Cybersurf

Hello good morning and welcome to Cybersurf – a quick update on Internet news. I am your Cybershost Steven Lang.

Last night thousands of people packed shops across Europe and North America waiting their turn for a burning crusade. Some of those queuing up were wearing bizarre costumes in imitation of their heroes.

No, it was not some charismatic church calling on the faithful to join in the good fight. Those who stayed up all night were eagerly anticipating their copies of the expansion of World of Warcraft – one of the world’s most popular online games.

The expansion is called – the Burning Crusade – and it will change forever, the way gamers inter act in the Fantasy World of Azeroth.

The Burning Crusade creates a new continent, two new races and new foes to be defeated.

Now if you think this is an irrelevant kid’s game – think again.

Massively Multi-player online role playing games or MMORPGs are big business in all parts of the world where the local telco doesn’t strangle bandwidth. To avoid spelling out this peculiar acronym, some users refer to it as a More Peg.

A More Peg is a role playing game that is played online – as its name would suggest. The fantasy worlds depend on which game you are playing – and they go by names such as – Everquest, Ultima and Lineage Two.

To find out more about MMORPGs you can just go along to MMORPG dot com where you will find out everything you could ever want to know about these games that involve hundreds, or thousands of people all playing online at the same time. The site itself claims to have more than half a million members.

A few years ago, the BBC online published an article quoting a report that said that the value of online gaming was worth more than the GDP of Namibia. I have my doubts about that, but it is true that some people actually earn their living from online gaming. This is not gambling.

Believe it or not, there are professional gamers that accumulate virtual assets in the course of the games and then sell the virtual assets for real dollars on e-Bay. It is not a scam. It is perfectly legitimate and the US government even taxes such gains.

Let’s change the music now ….

As from the beginning of this year in the UK, songs that have never been put on CD - or vinyl for that matter – now count for the charts.

This week – history was made when a song that you can only by online – by a rock band called KOOPA made it onto the charts in 31^st position.

The song, by the way is called – Blag, Steal and Borrow. If you would like to buy this track or find out more about the group then pop along to the KOOPA web site that is K.O.O.P.A which you will find at http://koopatheband.com/

And with that we wrap up today’s edition of Cybersurf – if you would like to look at the script, please go to the Cybersurf blog which you can find at Cybersurf.blogspot.Com – one more time

Thanks for listening and please join me again next week, same time same place.