I would hazard a guess that the majority of my readers have never played a MMORPG. That's a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Player Game. I have them because I feel I have an addictive personality and don't want to get sucked in to a game like so many people have. Whether or not I play, however, the virtual worlds these games inhabit are getting bigger and more complex. They may be the forerunners of a virtual world of the future, so news about game events leaks in to the real world sometimes. Especially funny stuff, highlighted by an assasination a few years ago.

Ultima Online was one of the first MMORPGs. I have no clue if it's still going. The creator was this guy named Richard Garriot, AKA Lord British. He entered the game to make a speech, and forgot to turn on his character's invincibility tag. Bad idea. Someone killed him, and it actually made real world newspapers.

Just recently there was another hilarious incident in an online world. Some girl who plays World of Warcraft died in real life, so her guild or whatever in the game decided to hold an in-game funeral for her. While in-game avatars lined up to pay their respects or somesuch thing, an enemy guild attacked and slaughtered them. The "bad guys" even made a video of it, complete with spliced in quotes decrying the action and a great soundtrack, and released it for public consumption.

Actually it brings up an interesting point. I would assume that there are plenty of normally "good" people who play online games to be bad. They turn on that computer and start killing and pillaging. On the other hand, I just don't think that many "bad" people are getting online to experience being good. If they get online at all, I'm sure they play bad/evil characters, too. This would leave most MMORPGs with a lower good/bad ratio than real life, and funeral attacks no longer seem surprising.