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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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The people are ripe for it. You've heard stories about how ticket sales are plummeting at movie theaters, in favor of home DVD viewing. Why? Why do so many people want to work from home now? Because we're sick of having to sit with other people. We want that extra layer of control that meat interaction will never give us. We want a world without the unpredictability of real, unrestrained humanity. Either that...Or DVD+/-R & DVDwriters prices are coming down.
do.what.promptcmds
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?
How dare you sully the great name of Blizzard? I and my 80 strong army of MC loot equipped legionaires will lead a crusade against you until there is not but one of you left to mock us!
But we need a one hour break from 6-7, Mom will murder me if I'm not there to eat dinner with the familly. Don't worry, this "real world" instance seems to be pretty persistant, our progress wont be lost, just aa few minutes to clear the repop...
Beep beep.
In addition to this, who is to say someone cannot get emotionally attached to something that isn't physical?
do.what.promptcmds
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.
until I ran into this:
/. and not something of actual merit.
"Just think of how porn changes when the user also gets to go in with the toned body of an underwear model. It'll make our current online porn look like just the tip of the assberg."
Was that really needed?
Anyway the article smells of someone trying to get posted on
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
I'd like to see a study on the percentage of people that drop out of college due to WOW and how many actually recover.
Of course these people dont think they live ina fantasy world... but here's the reality of it.
These people have a very real connection to the entertainment, social, and self image (among many other things) aspects of playing this game. The ways you can gain prominence, excell, get friends, make a splash, whatever it is they are talking about (swords and money are prime examples).
When someone takes that from you or offers to sell it to you, it has real world implications to their lives that are no less real than anything else. It does not matter what social construct it is.
Going down to my local club where every girl is dressed up and dancing is also complete surreal to the normal world around me. And if I drive up in a nice car (+5 pimp/has money) and wearing a rolex (+3 nice job) it has effect on that world too. And it's the bsuiness owners job to make it as surreal as possible just like a game... with flashy lights to make the girls look better, and drinks to.... make the girls look better (and the guys too).
It's all about power and these people are just living it with a game as the medium. But it's no less real. Odd maybe, not so accepted, yes, but it's very real... as that guys rage in killing someone demonstrates quite well.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Personal responsibility surrenders. Its not the game. Its not the weapon. Its not the sex. Its the person!
When there is internet cafe's in WoW Inns and Taverns on which I can read the news, read slashdot and even play online games such as WoW.
... mmmm!!!
And what sort of conspiracy that my verify word was 'sorcery'
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
I used to play EQ a lot, I was pretty hooked on it for about a year. I don't regret it, since I had a lot of fun times, but looking back, I certainly burnt a lot of hours in Norrath. My brother got really hooked on it too, and he's not even the complete nerd that I am. There were certain people there who were pretty terrifying though. For example, I often heard people talking about how they were skipping school in order to spend the day playing the game, and my brother once even got paid (EQ money, but still) to guard someone's character while he took a nap at the keyboard. This guy was so thoroughly obsessed with the game that he wouldn't leave the computer - not even to sleep.
Take these stories as warnings. You might not think yourself capable of such things, and okay, I doubt you'll end up killing anyone, but even a stupid little game can become a major feature in your life if you're not careful. Especially when you have to pay per month, since it's so easily justifiable - you're only getting your money's worth, after all!
K, why would someone kill someone else over something as intangible as the way they honor their preferred deity? There are always people on the fringe of any group whose very fringiness make them outcasts. Online wealth is still wealth. People go to war for essentially the same thing; albeit on a larger scale.
I say, Let Natural selection decide who is the victor, People with intangible swords vs. people with tangible swords and questionable mental stability.0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
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.
... while some guy in Korea murdered another guy over a rare sword that existed only in an MMORPG.
CHINA, not Korea. It happened in SHANGHAI. Geez, do a little research, tens of thousands of people are going to read your submission...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8143073/
Dupe
Here's a link to a phsychologist who's making his living on studying people who play MMORPG's.
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/
I've filled out his surveys for 4 or 5 years.
At the site you may find many tools for characterizing your personality type and how it relates to the alternate reality of the games. As well as analysis of how MMORPG's have affected people en masse.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
The sword was worth a good 5000 yuan on the open market. Adjusting that for GDP, that's around $3000 in the US.
Now how many americans have gotten murdered over $3000 or less? A lot.
You dont need to be an obsessive gamer. Anything you put time and effort into has value. Someone stealing it has commited a true crime.
Yet in playing the game you must understand that everything within the game mechanics is fair play. Exploits are another story. And its even worse when you get exploited and the parent company does not admit the exploit exists and wont make you right. Or even worse when they deny it exists, then you see a fix in for it a month later, but no reimbursement.
I play eve-online.com and its a blast. But you can't forget its a game. But those unreimbursed exploits!
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()?
In case you haven't heard how serious (read: messed up or funny, depending on your disposition) MMORPGs can get, have a listen to this:
http://wowseriousbusiness.ytmnd.com/
This was recorded from a voice chat on WoW. All I can say is...WOW...
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.
...who met a woman, and dated her, as much in the World of Warcraft as in the real one.
She ended up leaving her husband and moving to an apartment near him just to be with him -- a college kid. Talk about insane!
Poor guy didn't know what'd hit him.
She was po'-white-trash with no job and no education beyond high school. Finally he got enough sense knocked into him to get away from her.
The kid is still addicted to WoW, much to the detriment of his grades and his social life. For all I knock the crap that passes for a "social life," sitting by yourself in a dark room playing MMORPGs sure isn't healthy!
I've been in some bad situations, but man: What happened to him sure makes me feel normal.
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."
http://wowseriousbusiness.ytmnd.com/
Obligatory YOU STOLE MY FUCKING CLOUDSONG!
participating in a fantasy world. Usually, it's been their own, in their own heads; but now they manifest these behaviors in a public, communal fantasy world, in a way that is widely observable.
Of course, there now are regularly elements that are beyond the control of one person, namely other people; this is where the combination of fantasy and immaturity lead to "bad things".
It seems to me that it's just as much of a problem of having a "chronic need to escape reality" if you're blowing all your money at the strip clubs or nightclubs, going out to the movies every single night, taking recreational drugs to escape, or spending most of your waking hours inside an MMORPG.
... But again, all of it is ultimately "false", because those "friends" are only connecting because of the common addiction they share.
The way "reality" works in our world, entertainment = escape. The entertainment industry probably prefers you not equate the two so starkly, but I think it's just the facts. All of us have a need to disconnect from our daily lives (the "daily grind" as we so often call it), so we crave some "entertainment" to whisk us away from all those worries and stress for a while. But some people live for the escape itself, not for their lives as a whole. And that spells trouble.
Just because while playing an MMORPG, one might have a real connection to the "social aspects" of the game and so on doesn't mean it's any more "real" than other forms of "escape". Most people hooked on cocaine, heroin, or other drugs tell you that all their friends are doing it, and it's "cool" and so on and so forth, too. It does let them become a part of a particular "social circle" and attain a level of "popularity" they might not otherwise have had
I think the point the poster is making is that here in the US, violent crime is so common as to be generally un-news worthy, and that the US have a very high violent crime rate. Of course I am not going to quote you numbers, but I'm suggesting that this idea is not arguable.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
In That Hideous Strength , Merlin asks Ransom, "Who is called Sulva? What road does she walk? Why is the womb barren on one side? Where are the cold marriages?"
In part, Ransom replies, "... the womb is barren and the marriages cold. There dwell an accursed people, full of pride and lust. There when a young man takes a maiden in marriage, they do not lie together, but each lies with a cunningly fashioned image of the other, made to move and to be warm by devilish arts, for real flesh will not please them, they are so dainty in their dreams of lust. Their real children they fabricate by vile arts in a secret place."
Lewis had modernism pegged way back in the '40s.
Back in 2001 when I played UO, I remember hearing of a dude who committed suicide over being scammed out of some valuable possessions worth (back then) about a thousand bucks on eBay. I was scammed a few times in UO myself, and it sucked and I got pissed off over it for awhile - like you would if you were a victim of minor theft. Its pheasable to imagine - if your loss was much greater (equates to bankruptcy/major theft) - that some may kill/assault/commit suicide over it.
:P
I read somewhere that that dudes sword was worth about $600-700 via Ebay, and was very, very rare within the game. My point being is that a lot of people have been killed over non-virtual possessions worth a heck of a lot less, and a lot easier to come by too.
Oh and also, the linked article is just a bunch of incoherant rambling with some bad jokes and satire to boot. Hence, pointlesswasteoftime.com .
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
I seem to recall Meridian 59 being around long before that.
And before even that I remember wasting a lot of time playing Legend of the Red Dragon, Usurper, the Pit, and many many more game titles I have since forgotten.
"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.
forget swords! These people are obvious terrorists and should be dealt with. Track back the IPs and carpet bomb 'em! On Ebay? well, WE don't negotitate with terrorists, therefore whoever does... well, lets just say, more carpet bombs!
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
If you look at this Thottbot entry it appears to be from some other game.
They do say that one sign of MMORPG addiction is if you get far too emotionally involved in the ups and downs of the game.
" I can't hate a country any more that I can hate the color blue."
Don't get me started on the color blue! Just thinking of the color blue makes me see red! I'm not a violent man, but if the color blue were ever hit by a bus and tasted its own blood, I would want to be there to see it.
In short, down with the color blue!
(except for the periwinkle shade, which is kind of nice.)
It's a popular meme that crime in America is "so high that it's not newsworthy." Crime happens all over the world and no higher in America than anywhere else. Crimes are more often prosecuted here than anywhere else, and many crime rates are proportionally lower here than in Europe. There are several places to look these stats up, but here's a site from Google that summarizes them:
Stats
Of course I am not going to quote you numbers, but I'm suggesting that this idea is not arguable.
In other words, you won't cite anything but will declare your argument inarguable. It's sad that this is what passes for insightful commentary on Slashdot these days!
I played Everquest from about a 3 months after it came out (late 98 I believe) til around 2002, I 'quit' several times in between. In this small town at one point there were around 20 or so of us that played. You'd never believe the amount of absolute insanity that followd that game. I had friends that got married to someone (in game) then later that person would come to meet all of us.
One incident comes to mind, ok.. Let me see if I can explain properly. In the high end game there is a system called DKP that guilds choose to use or not, basically it is if you are on alot and at their events you get DKP that you can cash in to get an item that a monster yeilds, if everyone wants the item, it comes down to who has the most DKP.
Well... This real life friend of mine, who is a girl (we got her hooked on eq, bad idea, anyway), she got married in game to this dude that came down to meet her, so he shows up, they get together what ever, and he leaves. Come to find out his guild had set up this 'underground' DKP system that consisted of this - if you could have sex (in real life) with a girl from the game, you would get insane 'underground' DKP from the guild that you could cash in for anything (like getting someone kicked out for no reason, etc).
Ended up he didn't get his DKP though, because some other guy from his guild had already came to visit and had sex with her and claimed the DKP off her. Sooo, yeah, that game was all kinds of snafu.
But I'll tell you this, even though I had logged in over 300+ actual real time played / logged in on my account, I would have at any time left the game at the drop of a dime to do something with my friends in real life, the game never had me that hooked, but it was sure something to do those countless nights when I couldn't find any IT work. I'm happily retired now, for the last few years, and would never ever go back to it. I could have been a CCIE with all the time I wasted on that shit. Anyway...
same claptrap that was made in the 80s during the satanic panic: "D&D Players commit suicide and worship the devil!!!!!" There's more killings over damn football games on tv than there ever will be from RPGs. It's the whole "oh that's weird" mentality. For some reason its supposed to be "normal" to veg out in front of the idiot box (tv) but its not normal to use ones brain via two way communication on a computer. So whenever something happens in the "un normal" culture the "normal" talking heads point fingers and shout "see see..." Reminds me of a few days ago when a co-worker of my wife came to visit and saw my throwing knife targets in the back yard and made a comment in jest saying "oh because everyone has to have one of those". Now it's just a joke yea, but I've heard mock jokes like that crap all my life from the "normal" crowd so to speak. But a month ago when a neighbor down the street went wacky at 2 in the morning and started mowing his lawn and slamming things around who's house did 2 other neighbor gals come too because he was freaking them out? - That's right boys and girls the one who had something more than a TV to use on the weirdo if push came to shove. (cops handled it after I called them. The guy despite his snockered state had enough sense at least left to keep his distance one glance was all it took). Point is, claptrap comments like this article gets made to all counter-culture activities whether its video games, collectible card games, pen paper & dice games, whatever the idiot box doesn't give you basically or the damn nightly news doesn't "approve" of.
This article is lame for so many reasons, but I'll just pick at the first sentence of the post:
"On ebay people are paying real money to buy WoW gold."
No they aren't.
They're connecting to a virtual auction house (ebay) to exchange virtual money (credit card/paypal/whatever) for virtual goods (MMO junk).
I'm half inclined to go an about the value of various pieces of paper (greenbacks) vs. blank pieces of paper and the implication of the phrase "real money" - which is a lot like saying "real promises of value", or even "virtual wealth". But I'm not going to, because I've already put more thought into this comment than I think the author of the article or the post did.
5000 yuan is in fact $617, however, when you factor in per capita GDP, which is a very good indication of cost of living, you'll understand that $617 in China "feels" more like $4300 in the US. GDP is not only valid for comparison but its a much more meaningful comparison too. I'm not sure how the parent arrived at their number of $3000.
PowerLevel.com - A next generation marketplace for virtual items and services
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
between me and the internet me.
And we take offense to these remarks.
*DrugCheese rants*
Back when I actually gamed online, I recall that there was a character class... called THIEF!! They STOLE things... gold, items, equipment, you name it, if it wasn't bolted down, they stole it. From NPC's (non player bots) and PCS (player characters) alike.
Nowadays we have panzies who cry a river because their sword was stolen. I'm a hard core gamer (or was) but I've discovered that there is so much more I'd rather do than just play all day. This is the problem with most gamers. They do not know when to draw the line.
I personally prefer to build my body healthy than to let an interface make me think I'm healthy, because in the long run, being a fatass will kill you VERY unpleasantly. Most fat guys and girls aren't in the best of health. (Try bending over at 5'10" and 300+ lbs to pick up whatever you've spilled and you'll see what I mean.)
Most people are inherently lazy, so perhaps forcing them into a virtual world is a benefit. It will leave the REAL world open for those of us who like being outside in nature. (And yes I'd probably have a laptop with me, but I unplug a lot more than I used to nowadays.)
I love gaming, but I also like being able to know that I'm not just living for the benefit of having an alter ego, which once deleted, would leave me as a poor slob without any alternatives but to start over without a hope. (Hard core MMORPG beta testers will tell you how aggravating it is to build a character and have a server-wide character wipe at the next set of upgrades that invalidate half the items and skills youv'e "earned").
Oh, and when "thieves" loot items. Best choice is to kill them or get them killed. The reason "real life" is boring is because those with connections can usurp the law and use it to crush those without resources. In games, you can still appeal to the godlike Game Masters to change things for you if you're cheated. Removing thieves from a Dungeons and Dragons like world is like pulling someone's gums out, because you already got all their teeth in your pocket.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
OK.. all that said.. my points I want to mention are:
1. Most MMORPG players are average people. :p ) But mostly, NO.
2. A few news stories about someone commiting murder or having a heart attack in association to games makes it the games fault?
3. There is a REAL economy that directly impacts the in-game economy. Right now, companies like Sony are coming up with in-game auction systems using REAL money. (they want to bring it in game for 2 main reasons a) they can protect their customers from fraud b)they can charge a service fee to make a little extra $$$) Anything involving REAL money tends to increase the focus that a human being will put into that task.
4. Using online games can actualy be stimulating to the mind. Each game is a new peice of software . Each game provides puzzles and quests that the player must acomplish to succeed. And in the case of MMO's specificaly, it requires a certain amount of social skills to succeed. Unhealthy? only when used in excess, like anything else. (even forum trolling
I could (probably should) write a book devending gamers, but that's a whole different story.
(Oh yea, I also sold an online toon for aprox. $750US :p so while y'all bicker.. i've gotta get back to my game!)
-Quixxilver- "Where am I going?
Of course, the bottom kinda dropped out of the sports card business, so maybe that's not a good example. :)
"It is the time, that you've wasted for your rose, that makes your rose so important" (Saint-Exupery)
May Peace Prevail On Earth
My first impression of WOW was that this technology would evolve into virtual malls useful for real world business operations. Browse and purchase business supplies, that sort of thing. Or visit an Amazon book store. Interact immediately with sales staff etc.
4
If our consciousness could ever be uploaded into a machine perhaps these virtual worlds are the beginnings of the vessel for this.
The article brought up an idea that never occurred to me before. WOW characters could join in marriage or civil unions. Opposite sex partners could have children.
I advanced a WOW character to level 60 just to see how the game worked, then cancelled the game subscription. There is no way I can put that much more time into a game.
There was another story on WOW I saw recently that made some good points about the culture:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/8/7/162558/754
The post is arguing that both the money in the game and the money exchanged via paypal (or using some other online transaction) are just electronic bits of information, so calling one of them "real money" but not the other is, in that sense, a contradiction.
You could maintain that both were not real money. It may not be a very reasonable position to take, but it would at least be logically consistent based on them both being bits you cannot touch.
You're defining the "real money" as the bits that can be converted to cash at an ATM. If you can sell the game money (or game items) to someone to increase your electronic bank account balance, which you then withdraw as cash at an ATM, what is the difference between that scenario and selling (exchanging) a certain amount of French or German currency for US dollars? None. So, as I think you agree, both can be considered real money.
The parent is just pointing out that it's not really a sane position to call one real and the other not real.
Regards, Martin
I believe that parent posters point was that the poor bastard that got murdered didn't get murdered for a virtual sword that's worth nothing; he got murdered for a virtual sword that's worth $3000, with emotional attachments likely upping the value for the other party.
In other words, whether the sword was made of 1's and 0's or solid gold is completely irrelevant. It was valuable to the people in question. It is no more or less insane to kill over a virtual object than a real one. Not that that's going to matter to the politicians and busybodies who will no doubt be using this incident to try to prove that games are the root of all evil in the world...
Anyway, quite a few people, americans or otherwise, have been murdered over whatever pocket change they happen to be carrying - which, I assume, usually amounts to a lot less than $3000.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
If i remember correctly, the incident happened in China and not Korea. Did a google search and here's the original story... http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-03/3 0/content_429246.htm
now... can i find a dragon saber in guild wars?...
.. if this logic is reversed and applicable, I am a mass-murderer.
Kewl.
If you say, "but the Bonebiter doesn't even exist," I'll say it exists in exactly the same way that the songs and software I download off Bittorrent exist. And yet stealing them is a crime. The only difference is that when I steal a song, nobody else is deprived of the song. When that guy stole John's Bonebiter, he was left unarmed and forced to go find a replacement. That theft actually hurts more, not less.
"Stealing" digital music is illegal because you break the copyright-law, which is quite different from stealing a physical object in the real world. I would therefore say that this comparison is pretty bad.
But concerning theft of virtual objects in a virtual world, it would be perfectly OK if it was punishable in the virtual world. If not, why would it even be possible to steal objects in the virtual world? Or to kill someone? In a similar sense, if you think that someone did you injustice in a computer-game, wasn't it actually because he played by the rules of the game, and you do not think that those rules are fair. Then perhaps you should find another game.
To sum it up: Killing a virtual character in a game to get revenge is nothing new, but trying to revenge injustice in a game by acting in the real world makes no sense to me.
Weed makes you lazy, not a pederass. ...
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;-)
Weed rots your brain, especially on those who are using it alot, yes. The absolute worst cases you see on the street is in fact due to HEAVY use of harshis, not the harder stuff. But it also has diverse effects on people, not everyone reacts to it the same.
Do you smoke crack?
I tried harshis a handful of times, but on me it had worse and worse effect. Sometimes I got vibration in my chest from it that really scared me since it felt like it was the heart. Now I know better what it is, and it - along with nervous heart - is gone since I started doing yoga and breathing exercises. I was poisoning my body, now it is cleaning.
Tell Your friend to SEEK THERAPY. She should have ceased contact with this 'friend' of hers. It had nothing to do with 'dope'; he is a sexual predator! If he was also 6. It's not because of the dope. He was also molested. But the fact that she thinks it was dope, makes me believe it was an older sexual predator.
This you can state without having talked to the girl or anything.. Way to go making generalizations. She knows the guy, he was also young. You may be right he was also molested, but isn't that beyond the point? He did this one time in a trance from drugs.
Read a book. Your conclusions are based on dilusions and rationalizations of a 6 year old; not reality.
I prefer to deal with reality, not books and generalizations. I also don't claim to own the truth, I just share my experience. My experience was that her pain in the time from she was 6 years old was REAL, and she said this would not have happened if he hadn't taken that smoke. He wasn't himself.
Maybe she should have figured out how to deal with this at 6 years old without tornmenting herself, but things turned up this way no matter how much you try to excuse drugs.
Drugs, accept alcohol, do not make people do things they weren't already going to do. It makes them have more fun doing it.
Taken from somebody promoting drugs.. Do we really need advertisement for it?
People take drugs because they need a excuse for doing fun things in their lives. The drugs lowers the artificial high bars we have in our so-called "modern society" to let go, relax and just do what we feel like, not what others expect us to do. We live our entire lives on the expectations of others, even sometimes when we do the opposite! But when we drink, we have an excuse to drop all that. The sad thing is that is another social acceptable thing to do, so we're not really free even we do this!
There's no need to drink yourself up to talking with that girl. When you do, you're not really doing it anyways, the booze is doing it for you, you're not quite yourself. In fact people become quite stupid in the effect of booze.
Why use drugs to artificially lower personal inhibitions, when you can do the same in a drug-free state and really meet yourself and reality? You then also have more control, thought-processes intact and don't risk dropping those inhibitions that SHOULD NOT be dropped.
You can have as much fun as you like. Just do it, but you also have to go beyond your own fears, and be able to take ridicule and fear from others.
PS: NO ONE WANTS TO JOIN YOUR CULT.
That's okay, I don't want to join your cult either
What I'm arguing is that you can have a drug-free living with a much better and long-lasting high from doing yoga, meditation and service to the world. It is totally natural, have been practiced in the East for thousands of years and this is what everybody is seeking in drugs and other escapes from reality.
PPS: Maybe you should get some therapy too.
Way to go Mr. ad hominem attack.
What can I say after this?
I can only direct you to an article about being a fool I once read and now Google'd up for
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
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.
The best phrase I've heard to describe this sort of gratification is "Perpetually scratching a perpetual itch". That nails the MMORPG levelling treadmill pretty well.
In fact you "own" only a limited amount of time in your life.
Time that you spent for other people is often regarded with money, normally we call this our work.
Time you don't get money for ist your leisure time, you can freely decide what to do with it.
Many people spend some of their leisure time to play games, may it virtually or may it boardgames.
Most games do cost money, be it the money for the box with the boardgame in it, or the CD-ROM for a computer game. For many boardgames there exist extensions, that can be bought to increase the fun while playing the game. Virtual gold or a virtual sword in an online-game is such an extension.
People like spending money for such "worthless" things, it makes them happy. There is nothing bad about spending money to increase the fun you have in your leisure time even if it is a virual sword, you are spending your money for.
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.
Back in high school I skipped a week to play UO, I rember i alomst got held back, I rember how angry my parents were, I rember that being the worst possible time in my life.
At the time I was very introvert and anti-social, So playing UO counter-acted that completly.
It seems that there is a link between self-image and the length of time u spend on an MMO. Just think about it
That sword is no less real than the money in your bank account. Both exist only as bits on a disk drive at some server farm.
Computers are real, as are the people using them. I don't know why they should be considered less 'real' than any other human activity.
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.
I was talking to a couple, who are friends of my father's, and we were talking about video game addiction. When the subject came up the woman turned to her husband and said, "Oh God, remember how many times we stayed up all night playing Pac-Man and then had to go into work without any sleep or even call in occasionally."
I was floored. Pac-Man? But they explained that they would compete with each other, taking turns and getting higher and higher scores until they realized it was daybreak.
So, spending hours and hours playing a game to the detriment of your real world responsibilities is not something that can be attributed to MMORPGs.
I largely agree with your ideas about humanity's desire to escape reality, but I've also found from personal experience that it's possible to replace that escape from reality with reality that you truely enjoy. :)
During highschool and my first couple years of college, I played quite a few videogames, read books almost constantly, and went to movies frequently. But, for the past couple of years, I've replaced most of that with a girlfriend. We simply spent lots of time together, doing more "real" things, walking, talking, playing, - generally just being together.
During that time, my video game playing/book reading/movie watching was reduced by something like 3/4ths. But, now that we're seperated by an 18hour drive or $300 flight, I've noticed that I'm again reading lots of books, watching a couple movies a week, and, most disturbingly, playing WoW
I've found that the less enjoyable my reality is, the more I need to escape from it.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
Actually, the GP did a pretty good job equating the two, on the exchange rate market, 5000 yuan is worth about $600 but since the amount of wealth required for a similar standard of living differs, the poster appears to have compared it to wages or something similar. Well trained factory workers make more than a dollar a day, but still considerably less than their counterparts in the US.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I thought this was brilliant so I ran the idea past my wife. She said she didn't want urinal mints in her sink.
That was your first mistake.
It's easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission.
Live forever, or die trying.