World of Warcraft In the Axis of Evil

Kotaku is running a piece by Wagner James Au, discussing the place World of Warcraft has in 'The Axis of Evil'. From the article: "Then again, there's little reason to think the ban was enforced much at all. Veteran WoW players tell me they often raid with folks who say they are Coalition troops in Iraq who've cleverly hacked around military firewalls to log in. And while it's doubtful that anyone but Kim Jung-Il and his geek cronies could log into World of Warcraft from North Korea, there's still an embargo on Iran."

Now, I hate farmers...

[Opportunist]

But I kinda wouldn't like the Chinese players to vanish because their government cuts them off.

Whether Vivendi will bow to Chinese requests, should they decide to demand it? Certainly. But they will enforce it only when there's positive proof that a player is Chinese, and only when someone requests it, they certainly won't waste resources to hunt them down. After all, it's money for them when someone plays. Actually, I'd guess they'd appreciate such a demand. After all, it allows them to ban an account, knowing well that the customer will buy another one.

Most countries are banned from WoW, too

[tangent3]

From http://vnboards.ign.com/wow_general_board/b19789/9 6506468/p1/?73 [ign.com]

Just got banned today after playing WOW because I am not currently in North America. Apparently Blizzard does not care about those who are stationed abroad in the Armed Forces and working for them. I purchased WOW in the Post Exchange in Seoul Korea on the Yongsan Army Base there, which is considered by law, U.S. Soil. I installed the game and created my account using my U.S. Credit Card from Delaware. My billing address was an APO, AP address which stands for Armed Forces Pacific, Army Postal. After playing the game for 3 months I got an email stating this:

" Access to the World of Warcraft account BTOBEYONDER, and all World of Warcraft accounts associated with the payment information you have provided, has been permanently disabled. It is implicitly stated on the account creation page that: This account creation process is only available to customers in North America, New Zealand, Australia, and Singapore. As a result, the account(s) will no longer be accessible in any way and will not be reopened under any circumstances. Thank you for your time and understanding in this matter.

Regards,
Account Administration
Blizzard Entertainment "

Re:Leave Our Troops Alone

[Xaositecte]

I happen to be in Iraq right now, Baghdad International Airport (Part of the 447th Communications Squadron) - and it's entirely believable. All you really have to do is call up tech control and, assuming you're on good terms with at least one guy there, ask for admin rights.

It'd be especially easy for Comm guys since all our jobs are getting replaced by Civilian contractors now that it's more or less safe inside the base walls.

Bastards get paid like $160,000 a year to do the same job I'm doing for ~$20,000. Damned enlisted pay structure.

Re:Leave Our Troops Alone

[Xaositecte]

In Comm squadrons over here (Yes, I'm in Iraq this very moment) - we've got a network morale drive filled with games, movies, etc. - all of which our leadership doesn't mind us using so long as we don't have anything better to do at the moment.

Communications jobs in the Air Force aren't exactly filled with tasks, so we've got a lot of free time to play around. Nobody here is a WoW addict to my knowledge, but it wouldn't be terribly difficult to pull off, and no-one would care even if they did.

"Avatar Racism"

[panda]

Actually, I thought that the piece on avatar racism [blogs.com] in Second Life that was linked to in the article was more interesting.

WoW in in combat zones.

[mansa]

You'd be amazed how many people play WoW, Counter-Strike, and a host of other network games in Iraq. The internet is such a big morale booster over there. Nearly every American base I've visited has free (govt. sponsored) Internet connections for troops that include web cams, microphones, and IMs. The pay Internet (AT&T Cyber Cafes) have everything else... pre-loaded games, cams, and access to many other things the govt. doesn't want to worry about. Everytime I went in there to download my e-mail (Yes! They had laptop cubes/ connections! ($5/hour)) there were no less than 5 people playing WoW.

For those people that lived/worked on Iraqi bases the Internet connections there were pretty much unmonitored/unfiltered and allowed everything through.

I also have to say I've seen Morale network drives too... When I was there last summer the music directory was 195gb and the movies and videos topped 300gb... this is on a NIPR military LAN too. I think the leadership looked the other way 'til the filesever blew up December. I don't know if it exists anymore.