+1, Mod up! Make sticky! and all that!

Well said! The should also make Lord of Light!

I like your perspective. I wonder if you would care to comment on the female technological craze:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/08/vibrator-sales-sex-toys-women_n_1501352.html

Business is booming -- for the sex toy industry. It seems that erotic accessories are poised to become some of the world’s most popular gadgets, right up there with smartphones. The Daily Mail reported that UK sales of sex toys are projected to soar above £250 million this year (approximately 403 million dollars). And as of May 2011, consumers were spending an estimated $500 million a year on these products in North America, according to Scientific American.

Are vibrators becoming too much of a good thing for women? It might help explain why both men and women in this country are content to stay in their respective
corners and not come out swinging. Your take on women having no partners struck me as rather odd, as if women were helpless. They most certainly are not. On the other hand, if Steely Dan is satisfying them then that is more believable to my way of thinking.

The other thing to consider is that historicial marriage was based upon men subjugating women. That's not the case today but courtship rules have not kept up with the times. I'm just pointing out a systemic deficiency that both men and women are up against. In the words of Zoey to Captain Reynolds on Firefly, "Are you enjoying your own like bio-slave?" is no longer an option.

Well met. You should also factor in lifespan into your paradigm. Getting married at 16 was the norm until very recently in man's history precisely because that age represented the best years for reproduction for lifespans of 30 years. Today? Who gets married at 16? Till death do you part means 70 years of marriage? It is expected that everyone is socially awkward when they are young when people traditionally looked for mates...as opposed to midlife these days.

Well said and well met.

Technology is redefining norms. The problem with psychologists today is that comparative behavior requires comparing past and present and not starting with an assumption that norms of behavior are in flux.

If norms and social values are changing rapidly then what? There are some behaviorists out their who recognize this is the case. For example, the cell phone is making a huge impact on speech. Research is being done on language o help us better understand how to use cell phones appropriately. This type of attitude is not being conducted with respect to video games.

As technology gets adapted there are bound to be miss-steps in integrating technology into the human experience, obviously. The problem with modern psychology is the same problem with conservatives in general. That is both groups typically start with the assumption that the only "good" norm is a past, understood and proven "norm" and taking risks, making changes to achieve some new state of human experience is never a consideration. In that world then video games can only be destructive because video games did not exist in the past and these folk fit the facts to their negative bias. While evolution may take millions of years environment changes do not and anyone who is up on the cognitive sciences is well aware of the roll that environment plays in child development. The technology cat is already out of the bag and modern psychologists need to get with the cognitive science program and help us figure out what to do about it productively rather than focus on wholesale condemnation of that which they despise and do not yet understand. Video games will be with us as long as technology is. Get over it. Psychologists would be better served helping companies like Blizzard produce a healthier environment.

"Their lives are certainly likely to be more interesting, and their odds of landing a partner increases."

A good send up, I say. My compliments. This sentence strikes me as rather interesting. I might rewrite it as:

"There lives are certainly likely to be more interesting from someone who doesn't game's perspective and their odds of landing a partner outside of gaming increases thusly."

I read somewhere that more women now play WoW than men, although the demographics are out of sync I think.

The key here is "interesting". I think psychologists and the world at large tend lump games like WoW into the same mindless bucket as watching TV or porn when in fact the complexity of the game-play, the interesting factor, is really one's choice. The mythology in a game like WoW represents thousands of names and places to get to know. The maps are rich. The PVE encounters are in the hundreds. Your toon can be as mindless as you like to as complex as you need. I like complex where I'm constantly tweaking macros and remapping the keyboard. I also use a lot of plugins. I also "tank" which requires far more sophistication than the other roles unless one is in a guild or doing PvP. Speaking of PvP, the other thing psychologists dismiss with online gaming is that "guilds" are key to holding people for the long run. Guilds typically use "Vent", a group chat, and viola people are talking to each other.

Only time will tell if video gaming becomes a norm such that those who do not game are deemed less interesting. As long as technology keeps trending the way it is I know where I'd put my money.

If you are not an expert but would like more understanding on this topic, then I'd recommend Steven Pinker's, The Language Instinct.

http://www.amazon.com/Language-Instinct-How-Mind-Creates/dp/0060976519

One of his books discusses a series of experiments where babies were shown to be able to understand all phonemes but by the age of six-months only the phonemes of the parent's language are available. They did experiments with both adults and babies.

Also, Pinker talks about a group of people with no history that linguists have posited to once exist based upon common roots in modern languages that trace back to a period in history and then stop. Kind of a missing language link of people if you will. Not sure how that fits in here.

You all seem to be missing Greg's point. Greg was claiming that "We've got a lot of players into raiding now."

Maybe what I should have countered with was "prove it".

Link the RAID achievements vs. the number of level 80s and show us that level 80s who play on average 10 hours a week have lots of raid achievements.

"You can "know the fights" by looking them up on wowpedia.org or youtube. Or tankspot. Or bosskillers. Or a half dozen other sites."

"I want to raid but I'm not sure how," or "It's too hard." "

Your statement is directly at odds with Greg's.

Here's how hard it is for me to use video.

1.) As tank I've had to use ALL of the sites you've listed to "know how." No one site works.
2.) Many of the videos are out of date.
3.) Videos are for a class you are not playing. Good luck trying to tank a fight as a warrior when the video is paladin.
4.) Videos have characters far better geared.
5.) Most of the videos have the UI so tweaked and custom rigged it makes them difficult to understand and they require watching repeated times.

So I disagree with him saying that users don't feel the "know how is hard". It is hard, especially for tanks.

And I'm still surprised at how many players do not have Deadly Boss Mod set.

If a player has to spend 30 minutes to an hour scouring the web to "know how", maybe it has been two months since that raid, then this directly contradicts Greg's statement that "I want to raid but I'm not sure how," or "It's too hard."

Why do you think the tank ratio is so low? Because it's too hard.

". Average gearscore is about 5.3k."

I'm curious as to how you got this number?

"Greg Street: We've got a lot of players into raiding now. I don't encounter too many players these days who say, "I want to raid but I'm not sure how," or "It's too hard." "

Seriously? You can't even get into an Ice Crown raid unless your gear score is 5K and most people are going to want you to already know the fights.

If by "raiding" he means the Dungeon Tool, he's probably right there, but other than that forget it.

It is nigh impossible to reasonably PUG a raid.

Howard's Mom, 'Howard, I'm going to the store. Which peas should I get to go with the brisket!"

Howard, "Not NOW Mom! I'm BUSY!"

Howard's, Mom, "Just what's so IMPORTANT Mr. Smarty Pants that you have to spend all day playing video games in your room. Should you be in school?"

Howard, "I'm NOT in School Ma!, I work at the University, and for your information I'm not playing games, I conducting very delicate research on the latest robotic technology. Now will you PLEASE leave me alone!"