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Eliza Dushku starts playing WoW
Alright, so maybe she's only picked it up after almost five years of the game being out, but it looks like actress Eliza Dushku has started to play World of Warcraft. The actress, who broke into the nerd radar when she played a renegade Slayer in Joss Whedon's Buffy, tweeted yesterday asking her followers whether she should roll Alliance or Horde. The tweet made a small ripple across the nerdverse. The Dollhouse star, whose new show is getting pummeled in the ratings, received a number of responses on Twitter, most of them telling her to roll a Horde Blood Elf. We certainly hope she bucks the trend, though... Dear Eliza, Please roll a female Tauren Druid. Sincerely, Zach Dushku isn't the first actress or celebrity to publicly reveal a geeky side, and certainly not the first, uh, cryogenically-challenged female to play the game. There's Mila Kunis from That 70's Show, Guild creator and star Felicia Day, or even gaming event staple Kat Hunter, so the actress' firing up WoW probably isn't that big a deal. I mean, it's really okay to be geeky. There's nothing to it. Even girls play video games. It's also stipulated in the nerd handbook that we should play them in our underwear. The Chewbacca one.
Ubisoft says Wii a 'female-driven platform'
Gaming is becoming more and more popular, thanks to ever-increasing sales of the DS and Wii, and that means new gamers. A large portion of these gamers are of the female variety, and Ubisoft says a lot of them are flocking to the Wii and DS. "What's driving the Wii sales is the use of Wii by women, girls and families," said Ubisoft's senior brand manager, Ann Hamilton. Hamilton says that the number of girls who game has significantly increased over the past two years, jumping from 50% in 2006 to 57% in 2008. But are they solely responsible for the Wii's success? We'd say not, but it's important to note that female gamers probably take up a notable chunk of the overall casual audience that has been so responsive to the Wii. In our experience, however, we've found that a game's ability to be fun to play overcomes all obstacles, including the huge chasm between us boys and the fair sex. [Via Endsights]
Pirates dev: PvP and crafting are "different parts of the same system"
Female-Gamer keeps up their great Pirates of the Burning Sea coverage with an interview with dev Isildur, aka Kevin Maginn. It's an excellent read, especially if you're excited about the economic possibilities in Pirates. It sounds like they've been through a few iterations of the system, and Maginn seems pretty happy with what they've landed on. It's actually closer to EVE than crafting in games like World of Warcraft, in that player craft are actually necessary in a war-driven economy, and PvP will definitely affect how and where crafting gets done. Maginn goes so far as to say trading and PvP are different parts of the same system, in that to make the best items in the game, you'll have to fight other players to get to them.He also says the beta is currently going through an expansion, so if you haven't been invited yet, your chance may be just around the corner. But even if not, there's only a few months left to wait before we all start shipbuilding and sailing the high seas.
Useful tips for Book 11
As Lord of the Rings Online players happily patch away in anticipation of buying housing, summoning their new stealth Lynx or gearing up to take down a Balrog, we at Massively wanted to provide you with a few tips and links to help you get started. Can't find the instance portals leading to the new Housing Neighborhoods? Female Gamer has screenshots of the where each Housing instance is on the map for all four racial areas. Eight more Housing Brokers, in addition to the ones in front of the Housing Instance portals, will be temporarily available to help people buy property. Check here for a list of where to find them. You cannot "hold" a house for a friend by buying it and then releasing it. Releasing a house starts a 24 hour timer before that residence is available for sale again. The Epic story for Book 11, 'Prisoner of the Free Peoples', starts where Book 10 ended, with Calenglad on the island of Tinnudir in Evendim. And don't worry if you don't get the residence you want. A new neighborhood instance is spawned as soon as the current one is sold out.
AFK a sec guys -- wife aggro
When Ryan wrote in suggesting we write about the concept of "wife aggro," a collective roar erupted over here at WoW Insider. The resulting conversation was both stimulating and more than a little silly, and in the end I decided if we can discuss this topic so profusely amongst ourselves, our readers certainly would benefit from us writing on the topic. A couple of weeks ago several people in our guild started using the phrase "wife aggro" or "girlfriend aggro" as explanations why they had to AFK or log out of the game entirely. Now, being of that oh-so-rare female gamer demographic, I really took exception to this phrase, but it wasn't until four days ago when I actually spoke up to my guildies about how I felt.
