Any of you lucky enough to have never experienced the World of Warcraft might not be aware of the vast underground industry that exists to supply impatient players with gold and high level characters. As the story goes, somewhere out there, armies of geeks sweat away in basements turning Warcraft gold into top dollar, or yen, depending on who you talk to.

The biggest battle faced by Blizzard Entertainment (the makers of Warcraft) is keeping control of the endless wave of spam on the chat channels from companies attempting to sell players this ‘illegal’ gold. It’s all pretty basic stuff, just slap ‘cheap gold at www.warcraft-gold.com’ up on the chat channel a few hundred times until the account gets pulled, set up a new account and repeat ad infinitum.

I’ve been bored silly by the game for ages now but after a couple of weeks immersed in Credit Crunch stories it seemed like great time to exit reality – looks like I picked a good moment too.

Just after entering one of the capital cities ‘MMOINN.com’ was slowly spelt out on the floor with dead Gnomes, to the excitement of my fellow players. Hats off to the programmers who pulled off this spectacle however, as the letters began to fade away someone asked me what it said, before answering I had to double check this screen shot to be sure, leading to the enevitble conclusion that when using dead Gnomes, the message is in fact more important than the medium.

Why waste time thinking? Let the Ad-o-matic take the strain.

Coming up with award winning ads day after day is hard work. But thanks to the Ad-o-matic, with a few clicks you can create great ads in an instant. Leaving you free to get on with the important jobs – like deciding what trainers to wear to the next award ceremony.

So the next time the Creative Director comes knocking, you know what to do.

Hard to believe but apparently we’re still in the grips of a hosepipe ban. A permanent reminder sitting in your garden shed (next to your hosepipe) might prove to be a better advert for water saving than the current rash of posters.

I’ve calculated that one 48 sheet poster for one month in a half decent location could buy about 833 units.  So in this instance the medium is indeed the err… message.

*£2,500 / **£3 = 833 units

*www.viacom-outdoor.co.uk
**www.tradekey.com

The news that Sony lawyers have successfully closed down video game importer Lik-Sang will no doubt come as a blow to every video game enthusiast. Lik-Sang has always been like having a bunch of friends in Japan, whose sole purpose was to seek out cool stuff for you.

You’ve got to wonder how many hundreds of thousands of pounds Sony spends each year developing relationships with early adopters and members of the gaming community. It seems obvious that they should have regarded Lik-Sang and its customers as a resource, not as a threat.

I guess I’ll just have to put this incident behind me, be patient, and form an orderly queue outside Argos.