Cheater cheater pumpkin eater!

Image by Random Factor via Flickr

You are special. In fact, everyone is special. You are a unique and special little snowflake and there's no one in the world like you.

How many times have we heard this or something just like this? Mother's special little guy. Daddy's special little girl. The teachers special class of special children. And yet, if we are all special, then none of us are special.

But, if people hear they are special long enough and often enough, they begin to believe it. Once they believe it, then all bets are off, folks. You can forget about them waiting patiently in line at the bank or paying attention to road signs. They are special. Those rules are for everyone else. Definitely not them.

The rules of our games are no different. Hacks, cheat codes, exploits and bugs are all fair game. Recently, on my podcast, Inside Azeroth, I blasted people who were cheating in Wintergrasp. The response I got left me fairly amazed. emails and comments from people telling me I had it all wrong. That a tactics change was needed to combat cheaters, not a ban from the game. As if cheating were a legitimate tactic!!!

If a poker player has an ace up his sleeve, this is wrong. Yet, if someone uses an exploit in a game, to gain an unfair and unintended advantage, the gaming community not only discusses it's legitimacy as a tactic, but actually defends the cheater and protests when they receive a ban. Is this who we have become? Are we so morally and ethically bankrupt that we can no longer see simple right and wrong?

For me, the situation is black and white. Cheating is wrong...period. I cannot for the life of me fathom defending a cheater. but there are those that do. Are these simply the cheaters themselves, justifying their actions with flimsy and morally ambiguous arguments? Or, are these people who have lost their way? Or, am I just too uptight as some would claim?

Is it uptight to expect people to have some sort of moral compass? To have some sort of sense of fair play? To have some sort of moral and ethical character?

If so, I weep for the world.

Apples to Oranges

Image via Wikipedia

A few weeks ago, I blasted WoW.com for comparing Free Realms account totals to World of Warcraft's subscription totals. Today on twitter I see people comparing facebooks farmtown totals to WoW. What is it with people? how can they possibly think this is even remotely the same thing? Is it some innate need to tear down success that fuels these comparisons? or just a complete lack of understanding of where these numbers come from?

Farmtown is a minigame provided free to users of facebook. You buy seeds and plant a crop, then wait a few days and harvest. You take your harvest to town, buy more seeds, plant again and...well, you get the idea.

Farmtown is one of those things that your friends try and spam gifts to you getting you to take a look. Like Free realms, by simply trying the game, you are counted as "playing" the game, even if you NEVER play it again. So, today when someone twittered that it had as many players as World of Warcraft, I stood appalled that someone could even compare the two.

These free games never give an accurate count as to the activity of their player base. They simply count all those who have signed up from day one until now. WoW, on the other hand, like all subscription based MMO's, counts only those accounts that are still active. And to have a 12.5 million active and paying customer base wins hands down in my book.

Someday, I hope Blizzard will release the numbers on how many accounts were created over the years, playing or not. I suspect it's more than twice their active subscriptions, and would silence the naysayers once and for all.