ummm Homeland security - Alliance, Terrorists - Horde. in my opinion, i think its good that the government may finally see that games are just games, but i believe that because blizzard has over 8million playing, it hink its a gimmic to make some money off of somthing. in the game, Horde almost always wins bgs, so if terrorists pick horde side, will that be a proven study that terrorists will almost alway swin? if homeland security wins eye of the storm, because youre taking things over, and you have to defend the middle, will the middle be DC and the 4 towers be key points in warefare? hmmmm, but if alliance (security) loses, will that count as a loss for the war? this is kind of redundant when you actually think about it. for military use, are they all going to be hunters with security as gnomish, and terrorists as goblin engineers? hahahhaha.

Most of you seem to think that this is ridiculas and getting all angry over it which is a bit silly. They have a fair point in that its real people making real decisions which for all we know could be useful. For a starter most of us are kids or whatnot who just play for fun, were not experts. For all we know they can be using it in a good way which is actually beneficial to them. Terrorism? This may sound like taking it a bit too far but hey guys.. theyre the experts not us. If theres the slightest chance it will help protect the world against terrorism surely its worth it?

after reading some posts, ive come to this point - mages with arcane explosion are suicide bombers. warlocks who damage over time, are untraned terrorists throwing rocks. alliance warriors are the hihg ranking officers of the military, horde warriosr are the ranking officers of terrorists. paladins, and priests are kind of the leadership roles on both sides, rouges are like recon units, shamans are like a little of everything so theyre in the field, night elves and blood elves are the outside element who will win it all. see hwo dumb this gets? the government is upset that they arent cashing in on blizzards money, thats all it is. why would they want to try to direct military operations on world of warcraft if htey didnt want to get payed with all of blizzards money? what if the terrorists get characters, then you have to worry about hacks in your server to your computer, and secrutiy will be using that "big brother" thing to moniter yourmovements, it will be controlled if this happens, WoW will be "the eye in the sky" if this happens.......

Amazing! Someone has managed to BS their way into playing WoW all day on a government machine on the government payroll. I would like to meet the person who wove this tapestry of unbelievable nonsense and managed to land such a cushy gig. I salute you, whoever you are!

whats it take to be an expert? a degree? what about expert pvpers in world of warcraft who run the killing blow and damage sections? do they ahve a degree?

Maybe this will benifit them a little, think about it we already have a "cell" of a type... the RMT! In all seriousness... they might get some ideas that would help simply because of the large social interactions between players. Other then that i doubt this will be of much use... but maybe they will do something about the RMT once they see the spammage for gold buying and such lol.

Dagh:
"Given the average common sense quotiant of most of the political hacks in "Homeland Security" I wouldn't put it past them to fund a study on this and waste a few billion dollars of our tax money. On the other hand if the Taliban and Al Qida start gaming on WoW to learn how to counter the counter terrorists it could be a big income boost for Blizzard! (lol like they need it)"

On the other hand, getting Taliban / General WORLD TERRORISTS to play the game would effectively be the solution. Maybe getting these terorists hooked on WoW would make them see that RL isnt so hot anyways, and well they should be spending more time collecting badges... after all, i bet if Blizz knew terrorists would be waiting in dire aniticaption for a patch, it'd come a hell of a lot quicker...

I <3 US government for coming up with this stuff really though, It brightens my day :D

They could find somthing useful, but WoW, like most PVP games, usually consists of several up right attacks i mean sure it takes stradegy to know what skills to use at what times, but i have never seen a raid that consist of stradigy on where to attack from and how... they could find some things useful such as "how the WoW player thnks during battle" but other then things like those then i dont think they should be going in this direction.

If they wanted to see how non-military or unconventionally trained people form battle ideas and formations they'd be better off looking to people doing it in real life, for instant groups like the SCA or other like real live combat groups. Of coarse last time I checked terrorists aren't using polearms, *** swords, and bows made of bamboo padded sticks. Silly things like weapons do make impact on how people plan battles, or one would assume.

They perhaps will find some sociological benefit. to the study. Though they could garner as much from studying children role play something akin to 'Cowboys and Indians'.

"BANG BANG YOUR DEAD!"
"NAH HUUU...I have a resurrect left!"

You get my drift here. I see this as great excuse for some government types to play WoW on the tax payer dime. Great job where can I get it....

Call me crazy but may haps we should spend said recourses in I don't know studying REAL TERRORISTS in REAL LIFE!

Absolutely moronic. Although this is a depiction of 'real' people making 'real' decisions its literally STUPID to base those on 'real' life considering everything, EVERYTHING in that game has no inclination to real life interaction WHAT SO EVER. BASICALLY- Government is using this to study the aspects of the gamer society, because like all things that you do- the government wishes to control/regulate what you can and cannot do. Its a waste of MY tax money, its a wast of MY governments time which should be spent on MUCH more valuable things, like I dunno getting bush out of office and REVERSING the dumb ass anti-terrorism NAZI laws that were put into place (no that is not an overstatement) Sadly what few people know is "Terrorism, terrorism, terrorism" was exactly the same ploy HITLER used before WW2- It's an invisible face to an invisible enemy used to shadow actions of very few men in great power BEHIND the puppetry you call the United States Government. Wake up- http://zeitgeistmovie.com/

If you find wasting money on this useful Look at the deficit and tell me how to pay that off first, WITHOUT slavery. (Basically every dollar in currency is loaned to the US at interested, therefor using every dollar to pay it back we would still be in debt) No wealth to pay a debt=slavery.

Pay the deficit without causing some sort of slavery and then I'll be fine with our government using money studying people obsessed with chuck norris.

Well... Studying WoW may give some insight to economic acts, I doubt it would do much else. Guilds in Warcraft as more or less the same as Unions in the real world. Does the governent study them and use their example as a way to train counter-terrorist? I highly doubt.

But the government may get something useful out of this, aside from letting its employees get hooked on WoW all while getting paid to play however I can't see it.

As to the media going crazy with this... Umm... Duh... If its not death and horror (yes, politics fall under this one) then its how bad society is... This time they'll point they're greedy, gruby fingers at the gaming industry, namely Blizzard, and say that its a stain upon society and must be abolished... then assholes will jump on it, trying to tear the industry apart... Then us gamers, which use games to 'lower' violent urges (least I do ;) ) will get violent... And then rainbows will fall from the sky and it'll rain gold and all live happily ever after, THE END.

Sounds like someone is trying to justify all their WoW time to me :o)

I am guessing after reading this article Jeffery Dahmer learned cannibalism from playing horde side as foresaken? (Sorry, I had to hehe...)

wow is a game of war! notice "game" !! war is not a game war is pointless!!

i cant say violence is not the answer as i have resorted to it many times before.

but thousands of lives from bullets and bombs and the pain on familys is pathetic.... the world should be at peace. we are all brothers and sisters we are all related in one way or another! we all have simalarities.... killing some1 is like killing a part of you!!!

warcraft you kill some one as a joke that you are more powerfull u do not gain anything from it! why should real life be any different

Does that mean the cia have quests? And does George Bush have a yellow question mark above his head. What a load of Tauren Dung.

Aoe suicide has nothing to do with terror.
terror is psycological

I can't believe this! I knew they are dumb, but this is too much.

Sure, why not, I welcome the idea of eventually settling world conflicts on a PvP realm if it may come to that lol. But seriously... studying how terrorist cells form an operate in WoW?

Then again, what do I know, I thought it was a game.

And yet another American freedom falls under the Bush/Cheney regime. What kind of country do we live in when we can't even play a video game without being screened for terrorist ties or intentions? Orwellian, that's what.

It seems to me that the simple fact that the people playing a "war" game could be an ideal comparison to terrorists. Think about it ... most people playing WoW are young and still lack a complete education, at least in military tactics. Most terrorists are thought to be uneducated. As with WoW, there are a few that are educated and become the leadership. Look at the alliance in AB; most of the time there is no leadership and people just run around doin whatever they feel like (then loose the BG). Similar to terrorist cells, with no leadership they tend to atteck less strategic targets. It's not that the government is directly comparing the game with terrorists, nor that they are trying to get the terrorists to play the game, nor that they are accusing WoW players of being terrorists. It's simply that they are looking at a relatively uneducated group that consistantly plays a game based on war strategy. If you take away the keyboard and replace it with a trigger you may see a corelation between the way decisions are made in the game and the way they are made by terrorist organizations.

The government is not comparing the game to terrorism, they are comparing the thought process of terrorists to gamers. Hoping to maybe find a better understanding of why the terrorists make decisions the way they do. It's easier to study the surplus of gamers than study the elusive terrorists.

Maybe Alliance should send a Boeing crashing in Galvanar's head :D (i had to :P)