Please please please don't start reporting on American politics, even if it is semi-IT related.
Democrat candidate attacked by GOP for being stabby assassin ORC
US Republicans are completely out of touch with, er, virtual reality - it would seem - after a Maine state senate candidate was outed by Republicans for being a sweary orc badass in the online game World of Warcraft. Apparently, Colleen Lachowicz' participation and persona in WOW makes her unfit to run for office - in GOP eyes …
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Friday 5th October 2012 15:25 GMT TheRealRoland
Howdy
You ain't from around here, are you pardner? Why don't you mosey on over to the next website if this one is not to your liking, will ya?
Too late though, already lots of (American) politics is (are?) being discussed on this site / comments.
Although, to be fair, this article should be more at home in Bootnotes?
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Friday 5th October 2012 15:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Howdy
"You ain't from around here, are you pardner?"
Yes, I've been reading El'Reg since 2004 at least. In fact it's one of the few news site I do read because I couldn't give two shits about a bunch of celebrity-wannabies insulting each other and getting the general public riled up into some kind of craze, which is basically what American politics is.
"Although, to be fair, this article should be more at home in Bootnotes?"
I'd rather it went to somewhere like the Daily Mail.
"Well at least US politics are WAY more entertaining than when they report on UK politics ;)."
This is true, maybe my problem is just with politics in general.
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Friday 5th October 2012 18:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Howdy
"You can't have been paying much attention if you've been here since 2004 and have yet to realise at least half the articles are irreverent tosh."
Irrelevant tosh I don't mind, it's good for passing the day at work. American politics is far far beyond irrelevant tosh (even more so when you're not American.)
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Saturday 6th October 2012 00:32 GMT Eddy Ito
Just WoW
Much ado about nothing. It isn't even American politics; it's Maine state politics and she is running for one of 35 State Senate positions. It's a $23,000 per year job (plus all the traffic tickets you want tossed) to argue about which roads get repaved versus filling potholes, who gets bigger raises this year teachers or state police and lets not forget the occasional fight over whether to keep Moxie as the state soft drink, Chesuncook Soil Series as the state dirt and no doubt should WoW be the state MMORPG. Whatever the outcome it isn't going to make a hill of beans to the neighbors in NH and MA much less the rest of the US or the world.
To top it all off it could go either way since she is about to be flush with cash coming in from all over for her own attack ads but the question is will she be able to counter the more traditional Mainers who may not be quite receptive to her comments online. Sure calling people teabaggers might get lolz around the D. party campfire but given the number of independents in Maine who likely know or are related to one or more tea party types isn't going to win friends and influence people.
As a native Mainiac who now resides in a warmer clime, sometimes I miss Down East but not the weather. The politics are pretty much just as silly everywhere, well maybe not this silly but you get the drift.
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Monday 8th October 2012 09:24 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: wtf
"....they're less cool ...." Ah, I think I may have spotted the problem with your persoanl candidate selection process. You see, politics is only about "looking cool" for the thickies amongst the electorate. What is often required of politicians are people willing to make difficult and sometimes downright unpopular choices for the greater good, which often takes a level head and experience. But those two qualities often don't go hand in hand with "cool", hence the number of idiot popularist politicians we have, voted for by numpties worried about "cool".
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Friday 5th October 2012 15:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Best argument against democracy
well look at the article, and imagine the same occuring in the UK at the next general election. (we're normally 5 to 10 years behind the US policitical gimick curve)
suggest a pre-emptive strike, by cutting 650 publc sector jobs, i.e. those found at the "Gas Works" in westminster!
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Friday 5th October 2012 15:57 GMT Anonymous Coward
It's a cheap move by the Republicans, but if you look at the actual attack site it's fairly obvious it's just a cynical attempt at ridicule rather than trying to make some serious anti-videogame stance. It's really more a case of just "lol look at this nerd" more than anything, which admittedly is aided a lot by Lachowicz's pretty cringe-worthy quotes.
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Friday 5th October 2012 17:19 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Re: So...
There are issues? There are no issues! There weren't any issues when the debate started, there are none now and we stick to that story. Beside, everyone has signed the no-issues memorandum of understanding
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Sunday 7th October 2012 22:53 GMT Eddy Ito
Re: So...
Considering there were under 14,500 voters in that particular district in the last election and the median voter age in Maine is nearly 50 there probably aren't thousands of people who care let alone "relate to her beyond her political portfolio".
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Friday 5th October 2012 16:11 GMT tkioz
Yikes... I better no run for public office if people are digging up WoW forum comments...
But in all seriousness, I think personal hobbies should be off limits, some people like model trains (I can't see the attraction), some people like building ships in bottles (really can't see the attraction), some people play video games, everyone needs a way to unwind.
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Saturday 6th October 2012 09:55 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: When Republicans play WoW they're all paladins
<Sigh> And the politics of envy strike again. Do you find yourself playing WoW and moaning about all the people that have more gold than you? Do you moan that it's "not fair", that those "rich" players should have their gold and items taken away from them and distributed amongst other players (namely, you)? Often spend more time criticising the epic-equipped players that regularly kank you because you spend more time whining about "inequality" in the game economics rather than spending the time working with others to build guilds and work together? Do you always look at those top-ranked players and bitch about them as "must be gold-mining and scamming to have" item X, etc., and neatly forgetting that they all started at level 1 with nothing, just the same as everyone else? Well in that case I bet you vote Democrat in real life too.
At least Lachowicz seems to understand that building a good playing experience often involves working with others, though she may find her "socialist" guild is simply more like a typical capitalist enterprise, where training and co-operation are used to maximise company profit and achieve better results than the competition. Now that would make her head spin - pointing out that WoW is a capitalist enterprise which promotes many capitalist values!
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Saturday 6th October 2012 10:03 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: When Republicans play WoW they're all paladins
Well, I did used to have a pali on every server I ever played on (five European and two US servers). But that was more because they could tank and/or heal and so get into dungeon groups more easily. It was also because I used to spend time helping newb guildies leveling their PVP skills by ganking mining bots with them. Whilst there was an element of doing it because the bots did seem unfair, it was also because it used to make the botters soooo p*ssed off.
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Saturday 6th October 2012 09:44 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: Re: Best quote I have seen on this story...
"Right-wingers historically always have much more interesting scandals than left-wingers...." Depends on your definition of "interesting". I mean, how about single girls with married Dem, leaving said single girl to her to her fate after causing an accident whilst driving drunk, and covering it up to avoid political embarrasment, and then forcing his preganant wife with a previous history of miscarriages to attend the funeral just for show of political unity and then her having a miscarriage again....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappaquiddick_incident
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Sunday 7th October 2012 14:56 GMT Reg Blank
Re: Best quote I have seen on this story...
@ Matt Bryant
No contest. He's a Kennedy, if they aren't screwing their way through the female population then we have to start wondering what new world-ending STD is about to drop.
OTOH, prominent outspoken homophobic misogynist hypocritical twitching married arseholes who lean heavily on their wholesome "Christian" family values are outed offering blowjobs to strangers? It's the kind of schadenfreude that money just cannot buy.
Icon: "I was asking him to blow my party horn, as I was feeling in a festive mood while taking a dump in a public restroom".
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Friday 5th October 2012 18:16 GMT Matt Bryant
Obviously
Looks-wise, her choice of an Orc was just a realistic way to represent herself as a female Democrat representative (hint, Rosa Delauro) : http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/28/michele_bachmann_effect/
The sneaky, stab-you-in-the-back-with-posioned-blades bit was just standard for all politicians (execpt for Greens, who probably all play Shamans and get their butts kicked).
Besides, everyone knows Feral Druids are better than Assassins.
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Saturday 6th October 2012 09:37 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: In other words
"...republicans can't tell the difference between fiction and reality?" No, Reps like Reagan and Arnie got PAID for making fiction, whereas the Dems pay for it. Well, pay for it for now - she'll probably start some push for WoWcare, a scheme to help everyone play WoW, funded by taxs on employers....
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Monday 8th October 2012 08:34 GMT Thecowking
How long? Not long.
I saw a guy do it in about 12 minutes last week.
He was using recruit a friend though (bonus levelling).
Just normally? A month, maybe 2, playing pretty casually, (no more than an hour at a go, perhaps 3 sessions in a weekend). It's nothing like a grind now. Which is good in some ways, but I did kinda like it the old way.
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Monday 8th October 2012 09:19 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: Kevin Rogovin
Not necessarily. It could take weeks of just an hour every other night, or one week if you took holiday and played twelve-hour stretches. When the Cataclysm upgrade went live one of our DBAs had booked a week off just because he wanted to be first on his server to race all his chars from level 80 (pre-Cataclysm max level) to 85 (post-Cataclysm max). So probably less time out than other candidates might spend following their favourite TV show, keeping fit, or posing for the cameras playing basketball.
It all depends on the WoW player's outlook. If you actually want to enjoy the experience of levelling, get all the achievements, gain an understanding of the storyline and explore the worlds and all the quests, then it can take months even if you play several hours a day. However, if you just want to level up to 85 ASAP then that can be done inside game rules in a week or so using so-called power-levelling guides.
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Thursday 11th October 2012 16:56 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: Re: Kevin Rogovin
".....either she played it a lot...." A while back I had an applicant that was dumb enough to put on his CV that he played Eve a lot. The HR drones immediately translated that into the idea that the guy never left his Mom's basement, had no social skills, etc., and would make a bad choice because he played a game for a few hours every weekend. My counter was to ask the head of HR if his playing golf for several hours at a time somehow made him less of a good choice than someone that didn't?
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Monday 8th October 2012 12:14 GMT ShadowDragon8685
Wow.
Wow... I want to support her and all, you know, go video gamers and all...
But I just can't bring myself to root for someone who plays Horde.
I mean, a more-heavily-armored-than-a-main-battle-tank Draenei Ret Paladin player is a candidate I could vote for, but Horde Rogues are the scum of WoW.
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Thursday 11th October 2012 00:59 GMT Esskay
Lets see...
they're making fun of someone for playing what is the most popular MMORPG of all time, if not one of the most popular games of all time? And this is supposed to *win* them votes? I've never even played WoW (not really my cup of tea, and the subscription aspect irks me) but even I can "understand" that for some people it's a hobby...
Not exactly sure who the republican candidates' target demographic is, but I'm pretty sure it's someone who spends their spare time fucking their cousins.