Mordil and iTZKooPA will be joining the ranks of Hi-Rez Studios for a few hours to partake in the company’s (hopefully annual) holiday charity event. The company is running the event in support of everyone’s favorite gamer charity, Child’s Play. The event is a 24-hour drive, so it’s already begun over on the SMITE Twitch account.

Like last time, we don’t really know what to expect. I’ll be rocking Loki and Xbalanque as much as possible. Our friendly PR Specialist Gabe only gave us the following to go on:

Join us for a 24-hour SMITE marathon streamed from our playtest room with special guest appearances, prizes, and tips on how to survive the post apocalyptic wasteland. Bring your game face and see you on the other side!

Here goes my ELO…

Want to donate a little holiday cheer? You can chip in right here or the widget after the cut. The more money raised, the more Artemis Convention 2012 skins we give away. Continue Reading

Earlier this week, Blizzard released patch 1.0.3b for Diablo III, which added the ability to buy and sell commodity items on the real-money auction house. This includes gems, dyes, crafting materials, and most recently, gold itself. This makes it quite easy to convert gold to real-money if you don’t have outside funding available, and will hopefully start the trend of selling things for gold rather than real-money.

In related news, the “best gamer in the world”, Athene, launched his project to raise 400 billion gold for Save the Children. By selling the raised gold and items and donating it to the charity, he hopes to help address the hunger crisis in West Africa, where there are more than 18 million needy people. In today’s prices, 400 billion gold would sell for $10,000, so we will see how much he raises. He also plans to visit West Africa at the end of the August and livestream some of the benefits of the charity. Already, his project Operation Sharecraft raised $1 million for Save the Children, culminating at Dreamhack earlier this summer, and Razer has been very supportive as a sponsor in his efforts.

Continue Reading

Probably one of the best trends in gaming lately allows gamers to both do what they do best (play games longer than any human should theoretically be able to) and show that there’s more to the lifestyle than sitting on your duff with a controller in one hand and the other elbow-deep in a bag of Cheetos. Penny Arcade alumni Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik led the charge when they created Child’s Play, a charity that provides sick, bed-ridden kids in hospitals with quality, video game escapism (amongst other things) during the time they need it most. While the core of the organization is always accepting donations, many independent groups have taken it upon themselves to rally their fellow gamers by broadcasting marathons over the internet.

And few games lend themselves so easily to extended play more than MMOs. Enter the WoWathon, an event which involves taking two characters from 1-80, with as few breaks as the players can realistically muster (they already have plans for Tuesday’s scheduled maintenance):

The WoWathon Team will be gaming around the clock (rotating 12 hour sleeping/hygiene shifts). We’re going to be broadcasting live from our dining room in the hopes of inspiring you to donate as well. If we reach our quota, we’ll raise our targeted donation cap and game until we hit the next level threshold. Last year, after 12 continuous days of play, we managed to raise $8287.82 through tons of help, support, and donations. This year, we’re upping the ante by hosting WoWathon on a PvP (player versus player) server. We’ve started a small pot, but we’re depending on you to help us reach our next goal (and beyond!).

WoWathon 2, as of this writing, is still at a nascent 28 hours and about $1223. Making use of my terrible math, that means that if donations keep a steady pace, they’re on track to roughly double that amount this year. So why not give ‘em a shot, check out their stream (or the embed below), engage them on Twitter, and donate a few bucks to the cause while you’re at it? All proceeds go directly to Child’s Play, in case you were worried about who might be handling your money.

Streaming live video by Ustream

Let’s take this opportunity to show the world that we MMO gamers can poopsock for a good cause, too.