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Posts with tag politics

70 Orc Hunter running for Connecticut legislature

More politicians are coming out of the WoW closet. Jeanne Stevens is a WoW player -- with a 70 Orc Hunter, a 58 Troll Shaman, and a 53 Blood Elf Rogue -- and a Republican running for the Connecticut state legislature. And she freely admits it in a new interview with Wandering Goblin, as covered by our sister site, Massively. Her hunter is balanced between marksman and survival, her shaman specs elemental (close to my heart!), and her rogue climbs the assassination talent tree. Will she be able to master the beasts in her political race? (Okay, you go ahead and insert your own shaman or rogue wordplay here.) Maybe she'll hold some in-game speeches or rallies. She could hold forth on top of Orgrimmar's bank, or maybe lead a raid to Stormwind as a metaphor.

Is it surprising that a Republican chooses Horde? I think you could make a case for either faction going with either political party. Personally, I love to see that she's middle-aged and a woman, which defies Blizzard's assumptions about the majority of WoW gamers. She also chooses pirates over ninjas. I'm not sure there's a political comment there, but I'm sure someone will show me the light.

[Thanks to Wandering Goblin via Massively.]

Comedy Central looks at campaigning in the World of Warcraft


Comedy Central's Indecision 2008 blog (humor about the upcoming US elections) has a... well, OK, it's not all that funny, but it's a post offering the three major candidates (Obama, Clinton, and McCain) tips in their strategies to appeal to World of Warcraft players. That's right, we vote, too!

Unfortunately, it would probably have been a lot better if they'd gotten someone who actually plays WoW to write it -- there are some OK references in there, but nothing really insightful into the world of Azeroth (and a few just don't make any sense). And none of the candidates are portrayed as Horde (Barack's an NE Druid, Hillary looks like a Dwarf Female Paladin, and Johnny Mac is a Gnome caster of some kind), especially since being Horde has already been proven to be politically popular. Throw in the fact that they missed out on four classes (what am I supposed to know as a Shaman?), and this turns out to be a pretty poor attempt by Comedy Central for a little Warcraft humor. Too bad.

[Via Massively]

Elect your Flower Kingdom leader!


Rumor has it that some of your favorite characters will be featured in the upcoming MMO as country leaders! In the spirit of Amanda Dean's Azerothian General Elections, I thought it would be fitting to find out who are the fan favorites for leaders of Sanrio.

Let's take a look at the personalities and platforms of the candidates, shall we?

A. Hello Kitty (London, England): Hello Kitty believes that friendship is the key to peace and economic stability. If elected, she promises to hold free friendship seminars and events, including trust falls, group therapy, communal gardening and a buddy system. Other key issues in her platform include the "Cookies for Love" campaign, fair market prices, and staying in school. If elected, she will be bringing Charmmy Kitty on as her advisor.

Continue reading Elect your Flower Kingdom leader!

Earth Hour and WoW

Tonight the world will be celebrating Earth Hour, with individuals, cities and businesses turning off and unplugging as many of their electronics and lights as possible. How can you get involved when you have a scheduled raid, or when this is the only time for you to play today?

You need not feel pressured to unplug everything. Turn out as many lights as you can throughout your home, unplug the electronics and appliances in rooms you are not using, and consult Well Fed Buff for the perfect lights-out snack you can prepare before 8:00 p.m.

This event is important, not because it will change the entire world, but because it will send a message. Not only will we have the opportunity to think about our impact, and learn about just how much power the world did save in that one dark hour, but businesses and governments will realize just how serious people are today about the environment.

Gamers should be a part of that message. Lately, we have been garnering a poor reputation for ourselves, and not because we might all turn into mass murderers from staring all day violent images.

Continue reading Earth Hour and WoW

Breakfast Topic: Last word on Ron Paul in Azeroth

A little while back, we were the first news site on the 'net to report on the Ron Paul rally, and after it happened on Monday, our own Elizabeth Harper reported on the rally itself. And now, the rally has come full circle, and political tech news site techPresident has wrapped the whole thing up with a question about whether or not politics belongs in Azeroth in the first place.

So this morning, let's wrap it for good: the majority of the comments I've seen say that political rallies like this don't belong in Azeroth at all. Players claim that they play the game to escape from the real world, and that they don't want to be confronted with real-life politics in a virtual world.

But I, and others, maintain that this is not a complete fantasy world-- it's a world populated by real people who should be allowed to express their opinions. Sure, nobody wants to have an opinion forced on them (this kind of thing shouldn't fly on a roleplaying server, obviously), but the World of Warcraft is a big one-- if you couldn't go somewhere else on Whisperwind Monday night, you could sign on to a different realm. And if you make the choice to deny one expression of opinion, you have to deny them all.

Any last thoughts? I suppose the final word on this actually came from Blizzard-- they did nothing to stop or endorse the rally, so clearly they're not against players simply expressing their opinions in game, political or otherwise. And there is good news for those of you who never want to see politics in Azeroth again-- the rally on Monday didn't exactly help Paul win in Iowa, so odds are none of the other candidates are going to be rolling a new alt.

Ron Paul's World of Warcraft rally


On New Year's day supporters of Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul gathered on the Whisperwind (US) realm in World of Warcraft to march across Azeroth and show their support for their candidate of choice. The rally started outside Ironforge with approximately 240 players (with 400 members in their RP Revolution guild) and traveled to Stormwind, Westfall, Booty Bay, Ratchet, and finally Orgrimmar. And if you didn't make it, you can still experience the rally vicariously via our image gallery below (and if you did make it, feel free to send screenshots to us at aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com!) or video above!

To the best of our knowledge, this was the first political rally to be held in World of Warcraft -- and looking at their numbers it seems to have been a successful and upbeat gathering (or at least it was upbeat for the participants). Will this event help Ron Paul's chances in the election? It's hard to say until the votes are cast, but the uniqueness of the event is causing it to get a lot of media coverage. (And no press is bad press, so long as they spell your name properly, right?) Read on for impressions of the event.

Gallery: Ron Paul rally in World of Warcraft

Continue reading Ron Paul's World of Warcraft rally

Ron Paul supporters plan rally in Azeroth

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul's internet regiment has come to World of Warcraft-- a group of his supporters are planning to form a guild on Whisperwind and do a march from IF to Stormwind (which means they'll probably be Gnomes or Dwarves, which is too bad, because I liked the idea of "Trolls for Ron Paul") on New Year's Day at 8:30pm EST.

Now, we here at WoW Insider are politically neutral when it comes to Warcraft, so we won't advocate joining these guys (and we also won't advocate forming a "Horde for Hillary" guild to oppose them). But we are 100% in support of bringing widescale opinion expression of any kind into the game itself, so this should definitely be a fun event.

As always, if you go, take pictures and send them to us. And if you hear about any other political rallies in World of Warcraft this coming election year, let us know about those, too-- we'd love it if a presidential candidate (any of them) somehow got some extra buzz just because he (or she) was able to get out "the Orgrimmar vote."

Thanks, Paul!


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