Comments

Good post, dontbother. Perhaps the most telling thing about Popsci's general opinion towards WoW, or any MMORPG is their focus on the weird or truly crazy--the WoW habitat house complete with toilet, or even the subtitle of this article: "Canadians use World of Warcraft to help prepare for flu pandemic. Nerds!" Either all Canadians are nerds, every person who plays WoW is a nerd, it's "nerdy" to think of unusual, new, or experimental ways to test theories on mass panic, or Popsci has sloppy writers. You choose. (Regardless of what you think about Canadians, new ways to test theories, or the journalism on this page, I'd like to testify to the variety of people who play WoW. The guild I'm in is run by a mother of 3. One of our best players is a father of 9.) If you want to write about something truly fascinating, I suggest you look into the blogger underground covering the "Auction House" aspect to WoW. Practically a "gold" mine (ha ha) for economics majors and professors, they are free to make a killing or go broke. Making money based on in-demand items (supply and demand), must-have toy items (vanity ware), raw materials (just that), manufactured items (retail) can all very based on the day of the week, other activities going on in the world at that time, and the population of a given server. All have real-world applications. Or perhaps economists are nerds too. Start here: http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/ And here: http://woweconomics.blogspot.com/

There was a huge debate raging in-game about introducing an in-game version of a virus that's killing people all over the world. Perhaps Blizzard should have notified us that this was being done to benefit researchers--players would have been much more forgiving. As it was, I spend a couple hours on each day and completely missed the outbreak. What outbreak? Concur with the above commenter. WTH do you mean "more important than Mexico or Asia"? How are people supposed to take that?

Thanks boka for equating my desire to serve my country and keep you safe with Hitler's desire to eradicate people based on their race. Last time I checked we were fighting for everyone's freedom (religious, intellectual, political, personal). Anything that upgrades a piece of war-fighting material means that those of us who serve are more likely to accomplish our mission and come home to our families at the end of the day. I'm happy about the Black Hawk upgrade (though I'm a grunt, not a flyboy).

You forgot a multi-billion dollar industry--"farming" in-game currency for popular MMORPGs. It's entrepreneurial genius at its best--there are no regulations or limits on how much you can make--just don't get caught by the "government," in this case, Blizzard. Initial startup costs are cheap--about $80 for the software then $12 a month after that. If you have money for a "farm," you can set up several computers and pay people a fraction of their earnings to farm gold for you. www.eurogamer.net/articles/gold-trading-exposed-introduction-article Highly controversial, but the demand is there, which is why such businesses flourish, especially overseas.

Meanwhile, this whole climate change thing could be natural: UW-Milwaukee Study Could Realign Climate Change Theory www.wisn.com/weather/18935841/detail.html