Posts with tag new-york

The New York State attorney general has announced a widespread, sweeping purge of sex offenders from online games, Forbes reports. Working with companies such as Microsoft, Disney, and Blizzard, New York State, which requires sex offenders to register their emails, is using those emails to remove accounts and ban players from services.

Going by the name Operation: Game Over, the effort has already banned more than 3,700 accounts from a variety of online games and web spaces. Eric Schniderman, New York's attorney general, was happy with the cooperation from these big companies and online portals.

As virtual worlds grow and more and more people enter online games, keeping tabs on children and predators is an increasingly worrisome topic. By using the existing sex offenders registry, the state can start with whatever information it already has as it moves to expand the program. Read the full story on Forbes.

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MTV's Multiplayer blog has an interview with Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime (who is apparently sitting pretty with the elven ladies after last week's big expansion launch). He says that he sees no end to the expansions -- Blizzard has told us before that as long as they have ideas (and players), they'll keep making content for this game. He also says that they're happy with the subscription model in the United States -- although we'd imagine that both of those things might get rethought if Blizzard's subscription numbers were going the other way. For now, though, while things are headed up, Morhaime sounds pretty happy with the way things are.

Finally, they ask about an iPhone app, and Morhaime says Blizzard is working on connecting mobile devices up to the game, but he also specifically says they're not looking at a stand-alone app. So maybe a mobile version of the Armory? I'd love to see an iPhone app, as we've said before, with mail or auction house functionality, but maybe Blizzard doesn't see the majority of their audience on the iPhone anyway. Then again, their Mac guys always need something to do...

Whether you're attending the midnight release event at Best Buy in New York City or not, you might be interested in the fact that they've set up their own Twitter account to document the event. It looks like it's getting some use earlier than expected, too. It's currently a little after 3 PM in New York, and the first two attendees have already been waiting in line for at least two hours!

I think it's beyond cool that they took the time to set up this feed. Liveblogs are some of the funnest things to read on days like today, and Twitter is the perfect venue for it if you don't have your own dedicated site set up for something like that. And those early attendees? Okay, they're a little crazy, but I'll go ahead and give them props for it. Events like this don't happen every day, so you might as well make a story out of it. When The Burning Crusade launched, I walked three hours in a Wisconsin winter while it was snowing to pick up my copy. Was it insane? Yes. Was it fun? Yes! If you don't have a story to tell after an event like this, you missing half of the fun. Go out and make the best of today!

If you plan on following this feed and you're new to Twitter, don't forget to follow WoW Insider's very own twitter account where you'll see alerts and anecdotes from our team. You might also be interested in some silly fun and want to follow a few Warcraft characters as they tweet.