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Internet rage, dissociation, and difficult consequences
Everyone who plays World of Warcraft has encountered player rage at some point in their WoW career, it's almost part of the initiation ritual, the normal progress of the game. Some days are worse than others, some servers and regions and battlegroups are likely worse than others, some times are worse than others, but the one constant is that it's everywhere, there's no reality in which you can proceed through your entire WoW existence and not encounter one single moment of rage. A recent article in a major UK newspaper discussed two recent and public incidents of net-based rage, and its impact on two game designers, David Vonderhaar of COD: Black Ops, and Fez developer Phil Fish. Regardless of the causes of the incidents, these guys were the subject of quite some internet unpleasantness. And yes, CoD is well known for being a less pleasant cyberspace to inhabit than many others, and Fish engaged in quite some nerd-baiting, but our own devs are far from exempt from this sort of treatment. Blizzard Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street tweeted recently that it was not uncommon for him to receive death threats.
