Right now, one of the biggest things on the horizon for gaming is the impending release of Bethesda’s big MMO, The Elder Scrolls Online, which is currently in a Closed Beta stage. Every week seems to bring some new information for us to spread around our friends and yesterday brought a pretty big one. TESO will have a special release pack called the Imperial Pack, which seems to be the only way so far that you can play as an Imperial.

The pack comes with many extras included with the game besides the ability to play as an Imperial, who are the only type of character able to ally themselves with any of the three factions that make up TESO’s world. The content of the Imperial Pack is:

• Molag Bal Statue. A 30.5 cm statue featuring Molag Bal, Daedric Prince of domination and enslavement.
• The Improved Emperor’s Guide to Tamriel. A 224-page illustrated guide annotated by the Imperial scholar, Flaccus Terentius.
• Physical Map of Tamriel. A 53.3 cm x 66 cm printed map detailing Alliance-controlled zones and the ultimate conquest: Cyrodiil.
• Steelbook™ Packaging. A limited edition steel case decorated in the color of the Imperials.
• Exclusive Collection of Digital Content.
• Play as an Imperial: Become an Imperial and play in any Alliance. Gain unique bonuses, crafting styles, gear, and more.
• White Imperial Horse: Summon this Imperial mount and journey through Tamriel with speed.
• Mudcrab Vanity Pet: Explore Tamriel with a mudcrab pet scuttling along by your side.
• Rings of Mara: Complete the Ritual of Mara with a friend and receive an experience bonus when you play together.

The recommended retail price for the pack though is £69.99/$79.99 though which is additional to pay on top of a subscription fee TESO will require in an era of free-to-play MMOs. The standard game purchase is set to be about £39.99-£49.99 so it’s up the individual if they believe the extras on offer and the chance to play as an Imperial is worth the extra money spent.

In yet another interesting move, Google has sold Motorola Mobility to multinational Chinese tech company Lenovo.

The Chinese giant has just acquired Google’s Motorola division for a reported $2.91 billion. This is a marked decrease in value for the beleaguered Motorola, which was purchased by Google in 2011 for $12.5 billion. The division has been a constant drain on Google’s bottom line, losing $248 million in the last quarter alone.

Interestingly, Google will retain ownership of the vast majority of Motorola Mobility’s patent portfolio, leaving Lenovo with about 2,000 patents and the Motorola Mobility brand and trademarks. Lenovo has been muscling it’s way into PC markets in the last decade by buying IBM’s personal computer division and now seems poised to make a foray into the global smartphone market as well. Of note is the fact that Google will also be retaining control of it’s “Skunkworks” division as part of this deal. The deal is still subject to approval by both U.S. and Chinese authorities but it seems that the global smartphone market may be changing.

Lenovo is also a major Windows 8 partner, so it seems likely that the new acquisition will bring us some (hopefully) not dreadful versions of Windows Phone 8.

World of Warcraft is obviously popular, but a new infographic (See Below) reveals that it goes further than that – Azeroth’s population surpasses that of most countries.

Despite its slow decline in active subscribers, World of Warcraft is a pretty darn healthy MMO. Blizzard released an infographic today to celebrate the crossing of a threshold: since its release ten years ago, a whopping 100 million accounts have been created. That includes trial accounts, mind, but there’s no denying it’s an impressive census. In fact, it’s more than twice the entire population of South Korea, as the infographic happily points out.

All in all, Azeroth has a population of about 500 million player characters (an average of five per account, by our math), hailing from 244 countries and territories around the world. 52% of those characters are members of the Alliance, while 47% joined the Horde. Since Pandaren characters start out neutral, there’s also 1% of characters who are still on the fence.

It just goes to show that the glorious Alliance wins because of superior numbers. WOOHOO 😀

World of Warcraft’s economy is still booming as well. Every day sees about 2.8 million trades through the Auction House, which was twice the activity of eBay on Cyber Monday a few years ago. All that trade is handled by just 71 auctioneer NPCs in the game world, who each probably deserve a serious raise.

You can see the full infographic in all its glory over at Battle.net. There’s a lot of big numbers, and they’re well-earned; WoW has been more or less the reigning champion of MMOs for a full decade now. Azeroth still has over 7 million active players as of the last report, and something tells me that its community won’t be leaving it anytime soon.

That is the question Microsoft are now asking all its non-American users, after implementing a new feature that will allow users of Microsoft services who registered as outside the United States to opt to have their data stored only on non-American soil.

Microsoft have become what appears to be the first United States-based company to offer those outside the US the option to store their data off of American soil; and it isn’t too surprising given how vocal they’ve been against lack of user privacy in the United States. They’ve been very unhappy with the revelations given to us thanks to Edward Snowden over the fact that the NSA have been spying on American citizens. They are also unhappy with the fact that their own networks have been used to monitor citizens in countries like Brazil and all over Europe as well. It’s also possible that the move may perhaps have an additional role as a subtle middle-finger to the Syrian Electronic Army, who have repeatedly hacked their American servers in recent months.

So far, Microsoft is the only major company offering explicitly non-US data storage, despite evidence that the NSA has also broken into the private networks of both Google and Yahoo.

While there’s no guarantee the NSA won’t be able to reach servers outside US borders, the move would offer an additional layer of protection, as local law enforcement is likely to respond more aggressively to agents of a foreign country. This of course assumes that Microsoft are serious about their commitment to protect the interests of their customers globally; and not just an act to maintain loyalty with customers outside of the US. There’s also still the unanswered question of what happens when data is transit – data may not be STORED on US servers, but could it still pass through one or more of them when the data is transit – for example, whenever you use a different Microsoft service?

We shall see… soon enough.

Rumours by several sources suggest Apple may currently be working on a whole new set-top box as a successor to current Apple TV boxes, with updated hardware and software to support many more types of content and improve the slickness of the whole experience. But a separate report out today from iLounge says that Apple also plans to cater for the growing number of app developers and iOS users using the boxes as pseudo-game consoles, with plans to introduce native gaming support to the Apple TV, along with direct support for game controllers.

With Apple’s AirPlay technology allowing not just video and music, but also direct streaming of anything that happens on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch onto a TV Screen via an Apple TV box, many users have started taking advantage of the feature to show their small-screen games on TV while they play them on their iDevice. And with Apple allowing iOS app developers to build experiences that employ the Apple TV in specific ways; and iOS games taking advantage of this more and more to provide multi-screen gaming experiences (not unlike the Wii U combining TV and Gamepad), Apple TV is quickly turning into a games console in its own right – but there’s a problem. Streaming games from screen to screen adds a noticeable lag – around a tenth of a second – between the two devices, which for high-action gaming like shooters; or games that require fast reactions like racers, can completely kill the game play. Also, even for games with direct Apple TV support, using controllers other than the iDevice running the game requires those controllers to be paired with the device, not the Apple TV itself, introducing further lag.

Now though, it’s been suggested that Apple are looking into furthering the ability of Apple TV to play games, with sources such as iLounge claiming that planned software updates will introduce the ability to install games directly on the Apple TV box itself, as well as direct support for game controllers. 9to5Mac, who have a high level of accuracy regarding Apple rumours, claim knowledge that Apple may be planning to directly implement the Apple iStore into a future Apple TV refresh, lending some suggestion as to how the former may be achieved – but stop short of suggesting the updates are anything to do with gaming, instead suggesting the new hardware will be a refresh with a focus on improving the speed and user experience.

Apple have declined to comment on any of these rumours.

The current Apple TV last received a significant update in March, 2012, so it’s due for a refresh. Though no date for the supposed new Apple TV has yet been suggested – either by Apple or by rumourmongers – the suggestion from the latter is to expect a launch in Spring or Summer 2014. With Apple generally preferring Autumn for major announcements on the iPhone/iPad side of things these days, that timing would make a lot of sense as a way to keep up interest in Apple throughout the year.