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Dead Chinese Gamer Wasn't A WoW Player
Despite earlier reports to the contrary, GamePolitics has the news that the dead Chinese gamer whose parents were suing Blizzard was not a World of Warcraft player. From the post: "World of Warcraft (WoW) was not released in China until May 2005... the actual lawsuit claimed he committed suicide after playing the real time strategy game Warcraft III... Without WoW, it would have been much harder to pin the blame on Warcraft because it's a strategy game, not role playing. But with WoW, and the recent focus on the alleged addictive qualities of MMORPGs, the lawsuit gets much more attention..."
when he realized that every character around him were NPCs.
The English version of WoW was out before then, and I'm sure we can all think of ways around the Chinese censorweb.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
From the post: "World of Warcraft (WoW) was not released in China until May 2005"
So? Lots of players from several countries (including Asian coutries) play on the US servers. Several from Europe did too.
WoW does not do geolocation to filter connections.
Likewise, almost all "chinese farmers" in WoW play in the US servers. That's where their customers are.
No sig
Video games are "addictive" because people are not "addicted" to the real world. They are displeased with their surroundings so they escape into a more palatable place. The cure to video game addiction is to make the real world a better place. Why haven't video game addicts sued their respective governments for driving them to games?
Once upon a time, there was a guy named Darwin. Though his ideas have been contorted into the Theory of Evolution, his principles were brilliant. This is clearly an example of natural selection. This one deserves a Darwin Award for sure. http://www.darwinawards.com/
When I was in china in may, I coudl nto find 1 legitimate copy of WOW. I couldnt' find 1 cafe that had a real copy of WOW on it. So if it turns out that not only was he not on WOW and was playing an illegal copy of war3, what possibel responsibility could blizzard have?
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
He was playing a strategy game and died? Here's a strategy for him: don't play Warcraft III so much you die...he must've been really bad at the game to have such a poor strategy he couldn't even figure that out.
do {print "Mini-Geek Rules!\n";}
until ($TheEndOfTheWorld);
All we have to do is get all the Chinese addicted to online gaming...
An interesting fact is that 100% of the people that died while playing video games had consumed substances containing dihydrogen monoxide in the last 6 hours.
Seriously though, with so many millions of people playing games upwards of 20-30 hours a week, it's expected that some people that would have died randomly anyway (heart defect, whatever) would wind up dying in front of the screen.
No one much bats an eye when some teenage athelete dies on the field, it happens all the time. Pushing yourself is more likely to cause latent disorders to surface.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
"Without WoW, it would have been much harder to pin the blame on Warcraft because it's a strategy game, not role playing."
It was a heck of a lot more RPG than WarCraft II or StarCraft, what with the whole "heroes" mechanic and all.
A thirteen year-old Chinese boy jumped to his death last year from a 24 story building, allegedly after playing too much World of Warcraft. -- Joystiq.
I was just wondering exactly what portion of World of Warcraft, Warcraft III, or any Blizzard game contains a 24 storey building. And what part of this fictional game area involves you jumping to your death from it?
C17H21NO4
Phew! What a relief! It was only WC3. Now, back to World of Warcraft... see ya.
Just ban them all.
They are evil, and have no redeeming social value.
No one needs to play a 'video game'. No reason for them to exist, except to corrupt the mind.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You fail it, guess you need a few months more of sucking niggercock before you can join.
Any game can be addictive!
For example, I was playing NannyMUD text MUD at lysator for three day, and then committed suicide.
In fact, I jumped from the suicide tower 3 times to see what would happen, but nothing much happened except loosing levels and some XP, which was not a big deal since quest points where holding me back.
So there.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Furthurmore the orginal Red Herring article goes on to discuss the 'gaming backlash' and governmental involvement in cutting out aspects of gaming, specifically those on-line. Now I've hear critique of Chinia and their attitude to this before, this lawsuit was in a number of sources related to this, which could now become a little more irrelevant. It seems, therefore, that western journalism has contorted facts to make another point about China's meddiling in an electronic society. Reminds me of the recent story that the BBC were getting too involved and placing too much pressure about the issue of censorship.
So are we just now finally retributing the Soviets for Tetris? How many hours were wasted by that infectious little game, now is the time for our revenge! Lets ship some computers to Cuba with free copies of WoW or W3, Blizzard will singlehandedly destroy the last traces of Communism on the planet! :)
Im.
With piracy so rampant in China, I was surprised that there were no news of a Chinese gamer committing suicide after trying to beat the water temple in Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Now THAT'S something to commit suicide over.
At least we know it isn't only fundamentalist Christians that blame the deaths of their idiot offspring on RPGs.
Thunder Bluff.
Seriously. Falling there hurts. Bring a [Parachute Cloak].
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
With the prevalence of Russian-made weapons in the middle east, I'm sure that plenty of fundamentalist Muslims also blame the deaths on their idiot offspring on RPGs. ;-)
So? Lots of players from several countries (including Asian coutries) play on the US servers.
WoW does not do geolocation to filter connections.
Play Lineage II, and you'll see why you'll want geolocation and a firm policy to ban farmers, even for WoW's standards.
Likewise, almost all "chinese farmers" in WoW play in the US servers. That's where their customers are.
That's also where the torturers (by continuous PK, aka botkilling) are as well. When you can outright disrupt farming operations in multiple areas, deny them safe farming grounds, and (in some mmo's) deleveling them out of their gear and cash, you can make their idea of globalization not a good idea.
As for making this worthwile, there's nothing like a bot having its controller spout out random obscenities because you killed their currency collecting boss that was supposed to kill you. Over and over. On top of that, the next person to step up to the console gets the same displeasure as they dont know anything more than that their program is being actively broken, their characters pursued, with no end- and they might be new to farming. If they move to a new spot, you expand your operations to cover it.
The idea is, that if you're exploiting the US(or anywhere else) via globalization in an MMO, there are those that have it as their duty to correct your actions with everything short of effective legislation. You will be run into the ground.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.