Posts with tag donation

If you missed your chance to purchase a ticket to BlizzCon 2011 last month, there's still a way to get yourself in the door if you're feeling charitable.

Looking For Group: BlizzCon, a networking site for organizing groups and meetups at BlizzCon 2011, is giving away one ticket to a random member of its website who makes a charitable donation to Child's Play. Child's Play, if you don't recall, is a charity created by the authors of Penny Arcade to give toys and games to kids in children's hospitals.

To enter, all you have to do is join LFG: BlizzCon (it's free) and make a donation to Child's Play by June 30, 2011, at 11:59 p.m. CST. The donation can be for any amount, small or large. To read the complete rules on how to donate for the contest, check out the official contest page.

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Blizzard made a donation of over $1.1 million to the Make-A-Wish Foundation yesterday in a special presentation held in Irvine, California. This was 50% of the total sales of the Pandaren Monk Pet in November and December of last year. Blizzard invited 15 Wish children and their families to the ceremony and also to hang out with the WoW developers and learn how the game is made.

Blizzard has a long standing relationship with Make-A-Wish. The story of Ezra is heartwarming, though tragic. Mike Morhaime also thanked the players:

This donation also reflects the spirit and generosity of our players -- their enthusiasm for World of Warcraft and for supporting a good cause made this possible.

Purchasing the Pandaren Monk pet no longer donates money to the cause, but is still available at the Blizzard Store.

Azeroth United, the internet media community for all things World of Warcraft, has been holding a charity drive for Child's Play since November 1st. Hearts, Hands, and Voices has already surpassed their initial goal of $5000 and is now hoping to reach twice that by their end date of December 13th. Sunday, our very own Mike Schramm played Rock Band for 9 hours -- until his fingers hurt -- to raise money for the drive. Also, you can blame Syrana for all your troubles on Twitter and help raise money for the charity, just by tweeting.

If you wish to join in on the fun and support this Penny Arcade-run charity, please donate by clicking on the ChipIn link at the main HHV site, or any of the supporting sites. ChipIn was the same service that the WoWathon players used to also raise money for the hospitalized children who are the recipients of Child's Play's funds, toys, games, etc. The donations from this service go directly to the charity.

Hearts, Hands and Voices have drawings for donating $10 or $20 that include some really cool things like ThinkGeek gear or a Warcraft Stein. Please go check out the goodies you could win just for a small donation to a great cause. And if you don't, well, I blame Syrana.

The last time we posted about Brajana and her SPCA charity drive over on Mend Pet, she'd only just started it and was revving up to get a nice list of prizes going. Nowadays, she's got a great list of prizes (including a free FigurePets set, a few good loot cards, some custom-made character artwork, and even a custom-designed UI -- you can make yours look just like Turpster's if you want), and she's rolling into the last few days of the drive. It all ends on Friday, July 31st, so if you haven't gotten your donation in to the SPCA International yet (the money will go to volunteer programs, including animal shelters all of the world, and help out with food, shelter, and vaccination costs), do so right away. And make sure to follow the instructions on Brajana's site -- for every donation you make, no matter how big or small, you'll get two chances to pick up some of that great loot, and you'll be helping out real-life pets all over the world.

It's a great way to help out a worthy cause, give some back to the Warcraft community and the hard work that bloggers like Brajana do, and maybe even win some free stuff. Remember, she's asking for your donation before Friday, July 31st, so head over there and get it in as soon as possible.

Yes, after a short and tumultuous journey into the world of video last week, our podcast returns to its audio roots, and this week, Turpster and I welcome a special guest host, direct from Brigwyn's Child's Play charity auction. Listener Kevin D. was kind enough to step up and donate a very generous amount of money to Child's Play, and for that (and because he's a cool guy), we'll be welcoming him on the show. He's got a few things he wants to talk about, including how guilds work together, how to balance WoW and life, and why people are or aren't shy as they play the game. And of course we'll answer a few of your emails (you can send those to theshow@wow.com now), and during the meat of the show, we'll talk about the most popular posts from the last week.

Should be a lot of fun, and hey here's this: by the time we go live, we'll all know whether we have BlizzCon tickets or not. Scary, no? Join us over on the our Ustream page at May 30, 2009 3:30 PM EDT , or you can jump after the break to see an embedded feed. And if you don't make it, don't worry -- we had some unfortunate issues with all of the video last week, but I can guarantee that this week, our audio will be back in the feed ready for your ears on Monday.

Should be a lot of fun -- we'll see you on Saturday afternoon.

If you're a machinima regular, you're probably familiar with Myndflame. The name can refer to the machinima website, where a wide and varied group of authors gather to share their work, comment on one another's pieces, and generally do the hang-out thing. Or, the name can refer to a specific set of artists, who put together pieces like Illegal Danish. That group's got a lot going on.

The Myndflame team is offering a few select pieces of swag over on their official site, as rewarsd for charitable donations. They've got a few limited edition shirts available, as well as a couple discontinued CDs. The purpose of this offering, of course, it to help provide for the ongoing development of the Myndflame community. They've been working with Blizzard to promote a better understanding of machinima and machinima law, as well as working to try and get more people involved in machinima creation.

The items have a little history to them. The shirts were produced for the Myndflame team, and one was given away at Blizzcon 2008. The remainder are the only ones left from that print run, and remain crispy clean and unworn. The CDs are only available digitally nowadays, so it seems likely these originals come from someone's personal stash. If you know someone who's a fan of the Illegal Danish series, these might make a nice gift -- Clint's offered to sign and personalize anything you get.

The guys behind Carbonite have finally responded to Blizzard's new addon policy, and probably not in the way you might have guessed: they're continuing development, and they're making the addon free. Carbonite was rumored to be the addon that started all of this trouble: they had a partial version up for free download, and were charging for the full version of the addon, which apparently Blizzard didn't appreciate. But rather than shutting down the addon completely, they've decided to go free for everyone, and they're continuing development -- version 3.00 is supposed to be out next week.

It's worth noting that they still have a number of donate buttons on their download page, which Blizzard is supposedly fine with -- all Blizzard wanted was the donate buttons out of the game itself. And of course, if you find this addon (or any other) helpful, you should definitely support the people who make it.

Reaction on the addon's forums is grateful as expected -- lots of people figured that this addon would be shutting down for good, so many are glad to see it will be continuing development. And one developer does say that Carbonite will be removing any obfuscation from their code, as per the new policy, so it's possible that other addon developers will be able to more easily hook into their code and use their techniques. Of course, whether the addon will still be financially worth it for the devs remains to be seen but for now, they're going along with the new policy and widening their audience at the same time.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Recently I donated a character slot to the cause of guild management. One of our guild officers thought it was a good time to start a guild bank system, and since I had an extra character sitting around (goodbye Fela, I'll miss you) I offered my services for managing the guild bank. So we created Donations, an officious little gnome with a penchant for bureaucracy. Our system is highly organized, thanks to minds that are substantially better at these things than mine.

We built the donations system along the gold standard. Each item donated is assigned a point total based on how much gold it is worth in the auction house. I downloaded Auctioneer, and that has cut my research time in half. The guild bank accepts certain crafting supplies along with monetary donations. Any greens or blues donated are auctioned and the player is given points corresponding to the amount of money it sold for. The points are a lot like DKP, you spend them on items or gold whenever you need them. The more points you have, the more points you can spend on items donated to the guild bank, or withdraw in the form of cash should you need to pay for some hefty purchase in the future – epic flying mounts anyone?

So far the system has been pretty successful in its beta phase. Several of us, myself included, were able to save enough points for mounts for our alts. I am hoping that when Blizzard instigates its guild bank system in the future it is something that is this intuitive. I know personally I like being able to get value from items that I cannot use (exactly how much Knothide leather does an Alchemist need?), and it's important to me that we are able to provide supplies to those in the guild who need them. What are you guild bank systems like? Do you tithe, or are the donations all voluntary? And what would you like to see in the guild bank system Blizzard is proposing as an addition to the game?