Posts with tag singapore

We already knew Heroes of the Storm was heading to China, but now Blizzard has inked a deal to bring Heroes -- and possibly other games -- to more of Southeast Asia. Expanding on Blizzard's existing agreement with Asiasoft -- which currently distributes Diablo 3, StarCraft 2, and World of Warcraft in Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore -- the deal now includes Heroes of the Storm and features distribution to the Philippines as well. Marketing and operation for the game in the Philippines will be handled by Asiasoft subsidiary Level Up! Inc.

No launch date has been set for Heroes of the Storm -- currently in technical alpha -- domestically or internationally, but we assume it will arrive on the traditional Blizzard schedule of "when it's ready."

---

The WoW TCG has just finished up their year with the World Championships, but apparently they're not sitting back on their laurels -- they've just sent word that their Realm Championships will be going down November 14-15, 2009, in cities around the world like "San Diego, Philadelphia, Helsinki, Manchester (England), Singapore and Melbourne." These are invite-only tournaments, but they're always accompanied by events that are open to the public, including lots and lots of TCG playing, giveaways and door prizes, and sometimes even special realms of the online game set up for players to join. If you've never seen a TCG event and one is headed to your city, it's worth checking out.

Additionally, the TCG folks have outlined their plans for 2010 over on their website, and it sounds like it'll be a busy year. They're kicking things off with the Scourgewar release, including the TCG loot of the mini-mounts (finally, a pony!), the Tuskarr Kite, and a Spectral Tiger Cub. And later in the year, you can look forward to a Naxxramas dungeon deck, another expansion called Wrathgate (with likely more in-game loot to go after), and finally, an Icecrown Citadel raid deck release. Should be an exciting 2010 for the trading card game -- we'll definitely be watching for that new expansion and the loot items due out with it.

The topic of addiction comes up pretty often when you're talking about World of Warcraft -- as Dr. Hilarie Cash told us, this is exactly the kind of game that brings out addictive tendencies in people who already have them. They've dealt with it in Sweden and elsewhere in the world before, and the most recent place to step up and face the problem is Singapore. This article talks about a three-year study that reveals some interesting facts about how and why Singaporean primary and secondary school students play their MMOs. The average amount of playtime per week, according to the study, is 27 hours. That's over a day of playtime per week.

Still, while that seems high (and remember, it's just an average according to this study, which apparently isn't done until the end of the year), I like the government's take at the end of the article: regulating it, either by attacking the games or putting unenforceable rules on the Internet, just won't work. If these kids are playing too much (and generally the rule is that if your life is suffering, you're playing too much -- it's hard to believe that a kid going to school can play for 27 hours a week and still have time to do homework and sleep as they need to), then it's their and their parents' responsibility to get educated and fix it. Lots of people play MMOs, but it's up to those who do it unhealthily to get help for themselves.