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Ubisoft is doin' well, and I think they deserve it. Nevertheless, performance of some recent games fell below expectations, as they are honest to admit. Well, at least they don't come with ridiculous claims like EA does sometimes, when releasing some junk just for the money. Anyway, let's keep it straight and talk about these brand new Ubisoft records, shall we?

In Q3, Ubisoft recorded an impressive amount of sales, for a total of EUR 508 million, going way above the 405 million recorded for the same period of last year, while the sales recorded in the first nine months of the fiscal year, totalled EUR 852 million, from a previous EUR 711 million, the previous year.

While the 2.2 million sell-in of Prince of Persia, and Tom Clancy's EndWar were below expectations, Shaun White Snowboarding, managed to sell 2.3 million units, becoming the number two sports game in the US - according to Ubisoft.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft, said "The Christmas period proved to be even more competitive than we expected. Against this backdrop, our sales figures demonstrate the strength of Ubisoft's business model which is based on competitive development costs, a varied range of owned brands, constant innovation and a great capacity for responsiveness."

OK, that's mumbo-jumbo, most of it, but I must confess that, as a gamer, I always enjoyed Ubisoft's commitment to at least try and not to disappoint when releasing games from notorious series, although sometimes they managed to damage the reputation of some titles simply by pushing them into the market a few months too early. Anyway, I would rather like to see a bugged Silent Hunter that's what I expected in terms of gameplay, instead of a Need for Speed title developed for 5 year olds...

I don't know about you, but if I have to choose between gold farming and anything else, I choose the last. This may sound noobish to those experts out there, but to me, gold farming and grinding go hand in hand. Well, I guess that's the naked truth, after all, don't you think? Anyway, the idea is that, despite the fact that those using specialized tools to farm gold in online games usually end up losing their accounts, there are also people who fully agree with this practice...

...and I am not talking about fellow gamers here! For example, Kerry Fraser-Robinson, founder of virtual worlds developer RedBedlam, spoke to GamesIndustry.biz about the fact that "People will always find the path of least resistance, if you stop them buying your gold then they'll buy that gold from somebody else who is gold farming," and "If you don't build that into your system then you're not going to be able to compete with the gold farmers and that will ruin your in-game economy, which will in turn ruin your game. At the very least having the recognition that virtual economics is a discipline and is a very important integral part to being a virtual world."

Using EVE Online as an example, he pointed out the fact that virtual economics should be taken seriously, going as far as saying that game companies should take into account the advice of economists, seeing this as a next natural step in the evolution of online games involving some kind of virtual economy(aren't they (almost) all like that?).

"I only know of just two or three companies that actually have economists specifically for the purposes of understanding their own virtual economy. I think that's absolutely essential going forward… because wherever humans are in communities and whenever they are bartering there is a market and there is going to be a market place. If you let that go with no regulation and no recognition then very, very crazy things will happen," said Fraser-Robinson.

World's most popular MMORPG just got better! World of Warcraft just got a new patch, jumping right to version 3.0.8. So, what are we going to get from this brand new WoW patch? Ready or not, here's the essential right out of that (very, very, very) long list of changes...

First of all, the most outstanding feature is that, once you installed the WoW patch 3.08, you can easily create a Death Knight character in any realm as long as you're level 55 or higher.

A funny change - and I must confess I don't think this is a brilliant change at all - is that racial restrictions have been removed when using mounts, so now you can laugh your heart out at Night Elves riding mechanostriders. I don't even dare to think about the looks of a Tauren riding a... you name it, I already die laughing here!

Those into spell casting may not enjoy hearing that all the Silence effect spells lost a bit of their power now, and it doesn't stop here. This, my friends, is only the beginning...

...so if you want to waste a lot of time reading about the changes in the latest WoW patch instead of actually playing the game, go ahead - knock yourself out - the official Wow patch page is waiting!