Living a Virtual Life
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 774
Though WOW is a fantasy world, the interaction between guilds and individuals relies on human choices and morals. The first thing one does when joining the game is to choose an avatar from one of eight "races," split between two factions: the human-looking Alliance and the more bestial Horde. Edward Castronova (Level 42, Priest), an Indiana U professor and author of "Synthetic Worlds," once roiled the WOW community by a blog posting entitled "The Horde Is Evil," in which he charged that only the antisocial at heart would pick that darker side. Castronova believes that if someone behaves badly in the game an example would be the WOW equivalent of spree killing, where someone ganks a character of a much lower level, just for the hell of it that person should be judged harshly in the real world as well.
