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A World of Warcraft World
An anonymous reader writes "On ebay people are paying real money to buy WoW gold... while some guy in Korea murdered another guy over a rare sword that existed only in an MMORPG. This essay looks at the way more and more people are failing to draw a distinction between their real and online lives and takes it to its logical, yet utterly insane, conclusion." Amusing, and with more than a few ounces of truth.
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ever consider the benefits of mmorpgs and computer games? ever compared the real violence rate and drug rates between nerds and jocks? jocks are the generally the ones beating peers, raping women and snorting coke. sh~t happens with anything. what doesn't influence people?
Absolutely right. If the time and effort required to obtain something is real, and the satisfaction derived from it is real, then why does it matter if the object itself is virtual?
The fact that people care so much about a silly game is, however, pathetic in my opinion.
I don't understand why people ridicule online life and view it as some trivial sideshow to "real" life. The history of human existence shows that people have a penchant for taking many things seriously. Many of these activities reside far outside the realm of pragmatic, utilitarian life. Whether it's being a sports fan, a serious gardener, a breeder of dogs, an avid golfer, a sailboat owner, or any of a thousand other activities, people can become quite immersed. If online gaming "doesn't count," then so many other activities that people invest time in do not count either.
Without these "hobbies," people would be little more than animals -- eating, sleeping, reproducing in the endless cycle of life that we share with even the lowliest bacteria. What distinguishes humans from animals (perhaps only quantitatively) is the extent that we can move beyond the mundane activities of "real" life and explore such a wide range of alternatives.
For the record, I, personally am not into online gaming or sports -- this post is not a personal rant -- but I can see how these activities can become a major part of a person's identity and daily life. As such, it is important to understand and respect (in a love-of-freedom sense, not a politically correct sense) the fact that different people value different things. Its not that some people go overboard on online life vs. real life, its that some people become immersed in a life that is different from the utilitarian vision of a standard life.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
The comment that was made in the blurb/article about not being able to differentiate between a game and real life is ridiculous. It's inflammatory and biased and baseless. Nobody is making a mental disconnect between the two "places". It's just people with anger issues. Some people get seriously pissed off when someone cuts them off in traffic. They tail them until they can beat the crap out of them. Other people might let their anger get out of hand over a discussion on abortion or religion or the invasion of Iraq or a sports team or getting fouled in a basketball game. Otherwise might do so because they felt screwed over in a game that they'd invested a lot of time in.
This is nothing more than more of the same crap that surrounded Dungeons & Dragons in the late 70s and the 80s.
r iticism_and_controversies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_&_Dragons#C
These people behave irrationally not because of the game, but because they are irrational, sick, or sociopathic people.
If these same individuals were in a knitting club, they'd be stabbing each other's eyes out with knitting needles and paying stupid amounts of money for fancy-assed wool to turn into butt-ugly sweaters and scarves. But we don't hear people telling us that knitting is evil -- probably because other people outside the knitting community understand what it's all about.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
All I would say is that this level of feeling is not some unique nerd-loser quality. See "World Series", "Super Bowl", "Championship Belt", "Formula One", etc.
Working from home helps cut down on the money spent on gas now that the prices have become prohibitive.
Renting dvd's also tends to end up being cheaper. Cost of getting to the theater, $10+/ticket in a lot of places, and soda, popcorn, etc. by the time it's all said and done, if more than one person is going to see the movie, it's actually cheaper just to buy the bloody thing in the store when it comes out on dvd.
Avoiding rude people is just kind of an added bonus.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
I do not believe that you can possibly identify a single country, except for perhaps Monaco and Vatican City, where someone has not been murdered for a sum of money less than 3000 USD. So I am not sure why gripe you have against the US that you feel the need to try and turn everything into a failing of the US "social experiment."
And the trolling and flamebait never ends.
GGP makes a statement. Thin skinned GP take offense at what he obviously believe to be an attack on the U.S. and P spouts inane trolling crap.
And here I am answering for some reason to that crap.
I'm not the GGP but I'll take the liberty to re-phrase what he said:
"A lot of people have been murdered for less than $3000 in almost every country in the world."
There. I believe it's still faithful to the spirit of GGP's post which was something like:
"The man wasn't killed just for an imaginary object in an imaginary world. That object had a value of about $3000 and that is why he died."
Disclaimer: I'm not american nor I live in the U.S. I don't hate America, tho I probably hate a few americans. I also hate people in several countries in all continents. I'm probably a very spiteful person. A country is an abstraction. I can't hate a country any more that I can hate the color blue. But that's just me.
No sig
"Real" money is just a fantasy substance that people barter for. Money is not a fancy piece of paper, it's a delusion, that we all politely buy into to make trading easier.
Like some third-world currency that suffers boutes of inflation and counterfeiting, MMRPG money is ephemeral and unstable, but from a mathematical standpoint, economics does not care if there the resources are real or imagined.
Markets have judged the supply and demand and the perception of inflation/permanence have assigned it a conversion rate. And because there are a great many unknowns in how a game will develop or be managed, the markets may from time to time exhibit irrational exhuberance, have pyramids and bubbles, just like the "real" world.
It's not entirely impossible that some day a court might rule that income tax will have to be charged on game money for the simple reason that there is a market for it - just as if it was money earned in another country.
People are playing World of Warcraft, EverQuest 2, Star Wars Galaxies, etc. as a hobby or form of entertainment when they are away from work or school. And like every other hobby or form of entertainment, there will be some who do it way too much or way too seriously for their own well-being.
I work a regular, decent job like any other normal person. When I come home, my wife and I play World of Warcraft together. This is opposed to sitting ourselves down in front of the TV for 6 hours like many people do.
We have formed a guild with other working adults who treat WoW as a game, and not a replacement for life. We have a great deal of fun when we play without needing to be pressured by others to be involved in raiding or other activites every waking hour.
Yes, there are some people we know who are in the game at least 18 hours a day and treat raiding Molten Core as if it were more important than life itself. Yes, it is pretty sad. But if it weren't WoW, they'd most likely be squandering all their time obsessing over some other activity.
You've got some serious relationship issues.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I don't know about murder, but people do suicide over it (a recent event in the stock exchange where I work confirmed this to me).
Come to think of it, there's an awful lot of commonality between an MMORPG and the stock exchange. Hmm... you listening, Sony? I can imagine my level 63 Vah Shir warrior wandering into the main bank at PoK, right-clicking the banker and investing in the international equities market. All on the credit card. Corporate takeovers could be PvP raids. Thwack!
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Of course, the bottom kinda dropped out of the sports card business, so maybe that's not a good example. :)
That's precisely what I'm always trying to point out to people. That this "new wave" of crime is the same old garbage, brought to a new medium by the same psychos who'd kill you for saying their baseball team sucks. Although I have no hard facts to backup this second idea, I speculate that the violent outbreaks over video games isn't even perpetuated by the geeks and nerds, it's a result of video games/PC Games becoming easier and popular enough that the same sick people who kill people over a football game are now playing video games. People weren't killing each other when games were BBS style and you had to be a true nerd to even figure out how to connect, play them, and appreciate the ASCII art. Most maniacs who are prone to kill people just don't have the patience, desire, and intelligence to do all that, but now that the technical knowledge required to play games is so little, your average joe-psycho can hop in and get pissed off in record time.
It's like somebody getting murdered over a $3000 baseball card. The card, in reality, isn't worth much more than the paper it is printed on. But to the people buying and selling cards, it is worth that much.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
people here seem to be talking about killing like if they had enough money from the murder then it's okay, that seems crazy to me
Nah, of course it isn't okay. What we're saying is, is that it is conceptually understandable.
If you say "some guy killed another guy for stealing his imaginary sword", the immediate response is "wtf?"
If you say "some guy killed another guy for stealing 3 grand from him", the response is more, "oh. one more murderer in this wonderful world of ours."
You don't condone it, but you can sort of see why he might want to do it.