Reason reports:
…the Office of the Director of National Intelligence wants to “study the emerging phenomenon of social (particularly terrorist) dynamics in virtual worlds and large-scale online games.”
Studying emerging social phenomena in MMORPGs sounds really interesting, and I’m sure there’s a lot of fascinating market analysis to be done in the World of Warcraft auction house, but terrorism? Really? I’m pretty sure my mad Mind Flay skills are preparing me for nothing except a sad, lonely life.
Luckily, commenter Esher Fern Gamble has the only appropriate response:
They came first for the Orcs
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t an Orc
Then they came for the Blood Elves
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Blood Elf
Then they came for the Dwarves
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Dwarf
Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left on the server.
This is all very bad for me. I’ve gone cold turkey on WoW…twice.
ETA — Also, this: “I hear that Pelosi’s not too tough a boss in the House wing, but those waves of Congressmen before her get kinda tedious.”
ETA 2 — A better subject line, in retrospect, would have been “Osama is with Mankrik’s Wife.” But it’s too late now, and I am revealing myself to be an even bigger geek than anyone knew.
Actually, epidemiologists are finding the Blood Plague from WoW really helpful in modeling how people actually respond to epidemics. Modeling transmission rates is a lot easier than guessing how many people will flee, hunker down, or loot to gain XP. I keep clipping articles on this subject, if you’d like to see any when I get back to school. Sadly, I don’t know much about WoW beside the epidemiology application, all my RPing is tabletop based.