Oh my lord.

[Doktor Howl]

That's amazing.  I saw a TED talk where a guy talked about this exact kind of thing being widespread in the future.  Except, essentially, he was embracing the change and talking about a way in which it could achieve "good things" if handled properly (for instance, promoting exercise by giving points whenever someone runs for so-and-so length of time).

You just rand FIVE IRL MILES here are FIVE FARMVILLE TOKENS and THIRTY EXPERIENCE POINTS

Beat me to it.

Or how about:

You weren't sick yesterday, we show you as being at Lake Patagonia.  My, my, aren't you a naughty boy?  A naught, unemployed, unemployable boy.

To further the "IRL stuff for E-stuff"
That really means that really fit people will sell their accounts to fat people for real money so the neckbeards can get their epic doombringers and maxed out stables without having to leave the basement.

Do people really do that shit with WoW?  I mean, I know people are stupid, but that reads like an Onion article.

Yes they do.

And then they get hacked by the person who sold the account, powerleveled it or sold them gold. Hacked to sell off everything for more gold to sell to people in WoW.

APPROVED!

[Placid Dingo]

I actually was reading this thread all like, man this sounds kinda cool.

Just watched the video.

Creepy as fuck. Donotwant.

[Don Coyote]

That's amazing.  I saw a TED talk where a guy talked about this exact kind of thing being widespread in the future.  Except, essentially, he was embracing the change and talking about a way in which it could achieve "good things" if handled properly (for instance, promoting exercise by giving points whenever someone runs for so-and-so length of time).

You just rand FIVE IRL MILES here are FIVE FARMVILLE TOKENS and THIRTY EXPERIENCE POINTS

Beat me to it.

Or how about:

You weren't sick yesterday, we show you as being at Lake Patagonia.  My, my, aren't you a naughty boy?  A naught, unemployed, unemployable boy.

To further the "IRL stuff for E-stuff"
That really means that really fit people will sell their accounts to fat people for real money so the neckbeards can get their epic doombringers and maxed out stables without having to leave the basement.

Do people really do that shit with WoW?  I mean, I know people are stupid, but that reads like an Onion article.

Yes they do.

And then they get hacked by the person who sold the account, powerleveled it or sold them gold. Hacked to sell off everything for more gold to sell to people in WoW.

APPROVED!

On top of that, WoW players don't own anything in game. They just purchased the 'rights' to use the software and servers. All those shiny pixels are belong to Blizzard.

[Cain]

As I understand it, you can make a good living in South Korea and China goldmining and leveling up characters for rich (by which I mean more money than sense, not the classic description) Western neckbeards.

I'll watch the video in a bit, as parts of this sound suspiciously like a pair of novels I read, a while back.

[Placid Dingo]

I never finished it but Doctrow's 'For the Win' revolved around this.

[Cain]

I never finished it but Doctrow's 'For the Win' revolved around this.

I was thinking more of Daniel Suarez's Daemon and Freedom.  Which were actually fairly righteous.  In fact, I should have included them in the sci-fi book discussion thread we had a while back, although they're set more or less in the present day, with more or less current technology.