Noob In Azeroth - Charities

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

NoobinAzeroth Guest Post:

If you have ever played an MMO before you would probably be aware of a certain etiquette required while playing. I was playing with several PUGs earlier this week, and I noticed that certain events during the game triggered certain, and specific reactions from the players in the group. It was a trend that interested me, and decided to focus on Azerothean Etiquette, Ethics and a great idea on my part, for this post.

While you do get alot of players who totally disregard etiquette, by either quitting without warning, or thinking they're Bruce Lee and ninja-ing that sweet pair of rare gauntlets from right under you, the majority of players are honest, and polite people. The first thing that got my attention regarding this, was when someone in the party dinged, and regardless it was only level 25, there was congratulations all round, with one or two members of the 5 man group even cheering. I then started to see other trends such as, when someone says something along the lines of "drink" or "mana break" everyone stops what they're doing and wait for that one person to get back to 100%, without question. Why can't the real world be like this?

Think about it for a minute, how great would real life be, if, everytime you succeeded in something, everyone around you clapped and cheered? Or if you could take a "mana-break" from work anytime you needed to? Would Adolf Hitler have done what he did, if someone, even one person, commended him on his artwork as a young Austrian youth? Maybe, but who knows, human kindness only seems to exist on the internet these days.

If there was someway to track the amount of donations to guild banks and low-level characters in World Of Warcraft in a single month, I'm almost positive that the figure would eclipse the entire annual collections of The Red Cross in one year. You may say that this is virtual money versus real money, but I can assure you, that these players worked just as hard for that 100 gold as they did for that €1, dollar or whatever.

Wait. What if charities could exist in a persistant world like World Of Warcraft? What if I could donate 100 gold to a charity of my choice. Sure, what would a charity do with virtual money? Maybe the likes of Blizzard could donate €1/$1/£1 for every 100 gold collected. I can see this as being good for both the charity, and Blizzard, as it would help remove excess money from the in-game economy, and will help Blizzard's public image. There could even be incentives to donate, such as achievements for donation milestones, titles, and even temporary ingame buffs.

But then again, this isn't a perfect World (Of Warcraft)...