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Breakfast Topic: Getting guildies to the website
This is certainly an issue (if not a full-blown problem) in my guild, so I wouldn't be surprised if most guilds have a rough time getting guild members to use some of the outside resources they've put together. Nowadays, there are so many ways to make a guild website and so many different things you can do with one that most every guild has at least one place online to call its own. And those places are usually frequented by one or two people in the guild (usually the person running the site and/or maybe the GM and an officer or two), but in my experience, it's kind of tough to get people to use those resources, just because of lack of interest or know-how or habit. What's the point of having a database of members, a message board, and a blog and picture gallery when no one uses it? Enter Ankie of WoW Ladies, with an intriguing idea to support the guild's website.
Activision-Blizzard makes lots of money, no update on Blizzard earnings
Activision-Blizzard has released their third-quarter numbers for the financial year of 2009, and as you might expect for the company in charge of Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, and World of Warcraft, business is brisk. They were expecting to bring in around $700 million, and ended up pulling in around $50 million more than that. It's good, we guess, to be the king. Blizzard, in particular, laid claim to three of the top five selling PC games in North America on the good side, and on the bad side, Activision acknowledges in the press release that they're happy to have WoW back online in China, but a little worried about the troubles it's seen over there lately. Strangely enough, there is no information in the earnings about how much money World of Warcraft has pulled in for the company, or any updates about subscriber numbers. Usually, that gets at least a mention, so maybe, with subscribers certainly down in China, Activision-Blizzard wants to keep that under their hat for now.
Microsoft first-quarter income down 18 percent, still beats expectations
Microsoft just turned in its first quarter financial report card, and while the good vibes around Windows 7 launch haven't yet begun to fade, the numbers here aren't exactly cheery: revenue is down 14 percent from last year at $12.92b, operating income is down 25 percent at $4.48b, net income is down 18 percent at $3.57b, and earnings per share are down 17 percent at $0.40. Not wonderful, but it's better than analysts were expecting, and the stock is actually way up on the news. Adding in the deferred revenue from early sales of Windows 7 makes things look a little better still, with only a four percent decline in revenue and an eight percent increase in earnings per share, and the Entertainment and Devices Division -- home of the Xbox 360 and Zune HD -- is also a bright spot, increasing income from $159m to $312m on essentially unchanged revenue. Of course, the big test will actually be next quarter, after Windows 7 has really had a chance to make an impact -- we'll see if all these warm fuzzies translate into cold hard cash.
Apple pushes to change subscription accounting rules
Apple's pretty famous for using subscription accounting for the iPhone and Apple TV as a way to bend the rules and offer free software updates after purchase -- basically, instead of putting all the money from the sale on the books at once, the company's accountants spread the revenue out over two years, extending the "transaction" to cover upgrades. That's great for iPhone owners, but it's not so great for Apple or its investors, since the company's stock price doesn't always reflect the true amount of iPhone money coming in -- in fact, Apple earnings reports now include a second, unofficial balance sheet that does away with subscription accounting to show off the real numbers. Yeah, it's confusing, but it might finally be about to change, since the Financial Accounting Standards Board just tentatively approved new rules that could allow Apple to do away with subscription accounting and still deliver free updates. That means Apple's quarterly earnings will now feature much larger official revenue and profit figures -- last quarter's official revenue was $8.34 billion, while the unofficial number was $9.74 billion -- the lawyers and accountants will be happy, and we'll still get free iPhone updates. Good deal all around -- except for iPod touch owners, who will still have to pay $9.95 and not get a camera. [Via Yahoo]
Poll: How many Achievement points have you earned?
Sure, it's only been a few days, but achievements are all for nothing if you can't brag about them, right? We're curious -- how are you doing with achievement pointage so far? Have you not bothered yet, or have you been working tirelessly to earn a bunch of meaningless points?As of last night, I still had under 1000, but a few people online had up above 2000, so I'd expect the average to be in between those two. We aren't quite sure how many points there are total to be earned (you'd think that would be part of the UI, so you could compare yourself to the total), but from our calculations, it seems like there are probably around eight to nine thousand points or so to pick up.How many do you have so far?%Poll-21091%
"Leading the Cavalry" achievement lowered to 50 mounts
Looks like our little survey of mounts available for the Leading the Cavalry achievement found some ground at Blizzard -- they've lowered the number of necessary mounts from 75 to 50 in the latest beta build. Seventy-five mounts is a lot, and even though, yes, we didn't actually count any of the mounts coming in Wrath of the Lich King (surely there are plenty there), Tauren especially would have trouble coming up with that many things to ride around.And as you can see, the prize for having way more mounts than you'd ever need is... another mount. You can nab an Albino Netherdrake (a few commenters say it's just a drake, but that model looks like a netherdrake to me) for completing the achievement. We can say this: it'll definitely stand out in a crowd. But the green and the white together? The skin may change before launch, but maybe we don't actually need to bother getting those 50 mounts after all...
Retroactive achievements and how they'll work
I was away at E3 last week when the big news dropped about achievements coming to Wrath of the Lich King, but that doesn't mean I'm any less excited about them -- I am a huge fan of achievements on Xbox 360, not only because it's really fun to see what other people have and haven't done in game, but because they definitely extend my own gameplay. Despite the fact that the only reward on Xbox Live is meaningless gamer points, I often find myself going the extra distance in games just to earn those achievements, and considering that the achievements in WoW will actually offer tangible rewards like tabards, titles, and whatever else Blizzard can dream up, I'm all for them.Of course, the biggest question players have asked so far is whether or not the achievements will be retroactive. The short answer is: yes. The longer answer is: most of them will be. Starting with Wrath, Blizzard is going to be tracking an astounding number of things about our characters, and obviously some of them haven't been tracked the whole time -- it'll be very hard to determine how many yetis, for example, that you've killed, and so something like that will likely not be retroactive. But it's easy to know, for example, whether you've turned in a quest or killed a raid boss, and so that stuff will almost assuredly be retroactive.My guess is that Blizzard will tune some of the old world achievements to make them more easily checkable (i.e. instead of "Kill 1,000 Furbolgs," it'll be something like "Be Exalted with Timbermaw Hold" -- something they can very easily know about your character). In the future, we'll probably have a few more silly achievements (Blizzard is already working on implementing a few more in-depth stats). And the real question is how/if this will all be shown in the Armory -- if websites can determine guild progress just based on the gear characters are wearing, imagine what we'll be able to do with all of this achievement data.
