Tag: warcraft

It’s literally he said, she said

Angie L. Jenkins told a boy she played World of Warcraft with that she was 21. She’s actually 35. He told her he was 20. He was actually 15. Can we say romantic comedy?

After meeting in 2009, the pair developed a relationship that began online, moved to phone conversation and ultimately ended with a rendezvous in a car park in Amherst, New York, where the pair had sex, despite the unnamed boy being only 16 at the time. Jenkins has since been charged with “using the Internet to entice an underage person into sexual activity”, her undoing being that, during their earlier communications, the boy eventually and explicitly told her he was only 15, yet she kept up her pursuit, later telling a federal agent “it did not matter how old he was”. After all, love cares not for age nor legal status, right?

It’s not known at the moment just how Jenkins, a mother of five, was tracked down, but when the FBI got hold of her World of Warcraft username, all it took was an administrative subpoena to WoW developers Blizzard and they had her name and contact details. So, hey, you night elf and paladin in the corner over there-knock it off!

Leroy Jenkins is more important than your marriage

Social sites and massively multiplayer online games aren’t just a great place to catch up with friends and be entertained, they’re also a great place to dig up dirt on a soon-to-be ex. Which, let’s face it, is one of the lamer reasons for why you’re being divorced.

The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers says 81 percent of its members have used or faced evidence from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networking sites, including YouTube and LinkedIn, over the last five years.

Evidence like:

Father seeks custody of the kids, claiming (among other things) that his ex-wife never attends the events of their young ones. Subpoenaed evidence from the gaming site World of Warcraft tracks her there with her boyfriend at the precise time she was supposed to be out with the children. Mom loves Facebook’s Farmville, too, at all the wrong times.

So the next time you’re clanning for a new scepter of intelligence +25 in World of Warcraft, or logging 10 hours in Farmville, you might want to remember that someone could be watching … and taking a few notes.

GAY MARRIAGE FOR ALL

…people who play Runes of Magic and want to be gay-married.

Taiwanese MMORPG Runes of Magic has an update coming that allows players to get married and become “connected” with each other. That’s probably like poking on Facebook (remember that feature? You used it a grand total of no times). The big news, however, is that that Runewaker Entertainment’s game is going to be more progressive than most states in the United States-allowing same-sex marriage all across the board.

“You will be married and somehow connected to the other player,” explains Western publisher Frogster. “Of course you can only be married with one person at the same time. It’s even possible to have gay couples, so no need to just have a male and female character. Two male characters and two female characters can marry each other.”

Isn’t that quaint and pleasant? I eagerly look forward to the jump to conclusion met by some repulsive Congressman or Billy Graham about how acts like these are corrupting the youth. They tend to make my day.

Real life has consequences? ZOMG!!!11

We’ll go ahead and get the pun out of the way: Oh WoW!

A World of Warcraft essentially slipped the human race the finger by getting involved in a drunken dispute with his mother, grabbing her hair, choking her, and headbutting a wall. Oh, and he also ended up getting shot in the head by his grandfather. All in one night. Impressive.

27-year-old James Swan, who lives with his mother, had been playing WoW and getting drunk before the fight began. That might mess up his ability to effectively use some of the macros, but hey, who are we to judge? Swan’s mother demanded that the man-child tone down the noise while he played his game at 10pm, a demand that Swan took umbrage with. So very much umbrage. NERD RAGE! Wacky hi-jinx ensued as the MMO player eventually grabbed his mother by the hair and flung her onto a bed. We can only hope there’s nothing Freudian about that action. He also did the same to his little brother, who had arrived to find out what the noise was about.

The mother ran to call the police, but Swan ripped the phone from the wall and proceeded to repeatedly headbutt the the spot where the phone once was, which is a good way to show the phone that it needs to learn its role in life and get back into the kitchen and make me a sammich.

Ahem.

He then began to choke his mother into near-unconsciousness, threatening to kill her, before the grandfather became involved. Swan threatened to kill him too, so the grandfather got his gun. The two men then wrestled over the gun, which went off and shot James Swan in the head. The bullet bounced off his skull and went through a window. Luckily for Swan, he was only wounded, and was arrested after refusing treatment at a hospital.

Words cannot begin to accurately articulate the glee and childish squealing that this story has given me.

Maybe he can face some theoretical jail time?

Let’s be honest here, people: there should probably be some technical terms for multiple levels of stupid. For now I’ll just make some up: if you have to gauge the actions of the guy in this story and your choices are A Little Slow, Stone Cold Stupid, Colossal Moron and Drooling Vegetable, it would fall somewhere between the third and the fourth. What happened here is that an eighteen year old Johnson County, Indiana resident decided to announce he was planning to hijack a plane. While playing World of Warcraft. Remember, geeks do their crimes online.

It’s been reported that the teen was playing the game yesterday morning when he announced that he

“was going to board a plane at 7:30 to Chicago and that (he) was going to try and kill as many Americans as possible”.

Which totally doesn’t imply suicide at all, moron.

A facilitator from an online gaming center reported the kid after hearing him repeat himself a few times. When confronted, the teen at first said that someone hacked into his computer, then backpedaled and said he was just kidding around. How humbling it must be to have your e-penis so swiftly and suddenly confiscated!

A rep from Blizzard who had gone over the chat logs said they seemed very serious and not like a joke at all. In the meantime, the teen’s computer has been seized by the FBI, who are looking further into the case. Charges could possibly be filed with the U.S. Attorney’s office, but it hasn’t gone that far yet. I bet he’s not allowed to play WoW anymore, which could possibly be the end of his world.

Leeeeee-roy Clubbings!

Hey, you! Yeah, you, the one with the Cheetos-dust covered fingers and the addiction to Wow!

No, the other one. No, the other other one. OK, fine, whatever, all of you.

PETA wants you. They’ve decided that Canadian seal slaughter has gone on long enough, and rather than chain every single member of the terrorist animal rights terrorist (sorry, I had it right the first time) group to an iceberg, they instead will take their protest signs and paint to a digital front-the land of Warcraft.

A call to arms was placed on PETA’s official blog for this weekend, asking people to take part in a fight against four Horde players that apparently kill seals for their luxurious fur. Their soft, sweet, delicately luxurious baby seal fur.

“Thrall refused to ban the slaughter of seals, despite multiple requests from the Alliance to do so, because Orgrimmar stands to make a large profit from the fur,” reads the posting.
“Activists from across the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor are banding together to put a stop to the atrocious seal slaughter. Anyone who slaughters baby seals for their fur must surely be in service to the evil Lich King.”

Good googaly-moogaly, this is good. Like, super-nerdy-ultra-lame-good. Sadly, from what I gather from friends, PETA did not choose a Player versus Player server for their protest. As such, no true internet drama can be created. ALAS!

SeriouslyGuys would just like to let the Horde players being protested know that, despite being both Canadian and super nerdy, you’re very much welcome in the United States. We know that you’re just doing your part in the War against Animals to make sure that these seals don’t end up becoming monsters of the oceans.

Vikings punter: ‘It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do’

Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe is prepared to take the ultimate step to becoming the greatest World of Warcraft fan ever by possibly becoming “Chris Warcraft.”

Apparently a ginormous WoW fan, he revealed his gaming perspicacity in a chat with the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune late last week.

“I think more people like to hear me talk about playing video games than football,” claims Kluwe. “I’ve played video-games since I was 4 years old. I play them a lot more than I kick a football. I kick the ball about 45 minutes a day. I play video games about five or six hours a day. But that’s OK. I don’t watch TV …

“Back when [Bengals receiver] Chad Johnson changed his name to Ocho Cinco, I told the guys at [radio station] 93X that I was going to change my name to Chris ‘World of Warcraft.’ They said that’s too long. So they started calling me Chris ‘Warcraft.’ I could make a lot of money if I changed my name to that.”

Let’s back that up for you all.

“I play them a lot more than I kick a football. I kick the ball about 45 minutes a day. I play video games about five or six hours a day. But that’s OK.”

Once again, WoW players, you make it almost too easy sometimes.

Does studying not get a shortcut command?

Oh, WoW. Your players never fail to amaze us.

Federal Communications Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate claims that World of Warcraft and other online games are directly responsible for students dropping out altogether. In a speech to the Practicing Law Institute last week she cited a recent FCC survey,

“With the explosion of educational resources available online, one might think parents would be 100% pleased with the Internet’s role in their children’s lives, but surveys show just the opposite: a late 2006 survey that showed 59% of parents think the Internet has been a totally positive influence in their children’s lives– down from 67% in 2004.You might find it alarming that one of the top reasons for college drop-outs in the U.S. is online gaming addiction – such as World of Warcraft – which is played by 11 million individuals worldwide”

Tate provides no real evidence of her claim, but we’ve also seen what happens to people who let their lives be dominated by an MMO’s wily charms. While it’s hard to believe that huge swathes of people are dropping out purely to play Warcraft, it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to think that it had a hand in a few educations getting flushed away. As always, however, this is less Blizzard’s fault and more the fault of whoever made the decision to let a computer game control them.

Though, just to be on the safe side, we’ll make the illogical jump to a conclusion that Blizzard Studios is NOT a real American hero. Because someone has to be the first to do so.

Be glad it was only PvP and not ClanvP

Slowly but surely, news related to World of Warcraft has made its way onto our headlines. Thanks, crazy people. You’re the best. Even more so when you’re from Australia.

Oh my. What a coincidence. I just happen to know of a story that has both topics related to it. I better talk about it.

….and one clever segue later, an Australian student stabbed a friend in the head and nearly severed one his fingers during a fight about the volume of a World of Warcraft gaming session. No, really.

The university student was at a friend’s home last night with four friends playing World of Warcraft when the fight started. The student told the court that the fight was spurred by an argument about the volume of the other man’s computer. During the fight, Zhenghao Shen allegedly stabbed the victim in the head with a chef’s knife, gashing his head, and nearly left him with one less digit.

Sadly, the victim was not wearing a cloak of +8 protection. Though, I’m morbidly delighted in finding out what Shen was yelling out while stabbing. Perhaps something akin to “Leroy Jenkins?”