Some interesting observations about in-game gender from my three years of playing WoW –

Most World of Warcraft players are male, however you’ll see a fairly large representation of female characters in-game. Mostly, I’d guess, because men like to look at female characters. I have met far more men playing female toons than women playing male ones, which may say something about how women see themselves, and the advantages of playing a female character.

And there are advantages. Anecdotally, I can tell you that female toons get more assistance and are invited to groups more readily than males. My husband plays a male toon, and has never been randomly invited to a group (despite playing a more group-able class… don’t ask). Other players start up random conversations with him far less often. He rolled a female toon just for kicks and found that people were talking to him all of a sudden, and he got a lot more random group invites…

The most interesting part about the ‘assistance’ of female toons, is that everyone knows most of them are men. They still get more help, and this is the kicker – real women seem more likely to talk to men playing women than men playing men. Almost all of the in-game friends I’ve made have been with men playing female toons. Maybe this says more about me than gender in WoW, but I’ve found that I’m not alone in this.

I’ve also noticed that women seem more likely to play certain classes than men. Again, this is just totally based on my own experience, and others may completely disagree with me, but…. Priests, warlocks, hunters, and druids are the classes I most expect to meet women playing. Two healing classes and two ranged DPS pet classes. Don’t ask me why, but this is what I’ve noticed. I’d love to see an academic paper that looked at whether women made better healers than men, or why they seem (on a whole) to be drawn to healing rather than tanking classes. Is it a social expectations thing? Is it because their gear is prettier? I fully expect to get flamed by all the girls who play tanks now.

Curious about how exactly the 700bn$ bailout is meant to work to "save the economy" or somesuch other.

Have read elsewhere that the 700bn was an arbitrary figure the Treasury came up with, without any research or logic backing it.

Also curious about how buying dubious assets in order to free up more lending is necessarily a good plan. Perhaps it's better for money to be tight for a while? Maybe it will stop the crap lending practices that have led to inflated stock prices and the massive boom of the last few years (in both housing and stocks).

Or, the US govt could buy the dubious assets (that no one else will buy), hoping that over time they'll come through... meanwhile providing a fresh injection of capital that doesn't exist.

My sympathies in this situation are mixed at best. I think all the "DOOM IS NOW" nonsense in the blogosphere and MSM is unhelpful. This isn't the great depression. This isn't even 1987 for chrissake. The market lost 5%. I'm not thrilled, but it's hardly the end of the civilised world.

Why 700bn? Why not a trillion? Why not 100bn? Who's coming up with these numbers. Little about how this 'bail out' is supposed to actually work has been passed on to the American people. We're right to be skeptical and tell our representatives to vote No.

So... a movie review that only reviews the visual style of the movie, and fails to mention the plot and characters... was there a second page that I missed?

Last time a checked, cool visuals weren't a reason to shell out $15 at the movies. I'll pass on this thanks. The magic of this series is long gone.

I'm unsurprised that gold farmers enjoy their jobs more than their sweatshop working counterparts. Its a relative easy, non-taxing sort of work that pays comparatively well in China to the other factory/industrial work available there.

Unlike Nike shoes, which have an astronomical mark-up between what is paid to Chinese workers vs what they cost to Western consumers, the cost of WoW gold vs what's paid workers isn't that bad.

I would estimate it would take a lvl 30-40 player like your son about 5-6 hours to farm 100 gold (much less for a player at lvl 70). Assuming you paid your son minimum wage (I know he's not even 10, but let's pretend), you'd have to pay him $30 to farm the gold. You can buy it on ebay for about $15.

So, for a player like myself who earns a fair bit over the the minimum wage, $15 for 100g doesn't seem so bad. Thats less than an hour of my working wage.

And thats the problem -- it makes the game unfair. Part of the fantasy of World of Warcraft is the notion that everyone is equal. It doesn't matter if IRL you're a stockbroker, or a 7-year-old -- your in-game resources are determined by the ammount of time you spend playing and your skill/craftiness at playing the game. So, people do get a bit annoyed when this aspect of the game becomes commercialised... it ruins the egalitaraian fantasy.

Having said that, at the apex of the game, gold is fairly irrelevant. All high-end items are "bind on equip" meaning players cannot sell them or buy them. This is where the second type of farming comes in -- playing the game FOR someone else and aquiring high-end items, then selling the actual character with the items. This is a far more lucrative enterprise, but also requires more player skill than just gold farming.

It's quite common to see a fully decked out lvl 70 character selling for around $300-400. So, hey, maybe your son isn't wasting his time after-all....