One of the many gaming myths/urban legends include the existence of Asian MMORPG addicts that sell their bodies for in-game items. Perhaps the most persistent is the one wherein a supposed Korean lady sold herself for a "kitty band" in the Korean servers of the anime influenced Ragnarok Online MMORPG. Westerners are apparently taking notice of similar economic opportunities. Specifically, this particular female player within Blizzard's World of Warcraft. There is a reason after all, why folks call this the oldest profession.

Behold:

 

In light of this, third-world gold-farming, and outsourcing leveling of characters in MMORPGs, we now wonder what other online-world-to-real-world services MMOs could spawn.

Well folks? What other MMO related real-life "businesses" come to mind? A "Will mow your lawn if you help me with that 40 man raid" service? A "Will do your high-school paper for you if you get me to level 70" job? A "Will pay you to help me re-enact a raining of flying vibrators in real life" venture?

The danger here of course, as this mount-seeking WoW lady shows, is that their "creative ventures" could endanger players who are deemed by society to be not "mature enough". As it is now, there seems to be no limit to the weirdness that is possible online. Linden Lab's Second Life for example, seems to be the leading force when it comes to online representation of the need for human freakishness. (Imagine public copulation between human avatars and imaginary 3D cats.)

Moreover, given that the tendency of folks to use any medium that allows them to communicate as an avenue for perversion, attracts undeserved scrutiny from concerned moral leaders/zealots/protectors, this might be a cause of worry for those whose main goal is to just enjoy playing MMORPGs. The console playing folks are already getting headaches from proposed laws from moral crusaders; MMO gamers definitely won't appreciate the politics that follows.

Sigh.

Well, what's your take on this?

The featured screenshot of the mount seeking WoW addict was made famous on Digg around a day ago. We sincerely hope that this is just a gag and is fake. Otherwise, it's just plain sad ...or cool, depending on your tastes, your age, your values, and the amount of money you have in your wallet.

 

A big population of Digg members believe that any hardcore gamer can't keep girlfriends, but this stereotype was specifically aimed some time ago against one particular World of Warcraft gamer's girlfriend who baked him a sweet lookin' World of Warcraft-themed cake. There's a whole lotta lovin' in that couple.

But wait, for geeks who hang around a site checking out everything hot and burying what's not, haven't they heard of the couple who got hitched in World of Warcraft a couple of months back? Love, indeed, is everywhere, and World of Warcraft is no sloucher in that department.

If you sneak around the WoW Forums long enough or you're one to partake in Guild "convos" from all over, you could have been able to pick up a mention here or there about a couple hooking up. And don't get us started on how serious these relationships are. The phenomenon is abound in Yahoo!, it's common in iRC, and it's no stranger in World of Warcraft.

But still, why pick a bone with WoW players? Or have they got something sour about matters of the heart?

Flukes submitted this JPEG screencap to Digg which could be funny, freaky, or downright furiously worrisome, depending on where you stand in the online privacy debate. Here's what Flukes has to say:

The linked screenshot provides proof that WoW developer Blizzard is actively scanning players' browsing history and cookies. Early speculation is that this is a countermeasure against cheaters, but players are arguing that Blizzard has no right to access this highly private data.

(You will note with great trepidation that the next thing the program checks after the temp files is the Cookies folder)

Not knowing what Blizzard's reasons are for checking your computer's internet history, all everyone at Digg and here can do is speculate. Beyond jokes of (and we quote) "Worried about Blizz finding out about your (just use the sickest imagination you've got) pr0n collection?", there are some very serious repercussions from this.

One theory being strung out at Digg is that the game's actively looking for the computer having visited sites Blizzard frowns on for one reason or another. A more benign reason is that WoW could simply be saving cache files from the news ticker, or from the program's launcher, which is why it's accessing the temp folder. Could be an anti-scam thing, too. Of course, those are the benign reasons - who wants to speculate on the more overtly provocative ones?

But again, no one knows why, and Blizzard didn't say anything about this before. And a lot of people in Digg are seriously miffed and are, not to mention, switching to Firefox - unless WoW's designed to look in there, too.