Character recognition, matching

Listening to music, rhythm

Count, sequence number

Color shape

Paintings

It took several days for me to finally get my character copied over to World of Warcraft's Player Test Realms (or PTR). Imagine days of incessantly refreshing browser windows, waiting for the copy button to finally turn red from its persistently grayed-out state. I'd try in the late evenings and early mornings, in the middle of the work day and on lunch breaks. Why do I feel that testing unfinished content is worth the effort? After essentially "beating WoW," Ulduar promises new challenges, and I don't have the patience to wait for it to reach the live servers. My raiding guild has been clearing all of WoW's current endgame content on Tuesday nights. We come together once a week for four-hour raids that have us clear 25-man Naxxramas, Eye of Eternity, and 25-man Sartharion with three drakes. The guild leadership occupies itself on the other days of the week running their alts through the same content, and monopolizing the jewelcrafting market on the auction house, essentially playing the waiting game until the forthcoming 3.1 patch introduces Ulduar, the next tier of raid encounters. The guild members have all been asked to get their geared-out characters copied over to the PTR, so we can get the strategies down for these new fights before they go live.

Stardock CEO Brad Wardell claims it's far too early to declare a winner in the digital distribution derby. Writing in a blog post for the UK's Edge magazine, Wardell is reponding to a recent article that details the beginning and current success of Steam, Valve's own digital distribution solution. In his post, Wardell acknowledges that Steam has "a commanding early lead," but that it's still too soon to determine whether it will continue to be dominant in the digital distribution space five years down the line. According to Wardell, Steam's large number of accounts may be misleading in that only about a million and a half users log in every day, far less than the 16 million users and 20 million or so accounts Valve claims for the system. Of those, the majority are there for Counter-Strike and never play any other game. He concludes his argument by pointing out that Steam has yet to face any real challenge, but that with more and more titles coming out on multiple digital distribution platforms, exclusivity (as Valve has with its own games) will recede behind the need for better customer service and more features. Wardell, of course, is hardly a disinterested party in this discussion, as his company's digital download service, Impulse, is a direct competitior to Valve's Steam.

Bloomberg is reporting on a trial taking place in Marshall, Texas that may be of some interest to gamers. Microsoft should pay New York-based PalTalk Holdings $90 million for using its inventions, a lawyer told a federal jury Monday. PalTalk Holdings has sued Microsoft Corp., alleging that Microsoft's Halo first-person shooter games and the Xbox consoles on which they are played infringe upon two patents for inventions developed by MPath Interactive Inc. PalTalk bought the patents for less than $200,000, Microsoft lawyer David Pritikin told the jury. The trial centers on technology for ways to control interactive applications over multiple computers. MPath was "a pioneer in the online video industry in the area of real-time, multiplayer online games," PalTalk lawyer Max Tribble told the jury.

British game industry trade journal MCV is reporting today that Sony's European division is considering legal action against the British National Health Service over the use of a PlayStation-like controller in the ad. According to the story, the agency that put together the ad never sought Sony's persmission to use the distinctively designed PlayStation controller. The ad itself, part of the "Change 4 Life" campaign designed to promote heart-healthy lifestyles including getting more exercise and eating healthier foods, has drawn considerable criticism from the British offices of Konami and Codemasters as well as MCV itself.

If you were waiting for id's car combat game Rage to get your virtual Mad Max on, you're going to have to wait a bit longer. id's Todd Hollenshead revealed to Game Trailers' Geoff Keighley that Rage "won't be out this year." That's not necessarily as upsetting as might at first be thought because id gave itself a very wide release window when the game was announced two years ago, merely saying that the game would hit store shelves some time before 2011.

Collecting these items from your local neighborhood moogles can earn you good fortunes and decoration bonuses for your mog house, so don't turn down the free items when the moogles are just handing them out on street corners! Moogles will be stationed in northern and southern San d'Oria, the mines and markets of Bastok, and Woods and Waters districts of Windurst.

Choose from 5 new playable characters

Play 2 characters on the screen, at the same time

New co-op mode

Open-ended gaming environments - go back to previous levels to seach for additional items

Test of Valor to obtain new items not found within the game

NOTE: For Nintendo DS Lite ONLY, NOT compatible with Nintendo DS or Dsi. Never run out of battery power when you are about to score the winning point.

Save money and protect the environment by using the rechargeable battery

Voltage: 3.7V

Capacity: 1600 mAh

Compatible with: Nintendo DS Lite

Collecting these items from your local neighborhood moogles can earn you good fortunes and decoration bonuses for your mog house, so don't turn down the free items when the moogles are just handing them out on street corners! Moogles will be stationed in northern and southern San d'Oria, the mines and markets of Bastok, and Woods and Waters districts of Windurst.