Op Ed

Gamasutra - Can Games Become 'Virtual Murder?'.
If, in this hypothetical future, we're capable of stripping away our empathy and compassion to murder a 99% realistic virtual human (and maybe even enjoy it), will we be psychologically any different from people who actually murder those of flesh and blood? Having perhaps unintentionally trained ourselves to become cold-blooded killers through systematic desensitization, will we be emotionally capable of doing the same thing in waking life?

IncGamers - WoW is Killing itself. Thanks Ant.
Yeah, that's right, you heard me. WoW is in the act of committing suicide, and Blizzard don't even know it. Now, before you get all huffy and angry with me (save that for later, you Blizzlovers, you), allow me to give you a bit of background. And when I say background, I mean way, waaaaay back, to the games that inspired WoW in the first place, and to where these games went wrong.

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Re: Op Ed
Jul 2, 2009, 12:32
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Re: Op Ed Jul 2, 2009, 12:32
Jul 2, 2009, 12:32
 
Goddamn it, the lengths sites will go to, to get hits!
Yeah. A cliffhanger for an editorial, wtf?
Was pretty much expecting a hardcore WOW-player's rant when I saw the headline/summary, but it turned out to be an interesting read. It still depends on his conclusion, though. To be continued

He does bring up some interesting points, and apparently has a fair amount of MMO experience. I was once a casual WoW player myself, and his observations seem correct to me. Can't remember any patches where they really introduced anything of substance aside from raid dungeons. Perhaps a new battleground once in a great while. In any case, loads of effort spent for the minority that raids regularly. Even though these people probably constitute their subscriber backbone, the amount of effort leveled at them seems a little bit disproportionate.

On that note, I hear that Lich King (which I haven't played) has introduced an easy-mode for raid dungeons. Sounded like a good thing to me; at last I would've been able to see some places I'd only heard of previously. My semi-hardcore buddy did not agree, though, and I can sort of see that angle as well.
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