Of Guilds and Government
by Elizabeth Harper 
Jun 5th 2006 at 5:00PM
Terra Nova has an opinion piece up on democracy in virtual worlds. While we organize ourselves into self-governed guilds, where does it go from there? From my own experience as a guild member and a guild leader, the governance involved in even small organizations can be a headache, and I can only imagine it getting worse with increased size and complexity. Anyone have any opinions on democracy, from a World of Warcraft perspective?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Penguintine Jun 5th 2006 5:47PM
WOW is not democratic, it's better than that - it's anarchic. The guilds, PUs or raid groups have no real power. They are completely voulentairy associations, that can be severed instantly. Only if real world politics were more like WOW, people would have a lot more freedom.
obo Jun 6th 2006 12:48AM
I used to really pay attention to the TN articles, but two of their big ones got some fundamental things wrong about WoW. The one on the evilness of the Horde, among other things, said the human race was the only race with children; the one on cultural borrowing said NElves were the only dark-skinned Alliance race.
They can study virtual worlds all they want, but their writers don't earn much credibility when they can't get the basic facts that they're basing their theories on right.