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Widget shows character name statistics
If you've ever been fascinated by the MMORPG statistics provided at sites like the Daedalus Project, here's something right up your alley; the WoW Armory Character Distribution widget, programmed to comb both the U.S. and E.U. Armories and capture data on the popularity of character names across race, class, faction, and sex. The project is still in the testing stage, and it's a bit finicky about how you enter character names. Make sure you're always hitting the submit button and not using your enter key, as otherwise the widget will keep searching for the last name you looked for instead of your new query. Its creator, Emilis, also wrote to warn that it uses live information from both armories and will occasionally be slow as a result. I imagine it might also be inaccurate if either Armory is having problems.The widget is tremendously fun to play with and has yielded some rather interesting results even with the completely random names I keep trying. "John" and "Mary," as you might expect, are overwhelmingly Human toons, whereas the greater share of people playing a "Sergei" and "Yekaterina" are Draenei. 3 people with a "Brutus" are actually playing female characters, and 1 person with a "Laura" is playing a male character (Emilis notes that gender-bending names are surprisingly common, although from what I can tell so far this seems to be a lot more true of male names for female toons than the other way around). Most people with a "Killer" are playing a Hunter, Rogue, or Warrior. Characters named "Bank" are mostly Human Warriors, but "Banktoon(s)" are mostly Orcs. And, yes, most of the people playing a toon named Legolas are Night Elf Hunters. Are you really that surprised?Thanks to Emilis for writing in!
VG Voters send Senate 20K notes; survey up
New members to the Video Game Voters Network received an e-mail this morning letting them know that nearly 20,000 messages were sent to U.S. Senators from concerned gamers in just over a week's time.What were basically sent were form letters, addressed to the appropriate Senators, telling them not to restrict video games, and concluding with the gaming voter's name and address at the end. It looks like the more effective mailing of handwritten letters will be left up to the concerned citizens themselves.Also noted in the e-mail was a survey meant to "help [them] better target and personalize the action alerts [they] send to you." While it's up to you whether you want to share your demographic information and gaming-blog contributions with a political network (even a game-oriented one), it would probably help refine the organization's strategy in who to approach for help and how. The full letter this blogger received follows.See also: Video Game Voters Network: 10,000 strong in first week VGVN's "Contact Congress/Your Senators!" page [with form letter]
