• City State Entertainment (which was founded by Mark Jacobs, former CEO of Mythic Entertainment) just registered some trademarks in the OZ universe: "MARCH ON OZ" and "WORLDS OF OZ".


• Lucasfilm Ltd. filed trademarks (first and second) for "RED TAILS". Looks to be mostly online social services, media, and toys for the new movie I'm assuming. Nothing specifically related to video games though.


• Paradox Interactive filed a new trademark for "DUNGEONLAND". Paradox is most well known for historical strategy computer games, and they're the ones currently developing that Salem MMORPG. Dungeonland is probably a new IP, and unrelated to Gary Gygax's (no relation) Dungeonland D&D adventure module.


• UBISOFT has more movement on the Assassin's Creed front. Live streaming and television series, books and comics, audio recordings and live action entertainment. Assassin's Creed: The Opera, anyone? :) With heavy investment into new transmedia, that would mean that the next AC is probably being developed right now. (I don't follow AC though, so this might already be common news; i.e. the new AC is already being worked on or announced already.)


• Nintendo of America has filed a new Pokemon Trademark. "PIKACHU" specific goods and services ("Candies, pasta or rice, breakfast cereals, pastries, chewing gum"). I'll keep my eye on this, this could be the first of a couple more registrations. There's probably some new Pokemon announcement coming soon. But then again, isn't there ALWAYS some kind of new Pokemon announcement coming soon?


• Taito has just filed for a new "DARIUS GAIDEN" trademark. So, if you're interested in those awesome arcade shooters, it looks like they're developing Darius Gaiden for the PC and/or consoles now too.


• World Wrestling Entertainment filed a new trademark for their new "WWE SHOWDOWN" game.


• Finally, looks like EA filed domain registrations for the new Command & Conquer "Alliances" game or social services. (e.g. commandandconqueralliance.com)
  
  Fusible beat me to it though, but I thought it was worth mentioning. Domain registrations are a lot harder to track without a paid account. :)
  
  The reason I'm referencing "social services" is because they also have "alliances" in the Red Alert, Tiberium, and Generals domain names. Perhaps "Alliances" is a new social service for all Command & Conquer games and future games, much like COD Elite. It's rumored that it will be revealed at the VGA this coming Dec 10th.

Blizzard has just updated their "A Day In The Life" page and they have added two more articles on top of the originally planned three.

The most recent one is about Micah Whipple aka Bashiok aka Drysc.

For most, this is no big deal.. it's just another short article. But, this was actually a website I've been watching for a while now. Not for it's content, but rather it's scheduling of releases.

(What I'm about to explain is actually a good example of my thinking process. I'm also going to touch on Bashiok for a bit, and provide some interesting insight on a specific subject.)

About Me

You see, what Blizzard has been doing is releasing small amounts of information at a time and spreading it out to keep people busy with art and information until Diablo's release date.

It's all scheduled ahead of time; the three "Day in the Life" articles, the FB beta key sweepstakes start and end date, D3 followers information, D3 gold and cash auction houses, D3 character reveals and information, D3 item database, etc. They're all released at certain times, just to keep people busy, until the ultimate goal is reach. Makes sense right?

As soon as the three "Day in the Life" articles were completed, that would mean that they would have to move onto new bits of information until the release date.

I was keeping an eye on this schedule, and I was hoping that this wouldn't happen. But, they've now redesigned the website so that they can do 5 articles now instead of 3, meaning that they're dragging everything out even further and pushing back their information release schedule. That means everything else gets pushed back too..

About Bashiok

This is something about Bashiok that's largely unknown by many players. You might find it interesting though.

You might have noticed that Bashiok is very quick to come to the defense of the Cash Auction House. One of the very first, in fact:

We've spent a very long time working with our legal departments around the globe researching regional laws and regulations, if not obtaining government approvals.

.. we know it to be sound from a legal perspective.

If any local or country-specific laws do become an issue we'll of course be sure to let people in those regions know.

As you might have noticed, there's something very wrong with these statements. He claims it's sound from a legal perspective, and the legal team has been working on it for a long time. That means there are no problems. But then he said, if there ARE issues we'll let people know. Didn't he just say it was perfectly acceptable "around the globe"?

This was before the South Korea incident too, meaning that the legal team couldn't have been working around the globe and getting government approvals.. and they still haven't received approvals yet in all countries or regions.

This was a very old example, but even now, he'll be the first to jump on anything related to the RMAH and gambling.

The reason he's so involved and.. intense.. about the RMAH and the gambling issue is because there's something you don't know about Micah.

Jay Wilson said that Micah is "ALL FOR" turning Diablo 3 into a whole PVP / E-Sports game with player wagering and arena gambling. That video is one that has went largely unnoticed by players, but it shows how even Jay knows that he's a big supporter of gambling within the game.

Bashiok can't call it gambling, mind you, because he knows that gambling is illegal.. and I'm sure he doesn't want any players calling it that either.

A little something that I hope you found interesting since it explains why he responds to those posts and why he's an advocate of the RMAH.

Back To Blizzard

In that same interview, Sixen later said:

It's something Force and I brought up at the Press Event back in July... Gambling, Replays, and Observer Mode to PvP. Jay Wilson said they're all cool ideas they want to do at some point in time... Just... Later on down the road.

So, these gambling features might be something later on down the road.. like what I lovingly predicted for Diablo 3 X1. :)

There are probably many other supporters of gambling within the game who also see it's potential, but they all have to be very careful about using "gambling" verbiage. It's not gambling, just "games of chance and using in-game currency". Gambling in D3 is very much possible and perfectly legal because the RMAH allows it to happen through indirect loopholes.

It's one of the reasons they need the RMAH to be successful and active for a very long period of time before before they expand D3 features (like arena wagering) or put RMAH systems into other games. They need to see how the governments react to it after at least a year of activity. If governments don't say anything about it, then they'll know it's safe to proceed because it's the same as giving approval. :)

In a year from now, when players are asking why it's taking Blizzard so long to implement arena wagering, just point them back to this old post. They're simply watching and waiting.

I think it's a very cool and bold idea, and I support the RMAH.. but, I don't support the non-transparency about the whole issue. They should just admit it's gambling, get government approvals, and get it licensed (if it's legal in the region.) Even the South Korean Blizzard employees knew that it was gambling and tried to fight against it, but Blizzard HQ forced them to launch the feature. So, we know for a fact that within Blizzard walls even they know it's gambling.

I've got another PoE Key to giveaway thanks to one of our previous winners.

I don't know the exact time I'll be giving it away, but it will probably be tomorrow some time around 1:00PM PST. I'll update this post earlier in the day with a more firmed up time, once I've worked out my schedule for tomorrow.

It looks like the winners do receive new friend keys pretty quickly. So, if you're a winner, just post in the "Content Submission" area if you want to continue this trend on the site.

* UPDATE:

Looks like I'll probably do it around 2:00PM PST today instead. Will update later today as soon as I have the chance.

* UPDATE:

In 15 minutes I'll post it here, just like usual. It will be another jumble puzzle like last time. It will be 4 characters just like last time too.. 5 characters (120 permutations) is far too annoying.

* UPDATE:

FR83B-B6RQF-M55Q2-L____

Characters: 6 4 G N