Tag Archives | World of Warcraft

World Of Warcraft Gamer Wins Seat In Maine Senate

By on November 9, 2012 in News 3

The 2012 election featured many historic firsts, but surely all pale in comparison to the victory by previously discussed Maine state senate candidate hopeful Colleen Lachowicz. Despite advertising from Lachowicz’s Republican opponent attacking her over her online role playing, it seems that America is comfortable electing a gamer to public office.  Ars Technica adds:

The attacks on Lachowicz’s gaming generated an outpouring of support from around the world. Supporters raised $6300 to promote her candidacy. Because Lachowicz accepted public funds under Maine’s “clean elections” law, she wasn’t legally permitted to accept the money herself. So the money was donated to an independent Political Action Committee.

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Maine Political Race Hinges On Candidate’s World Of Warcraft Alter-Ego

By on October 5, 2012 in News 13

Is the American public finally ready to elect a role-playing gamer to public office? In Maine, the Republican Party is portraying Democratic state Senate hopeful and World of Warcraft devotee Colleen Lachowicz as unfit for office because she “lives in an online fantasy world,” Kotaku writes:

Colleen Lachowicz is running for state senate in Waterville, Maine. She also plays a lot of World of Warcraft. According to Maine Republicans, this means that she is unfit for office. The Maine Republican Party has set up an entire website dedicated to digging up old forum posts made by Lachowicz on Blizzard’s online role-playing game.

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Chinese Prisoners Forced To Play World Of Warcraft

By on May 27, 2011 in News 7

china-prisonIronic — when I was a kid, being locked up in a Chinese prison and “forced” to stay up playing video games all night would have been my dream. The Telegraph reports:

A 54-year-old prisoner at the Jixi labor camp in the northern province of Heilongjiang said he was forced to play games on the internet in order to build up credit that was traded by his guards for real money, a practice known as “gold-farming”.

In an interview with the Guardian, the prisoner said online gaming was a far more lucrative activity for the managers of the labor camp than the physical labor the inmates were forced to do.  “Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labor,” he said. “There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb a day.

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World Bank: MMORPG Gold Farming Is A 3 Billion-Dollar Industry

By on April 29, 2011 in News 10

Via BoingBoing:

A research arm of the World Bank has produced a comprehensive report on the size of the grey-market virtual world economy in developing countries — gold farming, power-levelling, object making and so on — and arrived at a staggering $3 billion turnover in 2009. They go on to recommend that poor countries be provided with network access and computers so this economy can be built up — a slightly weird idea, given how hostile most game companies are to this sort of thing…

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