A 17-year-old Ohio gamer found himself in hot water after he allegedly threatened to commit suicide while talking to a Blizzard rep about an online game (presumably, World of Warcraft).

The Middletown Journal reports:

The teen was having an online conversation with a representative of Blizzard Entertainment, an online video game company, when he typed that "he was suicidal and that the game is the only thing he has to live for," according to the report.

The company representative called 911.

The juvenile told police it was a joke "to try to get what he wanted for the game," according to the report. He was then handcuffed and placed in a patrol car.

If you thought that World of Warcraft was apolitical, think again.

WoW Insider recalls the popular MMO's top political moments of 2008:

• The New Year's Day Ron Paul campaign rally (covered in person by GP)
• Gay & lesbian WoW guilds
• In-game issues of sexism and racism
• Obama gains presidential achievement
• WoW-themed parody of Iraqi tossing shoe at President Bush (covered on GP)

Uh, I'd like to pay my property tax, sign up for trash collection and could the police department do something about that Orc who lives around the corner?

Well, it's not quite like that, but the City of Decatur, Georgia is evaluating the use of a virtual world interface to "encourage community networking, improve civic engagement, and promote economic development."

The project even has a name: Virtual Decatur.

A website devoted to Virtual Decatur references Second Life and World of Warcraft, although not necessarily as models. From the site:

Virtual Decatur will provide an environment in which residents, businesses, institutions and visitors can interact and connect...  it is it is imperative that the project go beyond the features of traditional virtual environments.  The overarching purpose of this project is to allow users to interact with the City in new and innovative ways that are not possible in the real world.

Possible features of the proposed Virtual Decatur might include:

    • Opportunities to gather citizen input on policies, topics of interest, city services, and happenings
    • A Virtual City Hall Tour with multimedia capabilities.
    • Opportunities to earn coupons for use in real stores/retail establishments.
    • Streaming video of public meetings, ideally with a chat room feature that allows viewers to comment.
    • Access to visitors information (store hours, directions, weather, etc.)

A Request for Information (RFI) is available for download, with proposals due by February 13th. Among other requirements, the city expects Virtual Decatur to be "avatar-based" as well as "fun and intuitive."

Although the information is sketchy, at best, an exchange on the f13.net forums suggests that some employers may be discriminating against those who play World of Warcraft:

The anonymous poster is known only as "Tale":

I met with a recruiter recently (online media industry) and in conversation I happened to mention I'd spent way too much time in the early 2000s playing online games...

He replied that employers specifically instruct him not to send them World of Warcraft players. He said there is a belief that WoW players cannot give 100% because their focus is elsewhere, their sleeping patterns are often not great, etc. I mentioned that some people have written about MMOG leadership experience as a career positive or a way to learn project management skills, and he shook his head. He has been specifically asked to avoid WoW players...

No WoW-hating companies are named. On the other hand, a firm that outright dismisses the WoW crowd de facto shrinks its global applicant pool by - what - 12 million potential employees?

They can't all be addicts.

Via: Raph Koster

This week's Child's Play Charity Auction Dinner raised more than $200,000 for worthy causes, reports Gabe of Penny Arcade.

Among the items auctioned off was the rather impressive statue at left depicting an Orc from World of Warcraft on his mount.

Simply awesome - both the event and the statue...

Yesterday GamePolitics reported on concerns by University of Minnesota Duluth officials that compulsive World of Warcraft play was causing some students to flunk out.

Those concerns have been echoed by Federal Communications Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate (left).

The FCC commissioner commented on WoW during a speech on telecom policy and regulation delivered to the Practicing Law Institute on December 5th:

With the explosion of educational resources available online, one might think parents would be 100% pleased with the internet’s role in their children’s lives. But surveys show just the opposite: a late 2006 survey that showed 59% of parents think the internet has been a totally positive influence in their children’s lives-- down from 67% in 2004.

 

You might find it alarming that one of the top reasons for college drop-outs in the U.S. is online gaming addiction - such as World of Warcraft - which is played by 11 million individuals worldwide.

Document Dump: Read Tate's (mostly non-game-related) speech here.

GP: Big thanks to Steve Augustino for the heads-up!

Is it okay to torture prisoners at Guantanamo Bay?

Is it okay to torture an emotionless animated character in The Torture Game?

Is it okay to carry out a World of Warcraft quest that requires the player to torture a prisoner?

boingboing reports on the controversy generated by one Richard Bartle, himself the inventor of the MUD genre. It seems that Bartle recently came across a mission in WoW's Wrath of the Lich King expansion that gave him pause:

Basically, you have to take some kind of cow poke and zap a prisoner until he talks.

I'm not at all happy with this. I was expecting for there to be some way to tell the guy who gave you the quest that no, actually I don't want to torture a prisoner, but there didn't seem to be any way to do that. Worse, the quest is part of a chain you need to complete to gain access to the Nexus, which is the first instance you encounter (if you start on the west of the continent, as I did). So, either you play along and zap the guy, or you don't get to go to the Nexus.

I did zap him, pretty well in disbelief — I thought that surely the quest-giver would step in and stop it at some point? It didn't happen, though. Unless there's some kind of awful consequence further down the line, it would seem that Blizzard's designers are OK with breaking the Geneva convention.

GP: Kotaku reports that the quest at issue is The Art of Persuasion. The in-game instructions for the quest are as follows:

It is fortunate you're here, <race>.

You see, the Kirin Tor code of conduct frowns upon our taking certain 'extreme' measures - even in desperate times such as these. You, however, as an outsider, are not bound by such restrictions and could take any steps necessary in the retrieval of information.

Do what you must. We need to know where Lady Evanor is being held at once! I'll just busy myself organizing these shelves here. Oh, and here, perhaps you'll find this old thing [torture device] useful....

Are World and Warcraft and other MMOs leading some college students to neglect their studies?

An academic advisor at the University of Minnesota Duluth thinks so. A report in the Duluth News-Tribune cites comments from UMD's Vince Rapesh:

"I accused one of them of coming in loaded from smoking dope, he looked so bad,” Repesh said. But the student had been up all night playing a computer game.

 

During freshman orientation this year, three of the 70 students Repesh talked to in groups about computer use had been to counseling for problematic gaming, one because he was too competitive to stop.

 

“I tell parents during talks, I believe it’s one of the hidden causes for kids to fail that nobody knows about it,” he said.

These are very, very bright kids, and if you can’t get them back on track, you’ve lost a lot of potential.

Via: Our sister-site GameCulture

The Timothy Plan, a Florida investment firm which bills itself as "conservative Christian," is warning holiday-shopping parents away from what it calls the 30 "most offensive" video games.

While the usual suspects (GTA IV, Saints Row 2, Blitz the League II) make the list, there are some surprises as well, including the T-rated Bully: Scholarship Edition and World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.

In its game rankings, the organization displays an obvious anti-gay bias. While it evaluates titles for sex and nudity, a gay/lesbian rating is also included, meaning that a game with a gay sexual encounter might get a double whammy when compared to a game where the sex is of the straight variety. This effect, for instance, pushes Fable II onto the group's most offensive list. Along that line a report prepared by the Timothy Plan contains this rather bizarre comment:

Army of Two: Homosexual Encounters: ...Somewhat homo-erotic undertones between the two main characters are present.

WoW made it onto the dirty thirty, thanks to a high "addiction" rating as well as a high rating for alcohol use (curse you, Noggenfogger elixir!).

How the group determined the addiction rank is really quite unfathomable. WoW received a 3, for example, the worst possible rating, while Lord of the Rings Online got a 1 and Age of Conan a 2. In fact, all of the MMOs were tagged for addiction as well as some multiplayer games like Halo 3. A few games (The Darkness, Devil May Cry 4) were punished for "demonic" references.

Timothy Plan president Art Ally (left) comments:

Many, if not most, parents who buy their kids video games really don't know the extent of sex and violence imbedded in them. From drug use, prostitution, murder and mayhem to vulgar profanity and blasphemy these games have become a powerfully negative influence on our kids...

 

I believe, if parents would take a moment to look at the report we've created, their game selections would be quite different.

The group maintains a corporate "hall of shame" which includes game publishers EA, Take-Two and Microsoft. The Timothy Plan also offers to screen your portfolio to see if any of your mutual funds have investments in shameful companies.

So helpful!

Document Dump: Get the Timothy Plan's game score card here. The group's press release with holiday shopping warnings is here.

The co-chair of President-elect Barack Obama's FCC transition team is a World of Warcraft geek.

That word comes by way of GigaOm, where Wagner James Au writes that Wharton Prof. Kevin Werbach (left), a Net Neutrality advocate is steering the Obama team's takeover of the FCC (presumably between WoW raids).

In fact, Werbach belongs to a pair of WoW guilds. He wrote of his gaming in a 2006 blog post:

I play Warcraft because it’s fun. It’s taking time away from watching TV, reading books, and other entertainment pursuits. But I’m also playing because I believe MMOGs will be one of the primary forms of social software for the next decade. Defined broadly, they may become the dominant form of social software. And you can’t understand games without experiencing them first-hand...

 

What [WoW] does is provide an incentive for people to develop new software and ideas for collaborative production. Many of those ideas will translate to other group activities, including those within the business world...

As Au notes, Werbach's WoW experience is a plus, since online gamers have a major stake in the Net Neutrality issue. Also of note, Werbach's co-chair, Michigan Prof. Susan Crawford, is an admirer of Second Life:

Professor Crawford, a board member at ICANN, also counts herself “a huge fan of Second Life” for the way it lets users retain IP rights to their content (though she confesses to difficulty when it comes to moving her SL avatar around.)

GP: We're dying to know - does Werbach play Horde or Alliance?

Swedish News service The Local reports that a 15-year-old gamer from western Sweden went into convulsions on Sunday after a 24-hour WoW binge.

According to the report the boy and some friends were playing the new Wrath of the Lich King expansion. The 15-year-old's father described the scene:

They played all day and all night. Maybe they got a few hours of sleep. They ate a little food and breakfast at their computers. [When the boy went into convulsions] we were terrified and called rescue services...

Doctors said that sleep deprivation and lack of food likely contributed to the collapse of the boy, who is expected to recover fully.

Not unexpectedly, the mainstream press is linking the episode to game addiction. Britain's The Times quotes child psychiatrist Dr. Richard Graham: 

Some of my clients will discuss playing games for 14 to 16 hours a day at times without breaks and for those the consequences are potentially very severe. The problem with World of Warcraft is the degree it can impact and create a socially withdrawn figure who may be connecting with people in the game and is largely dropping out of education, social opportunities.

 

One young man described vividly to me a sense that having achieved very high success in the game, when he switched off he felt downgraded.

Like millions of other WoW fans, I eagerly awaited last week's release of the Wrath of the Lich King WoW expansion. But this one should perhaps be named Wrath of the Server Queue, instead. Players attempting to log on at the most popular times may find themselves queued for up to two hours.

On the Mal'Ganis server, this has happened to me several times already, and Lich King has been out for less than a week. Judging from posts on the official WoW forum, many other players are frustrated by this turn of events as well. The queues are particularly annoying given that, in addition to the expansion's $39.99 price tag, gamers are paying a $15 per month subscription fee for their accounts.

Most Lich King buyers certainly expected to play, not wait in line, for their money.

The release of the much-anticipated WoW expansion has undoubtedly led to the reactivation of numerous dormant WoW accounts (like mine), but Blizzard needs to adapt to the influx and make adequate server provisions. Yes, they have offered some limited options to transfer one's character to a less populated server for free (normally this service costs $25), but it's not enough to deal with the crush of would-be adventurers.

Blizzard is raking in the greenbacks, as they deserve to for fine products like WoW and Lich King. But consumers deserve to play when they want.

Blizzard needs to fix this.

Microsoft has banned a number of Xbox Live users whose 360s were modded, according to XBL front man Major Nelson:

In our our continued effort to keep gameplay safe and secure for our community of more than 14 million members, Microsoft has taken action against a small percentage of Xbox 360 consoles that have been illegally modified in order to play pirated games.

 

You should know that modifying your Xbox 360 console is also a violation of the Xbox LIVE terms of use, will void your warranty and result in a ban... The health of the video game business depends on customers paying for the genuine products and services they receive, both from manufacturers and the local companies that support them.

Via: Amazon Game Room

In more banning news, Destructoid reports that Blizzard has said goodbye to some 350,000 Battle.net accounts for Starcraft and Diablo II.

At issue? 

Players using third-party hacks. The good news is that the cheaters were banned. The bad news is that Blizz might let them back in after 30 days.

So, GP just cruised over to GameStop's website to grab a couple of box shots for the EA lawsuit article, and our gaze immediately fell up this ad for the upcoming WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King:

The Lich King, full of anger, vexation and, some might even say, wrath, brings a dark threat to Azeroth.

 

This expansion opens up the Lich King's icy domain of Northrend, with the Borean Tundra, where the Packers play, and the Howling Fjord, which is what you get when you drive with the windows of your Taurus cracked open.

Get it first with In-Store Pickup!
PC - $39.99

Did someone forget to change some filler text in the ad, or is GameStop simply having a larf?

UPDATE: I'm hearing from some readers that GameStop has a bit of a history for this sort of thing.

The fabulous MMO Calendar is back for 2009.

If you are into MMOs, do yourself a favor and grab one. They're just $12.95 and proceeds benefit St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

They tend to sell out quickly, so don't wait too long to order.

Here's some info from the MMO Calendar press release:

With the help of some wonderful MMO developers we have put together our 3rd annual one-of-a-kind calendar featuring autographed artwork from the hottest released and upcoming MMO's!

MMO Calendar 2009 proudly includes:

    * Age of Conan
    * DC Universe Online
    * Dofus
    * Eve Online
    * EverQuest II
    * Free Realms
    * Guild Wars
    * Pirates of the Burning Sea
    * RuneScape
    * The Agency
    * Warhammer Online
    * World of Warcraft

...As always, 100% of the proceeds of the sale of MMO Calendar go directly to the amazing people at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, helping them in the fight for children's lives. Is there a more noble cause anywhere?

If World of Warcraft was a U.S. state, its 11 million players would give it the eighth largest tally of electoral votes.

That being the case, which candidate will carry Azeroth on election day? Do the polls show a split between Alliance and Horde voters? Between Dwarves and Night Elves?

In the video from Machinima.com comedian Rich Kuras polls WoW players on their presidential preferences.

UPDATE: This entire story is a hoax. My bad for falling for it, although it came from what I thought was a reliable website. Won't make that mistake again with that person or his site.  The Escapist has more...

With more than 10 million subsrscibers, World of Warcraft is the most successful MMO of all time.

So, how does World of Peacecraft sound?

The Click Heard Round the World reports that the Religious Society of Friends - aka the Quakers - plans a December  launch for WoP, an MMO based on Quaker themes. Blogger Rik Panganiban cites a draft press release from the Quaker United Service:

The Quaker United Service is pleased to announce the beta-release of the new MMORPG "World of PeaceCraft," the first massive online game for a Christian religious denomination.  Full of fun quests and adventures, the WoP will extend traditional Quaker values and historic testimonies -- such as their work to end the slave trade, protesting against war, and worshipping in silence -- into an immersive, 3D environment.

Not just for Quakers, the game promises to be inclusive of those from other faiths and spiritual traditions.  WoP CEO Thad Thomas promises that "whether you are a Buddhist, Muslim, Jew or just a curious agnostic, you will find much to do and enjoy in World of PeaceCraft."

Panganiban says that in-game quests will follow the course of Quaker history:

You begin in 17th Century England... preaching against the evils of war and unjust rule, meeting in clandestine locations to avoid persecution, and facing beatings and imprisonment at every turn.  Then you are transported to the early 1800s in the United States, helping shepherd escaped slaves to freedom as part of the Underground Railroad. Later quests involve you in the women's suffrage movement, the civil rights movement, and the anti-death penalty and anti-war protests of today.

Look for WoP on PC and Mac in December.

We've mentioned in recent weeks that Dr. Phil was planning to air a show focused on game addiction, and today is the day.

From the Dr. Phil website:

Computer games are supposed to be fun, but when a hobby turns into an obsession, virtual fantasy worlds can ruin lives and wreck marriages...

It looks as though Dr. Phil's guests will include Liz Woolley, whose son Sean killed himself while playing Everquest. Liz has been an occasional visitor to GamePolitics over the years.

We're expecting that Wendy Kays, wife of SOCOM lead designer Graham Kays may be on the show as well. Finally, Brad from ExGamer.net, another GP visitor, will be a guest.

GP: Thanks to GamePolitics reader Gamer137 for the reminder!

It has been reported on a number of sites, Ten Ton Hammer among them, that the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft will feature something mysteriously called "Paid Character Customization."

This news reportedly slipped out at a BlizzCon press conference featuring WoW's J. Allen Brack.

From the TTH story:

In a press conference late on Saturday, Lead Producer J. Allen Brack confirmed what some data file combers had surmised: WoW will feature paid character customization:

"I don't mind stating that there will be paid character customization at some point. I can't really go into detail."

Details such as when this feature will be added and the extent of customizable features for hire are unknown at this point, but its safe to surmise that any kind of paid changes will be purely cosmetic.

But, will it be purely cosmetic, as TTH assumes? Gamasutra has something of a different take on Blizzard's news:

Emerging business models for online games like microtransactions and tiered subscriptions have long met with skepticism from the average MMO enthusiast, who's viewed Blizzard and its standard subscription model for World of Warcraft as a bastion against new monetization strategies.

But it seems possible that Blizzard might soon explore the pay-for-goods arena after a press conference at its BlizzCon event -- though specifics are still being ironed out.

So, if it turns out that Blizzard is selling character upgrades such as special items and gear, philosophically, is that much different from buying WoW gold from a third-party seller? (which I've done in the past and for which I get a great deal of criticism from some MMO gamers whenever I mention it).

By way of Ripten comes the story of "Bradster," who claims to play 36 separate World of Warcraft accounts on 11 computers, dropping nearly six grand per year in subscription fees.

If the picture at left is genuine, it's quite a hardware setup.

Of his obsession, Bradster writes:

A lot have asked me, why create so many? The main reason is to invade Stormwind and Ironforge when they reach top level. I’m sure the Alliance will put up a big fight when that happens. We’ll see how it goes...

 

It costs me exactly $5711 in subscription costs per year with 36 accounts on the 6 month pay schedule. Not bad considering I’m looking at it like it’s a hobby and there are more expensive hobbies out there than World of Warcraft... When Wrath of the Lich King is released, I plan to be at the store when it opens and will purchase 36 copies of it. With tax, it should be about $1500 for all of them...

Via: Gizmodo

GP: I've seen individual WoW players control a chain of characters before, but 36? Sounds almost superhuman.

World of Warcraft usually gets blamed for bad grades, not praised for contributing to the educational process.

But LiveScience reports that the use of online games - including WoW - is getting new attention from proponents of the unschooling movement. By way of example, University of Wisconsin-Madison educational researcher Constance Steinkuehler organized an after-school group in which boys gather to play WoW:

Some of the eighth graders and high school freshmen who signed up for the group couldn't have cared less about writing or reading in school. Yet those students have gone from barely stringing together two sentences to writing lengthy posts in their group's Web site forum, where they discuss detailed strategies for gearing up their virtual characters and figuring out tough quests...

 

The unschoolers' experiences, along with the early success of Steinkuehler's program, suggest that playing a video game set in a virtual online world can encourage students to learn valuable real-world skills. Steinkuehler's goal is to figure out when and how learning takes place in online games, and how popular games made for entertainment might become educational tools.

 

Before starting the WoW group, Steinkuehler studied forum message on Blizzard's official WoW site, and noted that 85% of the threads indicated that gamers were scientifically literate, using reasoned arguments and hypotheses supported by facts. Said Steinkuehler:

What I'm deeply invested in is reinvigorating their intellectual life. I want kids to understand that games are intellectual and about problem solving, not that different from what scientists are doing in the real world.

GP: It's not the first time we've reported on Constance Steinkuehler's MMO research. See: Study: Online Games Make You More, Not Less, Social

Thanks to: Reader Skyler Martin for the heads-up...

While pulling together this morning's stories, GP stumbled across ExGamer.net.

The site chronicles the unnamed blogger's struggles with compulsive MMO play. ExGamer describes himself as "a 40 year old Canadian in recovery from a nine year compulsive online gaming habit."

From the site's FAQ:

My life as a gamer was out of control. I couldn’t hold down a job or function as a brother, son or husband... This blog is about my ongoing healing process, and that of some new friends I’ve met along the way...

 

This is not an abstract illness; it involves the use and abuse of specific products that proved very problematic for me... I could not stop playing online role playing games for years, no matter how bad things got. I would spend hundreds, even thousands of dollars and untold hours in one game, only to bore of it and seek another “high” elsewhere.

It also appears that ExGamer will be appearing on the upcoming Dr. Phil segment on game addiction that GP mentioned recently in regard to Wendy Kays, wife of SOCOM lead designer Graham Kays.

GP: Good luck to ExGamer with the site - and especially with his recovery.

The BBC reports that Blizzard has won a $6 million damage award against the creator of a botting program used illegally within World of Warcraft.

Glider, distributed by MDY Industries, infringed upon Blizzard's WoW copyrights, a judge ruled earlier this year. From the BBC:

The Glider software is the creation of MDY founder Michael Donnelly who is thought to have sold more than 100,000 copies of the $25 (£14) program.

 

It proved popular with many WoW players as it helped them automate the many repetitive tasks, such as killing monsters and scavenging loot, required to turn low level characters into more powerful ones...

 

The case is due to go to court again in January 2009 when the remaining issues in the legal conflict look likely to be settled.At issue will be whether MDY broke the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act and whether Mr Donnelly will have to pay the damages from his own pocket.
 

Today's Sydney Morning Herald reports on a viral YouTube fad involving mash-ups of 2004 Adolf Hitler bio-pic Downfall.

In one version the evil dictator gets banned from World of Warcraft (hit the video). In another der fuehrer is booted from Xbox Live. From the SMH:

In yet another case of an online parody taking on a life of its own, hundreds of internet jokers are dubbing over a scene from the film Downfall, in which Hitler explodes with anger when told he has lost World War II...

 

The narratives include Hitler fulminating about being kicked off Xbox Live, football star Cristiano Ronaldo leaving Manchester United to join Real Madrid, Barack Obama giving a speech in Berlin and being forced to see an Adam Sandler movie.

 

Other Downfall clips include Hitler reacting to having his car stolen, being banned from World of Warcraft, Hillary Clinton's nomination defeat, getting rejected from university and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's disastrous Glasgow byelection results.

Forget the infamous $600 toilet seat. When it comes to tax dollar expenditures that might raise an eyebrow, how does $100,000 to research how Americans play World of Warcraft sound?

As reported by the Orange County Register, Prof. Bonnie Nardi (left) of the University of California Irvine, received the $100K grant from the National Science Foundation for the project. At issue: why American players go to greater lengths to mod the popular MMO than do Chinese WoW players.

You can't make this stuff up.

Said Nardi, not surprisingly a WoW player herself:

We are examining the many reasons for this disparity, including cultural and institutional factors. The vast majority of Chinese players are not ‘gold farmers’... They’re ordinary players like anyone. The media has blown that story out of all proportion. Many people think Chinese play for a job. They play for fun...

 

[The] Chinese have invented some interesting ways to play with the in-game economy... Ways that I have not observed here in two years of studying ‘World of Warcraft.’ Chinese players are more attuned to the aesthetics of the game... They talked more about color schemes, animations, architecture, and so on more than American players...

 

Here and in Europe and Australia/New Zealand people play with parents and event grandparents. Not in China. The older generation dislikes video games. People here play with brothers and sisters. But in China people don’t have brothers and sisters for the most part, so friend relationships are very important.

GP: Okay, so I'm trying to imagine the budget request for this grant:

• WoW - $19.99
• Burning Crusade Expansion - $29.99
• Pre-order Lich King Expansion - $39.99
• Hot Alienware PC - $3,000.00
• Strategy guide - $24.99
• 12 month WoW subscription - $180.00
• Power leveling service - $250.00
• Ample supply of black market WoW gold - $1,000.00
• TOTAL: $4,544.96

So... the rest is going for pizza and energy drinks?

I'm having a larf at Prof. Nardi's expense here, of course, but her research does sound interesting. Maybe not $100K worth of tax dollars interesting, but interesting all the same...

Via: Chronicle of Higher Education 

Planning a high level raid is tough enough in World of Warcraft, but a Pentagon researcher warns that al Qaeda could plan a nuclear attack on the White House via the popular MMO.

Wired's Danger Room reports that  Dr. Dwight Toavs, a professor at the Pentagon-funded National Defense University laid out such a scenario at the National Intelligence Open Source Conference in Washington, D.C. last week:

...two World of Warcraft players discuss a raid on the "White Keep" inside the "Stonetalon Mountains." The major objective is to set off a "Dragon Fire spell" inside, and make off with "110 Gold and 234 Silver" in treasure. "No one will dance there for a hundred years after this spell is cast," one player, "war_monger," crows.

 

Except, in this case, the White Keep is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. "Dragon Fire" is an unconventional weapon. And "110 Gold and 234 Silver" tells the plotters how to align the game's map with one of Washington, D.C.

 

... details are a little fuzzy. The terminology doesn't match World of Warcraft lingo, all that precisely. There is no "White Keep" in World of Warcraft; "Dragon Fire" is a spell in EverQuest, the old-school role-playing game, not WoW. But the banter is reminiscent enough of World of Warcraft talk, to give outsiders an idea of how such a conversation might go down -- and how hard it would be to identify.

But Steven Aftergood of the Federation of the American Scientists was skeptical:

This concern is out there. But it has to be viewed in context. It's the job of intelligence agencies to anticipate threats and counter them. With that orientation, they're always going to give more weight to a particular scenario than an objective analysis would allow. Could terrorists use Second Life? Sure, they can use anything. But is it a significant augmentation? That's not obvious. It's a scenario that an intelligence officer is duty-bound to consider. That's all.

For his part, Toavs believes that anti-terror operatives may have to go undercover in games like WoW.

GP: This issue comes up periodically from the counter-terror community. Usually, Second Life is the main suspect. But would terrorists really go to all the trouble of using WoW as an assembly area when IMs, PGP-encrypted e-mail and steganography are readily available?

Besides, wouldn't WoW-playing terrorists become addicted like everyone else and neglect their jihad?

Finally, We've reported previously that Middle-East expert Juan Cole has dismissed the MMO terror cell notion:

What's the real game here?

...The notion that wandering around such an imaginary world with a computerized body is dangerous to anyone seems itself cartoonish and calls into question the public hand-wringing by security experts.
 

While running your character on a long trek through your favorite MMO, have you ever imagined how great it would be to get so much exercise in real life?

The marketing site for Mana Energy Potion has posted a fascinating account of how two WoW players connected treadmills to their PCs and used their own 6mph locomotion to power their avatars:

We decided on a run from the gates of Shadowglen, through Dolanaar, to the sentries of Darnassus. We took level 1-2 elves so there would be a real danger that we'd get attacked along the way...

 

I'd first like to point out that Eli is in quite good shape. I, however, am not... We thought it would be a good representation of the gamut of gamers if we both ran the race. We donned the cheapest heart monitors we could find for kicks...

 

Eli and I stayed pretty even throughout the whole run. But about 3 minutes in, my heart rate reached over 205 BPM, and my max is around 195 BPM. I had to slow down to a walk because I thought I was going to pass out. Running in WoW is no joke... 

Blizzard's success, along with its recent acquisition by Activision, has even business types sitting up and taking notice.

The World of Warcraft publisher is currently profiled by Business Week, where scribe Matt Vella does a good job explaining Blizzard to the suit and tie crowd. And while most gamers will automatically think of WoW, Starcraft and Diablo, the company has its fingers in a surprising number of pies:

Blizzard presides over an ever-expanding universe composed of not only blockbuster games but also action figures, novels, manga, board games, pen-and-paper role-playing games, apparel, and conferences. In South Korea, where competitive video gaming is a televised sport, Blizzard's decade-old game StarCraft inspires such fervent loyalty that tournaments still draw some 700,000 spectators a year, nurturing a niche industry worth $40 million annually. Legendary Pictures, the studio behind blockbuster comic book adaptations like Batman Begins and 300, is currently working on a big-budget, live-action film based on WoW slated for 2009. 

Video games are powerful learning tools, according to research presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association in Boston.

As reported by the Associated Press, researchers presented findings that games can help kids solve problems and make surgeons better at stitching up their patients. From the AP:

"The single best predictor of [surgeon's] skills is how much they had played video games in the past and how much they played now," said Iowa State University psychologist Douglas Gentile. "Those were better predictors of surgical skills than years of training and number of surgeries performed," Gentile said. "So the first question you might ask your surgeon is how many of these [surgeries] have you done and the second question is, 'Are you a gamer?'"

One study even explored whether World of Warcraft improves scientific thinking.

Researchers looked at a random sample of [WoW] 2,000 discussion posts... The study found the game encouraged scientific thinking, like using systems and models for understanding situations and using math and testing to investigate a problem.

 

The vast majority of those participating in the discussion posts, 86 percent, shared knowledge to solve problems and more than half, 58 percent, used systematic and evaluative processes, researchers found.

 

The forums show that gamers are "creating an environment in which informal scientific reasoning practices are being learned" by playing the online games, said Sean Duncan, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Not all was sweetness and light in regards to video game research, however, as the AP article points out:

Other studies confirmed earlier research that found students who played violent games tended to be more hostile, less forgiving and believed violence to be normal compared to those who played nonviolent games.
 

How can we preserve the history of events which occur in virtual worlds? And why would we want to?

The BBC reports that researchers at the University of Texas, Austin are studying ways in which MMO history could be recorded. Said Prof. Megan Winget (left):

It's a huge challenge for archivists to deal with digital information. One of the most interesting problems for digital preservation is interactivity and how difficult that is to preserve. Video games offer all of the same problems as digital art. They are interactive, very complex and a lot of people get involved in making them happen...

 

We want to raise the consciousness in the industry about how important these records are. I do not think they save anything or it's saved in such a way that they would not be able to recognise the significance of what they are holding.

 

Key events mentioned as perhaps worthy of documenting include an outbreak of  virtual plague in World of Warcraft, the assassination of Lord British in Ultima Online and the death of Morpheus in The Matrix Online. Said Winget:

A lot of people have mentioned [Lord British's death] to me as a pivotal moment in their lives. I would like to talk to people who experienced that, saw it happen or where they were when they heard about it. Maybe we can talk to the people who did it and whether they knew Lord British was [Ultima series creator] Richard Garriott.