Today is indeed a dark day. The world mourns, as the man who made the moonwalk famous returns back to the earth from which he came. Michael Jackson has died today, June, 25th 2009. The cause of death has now been confirmed to be cardiac arrest. Michael Jackson was indeed larger than life. His talent could be described by many adjectives, most of them will fall under the categories unreal, awesome and gigantic. We can not imagine an artist stepping forward and re-creating the magic that is Thriller, Beat it, Scream, Never Can Say Goodbye, or any one of the numerous titles that Michael has released. We as a people can only hope to capture that intense lightning in a bottle once more. One more time for future generations to enjoy. Michael's death will be mourned by many, gamers and non-gamers alike. He has left for the world an extensive discography, movies, music videos and for us here at mmosite Michael left us a game.

Michael Jackson Moonwalker for the Sega Genesis.

He was so terribly good at everything he did, and though this game may by some standards be considered bad, I look back on it now and see that it is good. In this medium that I can so

I want to pay respect to those special women inside each and every MMO. They are behind every controller, keyboard, mouse, and monitor. They raid dungeons and player level the weak. They love games but they love their children even more. Have a happy mothers day. Thank you for teaching us respect and patience. It's because of you we can wait at spawn point for three hours and keep our cool. It's your love and compassion that keeps the internet and electricity turned on. We take you for granted and you love us anyway.

HOORAY FOR THE MOTHERS!

Special shout to Ma-Chan within DOMO

GOOFY from Holic

And my Okasan.

     Everyone knows that blogging for MMOSite is one of the 7 pleasures left in today's world, that can completely consume your soul. The problem is how do we write an article that satisfies our narcissistic need to see our own article featured in that top left window to glory. Many have blogged their hearts out but only a set few have made it. It makes one start to question themselves, does my writing suck? Am I not on the cutting edge of gaming and pop culture? Is my opinion really irrelevant? All those things just may be true! In the off chance that they aren't though here are a few suggestions, my top ten tips,  to get your own feature article into the Valhalla which is the MMOSITE front page.

Tip #1 It's all about the article. Write the best article you can possibly write! Though the concept may seem a bit foreign you may want to proofread whatever it is that you wrote. The first step to having everyone respect and enjoy your idea is to make sure that they can understand it!

Tip #2 Article length is important try to write an article that you, would read in it's entirety. It's trying to balance the fine line between your article

      Ever get the old I am bored to tears feeling? Maybe at school or work you have access to a computer but downloading and beginning a dungeon raid on your favorite MMO is just out of the question! Well like most of us I am sure you retreat to your social network of choice for what we call time wasting entertainment. What we all have yet to realize is that these highly interactive turn based and action games provided by our friend networks are covert MMO browser games. I realized after playing my favorite Facebook game NATIONS. What once began as my own personal way of satisfying my curiosities of running my own government and creating my own sick twisted views of political utopia quickly became a highly interactive RPG. The developers of the low tech Text based question and answer game engine, added a factions feature and a forum. Now we make collaborative decisions each effecting our own individual nation and the state of our faction. It is this easy to make the leap from single player to MMO.

      Allow me to tell you the story of a young girl named Nancy. Nancy spent the past 4 days playing a game on facebook named Soro

     These days you can usually find me within the Holic Universe playing my Rogue/Hunter. I wanted to hold off on writing a Joe official article about this period of uncertainty within the Holic universe that I refer to as the transiton. Holic Usa or Holic 1 is scheduled to be updated sometime this year to Holic 2 which, thanks to our friends overseas who already have the game, sports an array of cool new features and content. Features such as the much anticipated PVP mode, faction wars, More pets, more maps and dungeons, a new character species, skill tree's etc. The release of Holic 2 was slated for early January 2009, here we are late february and still no Holic 2.

The release date being pushed back was our first warning sign of bad things to come. The second concern shared by myself and many other player was wether the game would be a stand-alone or a patch style expansion of what is now Holic 1. This was a determining factor in wether current players of Holic One should continue to play on their accounts, spending crucial NCash (Actual Currency) to level up only to have to repeat the process when Holic 2 is released, clearly a formula which equates to a wa

      I have to say that one of the most difficult task's before me is to predict how my most favorite activity ever (gaming) will evolve in the years to come. I noticed one thing over the years, New technology follows a very distinct trickle down effect, first its used for military application, then the porn industry applies it to sex, and then it is used to enhance the overall gaming experience. So with that said I sat down put my mind to the grind stone and tried to come up with what I would be the next logical step for Our World of MMO's to take. The future of gaming as forecast by me proceeds as such:

Reality made virtual 

     The first idea I wanted to throw out there came after I saw this magical device in a RadioShack, the Rovio. Now we have all seen those guys at a large arena type establishment, using those big remote controllers, and slamming robots with chain saws attached into each other. Definitely not MMO, but the Rovio can be controlled from anywhere in the world via it's WIFI uplink. I’m thinking a company has you purchase your own Rovio or other mobile webcam device, and you send it to them. The company th

      From the inception of gaming whether it be your basic, Ping noise to a full orchestra playing the music for that final boss battle, sound has been crucial to a gamers experience. Sadly It is in my opinion the case has been more often than not, sound and music take a backseat to visuals on the rank of importance for the developers, and often times for the gamers as well. I have been guilty of lowering the back ground music of many an MMO and Console game alike turning up the SFX sounds and simply playing to my own playlist of hit mp3s. This while it does make for maximum enjoyment of the game because I tailored it to myself takes away from the magic that could be potentially created if the time was taken to create more than the simple repetion of 3 chords and a simple melody. The end result of well developed game music, is it finds its way to fame and immortaliztion on my and a vast number of other music enthusiasts playlist rotation.

Now game music can gain a cult status a number of ways but the usual suspects are as follows, The game becomes incredibly popular, The music was done by a popular band or group, An already popular song ,or the music create

      In my random day dream. I had an idea that was based on the ideas that america is supposed to be based on. I think we can alll agree that within MMORPG's even though the genres may differ, the content will vary, and our objectives are not all the same, those free flowing worlds built on code are where we all reside. I may spend more time within an MMO than I spend outside, this may not necessarily be a positive thing but people some people do. Now those people need to have a strong administrative oversight that produces new content and keeps the game functional fun and expanding. The people who rule these are the developers, Admins, GM's, all your local game governmnent. They are here to protect us from Anarchy but what exactly is in place to protect us from tyranny? Would it be too progressive to think that there can be a standard set of values that different developers, may one day all adopt that has provisions to both protect the gamer from Anarchy and Tyranny? I am suggesting to add a tab guareenteeing a gamers Bill of RIghts. 10 core principles that cannot be taken away from that gamer by anyone not admin and not other gamers.

The

     I found one of my earlier paper papers titled Video Games and your Brain, and realized two very important facts I was not as great a writer as I thought I was one and two I was on to something big when I considered how Mirror Neurons were manipulated by the stimulus from the gaming world. Just to get things rolling I’ll make a bold statement, we can through our mirror neurons learn and experience how to perform certain actions that we ourselves may never have done one day in our lives. Mirror Neurons are credited with learning through imitation. The argument that people have been making from the beginning of time is this, violent video games make you want to be violent. And the counter argument is such “I’ve been playing video games for _ number of years, and even though I can tell you how many rounds are in a standard-issue Desert Eagle (thank you counter strike) I’ve never owned one, let alone planned to kill someone with it. Why haven’t I turned to a life of violent crime?” (Gouskos 2006)

I think its time we learn to separate the potential facts from the numerous amounts of fiction. Mirror neurons through the use

     I spent some time thinking today, I as a writer enjoy writing, and as a gamer I enjoy gaming but the possibility of being paid for either is the shangri-La of my imagination. As time goes on the world of gaming has grown in a technological sense and in terms as an industry on the whole, and it's this industry part of gaming that feeds our fledgling fantasy of being paid a hefty salary to simply play games. Imagine not having to worry about your expenses because today your going to log into {Insert Game}and your sponors are going to pay you. Well we all know this is not a fantasy. The professional gaming world is gaining steam, its chugging along each year, as more tournaments are held, more gamers gain sponsors and more guilds and clans also find that corporate backing. Which lead me to ask the proverbial question how can I earn a living as a gamer? How can I Joe player ascend into what has always been my and probably every serious gamers dream job.

Well the sad part to becoming a professional gamer is that there is no guide. There is no checklist of things that will land you a sponsorship with a multimillion dollar corporation will