For Those About to Nerd, I Salute You

I have a friend who wastes his entire life playing "World of Warcraft."

Most of you are familiar with the game, some of you might not be. Basically, it's a huge online medieval fantasy role-playing computer game. You sign up, you create a character, and then you're plopped into the middle of this vast cyber-world with hundreds of other online players, wherein you can form alliances, battle enemies, and basically be a gigantic nerdling.

Essentially, it's the kind of thing where, were I in 8th grade, it would have consumed my life. Happily, since I don't have time to fully get into the game, I have nothing better to do than make fun of it.

So here's the story that's making the rounds this week. Apparantly, a semi-popular WOW player in one of these cyberworlds tragically died (the REAL person, not the character) apparantly of a stroke.

So what's a bunch of video game nerds to do? That's right, throw a World of Warcraft funeral. Friends of this girl were given a date and time and were encouraged to put down their weapons, and -- IN THE GAME, MIND YOU -- walk their characters to the side of a virtual lake in one of the game's many open combat zones and pay their last respects -- it was literally a funeral WITHIN the role-playing game itself.

Well, it turns out that this dead girl's character belonged to a guild (a brotherhood of other online players who had formed an alliance with her.) And all the guild members turned out for the funeral.

Problem is, this guild was currently at war with ANOTHER guild, who took it upon themselves to party-crash this girl's cyber-funeral and effectively kill pretty much every character in attendance.

Now the WOW community is up in arms because of the callous, evil guild who killed everybody. Players are literally demanding the raiding guild be reprimanded or something. For killing people... in a game whose objective is to kill people.

The best part about it? The guild responsible for the carnage recorded the whole thing, put it to music, and is circulating it on the web as a tool to recruit more members to their group.

Even if you don't like video games, you'll get a kick out of the video.

My favorite is, after the carnage, the leader of the rival guild goes to the dead "body" of the girl who died in real life and eulogizes her by saying, "She liked fish. She liked snow."

Side with the funeral attendees or the murdering hordes, it's your call. But the moral of the story remains the same: Nerds can be VERY nerdy.

See the video here.

Read more about it here.