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World of Warcraft's top five political contributions of 2008
With World of Warcraft having the combined worldwide population of a small country, and the combined US population of a small state, people have been finding various ways to infuse their politics into the game. This can only be seen as a natural occurrence – people will naturally want to bring their out of game ideals into the game to express themselves.We've covered various politically and socially minded groups in the past here and there. And with the end of the political season we've seen an increase in the number of political expressions in WoW.Let's take a look back at the top five politically and socially relevant WoW thing-a-ma-jigs on the net in 2008.
Is WoW a hotbed of political activity?
Earlier this week, USA Today published a lifestyle article that made the claim that the population of World of Warcraft has gotten swept up in the political fervor of the day. According to one frequent WoW-player quoted prominently in the article, the buzz over the race between Hillary and Obama has reached such an ever-present crescendo that it's bled into our most prominent avenue for fantasy and escapism.While it is particularly interesting the way that the political dialog has overcome more tradition fare in /general and guild chats (and by traditional fare we mean Chuck Norris jokes), we'd hesitate to call this phenomenon an exclusive product of this election cycle. The fact of the matter is, this is really the first presidential election cycle that has taken place during World of Warcraft's life, so there's no way to tell whether this amount of election buzz is peculiar in any way. Are marches through the streets of Iron Forge in support of marginal Republican candidates par for the course? We honestly haven't a clue. Ask us in four years![Via GamePolitics]
Breakfast Topic: Last word on Ron Paul in Azeroth
A little while back, we were the first news site on the 'net to report on the Ron Paul rally, and after it happened on Monday, our own Elizabeth Harper reported on the rally itself. And now, the rally has come full circle, and political tech news site techPresident has wrapped the whole thing up with a question about whether or not politics belongs in Azeroth in the first place.So this morning, let's wrap it for good: the majority of the comments I've seen say that political rallies like this don't belong in Azeroth at all. Players claim that they play the game to escape from the real world, and that they don't want to be confronted with real-life politics in a virtual world.But I, and others, maintain that this is not a complete fantasy world-- it's a world populated by real people who should be allowed to express their opinions. Sure, nobody wants to have an opinion forced on them (this kind of thing shouldn't fly on a roleplaying server, obviously), but the World of Warcraft is a big one-- if you couldn't go somewhere else on Whisperwind Monday night, you could sign on to a different realm. And if you make the choice to deny one expression of opinion, you have to deny them all.Any last thoughts? I suppose the final word on this actually came from Blizzard-- they did nothing to stop or endorse the rally, so clearly they're not against players simply expressing their opinions in game, political or otherwise. And there is good news for those of you who never want to see politics in Azeroth again-- the rally on Monday didn't exactly help Paul win in Iowa, so odds are none of the other candidates are going to be rolling a new alt.
Ron Paul's World of Warcraft rally
On New Year's day supporters of Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul gathered on the Whisperwind (US) realm in World of Warcraft to march across Azeroth and show their support for their candidate of choice. The rally started outside Ironforge with approximately 240 players (with 400 members in their RP Revolution guild) and traveled to Stormwind, Westfall, Booty Bay, Ratchet, and finally Orgrimmar. And if you didn't make it, you can still experience the rally vicariously via our image gallery below (and if you did make it, feel free to send screenshots to us at aroundazeroth@wow.com!) or video above!To the best of our knowledge, this was the first political rally to be held in World of Warcraft -- and looking at their numbers it seems to have been a successful and upbeat gathering (or at least it was upbeat for the participants). Will this event help Ron Paul's chances in the election? It's hard to say until the votes are cast, but the uniqueness of the event is causing it to get a lot of media coverage. (And no press is bad press, so long as they spell your name properly, right?) Read on for impressions of the event.%Gallery-12524%
Ron Paul march in Azeroth
Here's video via Gamepolitics.com of the march that took place last night in Azeroth (a.k.a. the World of Warcraft) to support Ron Paul, a Republican candidate for the president of the United States. We originally reported on this topic over at WoW Insider (which, if I may say so, was one of the reasons so many people showed up), and we'll have more coverage of the march last night there soon.But while Gamepolitics gives a good man-on-the-scene writeup, they also avoid the real question here: does real-world politics belong in a world like Azeroth at all? No one questions it when politicians show up in Second Life-- in fact, the few Second Lifers I know take it as a badge of honor that their world is important enough to host those folks. And certainly there are places where politics don't belong-- on WoW's roleplaying servers, discussion of the real-world is a no-no.But let's not forget that we players aren't just avatars in a game- we're real people with opinions of our own to express, whether they be political or otherwise. Whether they should have or not (and many players on Whisperwind, where the rally took place, where extremely unhappy with the queues and congestion on their server last night), they expressed those opinons last night.Update: Looks like Paul also wins the presidential naming race.
Ron Paul wins WoW's presidential naming race
With Iowa's first in the nation presidential nominating caucuses coming tomorrow, and New Hampshire's primaries following early next week, pundits and observers across the nation are closely watching the polls and prediction markets for early word on who might win. But these pundits might be ignoring a potentially important leading indicator of political opinion. We're talking, of course, about World of Warcraft character names.As pointed out by blogger Andrew Sullivan, a full 48 realms in the popular online game have a player-characters named after Republican candidate Ron Paul (player names must be unique to a realm). The WoW naming support for Paul isn't that surprising given the recent in-game rally held in his honor in Whisperwind's IronForge. Paul runs well ahead of his closest competitor, Democrat Barack Obama, who shares a name with 36 WoW characters. No other candidate breaks the ten-character mark in a search of World of Warcraft info. resource The Armory.While naming a WoW character after your favorite politician seems a great way to show your support, it's not always possible. For one, names longer than twelve characters are not allowed, meaning supporters of Hillary Clinton or Bill Richardson couldn't use their full names for a WoW character. Even shortened names don't always work -- in our tests, characters named HillClinton, HClinton and just plain old Clinton were deemed "unavailable." This likely means the Clinton name has run afoul of Blizzard's terms of use clause against using character names that belong "to a popular culture figure, celebrity, or media personality." (This is also probably why there are no characters named BillClinton or GeorgeWBush. There are 29 GeorgeW's though).While tracking WoW's presidential naming race is fun and all, it probably has very little actual value in predicting nationwide voting preferences. After all, there are 71 characters named Trogdor, and no one really expects him to burninate across the 2008 elections.Read on for a complete list of WoW's presidential candidate name counts, as of press time.(Thanks to WowInsider's Elizabeth Harper for help with this story)
WoW Insider Show Episode 18: New Year's resolutions
Dan O'Halloran, Turpster, and I all sat down for the 18th episode of the WoW Insider Show (and we got circular for the end of the year, since we had the same cast on the very first show), and it is now available for listening over on WoW Radio's website. We chatted about: Marcie's new raid healing column, and our new hardcore raiding content The big Ron Paul rally scheduled for tomorrow afternoon If summoning stones need neutral guards (they do not) and how mining will get easier We also talked about our suggested battle cries for the Alliance (my favorite is still "Grab Your Sword and Fight the Horde," and finally someone made a Tshirt for me-- thanks, Arek!-- but we found a lot of support for "You No Take Candle!" so I guess it's up to the Alliance what they like best). And we shared our New Year's resolutions for 2008-- Turpster's resolution is 1680x1050 (funny guy), Dan resolved to try some PvP, I resolved to play my good old Night Elf Hunter more, and see if I can't have a look at some high level content from the Alliance side.Definitely check out the show if you're bored while off work tomorrow, and don't forget-- we do this show live on WoW Radio every Saturday afternoon, so be sure to listen in again this coming Saturday at 3:30pm EST.
Ron Paul advocates plan in-game WoW rally
As campaigning for the presidential primaries reaches critical mass, America's political eye will be sharply focused on a number of locations during the upcoming months -- places like Iowa, Washington, D.C., and ... Azeroth? Yes, the fanatical internet following of Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul has spread its influence into the digital realm of World of Warcraft, and is currently planning a pro-Paul march from Ironforge to Stormwind on the Whisperwind server.Most of us will be too busy attending the "Orcs for Obama" and "Rogues for Romney" rallies to make an appearance, but if you want to show your support for the Republican underdog, and you don't have better plans for the night of January 1, then roll on in to Ironforge astride your Great Red Elekk and join in the festivities.(Via WoW Insider)
WoW Insider Show goes live this afternoon
Yes, it seems like the week flew by, but it's that time again-- the WoW Insider Show is going live on WoW Radio this afternoon at 3:30pm EST. This week, myself and Dan O'Halloran from WoW Insider are at the helm from our side, and from WoW Radio... well, we're not sure if Turpster's going to be on or not. No matter who shows up, it's sure to be a good time-- we'll be chatting about political figures making appearances in Azeroth, how to make mining and other gathering easier, and what's going on during the New Year's holiday next week (not to mention our own personal New Year's resolutions).So join us this afternoon, won't you? You can listen live at 3:30pm EST on WoW Radio, and be sure to fire up your IRC client as well to join us in #wowradio at irc.mmoirc.org. See you there.
Ron Paul supporters plan rally in Azeroth
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul's internet regiment has come to World of Warcraft-- a group of his supporters are planning to form a guild on Whisperwind and do a march from IF to Stormwind (which means they'll probably be Gnomes or Dwarves, which is too bad, because I liked the idea of "Trolls for Ron Paul") on New Year's Day at 8:30pm EST.Now, we here at WoW Insider are politically neutral when it comes to Warcraft, so we won't advocate joining these guys (and we also won't advocate forming a "Horde for Hillary" guild to oppose them). But we are 100% in support of bringing widescale opinion expression of any kind into the game itself, so this should definitely be a fun event.As always, if you go, take pictures and send them to us. And if you hear about any other political rallies in World of Warcraft this coming election year, let us know about those, too-- we'd love it if a presidential candidate (any of them) somehow got some extra buzz just because he (or she) was able to get out "the Orgrimmar vote."Thanks, Paul!
House overwhelmingly passes SAFE Act on obscene images -- Ron Paul dissents to save us from ourselves?
Look, kiddie porn and terrorism are bad. Obvious. But what better way for a government to push through controversial legislation quickly than to harness their emotive properties? After all, what self-respecting member of the US House of Representatives would vote against legislation called Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online, or SAFE? Only 2 it turns out (Rep. Paul Broun from Georgia and Rep. presidential candidate, Ron Paul) with 409 members voting yesterday in favor. The new bill requires everyone (that includes you and Starbucks) offering an open WiFi connection to the public to be on the lookout for report known "illegal images" and "obscene" cartoons and drawings. The reporting requirement extends to cover social networking sites, ISPs, and email providers. Failing to dutifully report what you've seen (or haven't seen but are unwittingly complicit in) could leave your data seized and in debt from fines of up to $300,000. This isn't a call to arms, however...
Flickr Find: Ron Paul, iPhone user
Ron Paul, one of the Republican candidates for the Office of the President of the United States of America, is gaining some steam. It wasn't so long ago that most people didn't even know who Ron Paul was, but now a few more people are cognizant of him. Why post this on TUAW? Because it would seem Mr. Paul is using an iPhone to talk to his supporters. Check out this picture and tell me if that doesn't look like a man who is happy with his iPhone.We all know the current US President is an iPod user, as is the Pope and the Queen of England. Have you seen any other noteworthy folks chatting away on iPhones? One imagines that Al Gore has an iPhone or two.Oh, and just because Ron Paul is a political figure doesn't mean the comments on this post should descend into partisan talk. Let's keep the focus on the technology, shall we?Thanks, John.
