I really think that I just don’t get World of Warcraft at times. I’ve tried playing it and found it to be a fun game until I reached about level 15 or so at which point used a bot hired a small child to play the game for me, used that for about a week, leveled my character about 3 levels and lost interest in the game. Not to mention that kid was eating all my food and was complaining that his eyes were sore after 38 hours. Kids these days. Can't even play for more than a couple days without complaining... I think the game is probably more enjoyable without the bot child but a total waste of time since grinding is really only fun during the first MMO I played and then I figured out that the other MMO games really did grinding for levels the same say.

Needless to say, there are those that are addicted to the game and I’ve once been addicted to other MMOs. ChrisM writes a very interesting post about the connections between the worlds of reality and that of the virtual and something that was done in the virtual world for a real life event and actions that happened in the virtual world and caused the real players to be hated.

In the situation, a woman died and the WOW players held a memorial service for her in the game in a PvP area. During the memorial service a clan attacked the group and killed all the attending players which disrupted the virtual memorial. Probably a juvenile and rude thing to do but the leaders of the memorial service were idiots for holding the event in a PvP area. They had to figure someone was going to kill someone else in the area. I’d actually be more surprised if the service was held and no one was attacked.

I think the reason why these events in games don’t work is because people play games a lot of times for escape and enjoyment. MMOs cross the line because some people play because they are addicted to them. Their lives are the games and an in game memorial service really means something to them. To someone that just plays after work a couple days a week, they’ll never understand the game the way a hard core player does or feel as invested in the world events.