WoW Guide- The Burning Crusade and WoW Grinding
By Lisa Wimes

Grinding,.. if you play WoW you have to know that some people simply love it and some people absolutely hate it. You can start grinding for multiple reasons: if you are leveling, you can grind on some mobs, just because they got good drops, xp and cash. Further into the game when you’re more or less reaching the end, you will mainly grind for stuff needed for your professions, or just for gold.

In the Burning crusade, some people strife to get the epic flying mount, as the skill costs 5000gold (which is a lot), grinding is almost crucial to get it.

The ideal grinding mob is a mob that has low HP (Casters), doesn’t have a skill that gives you a debuff or deals high damage, and of course drops some good loot. I will focus this short guide on grinding in the Outlands, since there are already a lot of non-TBC WoW guides.

When you’re discovering Outlands for the first time, you will soon notice a new type of cloth being dropped here: Nether Weave. These cloths sell pretty well, due to the fact that tailors need lots and lots of them. On the way to 70, without grinding too much, you will find about 100 stacks at least. On my server these sell for about 6-7Gold a stack, so that means a lot of money.

Most players consider browsing the AH(Auction House) being a waste of time when they’re just starting out, which is a quite shame as they’ll be missing out on a tremendous part of the game. Browsing the AH is and will always be helpful, as it gives you the opportunity to learn about the specific prices and economy on your server. After a while you’ll be able to find and buy really under-priced stuff, to sell it for a much higher price, resulting in a nice profit. This might actually help you to get your Epic Mount.

BC (Burning Crusade) came out. Most likely, you will notice that there’s a lot of 'primal' stuff going around at the AH. These things are needed for almost every profession above 300. You’ll have to farm motes in order to get those. (Especially elementals drop these.) On my server, the primal Fire is the most expensive one of them, which is easily farmable as a level 70 in Shadowmoon Valley. Depending on your server and local economics, you’ll usually be able to sell them for a nice 30-40g each. Go after the Blood Elfd in Netherstorm, as they’ll drop both Scryer items, and heaps of Nether Weave. It will of course vary from class to class which mobs will be the easiest to grind, and I personally prefer an affliction lock for the job, but your own experience might prove otherwise of course.

Some final words of advice: always keep track of the Auction House with a special bank character, do your economics, farm primal and Nether Weave or reputation items with your main character, and get rich!

The Growing World of Online Gaming?
By Alastair Harris 

What is a MMORPG? In short it is a massive multi-player online role playing game.

Online gaming has continued to increase in popularity. So much so that gaming income is now greater than the income earned by Hollywood. The future of entertainment is no longer in the hands of the pretty people from Hollywood but is more likely to be determine at the hands of the geeks and nerds working on the next big computer game.

MMORPG's are played online, 24 hours a day throughout the world and now have millions of players - massive is the only correct word for them.

Many people would have become aware of the world of online gaming through parodies in tradition forms of media, newspaper, television and movies. Perhaps one of the most popular was South Parks take on World of Warcraft which poked fun at the addictive nature of world of warcarf and MMORPG's, yet also paid homage to the power in the world of entertainment.

World of Warcraft or WoW is a complete online fantasy world - a bit like the old dungeons and dragons on steroids. You can take on the character of one of eight races and even within that there is further choices like a wizard/mage, warrior, paladin and the list go on. So popular has these games become that their is a demand for provision of some of the supplies in the game - namely Gold. So much so that people in China are making a living playing online 12 hours a day and selling the 'earned' Gold to Gold hungry players in the US, Japan and Europe. How much money potential is there in online games - well WoW has 8.5 million players each paying a monthly fee of $9.95 a month to play means someone or some company is a billionaire.

The addictive nature of these games is so dangerous that people have died as a result of playing for too long. In S.Korea they estimate 10 deaths a year - mainly for a person playing online for 80 hours straight and developing deep vein thrombosis - i.e. dying from blood clots. A word of caution if you love playing online games, in fact if you love the internet, get up every hours and go for a walk or do a short set of exercises.

The are numerous companies willing to jump on the bandwagon with so much money at stake. Another popular program is second life. Second life is literally that - it offers you a second life. Some people find their own real life so suckie that they get online where there life can be as they imagine they want it. Second life is interesting in that it has even created an online currency - Linden dollars - which exchange with real currency - $L 270 to $1 USD. Some people are so successful at there online fantasy businesses 'malls, casinos, shops, nightclubs' that they are earning thousands in REAL money. Where these fantasy economies will lead the real financial system has yet to be determine.

These online worlds are only likely to multiple as the graphics and experience becomes more realistic. Where this will lead only time will tell. Maybe your child's future job will be in a fantasy world? Maybe your next partner will be meet online? Maybe your television will become a unused out of date piece of entertainment?