Today, is Patty's birthday - head on over an wish her a happy one!

Your semi-regular Bolivia update. The governors from six of the nine departments (states) have cut all communications with the federal government. The six represent the economically strongest regions of the country. MAS, Morales political party, amended the rules of the Constituent Assembly to require a simple majority, instead of 2/3 majority, to amend the Constitution. Also last week, the House of Representatives approved a land reform bill.\

Morales angered the region's leaders by advocating putting the governors under congressional oversight and giving himself the power to fire them if they do not operate transparently or honestly.

On a more "huh?" note, Bill Gates wants to meet Morales, its a PR opportunity related to the Quechua localized build of Windows that I wrote about at the end of August. If Bill goes to Bolivia, I hope his tour includes a stop at the Mercado Negro, where he can see what price market forces have set for his OS and Applications.\

In the letter, Gates offered Microsoft's help "in the goal of providing all of Bolivia's people access" to the Internet and modern technology, La Razon reported.

The most obvious thing to add is customization. The MySpace generation expects a personalized experience, yet Warcraft's avatars come in only a few stock models.

True - when you're walking around populated zones, you notice that a lot of players look alike. Your only avenues for customization are the armor you wear and, maybe, your pet. This reinforces the "I want new shiny loot" aspect of the game.

Warcraft also limits your choices when it comes to gameplay. The citizens of Warcraft are like migrant workers---they get their marching orders, and they follow them to the letter.

There are only so many variations to the quests NPCs give you. At least for me, its been enough because your usually exploring differnt zones. If they'd improve the crafting aspect, and maybe make it so that you don't just get experience from killing monsters, the game would open up more.

The most glaring problem with World of Warcraft, though, is the larger storyline. Lots of video game developers are wrestling with how to shape players' choices without penning them in. Warcraft's developers don't care about that.

The hard core Role players want to have a much bigger impact on the game world. I suspect this is really hard because Blizzard has to maintain game balance across player types and levels. To have a bigger impact on the world could also require so much of a time commitment that the casual player will be left out. But, Blizzard could develop events that pit the two player factions, the Horde and Alliance, against each other in ways that affect the game world beyond the Battle Grounds. How this could be done, I'm not exactly sure.

Finally, I hope you made it this far, but in the comments to slashdot there was a link to Wurm Online, a multi-lpatform MMORPG that has both free and paid account. The unique aspect to the game is its community-building possiblities, see quote below. Anyone want to give it a try?

The base of this community is a village, which is an area that players purchase and that has game-controlled guards that protect structures, creatures and items within. Villages form kingdoms, and kingdoms fight each other out on wild servers. Combined with the religion system this makes for a large scale epic scenario with real heroes and myths.

\