If you wish to promote your MMORPG, one of the best ways to do so is to take your game with you on a road show. That's precisely what EA Mythic will be doing for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning in the next few months. If this sounds like something you'd like to attend, turn to the full article after the jump for more road show details.

Itching to try out Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning from EA Mythic but wasn't invited for beta? Here's you chance, boys and girls. You can try out WAR Online's beta by attending a Games Day convention (or other shows and conventions) near you. Check out the full article for the list and schedules.

Although much of the gaming populace grinding in World of Warcraft didn't have a lot of love for the physical aspects of gaming, the World of Warcraft: Trading Card Game has done quite well on its own. WoW Insider's Mike Schramm was able to visit the Darkmoon Faire in Chicago and meet Ben Drago, Manager of Organized Play, to ask just how well TCG was doing.

And by the looks of things, WoW: TCG was doing quite well compared to Magic: The Gathering. Drago said, "It was very successful. From the end of last year to the end of this year, it outsold Magic: the Gathering. That is the first card game to ever do that."

And it not only outsold a legendary trading card brand, but also sold out in stock. "Product was sold out probably for the first four months. We reprinted more than once," said Drago, mentioning that the WoW: TCG launch was just as successful as Magic's launch back in 1993.

But they weren't aiming to beat Magic to consider themselves successful, but Drago admits it does give them a way to create a milestone for their product's performance. Drago added, "There's been a lot of trading card games that have come out and have had varied levels of success. But coming out and being able to step up into that Tier 1 rank was pretty important."

And surprisingly, according to Drago, WoW: TCG has done extremely well to offer something different for trading card gamers, especially Magic gamers. It's not that WoW: TCG offers anything new - in fact it really doesn't - but the card game has dropped the limitations of other card game rules to add more flexibility.

Organized Play is planning more TCG tournaments to occur worldwide and mentions that TCG aspirants should watch for them this summer.

 

Blizzard's Darkmoon Faire Chicago kicked off and ended without a hitch. While there were a lot of World of Warcraft players in attendance, both for the Trading Card Game (TCG) and the MMO game, we'd like to bet that there are still a handful of players who wanted to be there but weren't able to attend.

Anyway, WoW Insider was lucky enough to be in Chicago and took snapshots of the said event. TCG players would probably want to take note of the WoW goodies they had on display such as the playmats and extended art Leeroy Jenkins.

The few screens for the WoW online game, on the other hand, would probably attract players from that niche. That said, we won't bore you anymore with useless prattle. Here are the pictures. Enjoy!

  

More pictures of the Darkmoon Faire Chicago in the full article

Here are some pictures of the surprisingly quiet Burning Crusade launch at Chicago. Opening at midnight, the retail stores proved to be rather efficient with their service to the people lined up outside the icy, cold night.

True, there weren't any fancy fireworks, Hollywood-ish events, nor rare appearances from the head honchos of Blizzard. But nonetheless, the launch pulled off without a hitch, and, well, the fans were just happy to finally have this expansion of WoW. And nobody was robbed at gunpoint.

Knowing that there are eight million of them fans out there, we sure hope there's enough to go around for everybody.

 

Most people don't use the words "education" and "video games" in the same sentence, but an education science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, David Williamson Shaffer, is trying to change that.

Let's face it. Gamers and video games in general are mostly stereotyped negatively. Studies about the negative effects of game addiction, politicians trying to push legislation against violent games, and news about gaming related violence abound.

So, to help ease this image and shed positive light on the matter, Shaffer has written a book entitled "How Computer Games Help Children Learn." On top of this, he has also been actively campaigning to get schools to try and use video games as tools for education, since according to him, video games can help children prepare for future careers.

Further more, he notes that video games can orient children in technology and help them gain the technological experience they need in this fast-paced world. People should also allow their children to play video games, listen to music, surf the internet, as well as use cellphones and computers, as it would result in a tech-savvy workforce in the future.

Now, the UK and Singapore are both pushing to use video games in innovating their teaching methods. The U.S. military, surgeons, and some corporations have also found uses for video games for training purposes.

Meanwhile, Shaffer and his team will be working with a school in Madison, Wisconsin and move on to another one in Chicago by the third quarter of this year, and they will be bringing along their own brand of educational games which can be found at Epistemicgames.com