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• A look at the NPD games sales charts for the month of March 2006 tells you everything you need to know about how consoles and PCs are dividing like drifting continents, with game genres split between them like separate species. The weird hybrid of anime and Disneyland, Kingdom Hearts II, took the lead spot again in the console sales charts, with mainly action combat games - among them, mostly first-person shooters - and sports titles following. Meanwhile, the PC games chart - whose titles now sell with one-third the quantity - is dominated by simulated worlds and gothic role-playing, with the add-on Sims 2: Open for Business leading the top spot, and Sims 2 itself at #7. Interspersed among them are all the major genre franchises we've come to know, with the powerhouse World of Warcraft clinching tightly to #5, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion at #2, and Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, D&D, Age of Empires, and Civilization IV all well represented. Are PC games becoming a minor player? Not really, believes Parks Associates' Michael Cai. While that continent may continue to drift, he believes it's in a state of transformation, and may yet have its just revenge. The secret is in the online component. Consoles and console games dominate the retail market today, he explained, and because of that, they command the spotlight. But as the online business models for PC games change, away from the "per-box" retail model and more toward subscriptions, gaming-on-demand, and ad-subsidized services (more on that later), the big franchise games and role-playing simulations that are already well established on the PC side, are perhaps best suited to these models. They fit like a glove. A "blood elf" - a kind of well-endowed Darryl Hannah/Christopher Walken hybrid, due to inhabit the long-awaited Continent of the Upgrades in World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. Welcoming the new business models to E3 this year could be an absolute blitz of PC games franchises, all of which are battling with each other for the biggest splash. I would say there's a "blizzard" ahead, but that name's been taken already. Blizzard's The Burning Crusade expansion to WoW, expected at E3, actually will create an entirely new continent, called "Outland," where one might find a new race of so-called "blood elves." (Oh, you never will believe where those Keebler cookies come from.) Meanwhile, Namco - yes, the company that introduced the world to Galaxian and Pac-Man - will actually try to knock WoW off its throne, with its much-anticipated Warhammer: Mark of Chaos. The company describes it as dealing particularly with "WAR, focusing on the armies and battles while de-emphasizing the tedious aspects of base and resource management." Which should already win this title some followers at the Defense Dept. Sticking a finger in the notion that first-person shooters are entirely migrating to console-based platforms, CryTek is likely to demonstrate its even-more-perfected rendering engine, in a demo of its upcoming sequel to Far Cry, entitled Crysis. This is the game that should prove the viability of Microsoft's DirectX 10 rendering library, due to become one of the foundation components of its upcoming Windows Vista operating system. The difference between DirectX 10 worlds and DirectX 9 worlds (for Windows XP), gamers are led to believe, will be clearly visible. But if the first-person shooter crowd is all gathering together around consoles, and if shooter games are more adapted to the retail model than the online sales model (How long can a gamer go on subscribing to the right to keep shooting down the same thing?), then could Crysis be less well received among publishers and retailers than it's likely to be among fans? This could be a bright comet of a game that burns out fairly quickly, as franchise role-playing and strategy titles such as Midway's Unreal Tournament 2007 appear well positioned to command and conquer - to borrow a phrase - the resurrected realm of PC gaming. And there's one more little thing: While fans of the Star Trek movies will happily remind you that it's generally the even-numbered films that are the best, and the odd-numbered ones that are as cursed as a red-shirted security officer in a dark cave, they'll also tell you that there has never really been a completely perfect Star Trek game, for any genre, in the last quarter-century. So the question on at least some people's minds at E3 (they'll be the ones in Starfleet uniforms) is whether Perpetual's Star Trek Online - which is likely to be previewed on Tuesday - will break this curse. Set 20 years after the last "Next Generation" movie, with slightly updated ships, set decoration, and uniforms designed under the direction of no less than Trek veteran artist Andrew Probert, the screen shots of this MMORPG look perhaps even more stunning than some of the odd-numbered films (Trek V comes to mind). But with the promise of away-team exploration of multiple worlds, and true 3D combat among fleets of starships, manned by multiple live players simultaneously, the question transcends whether this game will feel like a Trek movie, and becomes whether it places the gamer in anything resembling his understanding of the Trek universe.

• TG Daily interview: Chat with a World of Warcraft bot programmer

  Earlier this month, we ran a preview of an exclusive interview with Mercury, a developer of a World of Warcraft bot - a cheat program to accelerate the player's progress within the game. In this full interview, Mercury talks to TG Daily editor Humphrey Cheung about his motivation to create WoWglider, how it works and avoids detection, and his future plans for the bot. TG Daily: Were you an avid World of Warcraft player before writing the program - and what inspired you to write it? Mercury: Definitely. I'm one of the many lifelong Blizzard game owners out there. I started with Warcraft and have played all of their titles. When WoW was finally released, I got it immediately and I've been a fan since. The inspiration behind Glider was really what it's for now - to catch up to level 60 without spending so much real time. I'm in a small guild and my guildmates reached 60 while I was still in the mid-50's. I wanted to get to 60 as well to come along on the instance runs, but I had no time to grind it out between work and social life. When I did finally log in for a few hours on weekends, it was frustrating to see them orgranizing pickup groups for Scholomance and the Blackrock dungeons. I'd be off killing Shardtooth Bears and Crystal Rumblers solo. The original version was very unstable and simplistic, but it allowed me to get my warlock up to 60 pretty fast. My Canadian guildmates knew what I was up to and they encouraged me to turn it into a more well-rounded product so I could sell it. After I showed a few friends the rough version, they all collectively badgered me into marketing it. I promised my guildies that if I sold enough copies of Glider, I'd fly up to Toronto and buy them a round of beer, which I plan to do in January. TG Daily: Did any other programs give you inspiration or a template for developing Glider? Where did you learn the programming skills required to write the program and is Glider a full-time gig? Mercury: None in particular. I ran across a few tools that did some game automation, but nothing struck me as very professional. This was back in April, mind you, and things have changed a bit. But even then, our idea was to use my technology and my partner's marketing/design to position it as a very professional, clean app. So avoiding links to "hax0rs!!11" sites and keeping the design clean was the closest we had to a template. As for my own skills, I've been a full-time developer forever. I started with C, switched to C++ when it came out - that should date me - and just went from there. It doesn't take an enormous amount of talent to make something like this, but you do need to have a solid understanding of software development in general, like understanding business needs, prioritizing issues, source control, and so on. And, no, Glider's not a full-time gig. I've lowered my contracting hours to have more time for Glider, but it's still not making that kind of money. A big part of Glider is still the fun factor of working with the game and the users on our forums. TG Daily: How popular has Glider been? Do you have any estimates on how many times it has been downloaded? Mercury: It's been fairly popular, but not a huge, smashing success. In other words, I've never had to get more bandwidth or upgrade my small server. Without looking at the logs, and I don't want to reveal hard numbers, I'd swag it's been downloaded for evaluation around 3000 to 5000 times since the hard launch in late July 2005.

• TG Daily: You mentioned that some people have set up an extra account, which means up to $15 per month - depending on subscription plan - more for Blizzard. While it may be a bit of a stretch, could bot programs actually help Blizzard's bottom line? Mercury: In the short-to-medium term, I actually think they do. The plus side of having Glider or any other bot out there is that some people who would have quit will continue. And some of those people will create secondary accounts so they can party or avoid banning. On the other hand, it's possible that someone may burn out faster and quit from botting, but my experience shows that to not be the case. The downside of it is the impact on non-botters in the long-term: if the botting population becomes too big, other players become more aware of them and think badly about the game. With the huge population base in World of Warcraft, it would take several armies of botters to do that, but it could happen after a long time. Part of our recent price increase was to slow down the rate of Gliders being introduced into the system, which it has done. TG Daily: While it seems the main purpose of Glider is to level up the character, do you think people are also using it to grab gold for let's say their level 40 or level 60 mount. My warrior is up 54 and I'm sure it's going to take countless hours to get the 900 gold needed for the epic mount. Mercury: Plenty of people use Glider to farm money for mounts or other characters, definitely. We don't discourage that just because it's not the primary use. A gamer's tendency to adapt a tool to his or her own personal use is pretty natural. Personally, I hate farming at all, even with Glider. So I always do my best to aggressively sell and market items I find while getting to 60. So far I'm two for three on having my epic at 60. TG Daily: You've stated in the FAQ and also in the forums that it will never be used to kill other players. Since the program doesn't directly attack other players, what do you think Glider's real impact will be on people who don't use bots? Mercury: Honestly, I don't think Glider is going to have much of an impact on people who don't use bots. For people who are looking to have the best gear, do big raids, and compete aggressively in PvP, Glider is not that useful after a point, other than to make fresh 60's. You're never going get two-shotted by a guy decked out in epics and say, "Man, that guy must be using a bot!" Until Glider has a 40-man raid mode, which I must admit would be insanely cool and will never happen, it will have a very real ceiling on the direct advantage it confers. If you're real casual, then a player using Glider does have a competitive advantage over you as far as leveling speed. It's the same advantage a hard-core player would have, though, or someone who really did have a 10-year old nephew they could press into grinding duty. And, to be honest, we are changing the PvP policy of Glider because it's becoming more of a conflict with detection. A player who ignores an attacking player looks very suspicious, so we're building in some limited means to fight back. It will never beat a remotely competent player, but it will at least appear to be a very unskilled player. It was a pretty tough decision to make, but avoiding detection is job #1.