I'm not 100% sure I'll be getting the Lich King on release day. At the moment, I'm having fun leveling my hunter up and don't know if I can be arsed to get Baal up to 80 straight away. Also, I think that the server lag for the new area is going to be out of control for a few weeks and, being that we're in the states, I don't think my connection is going to be able to handle it too well.

As far as my hunter goes, she's a few blips away from 49 now. To BG, or not to BG...that is the question. As most of you know, we spent months at 49 last year, taking advantage of really fun and more fair competition in WSG and AB. I know that a lot of our old BG buddies have moved up to the 69 bracket now, so the old crew won't be around for whomping. That's putting me off a bit. I also want to get her running AV's, so the option to level to 59 before going into BG's is tempting. (I say 59, even though the AV cap is 60 because of WSG and AB).

I have two enchanted Hanzo's in the bank waiting for me at 50. Only problem is that there really isn't much too them stat wise. I'm obviously going to have to keep one for the character (those who know me will understand why). I was lucky enough to find my second Hanzo in WPL while leveling Lil all those months ago. Question is, should I sell one for some quick mount cash, should I level to 60+, and, if so, which one? One has Fiery and the other Life Stealing. Any suggestions would be awesome.

Anyhow...Back to play.

I hope Monkey's connection is getting better! I misses you missy!

While it was fun playing a baby mage and a kick ass hunter tonight, I have to admit that I miss my girls (and snooks). I'm dying to get back onto Baal and deliver an asswhooping or two...and also, to a lesser degree, back on lil to do some healing. It jsut doesn't feel right for a little UD girl to get onto a big male troll and try and get through doorways. I always think he's going to get stuck.

I'll try contacting Blizz again tomorrow and get this sorted out. All I want to do is a bit of raiding, a bit of drinking and a lot of PvP. It's not much to ask for really .

Since we're I'm still having Blizz issues, I thought I'd post some Baal rambles in here until I can bug everyone again.

Firstly, we're alive and doing well. Upset that we're missing Brewfest because there's a stinky cow that needs to be puked on (Ohh, one more month until he gets his annual bath ). I also need numerous new kegs for numerous alts.

I just thought I'd pop this up quick as the new searies of Heros is about to start. Anyhow, leave me a message....something about Tip-Top would be cool. Ohhhh, I found Mexican Tip-Top in Walmart, but that's another tale!

I made another Baal last night on Khad US last night and decided to take a step into the land of Destro lock. I dunno if I\'m going to be able to enjoy the shadow bolting machine gun thing too much though, as everyone knows, I love to dot and drain waaaayyyy too much. Shadow bolts are usually on my secondary action bar and only even come out for AV bosses and raids.

I have a couple of pets already. My Jakrot is called Zeprot and my Belgore is called Sartas (sounds a little like fartass to me, hence I name him farty from this moment hence). My skanybus will be called \"Whore\" and never used, while my Bruukysnooky will always be Bruukysnooky!

I\'ve got into a pretty nice guild on US, though nothing like the fits. They seem a bit quite and lack the element of fun we have. I dunno, Khad US is a disappointment in comparrison with proper Khad...and I miss everyone.

By Deborah Jian Lee

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Gina Sutton takes aim and deftly strikes down several targets in a row as they pop up on the screen in front of her.

A self-described girl gamer, she traveled from her home in Virginia to spend her 16th birthday at the Nintendo World Store in New York, and she can't understand why anyone would think video games are just for boys.

"It's like saying boys play with action figures and girls play with dolls," she said as she used a Wii Zapper in a game called Link's Crossbow Training. "I'm the girl who plays with action figures."

With her nimble fingers and bubbling enthusiasm, she is one of a fast-growing posse of female gamers in the United States and elsewhere capturing the attention of video game makers -- expanding the market beyond male-appeal games like Grand Theft Auto.

Girls and young women are a "pot of gold" for the industry, said George VanHorn, senior analyst at market research firm IBISWorld. "The gaming industry has market characteristics that many would die for."

According to IBISWorld, 38 percent of U.S. gamers are female, up from 33 percent in just five years.

From January through August of 2008 females ages 18 to 45 made up 28 percent of the total industry revenue, ranking second to males ages 18 to 45, who made up 37 percent.

Software makers have churned out a throng of non-violent, easy-to-play games in a bid to capture so-called casual gamers -- those who don't spend a lot of time on games -- and women make up a big part of that target audience.

Companies have also snapped up smaller online game makers. Last year, Walt Disney Co bought Club Penguin, which appeals to girls and boys aged 6 to 14. In 2005, Viacom Inc bought Neopets Inc.

At the Nintendo World Store in New York this month, Fatima Gomez, 8, bounced from one game to the next, looking for short, easy ones and never spending long on one.

She likes Bratz, Disney Princess and Hannah Montana and she doesn't like shooting games, said Oscar Gomez, her father, who brought his family from Mexico City on vacation.

"She doesn't care if she wins or not. It's different with this guy," he said, pointing to his son. "They like to win."

HORSING AROUND

Females accounted for 21 percent of the industry's total sales growth last year, according to Anita Frazier, a video game industry analyst from the research firm NPD Group.

Frazier said many more females were playing than were showing up in these statistics. "The challenge is not to get them to play, but to get them to spend more of their time and money on games."

One game that appeals to more girls than boys is Horseland, developed by Christina Johnson and her father, Phil Gerskovich.

When Johnson was 12, she stood at the kitchen table nearly every evening and lobbied her parents for a horse. While most parents might try to satisfy these demands with a stuffed animal or a day trip to the stables, Gerskovich created a horse avatar for his daughter.

The result was Horseland, an online pet game and social network, which they launched together in 1994. Today, Horseland lassos more than 5 million users, and has a line of merchandise and a partnership with DIC Entertainment for a CBS cartoon show.

Another factor that is making girls and women a greater force in gaming is the crossover of casual games from the online world to consoles like Nintendo's Wii. According to market researcher NPD Group, as of July 2008, the fitness game Wii Fit had sold 1.4 million units in the United States since its launch in May, drawing large numbers of female gamers.

Activision's Guitar Hero and Electronic Arts' Rock Band, in which players perform in a virtual band on console systems such as the Wii, Sony Playstation or Microsoft Xbox, also appeal to young girls who enjoy the interactive nature of the games.

Electronic Arts also publishes the female-friendly blockbuster virtual life game The Sims, which has sold over 100 million copies worldwide since its launch in 2000.

"The expanded audience of women joining the gaming community is very exciting," said Katie Cray, public relations manager for Nintendo of America. If current growth continues, the potential of the female market will only continue to expand, she said.

According to NPD Group, the top selling hardware in the United States in August was the Nintendo DS, a portable player which hosts girl-friendly games such as Nintendogs and Brain Age. Originally available in black or white, it now comes in metallic rose and silver.

Targeting the female market is part of the broad approach for the Sony Playstation console, according to Sony's Julie Han. In addition to Rock Band, she said Sony is looking to release other "gender-defying" titles like Little Big Planet, a world-creation coming in October.

In the U.S. economic slowdown, much is riding on the female gamers said Edward Williams, managing director of equity research at BMO Capital Markets.

"Publishers and developers need to create the right content that appeals to more girls in order to maintain the health of the industry," Williams said.

Still, the video game industry is reasonably small and subject to the cycles of console and game launches rather than to the broader economic cycle, so it should be continue to grow over the next two to three years, Williams said.

"As people travel less, the money spent on a video game is a little more justifiable," he said. "It provides a fair amount of entertainment value per dollar spent."

Meanwhile, some gamers lament that many female-focused games reinforce stereotypes and lack substantive content. Ubisoft Entertainment's "Imagine" line of games, for Nintendo DS, targets preteen girls with titles such as Fashion Designer, Master Chef and Babyz, a game where girls overcome obstacles to becoming "the best babysitter on the planet!"

Only 11.5 percent of the people designing games are female, according to the International Game Developers Association.

Didi Cardoso, managing editor of Grrlgamers.com, a video game review website produced by women, said that the trends in female-oriented games are pink boxes, fashion, cooking, babies and makeup. "I think a girl's world is a little bigger than that," she said

Sutton, in New York to celebrate her sweet 16 at the Nintendo World Store on September 12, said games that focused on cooking, fashion and babysitting were demeaning. Some of her favorite games are cartoon fighting game Super Smash Bros., racecar game Mario Kart and farm simulation game Harvest Moon.

"But I'm a little guilty of playing Cooking Momma, so I shouldn't judge," she said.

(Reporting by Deborah Jian Lee; Editing by Eddie Evans)

Overall, not at all impressed with Warhammer. Personally, I think it's been a bit of a rush job to get the sucker out, hence there are way too many glitches and total shutdowns.

I've created a chaos magus and a dark elf healer thingy so far (yup, both on the side of the "baddies"....not so untypical from Mrs Hordie here). Tbh, they are pretty unattractive to look at. The chaos girl seems to be a bit undeady, though not at all cute like Baal, but she can summon pets, though the demon's don't seem to move with you once they are created, so it's a pain in the ass to drag shit back for it to fight, and she does fly about on this magic carpet disc thing. If you like surfing corpses, then this is the gal for you.

The dark elf healer thing confused me though. When I first loaded her, I thought I made a mistake and made a melee character because she has these two kick ass swords to slash with. I'm not big into melee, hence my shaman didn't last more than a couple of days, and as for healing...why create a total healer when I have lil who can go between kick ass shadow dmg and healing whenever I want to respec?!

As I said above, there's way too many glitches at the moment, which still makes it feel as though the game is in BETA. A couple of times my head vanished totally and without warning. The background also has a tendancy to get really patchy and I completely dropped from the game and back onto desktop numerous times. That pissed me off. It's not even as though I have a shitty computer as Daddy Nano built me a real kick ass one when I got here, especially for gaming and high end graphic design.

Questing is pretty okay. Everything seems pretty straight forward as far as directions to mobs and info is concerned, so that is one plus. There are also very early PvP quests, that buff your levels up to be able to fight, AND you can loot items from dead players from the other team (they don't lose gear, you just get loot drops from them). The PvP map I've encountered so far seems like a cross between a mini AB and EotS, where you have to controll bases until your side reaches 500 points. So far it looks as though the Hordish side are PvP dominant, which is pretty interesting. You also obtain leveling points from these PvP objective kills, which is a nice way to level, if you're like me and into PvP. Also, there's some community quests in certain areas. Not really sure what that's about just yet, but it looks pretty fun.

One other issue I have with the game is that it looks too old school. The graphics remind me of D2, which is pretty bad really considering all the advancements in gaming graphics since 2002! Maybe I'm a little too spoiled after playing WoW for so long, but really, I think that if any game worth its salts wants to be compaired to the most popular mmo, then it should be able to compete graphically.

Baal says that it's not worth the initial $49 to buy the game, or is it worth the spondoodles per month to play. Stick to WoW!

Is it really essential for me to have two warlocks on the same server, in addition to the other 4 alts with no direction or real motivation to play them?

I logged onto Ruby (level 12 belf lock) last night, trying to decided on a new haircut and what the hell to do. I put my three points into destro, for no real reason other than Baal is total aff, but I don't know if a) leveling another lock would be fun, especially as it's a belf, and b) if destro is decent for me seens as shadow bolt only ever makes an appearence duing raids. I did initially intend to get her to 49 for pvp, as that's where we loved pvp the most. Now, I dunno if I have the will to even get her that far. Maybe it would feel better if I re-rolled as UD, but I'm effing sick of the Trisfall and on run.

I used to love the Tris run, as it's the fastest route to level. I have it down totally. 1-5 deathknell, 5-13 brill, 13-19 silverpine (inc sfk), 19-24ish tarren, hop to 1k from 25-30, back to tarren for 30-35, over to stv upto 45...blargh, blargh, blargh. All the same and I've done it countless times on numerous servers now...well, to the end of silverpine at least.

Anyhow, I guess what I'm saying is that I find my pally boring, my druid fun but cba, my mages both suck, another lock and priest....

What should I do?! Maybe I'll play my hunter for a while....unless anyone wants to do some instance runs with a shonky holy priest and a kick ass lock. Yous tell me

People have been getting it together online for years now, whether it's via dating and contact websites or virtually via their avatars in online worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second Life. But it took a Florida plumber to develop a system that further blurs the line between the virtual and real worlds.

"I've been called the Hugh Hefner of the digital millennium," says 47-year-old SL entrepreneur Kevin Alderman. "I consider myself a facilitator and an innovator." Alderman was quick to sign up to the virtual world program when it launched in mid-2003. And while he happily lost many an hour to cyberspace, there was something about SL that annoyed him.

"The characters on screen - the avatars - couldn't touch. There was a barrier in the coding and they'd bounce off each other." Alderman set up Eros, which is now a multimillion pound software company, and the next step on the evolutionary ladder for cybersex was born.

Using the SexGen software developed by Eros, users can "interact" with each other more fully. "We go the full spectrum from a kiss or caress, right through to all the positions of the Kama Sutra - anything you can imagine. You type, or say, what you want to do and the avatars do it. And they make a full range of noises."

Sexed-up avatars

Eros also customises avatars so you can turn your run-of-the-mill onscreen representation into any type of anatomically correct stud or vixen you can think of. Alderman's own alter-ego - the rugged lothario Stroker Serpentine - is now something of an SL legend. "And then I met Fyre Rain, who I love dearly and became my online partner," he says.

Which would be a fairytale ending to the story ... if it were not for the fact that Kevin is happily married with two children. "I'm very honest with my wife about what I do, we have a strong relationship, and I couldn't do this without her support." His wife, Debbie, agrees. "I absolutely don't think it's cheating - because she's a cartoon character in my mind," she says.

"He might be physical with himself, but he's not actually physical with her, and that doesn't bother me. It's a role, a fantasy, a character." But what of the emotional connection he has with a woman who lives nearly 1,000 miles away, with her own real-life husband and children? They claim to be in love with each other; doesn't that count as adultery?

"No [it's not emotional cheating], as you can have an emotional relationship with many people, but that doesn't make it adulterous," says Debbie. She also didn't have a problem when Kevin's online partner started getting jealous because he wasn't spending enough time on SL, or when Kevin met Fyre Rain in the real world. ("It was very nice," said Kevin. "There wasn't any sexual awkwardness, it was just like meeting up with an old friend, although it was a little odd when we went back to having sex online.") However, Debra does concede: "If she was hot and 20 I might have to think again."

Dr Sarah Munwah, a pyschologist from Berkeley University, doesn't agree. "I think it is very much cheating, and I think they're kidding themselves if they don't think of it that way. This is a situation where you have to be withdrawing some of your energy from [your wife] and your family in order to pursue another relationship. You wouldn't feel comfortable doing that in the real life, and it may not be skin to skin, but you're still doing essentially the same thing."

Aside from issues of adultery, Munwah admits she finds SL fascinating. "It is a very interesting area in terms of psychology. Because of the barrier the virtual world creates, people feel less inhibited and will experiment with experiences and personality traits they would not normally consider.

"The real question this leads to is, which relationship is more honest? The real world where people are often embarrassed to say what they really feel, or the virtual whose mask allows relationships to develop uninhibited?"

Both online infidelity and real/virtual world relationship development were investigated in the BBC One documentary Wonderland: Virtual Love and Cyber Space in January. The programme followed "Carolyn" as she receded ever more into the virtual world, spurning her husband and four children, for "Elliot".

Things came to a head when "Carolyn" flew from Pennsylvania to London. Alas it turned out, that the real-world "Elliot" didn't quite match up to his muscle-bound, weapon-clad, topless online persona.

"I think I had more hopes that it [the relationship] could be carried outside of SL," said a weepy "Carolyn" who subsequently returned home to rebuild her real-life marriage.

So what does the future hold for online lovers? Alderman sees the future becoming even more interactive. "We sell products that remotely actuate, erm, 'marital aids', from within the virtual world. I can have a device operated halfway across the planet."

Alderman believes that his $40,000 sensor suit which he uses for avatar development, converting real-life movements in to digital movements, will be able to be used in real time when internet speeds quicken.

Having a stroke

And he is working on a way to combine this with other technology which could lead to scenes that were once only the realm of sci-fi movies such as The Lawnmower Man. "There are systems - haptic technology - that use electronic pulses to contract muscles. So by using this as an interactive device you can actually feel like someone is touching, or stroking, or caressing you. We're currently looking into them ... they're only a couple of years away."

Many a Second Life addict may well never leave the house again

Kinda creepy, huh?!

Just a short post to say how excited I am about this community and that I can't wait until this gets going properly.