Respecting a World with Real People

The new piece over at wow.com on drama is absolutely amazing! This week they hit on taking calls or going AFK during a raid, and I was extremely surprised at some of the comments.

For the most part, many of the readers understood the overall feel of the situation. The advice was sound and it really didn’t cover anything most of us with built in respect don’t already know. It’s only the second week, and sadly every piece of advice that has been given reminds me of the golden rule.

Both Lisa and Robin are reminding us that the life lessons we are taught both at home and in grade school are valuable tools is WoW as well. I thought the phone call piece was classic for examining the microcosm that is Azeroth

See, the great irony of an MMORPG like WoW is that every inch popular culture moves towards them as a mass form of entertainment, the more we also move towards being information age lackeys.

Those of us who get the best transfer speeds on our modems and forage the internet for the best addons like we are sophisticated cavemen on a great hunt are some of the same people who become face book freaks with 50K friends and think that our cell phones have to be on us at all times because we never know when we might miss an important call.

Again, I love the column and the perspective, but was saddened by the way some of the commenters twisted the advice.

When I log onto the paladin, if see anyone out in the fighting world, I will bless them. Hell if they are fighting and low on health I will heal them and even if it is a Hordie, I often run in with reckless abandon, though not in the dramatic fashion that some other classes can, and help drop the SOB that is trying to kill them.

Helping people out comes with living in the real world, I just wish more people knew it was part of playing in Azeroth. I hope the drama mamas bring more of the golden rule to the servers in weeks to come.

-Rhab