Weekend Update
First: The Blizz Authenticator, A Quick “How”.
Blizzard builds an authenticator. The device is given a special file, called a Seed. This Seed is unique and it’s characteristics are saved in Blizzard’s Seed database.
You get an authenticator in your greedy little mitts, go to the Blizzard account page, and tell Blizz you’re gonna use an authenticator. You type your authenticator’s unique ID on the website, Blizz looks up the Seed for that authenticator, and stores that info in its Seed database. That authenticator and its Seed are now Yours.
You try to login to WoW, it says, “Hey Doofus, what’s the number on your authenticator?”
You press the button on your authenticator, it uses its unique Seed to generate a 6-digit number. You type that 6-digit number into your WoW login panel.
Blizz queries its Seed database and, using its copy of your Seed, creates a 6-digit number. If the number Blizz creates matches the number you typed in, you’re allowed to play. The numbers don’t match, you get the Big Boot-a-roonie.
That’s the basics. Interested in more? Here.
Next: Hackers.
In the past, this blog made a small amount of money from Goggle Ads. Now we’re against gold farming companies, so we would add any gold-selling sites to our Do Not Allow list on our Google Ad account, preventing them from advertising here. The number of sites we blacklisted grew to over 200. We gave up on Google Ads when it became impossible to keep the gold-selling sites from advertising on this blog. There are no more Goggle Ads on BRK.net. /wipes hands
But you know what our number one most frequently-clicked Google Ads were? Gold-ads, by a long-shot. We would see our ad-revenue spike whenever a new gold-selling ad would appear on our blog. We <3 money, but not dirty money.
So we changed our advertising, and today we have three very nice, non-gold farming ads for you to look at: a guide on how to make gold on your own, a leveling guide, and a professions guide. Before you decide to purchase gold, try one of these products. The best way to eliminate hacking is to eliminate the demand for that product. We are trying to do our part in this, now it’s up to you.
If you buy gold today, you’re buying the stuff that these predators stole from our guildies. That’s on your karma, not ours.
Next up on the rant roster: the economics professors running rampant on the Trade channel.
BRK: WTS [Nethercobra Armor Kit] 700g, only one available
Nitwit1: ZOMG DON’T BUY THAT IT’S TOO EXPENSIVE
Nitwit2: I’ll sell anybody one of those for the cost of mats
BRK: Um, the cost of mats is 660gold right now.
Nitwit1: NO THEIR NOT
BRK: Shall I list them?
Commonsense1: Yeah, primal nethers are starting at 300g, the cobra scales are 50g each, that’s about right.
Nitwit2: Anybody who buys that thing is an idiot and way-overpaying.
BRK: Economics 101 – things are worth what someone will pay
[w:From Purchaser1] I’ll buy it, COD ok?
[w:To Purchaser1] Done, and done. TYVM J
BRK: And someone just bought it. Thank you for participating in this class.
Later…
BRK: WTS [Terocone]x20 45gold, one stack available
Nitwit1: OMG WHO PAYZ 45 FOR TEROCONE!
Nitwit2: It should sell for no more than 30g, you @sshole, quit ripping people off
[w:From Purchaser2] I’ll buy it, can we meet in Shat?
[w:To Purchaser2] My pleasure
BRK: Economics 102 – sell when the demand is high. It’s raid-night, people need pots. There’s a reason the herbs are outrageous on the AH, folks. Buy them on Thursday, sell them on Sunday. Know when the highest guilds are raiding BT, and you’ll find plenty of rich buyers.
Nitwit2: You’re a j@ckass charging prices like that, I don’t care
BRK: Welcome to Capitalism, population You
The Grouch-ometer continues to peg with: The Elemental Plateau
Nothing about the Plateau makes us happy. If it’s packed with people, we can’t farm anything. If we have it to ourselves, we can’t make ourselves leave. We made three Belts of the Black Eagle this weekend, all of them we had the buyers come to the Plateau because we were in the midst of a Mote Frenzy.
Have you experienced a Mote Frenzy? Every single elemental dropping multiple motes, your bags getting packed, no competition in sight, respawns like they were being personally delivered to you by a GM. Mote Frenzy is powerful and addictive. If you’re a farmer of any kind, you probably know where we’re coming from. We farmed fifteen primal airs and nineteen primal fires this weekend, all from the Plateau. /motefrenzy
Let’s talk WotLK for Hunters.
This idea of talent trees for pets is too overstimulating, and very confusing. Look at the poll on the right sidebar, you’ll see something like 75% of you all want a DPS-spec’d pet.
Are you bonkers? Are you right in the head? Don’t make us come over there.
WotLK comes out, along with it an entirely new set of 5-man instances. They’re gonna need tanks, and tanks are going to be in short supply. Half the tanks rolled Deathknights, half have dedicated groups, another half refuse to run without a mage and a warlock for crowd-control, and one more half are really FWS. (Fury With a Shield).
But then YOU come along! A Beastmaster Hunter and your Tank Pet! Yes, your DPS isn’t going to be as good as the new Marksman Hunter with his DPS pet, but he’s still sitting in Dalaran LFGing and you’re… dude, you’re Main Tanking the new 5-man instances with a resto druid taking care of Panzer, your level 72 turtle Main Tank. Are you kidding us? That’s the complete and total schiznit, right there.
“Dude, your Turtle can’t tank a boss…”
“WHAT LACK OF FAITH IS THIS I SEE BEFORE ME! Panzer is a Tank Pet, and ‘lo, I am a Beastmaster Hunter! Panzer will out-aggro your squishy self, just try to pull from him! Together, we are a Tanking Machine, and you best recognize and respect!”
“OK, just shut up.”
/shivers in anticipation
Orcapalooza News.
Our search for a worthwhile charity is proving to be much harder than we anticipated. We had such great success with helping Sharvan’s family that we wanted to carry on that tradition and make Orcapalooza a fund-raising event.
With the Running of Da Bulls, you all donated to Sharvan’s family through PayPal. And as nice and sweet-smelling as they are, they still took a good chunk of the donations as fees. We didn’t want to do that with a charity event. We also wanted you to be able to deduct your donations as a Charitable Contribution, and since we are not an IRS-recognized 501(3)c corporation – Profit FTW! – we need you to be able to donate directly to the charity.
But we also want that charity to keep track of just how much payola gets sent into their coffers in the name of BRK, so we can report it to you and use that information as an advertising tool. That’s not asking too much, is it?
Apparently it is. Several charities has said, “Thanks but no thanks,” and one went so far as to say, “We’ll help you out, of course. As long as you can guarantee fifty thousand dollars in donations.”
/gulp
We have one more charity to contact, and we’re gonna drop them a line today. If they don’t come through, we’re out of ideas.
If you know of a worthwhile charity that fits in with what we stand for at BRKWWA – good times, hot chicks, buff dudes, love of animals, massive damage to demons, homemade beer, TJ, Porsches, cooking, bunnehs, cooking bunnehs, space travel, and loud, glimmering, oily guns – and think they’ll be willing to work with us to raise $1000 and a lot of goodwill, ask them what they’d think of accepting donations from our Orcapalooza event.
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45 Responses to “Weekend Update”
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Have you tried Child’s Play? It’s Penny Arcades charity.
http://www.childsplaycharity.org/
I’m not yet sold on the idea that a pet tank will be as good of a MT as a warrior or paladin as WotLK endgame progresses. Of course everything is still in alpha so I still expect to be proven wrong.
I highly doubt a tank-specced pet is gonna be anywhere near strong enough to MT in place of a real MT player. Now, it’s entirely possible that the spec is designed to compensate for the dearth of tank players, but at the same time, I’d hate to be a tank player with months invested in my character only to be equalled by a Hunter’s pet. That’d be a huge morale and game interest drain.
I voted DPS because, and I’m sure many others did too for a similar reason, of ease of questing and PVP.
My main is a tank. Tanking is by far the most difficult role in the game. And I’ve done them all (roles–not classes). If a pet can viably tank a 5 man then it better be some seriously involved playing and not just EZ mode tanking.
If there were a “one of each” on the poll, I woulda picked that. If they don’t expand the stable after they add pet talent trees, I’ll know the devs have lost their mind.
At the very least, I’d have a tank pet for soloing and a DPS pet for group/raid work. I dunno, maybe take the tank into 5-mans as an offtank if needed, but I doubt seriously they’ll be able to main tank.
Mote Frenzy? Spare a thought for the poor sap in the zone who is experiencing the dreaded Mote Drought. Every elemental drops some grey shard of vendor trash, your bags are overflowing with useless junk, you might see 1 mote for an hours work.
It’s because somewhere else in the zone, some madman is on a mote frenzy, taking the full share of mote drops from the Blizzard RNG – whenever the dice is rolled he wins and you get squat.
Still, good when you’re on the frenzy, eh.
I chose dps based on fun and damage, but assumed I would also have a tank-specced pet. (I’m actually intrigued to find out more – can any class of pet be a good tank pet, can a “traditional” tank pet now be a super-dps pet? Are we getting an additional slot or will the 3 “trees” now remove any need for keeping an open slot to train abilities?)
That being said, I agree with Anansi. My main used to be my tank and to think that some hunter and his pet could replace what I did while still being a decent dps class would be a huge blow to both me and the game in general, imo.
And re: idiots in trade channel. This is really my least favorite part of the game. You can’t post one innocent WTS message without a half dozen wise-asses adding their comments. I had basically the same Economics discussion a month or so ago, because someone was complaining that stuff was overpriced. The basic point is that it isn’t overpriced if somebody is buying it.
Not to mention that my server is fairly low pop., I think (Garithos) and so we have the same 12 people that use Trade Channel as their very own GC. EVERY SINGLE DAY! Come on people. If you have that many friends, just set-up your own frickin’ channel!
/kk, vented….feel better now
As far as charities are concerned, who are they to turn away donations, I thought every little bit counts… Have you tried the Jimmy Fund? This is at least a charity for sick children.
As far as pet talents go… wow now I will have 3 stable slots with 3 pets that each have unique abilities for the right situation. If we need a tank- boom pet tank. If we need more DPS- boom extra DPS. If we need a DPS but just incase a back up tank then- boom utility pet that can handle both. This is great news and will hopefully be implimented permanently..all we need now is pet armor.
I was gonna say the same as Qwarn. PA’s Charity Child’s Play is the way to go!!!111oneoneoneeleventyone
Also… what happens if I push said button too many times, or it gets pushed while in my bag. Is it now out of sync with Blizzard’s Database and thus I can no longer play WoW?
@Valthan: No it doesn’t work that way. The seed is linked between the Blizz servers and the authentication fob so it will always give you a correct code.
Let’s see, hot chicks, buff dudes, glimmering oily guns.. I can think of only one: Soldier’s Angels !
I am not sure how they work, I know Spirit of America has done fundraising where you can pick the blog you want your donation associated with. They’re a charity run by the US military but donations go to the civilians in countries they operate in (you can target country and what it’s for too),
BRK: WTS [Nethercobra Armor Kit] 700g, only one available
Nitwit1: ZOMG DON’T BUY THAT IT’S TOO EXPENSIVE
Nitwit2: I’ll sell anybody one of those for the cost of mats
BRK: Um, the cost of mats is 660gold right now.
Nitwit1: NO THEIR NOT
BRK: Shall I list them?
Commonsense1: Yeah, primal nethers are starting at 300g, the cobra scales are 50g each, that’s about right.
BRK – did you purchase all the materials for 660g then add 40g for your labor to create the item?
I see that you are a skinner, so if you farmed the scales yourself wouldn’t that be labor costs, rather than cost of materials. And if you picked up the Primal Nether through heroics, that would be labor as well.
I’m a big believer of charging what the market will bear but if you farmed the mats, labor is not the same thing as cost of materials. If folks don’t like the cost, then they should just keep walking on by.
Economics 101 things are worth what someone will pay
Economics 101a labor is not a cost of materials
Dunno about you BRK, but the idea of my kitty out-dpsing all those s1 rogues makes me drool.
BRK,
Have you tried Curt Shilling’s Charity?.. best of all, he’s a WoW player, and might participate!!!
@Mingo
Yes, but how is it linked… it doesn’t have WIFI, it doesn’t plug into my computer… I am just failing to see the link…
If I push the button 10 times, and Blizz only said to hit it once, does that mean I have to get blizz to tell me to hit it 9 more times (without actually hitting the button) for it to resync itself?
I agree with qwarn:
“Have you tried Child’s Play? It’s Penny Arcades charity.
http://www.childsplaycharity.org/” Woot for Orcapalooza!
I would have chosen one of each pet talent tree, had you given the option. Tank for instances, DPS for raid, and utility for farming and maybe questing, I have to see the thing first.
So much goodness in this post. Let’s see, I tend to undersell the market when I have farmed all or most of the mats, simply because I enjoy farming so much, I am amply paid by more moderate amounts than others think necessary. Silly, I know. I prefer to make stuff for guildies, or just put mats in the guild bank anyway, and only sell occasionally.
A big thank you for doing the honorable thing and ditching the scummy gold selling ads.
Oh. I am taking keyboarding at the local tech college, and, sure ’nuff, they say I must single space after a period. Sigh. As my son said, when I recently got my first cell phone, “Welcome to the nineties.” I am shamefaced, and I admit that in this post, I still double-spaced about half the time.
I will never, ever, ever revert to single-spacing. Single spacing is like not indenting a paragraph (unless you are composing a business letter or something like that)!
Say “YES!!” to double-spacing!!
You might want to look at some of the charities that do fun runs. You know, where you promise to run on a certain day in their race for the cure or something and you get people to sponsor you. Like Cystic Fibrosis or one of the cancer charities. They’re already set up to take small donations from lots of people.
The keys are built in before they send it to you. The 2 keys inside the fob are used to encrypt some information which includes a timestamp or some way to indicate the time. Then you have 30 seconds to a minute to log in.
On Blizzard’s end they have 2 keys used to decrypt the string and they check the timestamp, serialnumber, whatever else is encrypted. As well as check your user and password.
If it’s been over 30 seconds then it asks you to try to log in again, and press the button to get a new code that will be valid for 30 seconds.
So it’s not like there are 10 keys or even 100 that are sent, that could be watched and then copied. It has to be unique each and every time you press the button. So it’s an algorithm to generate a string that has to be encoded, not a set of strings, since then there would be repeats and a hacker could just copy them until one worked.
So the code it sends is not the secure thing that matches, but the keys used to generate it are. So the only way someone can log in as you would be to steal your fob.
And since it expires in only a minute, you are pretty much guaranteed that no one will crack it with existing technology.
The reason you can’t get them outside of the U.S. is we, like every other country, has strict rules about exporting encryption technology.
At least that’s how some of them work, I don’t know about Blizzard but it’s probably the same idea. I worked at a place once with 15 second rotating keys. I had to be fast
So I haven’t been able to find this info anywhere…where is this info found about the pet talents thing?? I can’t find it anywhere!
http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php
this is the piece of that post I found interesting…
“by Boubouille on June 28, 2008, 01:15:31 PM
There is a plan to give player access to two talent specs to switch between them without having to respec all the time. More details in the future.”
IDK bout you tanks, I actually like tanking. I’d rather tank than heal, at least i wouldn’t care if I got too much aggro. To me, tanking 5 mans is pretty straight forward, as long as the group understands aggro. But 99% of the time they dont, so it ends up me: tanking skull in a corner somewhere, no heals. Rest of group, each on their own target. I can only growl so much people.
But yeah, tanking pet. I think it would be understood that a good tank would do much better than a pet. Its not like suddenly we’ll be able to do 5 mans all by ourselves. On the other hand, its somewhat amazing how little tanking is required sometimes. The SV first boss (the naga chick), we were able to down her with a warrior wearing level 63 blues, and as an OT a bear druid with 10k armor. In my feral gear i have 17k armor and I’m not geared enough to MT heroics yet. So…yeah you’ll be amazed at what you can get away with (in non-heroics).
So you think that the people who hack accounts and shard everything feed the gained money into the gold sold on Ebay (etc..)? I find that a bit hard to believe when, you would think, tracking the money would be much too easy. ie: I’m a hacker. I hack Jo Blow’s account, shard/steal/plunder everything and then mail the gold to an account used to distribute it to customers from Ebay…. You’d think it would be way too easy to follow the bread crumbs with the ban hammer.
I’m not saying I think buying gold is good, I think it’s cheating, I’m just not convinced that that is the source of the funds. Also, it seems like there is a LOT of gold bought on wow, so if hacked accounts were even a significant source of gold for such things, a lot more accounts would be getting hacked.
Just my two cents…..
I’m just not looking forward to the Survival pets, running around dropping their ‘traps’ everywhere. o_O
[...] can do this. Right now it is 7.45 am here (I live at GMT+8) and I’m just finished reading Weekend Update at BRK. They talk about the recently speak-everywhere authenticator, the way they work. After that [...]
http://triggerbull.blogspot.com/2008/06/compromising-blizzard-authenticator-man.html
It’s all theoretical and may be off the mark in some areas, but here’s something I wrote up that shows a possible vulnerability in the use of the new authentication keys.
Regarding the charity… I know this complicates matters but as WOW is a worldwide game, it would probably be more appropriate if you selected a worldwide based charity (Childs Play great but only 6 countries). I dare say that a fair amount of people outside USA – myself included – would be more likely donate to a charity like Worldvision for example. Pay locally, act globally etc etc. Set up a form on the BRK website so that people can submit how much they sent in.
I love the idea of a child in africa being sponsored by a group of gamers!
Just a suggestion.
I’m sure there has been quite a few comments on WOW Economics 101…
No time to read em right now so sorry if I’m repeating others.
On target.
The absolute peak for certain items….many items…is right after the new arena season arrives. All that new gear for folks need enchants etc
I have dual gathering, but didn’t take full advanatage of what the market would bear. No great virtue involved…just a little sympathy for realm Bruddahs and Sisstuhs…cause I know their professions cost plenty to level.
For one instance, I had casually picked up…over time… about 20 cobra scales on my skinning daily. Saved em for the new season. I knew they would go higher but sold the first 3 batches of 5 for 155 per batch. They sold in about…ohhh…….5 seconds….lol. Then I sold three more for a little higher. That took maybe two minutes. Then greed overwhelmed me and sold the last 2 for 50 each. Both gone in a hurry.
If gold is an issue, a player can save a ton of mats’ costs just by waiting awhile…maybe a couple weeks….for their leg armor, enchants, etc.
Of course though a crafting profession needs to strike while da iron is steaming and can pass on those higher costs to eager first adopters.(I wonder if anyone still has the 42 inch high def plasma they bought for ten thousand or so not all that many years ago?)
I should probably think this over a little more, but I had a thought regarding the WoW gold farming adwords…
Every time someone clicks an adword, the advertiser gets charged. As no BRK reader would EVER actually buy gold, the economics of the situation suggests clicking the ads would eventually drive the bums away.
If they pay $40 for every $25 they earn…its a business plan right from the 90s. eToys.com, anyone?
So go ahead and click…just don’t buy. The pay-per-click on “buy wow gold” must be pretty high…
Just a thought, and probably a poor one. I just like to share.
I haven’t “looked” at many of the WotLK additions for Hunters much… But… If we were able to train a Pet for our needs via the Tree… I’d bloody well be ecstatic !!!
And… If I may ask for OP icing… Allow us to spec each pet per need !! (seeing as we’ll never get more stable slots) Just the PREMISE of being allowed to have 3 pets FULLY spec’d to individual roles…. Well Mr. BRK….. (to steal your 3rd party speak).. We’d be drooling in line w/ cash in hand for WotLK.
My main is a tank, and my hunter is there when I get those rare, rare chances to instead shoot things until they fall over, so having my pet DPS spec makes sense for me.
I seriously doubt that the ‘tank’ spec will be capable of main tanking a dungeon, though if it is possible it will be *very* hectic, since you’ll have to remotely guide a mini-warrior around in hitting everything enough to keep it on the pet. One thing to consider is that the pet will need talents that double its HP pool, at the least. Right now, pets are around 6k HP or so? I suspect your pet would need 10k HP or so to avoid the cases of suddenly falling over from burst damage.
capable of MTing? nah, that’s probably not wise.
but OTing? hell, my pet does that already, even with Cower turned on (tanks who can’t break 500 TPS, i am making fun of YOU right now) and he lives!
give Nibbler some decent threat generation and the ability to Parry, and we’re in business.
Dear BRK,
Fearstalker had a good suggestion, if Curt Schilling is a big enough WoW player (he apparently is), he will have heard of you. If so, if his lawyers say it’s alright, he might want to get on board, probably take all the good press, and greatly expand both the scope of your charity fund raising and its earning power.
If that doesn’t work, the various states have departments of Vocational Rehabilitation which both support and work in conjunction with many and varied charities. My e-mail address should be attached to my reply on the server-side; if this seems like something you would be interested in, I have a relative who works in the department for one particular state and might be in a good position to present such a proposal. I would love to be involved in orcapalooza in any way , though I am sure that you will find a charity on your own.
D&A
300g for a Primal Nether? Wow. On my server you’d be lucky to get 30g.
May I suggest trying the “Make a Wish” Foundation?
BRK,
Have you looked at http://www.firstgiving.com/ for the charity?
I know people who have used the UK version before now and it seems to work well.
So, about that authenticator… “This product can only be shipped to the United States.”
We say booh!
Pet Talent Trees:
I’m sentimental about my trusty kitty. He’s the first pet I tamed on my first (and at the time, only) ‘toon after I was done with the pet-taming prereq quests, and he will always be my main pet. He (Halo) gets DPS.
My beautiful white wolf has been seeing a lot of play time lately. He’s just a little bit more durable in small groups, where off-off-tanking is more important than raw DPS. He (Haol) is getting Tank.
Still trying to get my beautiful white owl up to 70 and figure out the situation(s) where she might be most useful. Soloing perhaps? Seeing as Screech is an AoE-aggro-generator. I’ll try the Utility stuff our on her (Whoolla).
And I’m sure u c wut i did thar, vis a vis the names. BM Hunter: Come for the Pets, Stay for the MQoSRDPS!
Being that most of your readers are Hunters with pets, how about the ASPCA or some other animal/pet based charity?
ZOMG ASPCA!
Pet tanks.
You’re assuming Blizzard intends to make pet tanks useful. I’m assuming not. I hope you’re right and I’m wrong.
@Valthan and others:
RSA keys fobs.
The principle is simple. Both sides of the conversation need to have a shared secret. So we have userid and password. but wait that secret gets out some times. (keylogger). hmm ok we will change the secret every minute. that will stop the secret from getting out and if it does it’s only good for one minute. (or what ever granularity you need)
Problem how do you keep two people in sync about a secret that changes every minute and both parties can’t talk to each other because “The Man” in the middle might be listening. what you do is, give each side the ability to generate the secret themselves with out talking to each other.
so both party have a clock that is mostly in sync with each other. both sides have a secret that they shared ahead of time in a more secure fashion and we will call it the seed secret (seed for short)
so all is left now is to take the current time + your seed and put it through the encryption instructions that both sides have. So if both sides managed to generate their secret within that minute both sides will have the same secret in this case a 6 digit number.
so if you pressed the button 10 times in a row (aka generate the secret) all withing that same time window you will still get the same 6 numbers.
The biggest security risk in this plan is because you have one person (aka blizzard authentication server) in all these conversations. If you learn how the secrets are made and the time used for the making, the range of serial numbers/seeds you will be able to predict the very course 6 digit number. you will still need to know what the seed is of the account your trying to hack, plus the userid and the password. So relatively secure but not enough to get rid of the Userid and password secrets.
worse case is that the keylogger logs into your account seconds after you do (having all three secrets). booting you off. now they have all the time in the world, unless you re-log back in right behind them. So keep your userid remembered by your computer
all bets are off if someone breaks Blizzards encryption (assumption that communications is encrypted) that occurs during the authentication phase (transmits your credentials/secrets) from your client to the authentication server. Classic “Man in the Middle” attack.
About Tanks:
Forget Tanks there is soon to be such a glut of tanks available that the next shortage will be yep you guessed it Healers.
I agree that for the first month of WotLK there will be a shortage of level 80 tanks because they will be 15 levels behind everybody else’s level 70 toons. They will catch up, but how many healers will make the trek to 80? Many healers I know are alt of other toons that get more play because people need healers.
Even today I have a harder time finding healers then I do, tanks. To the point that I am raising one myself (Level 62 Shadow Priest) SW:D ftw
will the SP make it to 80 yeah maybe some day. but my MM hunter is sure going to get there first.
My main is a tank and I have no problems with Blizz buffing pets until they could tank instance runs. I cheered when I heard a BM hunter was wearing +heal gear and going to instances in the tank slot.
I just don’t see the devs taking it that far. I suspect that tank specced pets will be great for soloing and only OT at best elsewhere.
I dont have time to read through all the comments to see if this is listed as i’m at work but i would suggest Child’s Play as a charity. Its a charity run by the gamers over at http://www.penny-arcade.com/ that buys toys for kids in hospitals, and all the donations go for that, they pay for overhead out of their own pockets. You can even choose what toys to buy and which hospitals they go straight to, as they act as middle men in the process.
anyway, my two cents. I’m sure they’d be happy to work with you.