Politics in the 21st Century: World of Warcraft Edition

Mudslinging meets online gaming.

Ladies and gentlemen and hobbits and elves, I give you what must be the first political attack site dedicated to a candidate's fondness for an online role-playing game. The target is Colleen Lachowicz, a left-wing Democrat running for the Maine State Senate. Here is her portrait that appears on the site, over the caption "Colleen Lachowicz's self-created identity, Santiaga is a Level 85 Orc Assassination Rogue in the World of Warcraft":

Another sample from the site:

Another:

Along with the petty nerd-baiting, the site does feature some material that's politically relevant, such as the ideologically charged comments that Lachowicz posted at Daily Kos ("I may have to go and hunt down Grover Norquist and drown HIM in my bath tub," "Hmmmm….Krugman…. I miss him") and a post where she announces that she's "seriously slacking off at work today." She evidently needs to work a bit on her spelling, too. Reading through the page, my general reaction wasn't How horrying it would be to have a legislature filled with World of Warcraft players. It's How horrifying it would be to have a legislature filled with blog commenters. Uh, no offense.

[Via Kotaku.]

Comments

[benji]

I saw this earlier on and thought it'd be more effective if the mailer didn't show her entire comments but just took them out of context and said she posted online:
"I love poisoning and stabbing!"
"...more mutilate skill..."
"I can kill ... without going to jail"
"I like to stab things..."

arstechnica has an image of the mailer: http://arstechnica.com/tech-po.....character/

[darius404]

Yeah, but we shouldn't give people ideas. If it's a ridiculous criticism like this, I would vastly prefer people use it's proper context.

[Jordan]

Dat alt-text... You are the man, Jesse!

[Rasilio]

Bwahahahahahahah

Best Alt Text EVAR!!!!!!!!!!!

[Auric Demonocles]

It's How horrifying it would be to have a legislature filled with blog commenters.

You bastard! On the other hand, you brought the alt-text. You're alright.

[Fluffy]

If H ampersand R were a legislature, there would be periodic melees like in the Phillipines.

[LTC(ret) John]

Uh, no offense.

None taken, YOU BASTID!!!

Oh, and the Phillipines?! More like Serbia.

[The Hammer]

Dude, there is no way it would be like anywhere except SOMALIA!!!!!.

[LTC(ret) John]

Ah, you are correct. If we are to be TRUE LIBERTARIANS it simply must be Somalia!

[Auric Demonocles]

We would bring back caning in the statehouse. And no one would get to slip in a last minute edit of a bill. Or pictures.

[Tim]

No one would get to do anything! Discipline.

[Auric Demonocles]

Approximately 1 out of 4 bills would be randomly marked as spam.

[Drave Robber]

In most real-life legislatures, at least 1 in 2 bills IS spam.

[CE]

Snorg Tees could put pictures in the bills, as sponsors, to defray the cost of printing them.

[Restoras]

If the legislature were filled with blog commenters busy snarking each other and keep track of the best zings at least the public wouldn't be getting raped by those mother-ficking real legislators. Just sayin'.

[Fluffy]

If you look for her on Google Images you will discover that the orc appearance is actually aspirational for her.

She logs on to upgrade.

[invisible furry hand]

she used her ogre suit... and forgot to take it off

There seems to be some gamer pride happening on her Facebook page

http://www.facebook.com/colleenforsenate

[KDN]

It's definitely aspirational. She even took one of the two pretty faces. Then again, I've always liked the femorc model, so I could just be weird.

[Art Vandelay]

FREAK!

Not that there's anything wrong with it....

[The Late P Brooks]

How horrifying it would be to have a legislature filled with blog commenters. Uh, no offense.

If only Barney Frank had spent the last twenty years fine-tuning his anonymous insult powers instead of playing Sim City with *our* money.

[The Hammer]

WTF? There is no way you can make it twenty years in Sim City without actually bringing in more money than you spend.

[Another David]

See? Games *are* unrealistic.

[Lost_In_Translation]

The object of simcity as I understand it is to build a thriving self sufficient metropolis...and then destroy it through a series of godlike plagues ("dance for me sims, dance!").

Maybe that's just me.

[The Hammer]

It is, but you have to make it to self-sufficiency before you have anything worth destroying. And to do that, you generally have positive revenue.

[SugarFree]

You must first give them hope if you want to take it away.

[God]

Now you're getting it.

[LTC(ret) John]

I like the cut of your jib, my good man!

[Corning]

Been playing civilization 4 and 5 lately...you start getting negative revenue in that game and you are fucked.

[Rasilio]

Seriously though I don't see the issue, we already have a President who loves playing video games, I hear his favorite is something called "Drone War" where you get to sit behind a screen and pick off bad guys (or anyone else you feel like) from a remotely piloted vehicle from thousands of miles away.

[The Hammer]

I had an ATHF flashback reading this.

[Bardas Phocas]

Extra points for wedding parties.

[darius404]

Yeah, but he's not a REAL gamer. I hear he just hires other people to farm kills for him.

[VG Zaytsev]

Are we going to get a post about Obama advocating violent redistribution?

[benji]

I hope not. I already told all my cosmo buddies I read Reason.

[ant1sthenes]

No, because it didn't happen.

[darius404]

No. It's a call for "fairer" tax laws. He just analogizes "not paying their fair share" to violence. Which is complete bullshit, of course, but not more of a call for violence than pro-tax rhetoric usually is.

[Kaptious Kristen]

This is my guest, Mr. Wang. No offense!

[Restoras]

I think this club is restricted so don't tell them you're Jewish.

[Translucent Chum]

It's a parking lot!

[Shmurphy]

You buy a hat like this, I bet you get a free bowl of soup. Oh, it looks good on you, though!

[DaveSs]

Rogues in WoW specialize in stabbing people in the back so she is clearly well trained to be a politician.

[Tim]

Obama should make her ambassador to Libya.

[Jordan]

They're also the only class that gets the ability to pickpocket. Yep.

[Lost_In_Translation]

WTF? Seriously?

[DaveSs]

Technically it only works on NPCs and possibly on players of the enemy faction.

Though you could say that in the realm of politics, the people are the enemy faction.

[KDN]

It never worked on opposing players when I played. Pickpocket was always a joke in that game, totally not worth the effort.

[Corning]

possibly on players of the enemy faction.

No... lame really.

Also it is only hostile NPCs you can pick pockets from. You can't pickpockets from guards or shop keepers either.

It is so limited they may as well never given the ability.

[Apatheist ?_??]

It's a gimmicky skill in the game, you can't actually steal peoples gear or anything.

[The Hammer]

VotoLatino and Pit Bull Want You to Register to Vote

Am I the only one getting this ad? Is this actually an ad, or am I having a stroke? Do these people really think that treating an entire ethnic group like 6 year olds is smart? WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING??!!!

[Tim]

Settle down

[Whiterun Guard]

Meh, if it was Everquest 2 I'd vote for her. But WoW is just so shallow.

[Killazontherun]

A buddy met his wife while playing EverQuest 2, and she is on the fairly beautiful side, and he looks like an ex-carny. He is an ex-carney.

[Rasilio]

Agreed.

That said the panda people look cool in the ads.

I'm still wondering if the had to pay Dreamworks a licensing fee for being too close to Kung Fu Panda though.

[Whiterun Guard]

I think the panda things were in plain Warcraft 3 before Kung Fu Panda came out. And if anything, there's Tekken which had a fighting panda before anyone!

I'm going to go kill myself now for being a nerd.

[Rasilio]

Yeah but were the panda's in Warcraft oriental warrior monks?

[Jordan]

Yeah, they were. With an extreme affinity for alcohol.

[Whiterun Guard]

Well, I mean they're pandas, so the oriental part is a given. But I'm not sure they used monkish arts, I didn't play it.

The one in Tekken did for sure.

[KDN]

http://classic.battle.net/war3.....ster.shtml

[The Hammer]

*sigh.* I remember when Warcraft was fun, and not a job.

[KDN]

The grind aspect is why I quit once Cataclysm got released (I was near the top of the world in my spec and now you ruin my playstyle and want me to start this shit over? Fuck that) and why I can't get into Guild Wars 2 despite liking the bit that I played. MMO's are fun when you've got your shit together, but getting that point is just a pain.

[Rasilio]

You know, I never bought into the grind aspect of it.

I've been playing EQ2 for 6 or 7 years and in all that time my highest level character is just now on the verge of reaching level 81, my other alts are all in the mid 40's.

Of course 90% of the time when I play it there is just me and my wife (who got me into the game in the first place) in the group and we're more interested in playing out the storylines and exploring than grinding to max level.

[ant1sthenes]

I never really got much grind out of GW2. I've pretty much just concentrated on bouncing around between different areas, crafting, etc., and I've always been overleveled.

[Trespassers W]

I may have to go and hunt down Grover Norquist and drown HIM in my bath tub

If something happens to Grover Norquist, she'll be the first to blame for her eliminationist rhetoric.

[Killazontherun]

Amazing that someone like Grover Norquist who non-leftist likely think about once in a blue moon, and who is not that influential outside a limited institutional setting has become a bete noir who is mentioned constantly amongst these flake progressives. If Norquist wasn't so thoroughly evil and offering gullible righties the juice, no one would be buying it!

THAT IS WHAT THEY REALLY BELIEVE.

[Somalian Road Corporation]

They still won't shut up about Palin. I really wonder how long that's going to go on, too.

[db]

No elimination in the bathtub, please. Other people bathe there too.

[Translucent Chum]

Where will I make my gin?

[dehaul]

A Congress completely full of lazy WoW players would be awesome - probably wouldn't have a new BS federal laws for a complete year!

[benji]

Wasn't there some state a couple years ago where there was a "scandal" because a picture captured like half the House or whatever playing solitaire while in session?

[fish]

.....playing solitaire while in session?

This must be the new euphemism for masturbation as a congressman/woman.

[Rasilio]

They weren't playing games, they were all studying for their MCSE* certifications so they could be better versed in technology issues.

[Greg]

They were sublimating their primal hunting instincts in a safe, civilized environment like Oog

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioWC-sT0iZI

[toxic]

Say what you will about WOW players; they aren't lazy. Most of them are working the equivalent of a part time job doing unfun crap to achieve increasingly minimal gains. If you gave them the Senate, god knows what would happen.

[R C Dean]

They'd spend most of their time putting together TEAM raiding parties?

[KDN]

To say nothing of the wasted hours at work playing with spreadsheets and models to properly plan out their .13% increase in performance.

[Mike M.]

Looks like Tony just got pwned!

[Old Bull Lee]

Sorry, if you brag in an online profile about being a "peace-lovin, social worker and Democrat" then YOU are the one who brought politics into the gaming.

[Scott S.]

I think my favorite comment over as Kotaku was from a person pointing out that people who favored rogues tended to kinda be dicks. That was my experience during the time I played the game.

[KDN]

PVP rogues were dicks. PVE rogues were obsessive maximizers with no tolerance for preference. As a class, they were probably the most competitive group.

[toxic]

99% of the joy of the rogue class is dickery. I mean, you get a bonus when you attack someone while they are sitting down!

[Scott S.]

I look forward to a political future where one candidate attacks another for playing a selfish class like a hunter or rogue while he or she charitably played a healer class.

[SugarFree]

But what if they both play Borderlands? A fight about Clap-Trap abuse? Over-use of phaselocking? Orange weapon drops as a sing of privilege?

[Corning]

Horde (orcs are members of the horde faction) also tend to be dicks.

They also tend toward group think and chastise anyone who is different.

[darius404]

Funny, that's exactly what the Alliance were like on MY server. Yours must've been an exception.

[Corning]

Demon Soul had more Horde then Alliance players which is the norm....and the discrepancy actually increased when they made faction transfers easier....and the most dickish Alliance players were the first ones to go over to the other side.

Dicks and group thinkers would tend to join servers that had majority control.

If i had a choice to do it all over again i would find a server with a close to even split.

My guess is that your server was one of the rare Alliance majority servers.

[darius404]

I was just being contrary, in the spirit of group think.

[gagster]

56% of WoW characters are members of the Alliance.

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php

[The Hammer]

So since we're on a video game thread, did anyone else play the original XCOM? And has anyone tried the new one? Is it worth playing?

[Paul.]

The original XCOM was quite possibly one of the most addictive games I ever played. Everyone I knew who played it became obsessed with it. I can't wait until the new XCom comes out.

I loved that game so much, I found a copy of the old game on the web downloaded and tried to get it running on my pc. I got it running, the speed was way jacked and it would regularly crash. I had a sad.

I seem to remember that the part of the game that was the real hook is you became attached to your characters.

You took great care to develop them and keep them alive. When you worked up a team over a long time and got them really good, it really hit you emotionally when you lost one, especially if you were the type of non-cheater player who didn't reload and replay when something bad happened to a character. I got more of an emotional charge from the game constantly worrying that one of my boys would die in combat. If he did, he was gone and that was that. Much more satisfying.

[Nephilium]

You can get the X-Com collection on Steam... I picked it up a while back for $2.

[The Hammer]

Now I have to get Steam. Although TFTD sucked.

[Somalian Road Corporation]

Clearing cruise ships room by room by room by room ad nauseam was fucking horrible. The original really was the best.

[The Hammer]

The opening to TFTD was so damn cool, the game was just a massive disappointment. Didn't seem like they put the same thought into the details that they did for UFO Defense.

[The Hammer]

My strategy was to have masses of mediocre soldiers surrounding and scouting for a few well-equipped supermen who would snipe from near the Skyranger (and later the big plane), get psi training, and eventually be hoarded for the Mars mission. I fucking loved that game. It was as close as I could get to chess with guns. And aliens.

[The Hammer]

Oh. October 9th. I thought it had already come out. I am extremely disappointed that this is not getting the attention that Borderlands got.

[Somalian Road Corporation]

I'm pretty hesitant about the new one because the very small squad size will mean a much different gamefeel. Yeah, 20 guys was quite a lot, but slimming it down to 4-6 is overmuch and means you won't have redshirt equivalents running around with primed grenades ready to step into a group of aliens. Without the high casualty rate I'm concerned about it not having that sense of desperation that gave the original so much of its charm.

Xenonauts is still in development so I'm looking forward to that as well.

Also, buy FTL, it's fantastically fun and the music is great too.

[The Hammer]

I loved how you started out so totally ill-equipped for the mission. Sending guys with rifles against aliens with Plasma grenades just to protect your early funding was so cool, having like 4 guys come back from early missions and protecting those 4 for the rest of the game. Although having to retreat in disgrace or write off an entire squad the first time you ran into ethearals was frustrating as hell. I fucking loved that game, I'm downloading it tonight.

[Somalian Road Corporation]

See, I like games that brutally kick you in the balls on occasion. Power fantasies when you just win and win and win bore me.

[The Hammer]

What's FTL?

[SugarFree]

ELO's side project that produced only a single album, 1977's Superluminal.

[Somalian Road Corporation]

http://www.ftlgame.com/

http://store.steampowered.com/app/212680/ (if you buy from the dev directly you get a Steam key and the Linux version as well DRM-free, if you care about that sort of thing)

FTL is a spaceship simulation roguelike-like. Its aim is to recreate the atmosphere of running a spaceship exploring the galaxy (like Firefly/Star Trek/BSG etc.) In any given episode of those classic shows, the captain is always yelling "Reroute power to shields!" or giving commands to the engineer now that their Warp Core is on fire. We wanted that experience, as opposed to the "dog fighting in space" that most videogames focus on. We wanted a game where we had to manage the crew, fix the engines, reroute power to shields, target the enemy life support, and then figure out how to repel the boarders that just transported over!

Watch the video in the links and you'll get an idea of the gameplay.

[Somalian Road Corporation]

By the way, that above comment of mine on games kicking you in the balls definitely applies to this as well.

[Rasilio]

You know I always wanted a MMO variation of a game like this where each player was part of the crew of one of the ships and not just in control of the ship itself.

You'd have a captian, navigator, one or more Fire Control Officers, Engineer, and possibly a damage control office. each role would have a different UI screen where they controled their systems and they would have to coordinate actions with each other. Then all of the other ships are also controled by identical teams and for larger battles you could even throw in squadron leaders and fleet commanders.

I know, the market for a game like that would probably be too small to be profitable but if it existed it'd be about the only thing I wanted to play.

[Somalian Road Corporation]

I haven't played it, but Artemis Bridge Simulator is apparently that kind of thing in a non-MMO format.

With the success of FTL you might very well see more games with these themes in the future. Or maybe not because it's the generic Tolkienesque fantasy that brings in the big bucks. Sigh.

[The Hammer]

I never really watched Star Trek or Firefly, and it took me a few minutes to figure out what BSG stood for. I did like Aces of the Deep and Red Storm Rising, though.

[CE]

FTL is "Faster Than Light". You spin up the FTL drive to jump somewhere before the Cylons can get you.

[toxic]

She's only level 68. Noob.

[Restoras]

I encourage everyone to sign up for the beta of Silent Hunter Online.
http://us.silenthunteronline.com/

[Rasilio]

Sorry, too busy playing Mechwarrior online.

[Restoras]

Oh come on! U-boats! Wolfpacks! It'll be awesome! I hope, at least.

[Rasilio]

U-Boats, pshaw, I want my 80 Ton mech with 3 PPC's blasting the crap out of anything that dares get in front of me.

[Somalian Road Corporation]

Delicious delicious trigonometry.

[Archduke Pantsfan]

what's the system specs

[Night Elf Mohawk]

I could never vote for someone who played a rogue.

[toxic]

Having said a lot worse stuff and played a lot more WoW than this woman, I'm glad that I would pretty hard to track down (I think). Seems like the lesson here is compartmentalization, and maybe the start of the backlash against people who have been too open about their real life on the internet.

[Paul.]

Actually her response is pretty good. The GOP look like dicks on this one.

[R C Dean]

How horrifying it would be to have a legislature filled with blog commenters.

Well, nothing would ever pass, so there's that.

[The Hammer]

The only thing we'd ever agree on is sunset clauses on everything. Including the sunset clause bill.

[Jeff P.]

WoW is far less fantastic than Mormonism...

[Corning]

and less fantastic then Keynesian economics.

[Hyperion]

I don't do online gaming(not the time for it), although I am an avid RPG gamer. But this gives me an idea.

I think several of us should join WoW, get our skils and levels all maxed out and then hunt her down. When we find her we tell her that we are with the government and are here to make sure she is paying her fair share. Then we beat the crap of her and take all of her stuff, with the promise that we will return later to make sure that she continues to pay her fair share.

[Rasilio]

Yeah only problem is in WOW you can't take other players stuff, not even in PVP servers

[Hyperion]

There is no fun in that. So then we are reduced to just constantly beating her up?

[Corning]

Rogue.

If you ever found her you might kill her once and then never see her again.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

On a PvP server at least you could camp the bitch then fear her into mobs for the durability loss.

[Generic Stranger]

Blizzard also tends to permaban griefers, so while it'd be hilarious it would be an expensive joke.

[Corning]

Huh?

That is not true at all.

At least it was not true when I played it.

[Corning]

Even if this was a pvp server it is too easy to escape...especially for a rogue who can turn invisible.

Also she is horde and most servers are horde dominated. (more horde then alliance)

So she would just ask for help in general chat and she would be rescued.

[protefeed]

WTF? There is no way you can make it twenty years in Sim City without actually bringing in more money than you spend.

Not really. You can build a city that has more public buildings than needed to support a few squares of revenue producing land, and then kind of stagger along with that tiny city forever, just at the verge of financial collapse.

You'd have to be an INTENTIONAL financial idiot to pull it off, but it is possible.

And it is certainly possible to crater a city right quick. All public buildings, no revenue generating squares at all.