Warcraft

World of Warcraft, the world's most popular multiplayer role-playing game, can definitely help you kill time, but can it also make your brain work better if you are of relatively advanced age? That was the suspicion of Anne McLaughlin and Jason Allaire, psychology professors at North Carolina State University. They run the Gains Through Gaming Lab , which examines how the playing of video games improves cognitive ability in older adults. To test their theory, the researchers asked 39 adults ages 60 to 77 to play World of Warcraft for roughly two hours a day over a two-week period.

Online game "World of Warcraft" has turned around its two-year decline in subscribers thanks to a popular new expansion pack. "Mists of Pandaria," a new retail game that adds a large new chunk of content for "Warcraft" players, sold 2.7 million copies during its first week on sale. More important for game-maker Activision, excitement around "Pandaria" has brought back at least 900,000 players, who pay a monthly fee for the game. The Santa Monica company said it now has more than 10 million subscribers worldwide.

Getting divorced was a lonely experience for Josh Schweitzer. Spending his days overseeing construction workers and his evenings caring for his 3-year-old son, he had no one to talk to. But there was one group of people who helped him pull through -- even though he'd never laid eyes on most of them. They were his World of Warcraft friends -- "guild people," he calls them. They live all over the world and spend 20, 30 or more hours a week together in the online world of Azeroth as druids, priests, warriors and rogues, slaying monsters and collecting treasure.

Despite turning in a second quarter that outshone Wall Street's expectations, investors pushed shares of Activision Blizzard down more than 5% after the company said its "World of Warcraft" online game lost more than a million subscribers in the second quarter. The world's largest video game company said Thursday that the number of "World of Warcraft" players fell to 9.1 million in the quarter ended June 30, down from 10.2 million at the end of the first quarter . The game commanded 12 million players at its peak in October 2010.

Despite turning in a second quarter that outshone Wall Street's expectations, investors pushed shares of Activision Blizzard down more than 5% after the company said its "World of Warcraft" online game lost more than a million subscribers in the second quarter. The world's largest video game company said Thursday that the number of "World of Warcraft" players fell to 9.1 million in the quarter ended June 30, down from 10.2 million at the end of the first quarter . The game commanded 12 million players at its peak in October 2010.

Online game "World of Warcraft" has turned around its two-year decline in subscribers thanks to a popular new expansion pack. "Mists of Pandaria," a new retail game that adds a large new chunk of content for "Warcraft" players, sold 2.7 million copies during its first week on sale. More important for game-maker Activision, excitement around "Pandaria" has brought back at least 900,000 players, who pay a monthly fee for the game. The Santa Monica company said it now has more than 10 million subscribers worldwide.

Blizzard Entertainment, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard Inc., is eliminating 600 jobs, the Irvine game studio disclosed Wednesday. The jobs represent 8.2% of the workforce at Activision. The Santa Monica company reported having 7,300 workers at the end of 2011. Blizzard, which publishes the popular World of Warcraft title, said in a brief statement that 90% of the affected jobs are not related to game development. As a result, the company said, its game release schedule for Diablo III, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard DOTA and StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm remain intact.

Activision Blizzard Inc. has raised its financial projections for the year, based largely on the strength of a single game: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. But a sharp drop in subscribers for the game publisher's other marquee title, World of Warcraft, knocked the wind out of the company's stock. The Santa Monica company announced Tuesday that subscribers for its World of Warcraft online game had fallen to 10.3 million from 11.4 million at the end of March. "The magnitude of the decline was surprising," said Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Securities.

Despite launching four new games last quarter, video game publisher Activision Blizzard Inc. continued to see a pair of older titles account for most of its business in its most recent quarter. Digital downloads and subscriptions for military action series Call of Duty and online fantasy game World of Warcraft provided some of the best news for the Santa Monica-based video game publisher, which saw its revenue decline 7% to $967 million and its net income grow 12% to $219 million for the quarter ended June 30. The new racing title Blur, which launched in May, and action game Singularity, which debuted in late June, have both been disappointments for the publisher.

Striking the death knell for a once-hot music game business, Activision Blizzard Inc. said Wednesday that it would disband Guitar Hero and scrap development of a Guitar Hero title slated for this year. At the same time, the Santa Monica company told analysts during a conference call to announce fourth-quarter results that it would invest heavily in creating an online service dubbed BeachHead for an existing video game, Call of Duty. Activision, which provided little detail on the upcoming service, also dropped hints about a new product it plans to announce next week at Toy Fair in New York, as well as a new multi-player online title from its Blizzard Entertainment studio in Irvine.

The savvy Internet reader knows that you can't believe everything you read online, but on April Fools' Day we suggest that you not believe anything you read online. Internet hoax time is just around the corner, and as our inbox continues to fill up with jaw-dropping press releases "strictly embargoed for April 1," we thought we'd put together a list of some Internet hoaxes past -- just to whet your appetite for what's to come. 1. Tacocopter: Tacocopter took the Internet by storm in late March, when a faux Silicon Valley start-up put up a website outlining a plan to deliver tacos via remote-control flying drone robots.

Blizzard Entertainment, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard Inc., is eliminating 600 jobs, the Irvine game studio disclosed Wednesday. The jobs represent 8.2% of the workforce at Activision. The Santa Monica company reported having 7,300 workers at the end of 2011. Blizzard, which publishes the popular World of Warcraft title, said in a brief statement that 90% of the affected jobs are not related to game development. As a result, the company said, its game release schedule for Diablo III, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard DOTA and StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm remain intact.

World of Warcraft, the world's most popular multiplayer role-playing game, can definitely help you kill time, but can it also make your brain work better if you are of relatively advanced age? That was the suspicion of Anne McLaughlin and Jason Allaire, psychology professors at North Carolina State University. They run the Gains Through Gaming Lab , which examines how the playing of video games improves cognitive ability in older adults. To test their theory, the researchers asked 39 adults ages 60 to 77 to play World of Warcraft for roughly two hours a day over a two-week period.

Activision Blizzard Inc. has raised its financial projections for the year, based largely on the strength of a single game: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. But a sharp drop in subscribers for the game publisher's other marquee title, World of Warcraft, knocked the wind out of the company's stock. The Santa Monica company announced Tuesday that subscribers for its World of Warcraft online game had fallen to 10.3 million from 11.4 million at the end of March. "The magnitude of the decline was surprising," said Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Securities.

Despite owning a broad portfolio of game franchises, Activision Blizzard Inc. continues to rely on a handful of titles from Blizzard Entertainment in Irvine and the Call of Duty franchise for much of its sales and profits. The Santa Monica game publisher said its second-quarter revenue of $1.15 billion was up 19% from $967 million a year earlier, thanks to strong sales of supplemental online content for its Call of Duty: Black Ops, as well as the popularity of two Blizzard titles, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm and Star Craft II: Wings of Liberty.

Striking the death knell for a once-hot music game business, Activision Blizzard Inc. said Wednesday that it would disband Guitar Hero and scrap development of a Guitar Hero title slated for this year. At the same time, the Santa Monica company told analysts during a conference call to announce fourth-quarter results that it would invest heavily in creating an online service dubbed BeachHead for an existing video game, Call of Duty. Activision, which provided little detail on the upcoming service, also dropped hints about a new product it plans to announce next week at Toy Fair in New York, as well as a new multi-player online title from its Blizzard Entertainment studio in Irvine.

The savvy Internet reader knows that you can't believe everything you read online, but on April Fools' Day we suggest that you not believe anything you read online. Internet hoax time is just around the corner, and as our inbox continues to fill up with jaw-dropping press releases "strictly embargoed for April 1," we thought we'd put together a list of some Internet hoaxes past -- just to whet your appetite for what's to come. 1. Tacocopter: Tacocopter took the Internet by storm in late March, when a faux Silicon Valley start-up put up a website outlining a plan to deliver tacos via remote-control flying drone robots.

Reporting from New York The vibrant independent video game scene is nearly invisible to the wider world. When most people hear the word "gamer," they tend to think of characters who'd rather spend a Friday night with World of Warcraft than hit the town. But like the music industry, the game space enjoys its own vibrant counterculture of hobbyist programmers, developers and players, driven by a passion for games as art. Formerly inhibited by the very mechanism that helped indie games grow and thrive — a globally distributed and diverse Internet community that rarely converges face to face — a group of devoted, bootstrapping indie gamers are forging an underground home for themselves.

Reporting from New York The vibrant independent video game scene is nearly invisible to the wider world. When most people hear the word "gamer," they tend to think of characters who'd rather spend a Friday night with World of Warcraft than hit the town. But like the music industry, the game space enjoys its own vibrant counterculture of hobbyist programmers, developers and players, driven by a passion for games as art. Formerly inhibited by the very mechanism that helped indie games grow and thrive — a globally distributed and diverse Internet community that rarely converges face to face — a group of devoted, bootstrapping indie gamers are forging an underground home for themselves.

The gig: Chief executive and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment Inc., maker of mega video game franchises including World of Warcraft, one of the most popular online video games in history with more than 11 million monthly subscribers. Morhaime and two fellow UCLA students started Blizzard in Irvine in 1991. The company just released an intergalactic war game called StarCraft II, which took five years to complete. Morhaime, 42, captains the long voyages from the games' inception to their release.