I'd rather be fishing in Loch Modan

First impressions of World of Warcraft (which I started playing a couple of weeks ago*) - neither the graphics nor the interface have to get all that much better before you could really just live there. Not corporeally, no - you'd still need food and water and sanitary facilities somewhere out in the world. But otherwise some of the scenery and the buildings are comparable to many of the places you'd trek halfway around the world to see and the society is probably as interesting as any on earth.

This, of course, is not news - back in the old Everquest days Ted Castronova got a 20% positive response to the assertion "I live in Norrath but I travel outside of it regularly", and a 22% positive response to "if I could, I would spend all of my time in Norrath."

But what this boils down to for me is, like the Kindle, more bad news for property values. Let's agree for a moment that once everyone can afford a working Holodeck they're not going to need anything else in their house. Somewhere on the line between Working Holodeck and WoW is a point at which people - lots of people - are going to start saying "screw this house thing, I don't even live here anymore. I live in Stormwind. My friends live in Stormwind. Sometimes we pop into London for baths, meals and a phone call to reassure our parents we're still alive." And once people twig that to do that they need one room with a bed, a shower and a wifi connection...well, what are all those big houses going to be for anyway?

*Nordrassil server, if you happen to be on the same and want to come and say "hi"

Comments

[Craig McGill]

I quite liked WoW when I played it a while ago - with the terribly original name of MacGhoul - and I think I'll be going back for another go shortly.

But what put me off was the fact that a lot of the skills in it where things I was feeling guilty about not learning in the real world instead of learning it digitally.

Give me a game where I can learn things that I have no chance of learning here.

Or is there a middle ground where education and MMORPGs can be combined so people can be taught skills?

Could we set up something - let's call it DoleNet - where people learn skills for their avatars that they can actually use in this world?

[Seamus McCauley]

Yeah, my wife thinks it's pretty weird that I'll spend an afternoon collecting virtual herbs in Arathi but won't help with the weeding...

[jacky]

I think i have lived the same thing, the games i play and like are at some point incarned into me because there so much going and so much to master if you wan to be good at it that are similar to the worl di am living in.