No, but that video pretty much mocked the nerdy behavior that is commonplace in MMORPGs.
Wired recently reported on a new academic paper that analyzed the dialogue on a WoW forum. They discovered that the vast majority of the content was players trying to figure out the “scientific” rules behind how to kill bosses and what not. And in the most extreme cases, some of the players used Excel spreadsheets to develop formulas to detect the underlying math involved in these virtual battles (in Lineage).
While I don’t want to diminish the painstaking work in categorizing each forum post, I’m sure anyone that has played any kind of shoot ‘em up game involving power ups (like Tyrian) can attest to the rigorous hypothesis-trial-error routine employed on a regular basis.
And now that I think of it, I recall overhearing some guys in the lunchroom a decade ago discussing which units to use in StarCraft. I vaguely recall that they settled on some kind of Zerg creature based on how many hits it could dish out in a minute. And I’m pretty sure Excel wasn’t used.
So the question remains: are you going to tell your wife that you’re honing your scientific skills the next time she tells you to turn it off? Are you going to tell your Biology lab instructor that you’ve been tweaking your thought processes?
I wonder how long until the guys behind Brain Age get a hold of that research paper.
My kids and I are big fans of Leeroy and the many remixes of his misadventures. I also have to say that South Park nails the WoW banter in the incomparable episode “Make Love not Warcraft.”
Comment by DJC — September 9, 2008 @ 8:51 pm