Scott's Adventures in the Wonderful World of Warcraft

Come with me on my journey down the rabbit hole into the MMORPG(Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) that is World of Warcraft and do not worry for my story shall be accompanied pictures, since as an undeservingly famous author once said "what is the use of a book without pictures."

First, let me introduce you to avatar. His name is Jorreal, and yes I stole that from a different game that I used to play when I was younger, and trust me that game is just as nerdy. He is a night elf warrior, or for those of you who play WoW a Night-Elf Mohawk and for those of you who don't play it means he is a cute little pale creature who wears a lot of armor and attempts to kill people. This is what he looks like.

Ok, so I haven't played WoW in a while so, as I was expecting, I was bombarded with a bunch of messages from my guildies(people whose main goal in life is to try and annoy me so much that I lose all in my life and spend nine hours a day playing the game, and not really having any fun.) So, I started my journey into the World of Warcraft already thouroghly annoyed and pretty much ready to quit again, but I needed to experience a little more. So I did as level 70s(highest level player) do and went to a lowbie(new player) area and started killing them for fun, and to make them almost as annoyed as I am, and was when I was leveling my character.Here is a picture of me standing over the dead body of a lowbie that I thouroghly annoyed.

What I learned from my recent adventures in the World of Warcraft is pretty sad and depressing. I suppose it's similar to what other people learned from SecondLife, that these programs that were intended to be fun and freeing become annoying and confining. In WoW it became a cycle of highler level players annoying lower level players, that I was more than willing to continue and higher level players annoying higher level players by guilting them, saying that people are relying on them etc. "Man, we need you to run TK(raid), you're the only one who can tank it that is on right now." Really, Really, am I the ONLY person playing the game who could do it, I highly doubt that, stop making me feel guilty, I've got homework to do, even if that homework is playing WoW.

This is me, happy that I'm finished.

Individually packaged

Lots of technologies offer room for the individual, while they also help kill the individual. The most interesting and contradictory example of this is the internet. The internet allows people to be individuals by allowing them to do whatever they want, it also makes some people less of an individual. In some ways the internet allows people to be more of an individual than they could be without it, since the internet allows people to do things annoynmously. It also has the ability to take some individuality away from people. Really it isn't the technology that allows or disallows individuality it's whether the person using the technology wants to be an individual or not. If one wants to be an individual, they can use the internet to research, learn, grow and solidify their own identity. If somebody doesn't care to be an individual they can use it to join groups and then conform to the ideas/ideals of the group.

Specifically, within the realm of the internet, the technology of forums allows for individulaity. They allow users to discuss all, and any sort, of idea. The freedom to discuss anything in any manner allows the user to be an individual by being able to choose what to read and what to say. Some forums do, however, also limit individuality by limiting the things that can be discussed and the manners in which they can be discussed, although this is not the technology's fault, rather the fault belongs to those controlling the technology.

That Most Important Issue (According to Me)

It's hard to say which issue from That Hideous Strength is most urgent today since so many of them are still relevant today. Since I have to pick some issues, or in my case one issue, it's going to be the competition between science and religion, and their attempts to be the single entity governing humanity, and by governing I, of course, mean controlling.
Now onto the WHY.
This is the most urgent issue today, because it is a seemingly never ending competition between the two. It also appears to be going more and more in the direction of science these days. The truly interesting and urgent aspect of this competition in That Hideous Strength is that the way in which C.S. Lewis discusses the competition between the two is almost an example of how Huxley's Brave New World came about. Lewis' competition clarifies the way in which Huxley's vision could have come about, which is what makes it so urgent. Society, even now, is dealing with a competition between religion and science as the means of controlling the masses, and should either entity ever win we just might get to see a Huxleyian world.