The Chinsese WoW Token Sure is Worth a Lot

Just recently I've created a new Twitter account to get rid of all the unnecessary distractions I had followed and only get to the core of it. I also followed @WoWTokens, which basically keeps you updated on the WoW Token prices. And that made me realise something.

What you may have noticed there is that WOW Tokens go for just under 80k gold in China. That's absolutely crazy in my opinion: the EU version currently goes for only 50k and in the US a WoW token takes only 30k gold out of your pocket and that's while the price for US is climbing.

And that's not all I found out: the Koren token goes for 190k and the Taiwanese one goes for 180k so it seems to me this isn't just pure coincidence. And I've already got an explanation.

We all work for a living, no matter where on Earth we live. But our pay checks do vary depending on where we work and unfortunately big companies see opportunities in "poor" countries like China and Taiwan to milk their industry even further. Causing most people there to live on the edge between debt and living on the streets.

This is just another case of the worth of a currency varying on where you are: we all pay exactly as much when converted to dollars, but someone from Taiwan or Korea will value it a lot more as the tokens are a lot more rare there (because nobody can actually buy them).

In the US, however, we have the opposite: people that have loads of money to spare because they unknowingly milk the other continents' industries. And they value it a lot less as it's a lot more common to have lying around.

This isn't meant to be boring, this is meant to give you an insight on how even gaming can show you how unfair the world economy is. This makes me wonder what happened in history to get us from equality to the one milking the other for every last cent.

New Helicopter With Legs

CNET just released a news flash that shows a helicopter that "lands like an insect" with its legs instead of skids. It just seemed like such a funny idea that I had to read it through.

In the beginning I didn't really get why DARPA would even bother making this: it just seems like the kind of thing an overly funded Japanese company would create. Yet it does have a very significant advantage over regular skids: it can land on uneven surfaces due to its robotic legs. 

That's right, while you may not have thought of it (because you most likely never had to) those skids are very impractical for landing in, for example, natural-disaster zones and so on. And they took care of that with what might be one of the biggest breakthroughs in helicopter technology lately. And this would be best used for good. That's awesome.

This is what I call a positive, useful breakthrough that should be celebrated.

StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void Opening Cinematic

Yesterday, Blizzard posted a cinematic for StarCraft II. If you're a hyperactive tech guy like me, you've probably already read the article about it on TechCrunch. As I always do with these, I'll give you my opinion and point of view in a nice blog post.

I think this cinematic really looks awesome. While StarCraft may not be my cup of tea at all, this cinematic alone made me consider at least trying it out. What harm could it do apart from getting me addicted to yet another video game?

It looked better graphics-wise than any WoW cinematic I've ever seen. There's obviously a huge war going on as we're going to take back Aiur and battle the massive swarm that has plagued it (sounds a lot like what the Forsaken are doing to me, just here you don't seem to have a choice of what side you take).

As I'm experienced with video editing and rendering I know how much time and effort must've went into this cinematic and how much money Blizzard spent on this fantastic work of art. The day they make the story into a movie with as good quality as that cinematic is going to be a very happy day for me, I reckon.

And with BlizzCon coming soon I don't think that'll be the only awesome footage we see, so be prepared or else... "You are not prepared!"

Apart from that I can't really give you any suggestions for what to expect as I'm not familiar with StarCraft at all.

2015 Road to BlizzCon

BlizzCon is getting closer and we have already got ourselves a cool teaser trailer! Oh boy do I love myself some teasers, for some reason they're the only type of advertisement that doesn't get me all annoyed and yelling at AdBlock to work.

It looks like the biggest event of the year for every WoW fan out there (wether you go there or not, there's always some cool content to look through and it generally gives you an idea of the future of the game). That's what it is every single year and that's not about to change: this year, it happens in Prague, Czech Republic. More specifically in the O2 arena.

The one thing I'm looking forward to is more information about the Legion expansion. I just can't get enough of those big updates and I always get so hyped about them. Unfortunately though, my attention span is extremely short and there's always something else to distract me. Perhaps I should monetize this blog in the future and even get paid for going to these events and documenting them, that would be absolutely awesome if I were able to do something like that.

Of course there's going to be some surprises as always and while you guys might have hoped for some extreme rumor-mill-ran-wild scenario on this blog, I'd have to disappoint you if you were. All I can say is I wish I could be there to see all of it for myself.

I'm hyped, not only because it's a big thing but because WoW is a big part of my life. I've spent years and years playing the game and everything that happens to it is something that changes in my life.