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Real World Anger Affecting MMOG Reality?
We reported late last week that FFXI was under a DDOS attack. The Japanese origin of the title may be the reason for the attack, as Ludonauts asks the question of whether chinese crackers may attacking the game because of political frustration. From the article: "Discussion on the Allakhazam forum points the attack at Chinese protesters angry about the deletion of references to Japanese war atrocities from history textbooks: the DDOS attacks began on April 9, the same day as the protests in China. In FFXI, this issue is linked to the question of 'gil-sellers,' players who farm in-game resources for real-world cash, who in FFXI are usually characterized as Chinese: many who are suspected of being gil-sellers have placed comments in their searchable information fields like 'Resisting all Japanese goods, long live the People's Republic of China.'" Commentary available from game girl advance, Broken Toys, and Terra Nova.
While it's certainly possible that Chinese groups are behind the attacks, it's unlikely that the (over-maligned to begin with) RMTs are. The biggest companies are based out of Hong Kong, which due to its heavy trade involvement isn't seeing as heavy anti-Japanese sentiment; in any case, given that their dinner and bed rely on maintaining a brisk sales pace, bringing the game down would be counterproductive.
/sarcasm
Its humorous to see how a lot of posts here on /. seem to have this idea that the Chinese are seriously informed about what they're 'fighting' (read: rioting) for. China is still a Communist country with a censored press and is subjected to a censored internet (something few outsiders could probably comprehend). Regardless of what it looks like from the outside, people need to think of what the average Chinese citizen sees from the inside. Once you do that, its not TOO much more difficult to see why the Chinese would/are doing such things.
Japan is attempting to join the security council at the U.N. China is the only MAJOR U.N. player in Asia (Russia doesn't count since its focused domestically and to its southwest right now). Throw in political (North Korea), economic (U.N. sanctions on China for human rights issues to cut competition?) and historical (WWII fears) and you have a nasty case of mass backlash.
"only making the link because the game is Japanese."
In case you haven't noticed, that's pretty much how the rioters have been operating. They've been trashing Japanese cars, reguardless of who's driving them, and attacking Japanese factories, reguardless of who's working in them. You're trying to apply logic to mob mentality, and it just doesn't work that way.
Unlike a large portion of China, most Al Qaeda members are not bored college students who spend their free time playing MMORPGs.