15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about at 15minutesoffame (at) wowinsider (dot) com.

When I received a news tip from from Rainnajax of US Uldaman-H about being an "older female gamer," I admit that I rolled my eyes. Please, not another one who thinks having two X chromosomes makes her the most special snowflake ... Not another one who thinks being over 30 years old qualifies her as one of the Ancients ... When I read her entire email, though, I realized Rainnajax's experience was actually intriguing – but not for the reasons she thought.

While Rainnajax may perceive herself as something still a little unusual among WoW players, I see her as the type of player who's becoming the new norm. She's less remarkable for being female or "older" – or even for belonging to a well known gay and bi-friendly guild -- than she is for being among the new wave of players who'd never imagined themselves playing a video game ... until they tried WoW. MMORPGs are no longer the province of a single type of player anymore. Rainnajax is here as an example of today's new-to-gaming, non-gender- or age-specific player.

WoW Insider readers are a talkative bunch. All of us here at WI monitor our own posts for comments, but there's not always time to keep up with what's happening on all the other posts. And if those of us who hang around here all the time can't keep up, we wondered how much our readers were missing, too?

Enter [1.Local], our new roundup bringing you a smattering of the zingers that may have gotten buried in the peanut gallery. We'll serve up both the sublime and the ridiculous, the thought-provoking and the just plain silly -- definitely a cut above Barrens chat (although we do admit that "Barrens Chat" was a strong contender for the feature's title).

This week's reader comments ranged from thoughtful ruminations on gender and modern culture's definition of "beauty" to an ongoing tussle over what constitutes success for an MMO. Be sure to dive into the comments area and add your own thoughts – unlike your mama, we like us some hot, fresh backtalk.

Warning: Some offensive language mentioned after the jump.

ActionTrip put together a pretty interesting list that includes World of Warcraft-- they've tried to list the top five most popular game communities. Online gaming is just a huge pasttime, obviously (thanks in large part to Blizzard's magnum online opus), and so there are quite a few communities that have built up around various games. But they've supposedly crunched the numbers, and they say they've come up with the five biggest.

The Sims, Counterstrike, and Halo are all predictably on the list, as is World of Warcraft. Not too unexpected-- these aren't just the biggest communities in online gaming, they're also four of the biggest games of all time. But most surprising, RuneScape also joins the others. It's a Java-based (as in played in your browser) MMORPG that's basically an updated, graphical MUD. And their numbers are very surprising-- they have 9 million free accounts playing, as well as 1 million paid accounts, which (if those were all separate users, which I doubt) would put them in range of WoW itself. Of course, a free game (that's played in a browser and not bought in a store) will always have a larger available playerbase than a retail game that has a subscription charge, but considering that 13% of all PC gamers have reportedly played RuneScape, that's a pretty big deal.

The other interesting, WoW-related fact that ActionTrip dug up is this: apparently PC gamers are still playing WoW more than four times as much as any other PC game. There's no question that since its inception, WoW has changed the face of PC gaming, and no matter what happens in the future, it's currently one of the biggest videogame communities in history.

[ via WorldofWar.net ]