Um... I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this, but according to this article on Massively.com, China's government just passed a law imposing a 20% tax on profits from selling virtual currency and/or items. Here's a peek:

"Questions remain about what will and will not be taxed in the virtual space, but it's clear that individuals who gain virtual income are expected to declare their profits and pay taxes on this, and do so within seven days of having earned the profit, according to Shanghai Daily.Taxpayers who can provide proof of the value of this property or the value of the transaction are taxed at 20 percent on their profits, while those who cannot provide sufficient verification are taxed at three percent of the total transaction value. But how many people are affected by this new system?"

I don't know, but I'll bet they're all Chinese gold farmers.

Turbine unlocked the new content for the Mines of Moria at midnight Tuesday and there was much rejoicing in Middle Earth. Between writing a review for Fallout 3 and exploring the new areas, I've been pretty busy. My early impressions are favorable. The new zones feel different, but still part of Middle Earth. The new trait design takes a while to get used to, but I like it. I'll give a more indepth review as I get further into the new content.  

Well duh... when you have 11 million subscribers in World of Warcraft, why on earth would you feel the need to replace that game with a new one? I'm not sure why this is news, but the fact that someone deems it newsworthy, I thought I'd chime in.

In a post on Videogamer.com, Blizzard COO Paul Sams talks about the potential of a WoW 2.

"We think World of Warcraft is a great stand alone product and one that a lot of people are very much enjoying. For us we feel like we can achieve great evolution and change and improvement within the World of Warcraft product with content updates and with expansion sets and will continue to do those for so long as there's a meaningful number of players that are interested in playing it."

In other words, as long as 11 million people continue to pay to play the game, there is no motive for Blizzard to release a new WoW with current generation graphics. Makes sense to me... The only way that will happen is if the subscription rate starts falling drastically.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a post up describing their experience with their new WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Here's a piece:

"Anyway, after I’d spent a short while feeling a bit too harried in Borean Tundra, a chum logged on and announced that he was headed to the other starting zone, Howling Fjord, because he’d already played through the Tundra in the beta. So I set off to join him, which proved to be a long-winded but oddly pleasing 45 minute journey up the coast and catching a sequence of boats from eerily quiet villages. I didn’t see another player the whole time. An odd turn of events for launch day, but it did give me that sense of exploration I always crave from WoW. It felt like I was catching a random train to the last stop on the line, with no idea what I’d find there. Adventure!"

NMA has a forum post with links to Fallout 3 mods and some nifty information like a very nice interactive map showing locations and bobblehead sites. There's also a handy list of recruitable NPCs, including stats. Check it out here.

Well, the WoW expansion,, Wrath of the Lich King, went live last night. Here's a quick account of one person's experience trying to access the new content. I'm sure it was frustrating, but I had to laugh. Here's a piece:

"9:08 p.m.: Rather than blow my hearthstone, I take a long nosedive off the side of the boat and procede to fall through the world, eventually splattering on some flat surface."

Read the rest of it here at GameSpy.

The news is flying all over the gaming sites that Richard "Lord/General British" Garriott is leaving NCsoft, the developer of MMO Tabula Rasa. For the uninitiated, Garriott garnered fame as the designer of the Ultima games, beginning back in 1980.

Garriott recently made news by taking a civillian flight to the International Space Station and bringing along with him, digitized DNA samples of Tabula Rasa players. Yeah... I know...

Anyway... you can read his announcement and reasoning here if you're interested.

As a side note, based on his comments, I'm wondering if a space game isn't floating around that bizzare brain of his.

P.S. A side note... although I never played it, I've read several accounts of how Tabula Rasa is a mediocre/bad game. I think the space ship is going down and he's leaving in an escape pod.