castle at world 8-4. Peach’s agent has refused to comment on the pictures. There has also been no word from the star herself concerning the circumstances that led to the pictures being leaked to the Internet. Nintendo has hired counsel, but it is unlikely that they will be able to do anything other than damage control since the young starlet is over 18 and the pictures are entirely legal in any country outside the Middle East.

Sony Pictures, owners of Columbia/Tristar pictures and the back catalog that comes with it, filed a lawsuit against Nintendo Entertainment in Tokyo for copyright infringement and trademark violations. The suit alleges that the Nintendo game Luigi’s Mansion “is clearly based in part or wholly on elements of the Ghostbusters film franchise owned by Sony Pictures, and is in violation of international copyright and trademark for using elements from same without permission from Sony or its subsidiary Columbia/Tristar.” Interestingly, Sony isn’t seeking any financial damages for Nintendo’s alleged violations. Instead they are asking that Nintendo add a Sony Blu-ray disc player to the Nintendo Wii gaming console and package a new Blu-ray edition of Ghostbusters I and II with every new Wii that is sold around the world to recoup the loss of sales in the GB franchise that were allegedly the result of Luigi's Mansion in the last generation of consoles.

Those of you familiar with World of Warcraft have probably recently heard the news of Abhorrent Taboo, the furry erotic roleplaying guild that Blizzard banned for getting a little to overzealous with their emotes in public areas on the Ravenholdt Horde and Blackwing Lair Alliance servers. We managed to catch up with Lilith, guildmaster of Abhorrent Taboo, for an exclusive interview that you'll only get here at DGN. He/she sat down with DGN to talk about the ban hammer, her guild's activities, the recent bad publicity, and what makes a person fall in love with a pixelated representation of a magical bear or cat. The interview after the cut.

A financial report released by Blizzard Entertainment yesterday indicates that Chinese holdings of U.S. Gold in World of Warcraft has reached an all-time high, sparking fear amongst investors and gamers alike that the trade imbalance between the two nations could lead to financial woes for Warcraft players and by extension the U.S. economy in the near future. China has been quietly investing in U.S. gold holdings in World of Warcraft since the game first went live in late 2004. Many financial analysts believe that Blizzard also quietly encouraged this action since cheap Chinese labor flooded the market with inexpensive goods that initially helped to stimulate local markets and gave a leg up to developing server economies as they were opened to new players.

The streets have been paved with gold at Microsoft since the mid-80s when they rose to market dominance through buying out and copying every major OS in the computer market, but the streets are paved with high quality platinum this week at the Xbox headquarters on Microsoft’s Redmond campus. The company announced earlier this morning that they sold over 200,000 Xbox 360 units since last Wednesday solely on the strength of releasing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on the Xbox Live Arcade. While no hard data is in yet concerning the phenomenal number of sales, industry analysts are speculating that a large and silent majority of Sega gamers who were waiting to see who would be the clear victor in this round after being repeatedly burned in previous console wars finally decided to throw their support behind Microsoft with the release of Sonic 2.

Authorities in the Brooklyn area are in a heightened state of alert today after learning that the notorious serial killer Mario Mario had escaped from the Dinoland Acres Mental Institution where he was serving a life sentence for a series of shroom-induced murders that took place from 1986 to 2002. The “plumber killer” first rose to prominence in 1986 when the equally notorious drug kingpin Bowser “The King” Koopa was found murdered in his red brick high rise apartment. Everyone else in the building leading up to Koopa’s apartment were also found dead from repeated blunt force trauma thought to be from the boots of a very determined individual who jumped on them until they were dead.

Interesting news out of Japan this morning. Square-Enix, publishers of the wildly popular Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest RPG franchises, published a revised list of games they plan to release in 2008 on their Japanese language website. The titles are mostly already known, but one particular surprise was a Final Fantasy 7 spinoff simply titled “Aeris: Reloaded” that will allow players to meticulously recreate the assassination of Aeris Gainsborough. Aeris’ death has been a source of contention and conspiracy theories amongst gamers since 1997 when Sephiroth descended out of the darkness at the end of disc 1 of Final Fantasy 7. A garbled translation, convoluted plot, and the popularization of the Internet all worked together to create an environment of suspicion. Rumors were soon flying saying that Aeris wasn’t actually dead, that she could be revived, that Sephiroth didn’t actually kill her, or why didn’t they just use a damned Phoenix Down to revive her.

President Bush made a controversial appointment earlier today that will probably fly under the radar for most political junkies. Jack Thompson, the noted video game anti-violence advocate from Florida, could replace current ESRB head Patricia Vance as early as October if congressional hearings approving the president’s nomination go smoothly. “I stand by Jacky,” Bush told reporters at a press conference where the appointment was announced. “He’s been doin’ a heck of a job, and I think that all the good work he’s done for video games and the kids who play those durn things makes him a true patriotic American. If the lesson of September the 11th has taught us anything, it’s to never let our guard down, and Jack has never let his guard down dealing with video games. We need to let the man continue doing what he’s already been doing because of his sense of duty and honor, only in an official role.”

Lifetime is getting in on the massive online gaming phenomenon with a new made for TV movie slated to hit the airwaves next month. The movie, Widow of Warcraft, is set to follow the heroic exploits of a strong-willed young woman who is forced to raise the children and support her family on her own while her husband sinks into the depths of addiction to World of Warcraft. Candace Cameron, best known as DJ on the popular 90s television show Full House, will be reprising the role of Melissa Connell, the courageous girl who proved her resolve to a generation of stay at home housewives with the blockbuster Lifetime movie She Cried No. The movie finds Melissa all grown up and married with the bad times seemingly behind her, until a dark presence enters her house through the cable modem in the family room and nearly destroys the family she loves.