There are a lot of socially-inept individuals that play World of Warcraft. Like many other MMORPGs, it harbors semi-extreme, "weird" behaviors quite well, mainly due to the safe house one experiences behind their computer screen. There, people can be social without being social. This provides those individuals with problem behaviors with an opportunity to interact with others, often unsatisfactorily. Just ask any girl that has ever played the game, and I'm sure they can recount several instances of awkward conversation with others, and even a bit of clingy-ness, obsessiveness, borderline stalking and other predatory behaviors. Also widespread is the unhealthy kind of competitiveness WoW seems to nurture. You've seen them... people with a RL sense of immunity and "rock star complexes" because they have a strong sense of character in a video game. Weird, right?The latter of these two types of players, while much more frequent and taken more lightly than the stalking types, present a far more serious issue, imho. The potential for dangerous behavior is far greater, and often unexpected, which heightens the risk these individuals present. For example, a recent occurrence of "immune ego gone wild" was outlined in an article on WIRED, where a Chinese WoW Player burned a fellow classmate he had an issue with. The aggressor cited World of Warcraft as his partner in crime, self-motived to turn himself into a Fire Mage. Sure, instances like these are few and far between, but when they happen, they're truly explosive...
...pardon the pun...
So anyway, it's always sad to see behaviors like this come to a head. And while there are many questions that surround the details of the matter, it's unfortunate that it could have probably been prevented, and wasn't. If people understood the risk factors involved (kinda like a Chinese farmer rolling a Fire Mage... HELLO?!), we would see less of this kind of thing happening.
Here's to hoping for that kind of clarity some day, and every day thereafter.
4 comments:
psssh. anyone who actually plays wow knows that a fire mage doesnt need gasoline to ignite something.
btw, dragonforce (your previous post) ...totally 2 years late there, jago. so is the rest of the world, though. i used to listen to them with Nappy when we raided Naxx and AQ. Lol.
ooh and you quitting... it's best for you. it's probably best for the rest of the WoW world, but good luck with that.
as for me, ive been playing tons less than ever before.. i logged in today to level the be priest a little and just couldnt get into it. the only time i throughly enjoy WoWing it up anymore is if i for certain know that im there and online with my good friends and B.
When my account got hacked and messed up I was lucky to get all of my shit back... but I can recall the same sort of emails regarding the situation when id inquire about the status of the restore, etc. Upon getting my account back into shape I realized I went from 1800g to 100g. When I asked about that the GM simply told me it was impossible to restore the correct amount. >.>
But yeah, the WoW GMs are just about as worthless as Verizons Tech Support. Weeee.
Useless indeed. I just received another email from Bliz and it was less than helpful. I'll post about it soon.
Psht.
The guy was CLEARLY a warlock. Thats a trinketed immolate/conflag if I have ever seen one.
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