made me smile
"** Yes, we know this isn't usually how this paper is referred to. What of it?"
An obsessive World of Warcraft player is suing the makers of the game for ruining his life, quoth a gleeful Grauniad this week. Erik Estavillo is seeking $1m (£600,000) in damages, claiming the orc-tastic roleplaying game has turned him into a blank-eyed basketcase who can no longer function in the real world (as the lawsuit …
He's filed a civil lawsuit. He hasn't won any judgment, and he's actually not very likely to. Anyone can file a civil suit; most of the clearly bonkers ones simply get dismissed. Yes, it means extra work for clerks, etc. but I'd rather that to a system which restricts your ability to petition a court for redress.
Between all these people suing McDonalds for their obesity, and people suing casinos in Las Vegas for gambling losses, this one is relatively timid (Save for the celebrity invovement).
Which is actually a very sad thing to say.
Um, and how long before someone posta a "For the Horde!" comment?.
"** Yes, we know this isn't usually how this paper is referred to. What of it?"
I must admit to not reading who the author of the article was at first. Then I read this line and thought 'that sounds* remarkably like our very own Moderatrix - an lo and behold !
It must be nice to have a recognisable style :)
*or how I imagine the written words to sound.
Reverse the icon : FTW
"Gore is a fine choice of expert in this regard, having penned a host of dead-inside yet catchy tunes (...) beloved of isolated Eastern European youth."
Say what you will, our beloved Moderatrix, but some of my best years as an isolated (south)Eastern European youth were spent listening to Depeche Mode, and I don't regret it. :-)
Surviving the era in which it was OK to dress like Jacko in "Thriller" and wear mullets (Limahl, Flock of Seagulls...), I expect some slack in that regard.
His case is flawed. How can he use a real-world lawyer when his case is that he can't actually function in the real-world?? It's self-contradiction.
Maybe he should go to the WoW elders and ask them to help him. He may get an ox and Scarab of Lethusia or something.
Alternatively, he should just FOAD!
Suing the internets for time wasted masturbation due to all the free porn available on it?
Or perhaps sue the television manufacturers for making such a clear crisp picture that it turned me into a couch potato?
Noo.. I got it. I am going to sue the school system for wasting all those years and by filling my head with useless information that I have never used?!?!
Easy answer is just to take this guys computer away. Problem solved! ;-)
I think I will sue my employer for putting me on a graveyard shift making it necessary to sleep during the day, wrecking my social life.
Alternatively, I will sue my docs, who have me on medications for pain, which make me sleep most of the day, resulting in a lack of social life.
Of course this all depends on either not finding out that before i got sick and before I got onto graveyard, I didnt have much of a social life to begin with. (dang games)
"Denmark has begun compensating “dozens” of women who developed breast cancer after working night shifts, multiple news sources have reported. The BBC said the Danish government’s decision is based on a report from WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)..."
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2009/03March/Pages/NightshiftandbreastcancerQA.aspx
Random person with grievance + lawyer = comedy + lawyer gets paid.
Seriously. Did this dolt hire Lionel Hutz ? What kind of regular lawyer would take such a case ? Has the dolt realised that when he gets slung out of court, the lawyer still needs to be paid ?
Not even going to get into the nature of the case itself, it's simply too dumb to consider. "I used your product for hours a day until I realised I had no life..... you owe me $$$$".
On second thoughts, I think I will - Fail.
There is an element of addiction to MMORPGs. I've played two over the years - Earth & Beyond and Eve-Online. I can well believe that the publishers know about the addictive nature and pander to it. I wouldn't go so far as to think it with actioning but the analogy with drug pushers isn't that hard to see.
Eve-Online is a frighteningly complex game to get to grips with and the amount of effort that some players put into the game is staggering. A lot of people were coming home from school/college/office and spending another four or five hours working just as hard at Eve.
I never fell into that trap and mostly played for the online chat and forums but even I found it hard to finally quit.
So yeah, the guys a bozo but I don't think the problem should be dismissed out of hand. I would be concerned if a child of mine started to play one.
... consulting with the client and filing paperwork and then, after the judge tosses out the case, hand the client a bill: regardless of outcome, services have been rendered and better luck next time. Other lawyers work on a percentage, taking X percent of whatever the client wins in damages as their fee (and steering far clear of cases like this one, no doubt). Actually, this case could make a lawyer smile: net one consultation fee, filing fees, and other administrivia charges without having to do any real work since this case is clearly stillborn -- it's almost free money.
The loading screens that also displays the tips has one that talks about playing WoW in moderation, so the warning is there (just like Wii stuff has). He chose to ignore it, FAIL, kick it straight out of court.
(P.S. this doesn't affect his status as an insufferable twat).
The stress of knowing that your co workers invit eyou to play at the point you knowingly wish to get the same things your co workers go when they were already at level 70 when you joined.
Then as you level up and finally reach level 70 and Blizzard has applied several patches to the game that in effect you can no longer get the same stats armor that you drooled for that your friends had and the desire fades because this almost becomes as they all called it BAIT AND SWITCH.
You see one thing but get another and it just isn't the same!
So if I ever roll another toon on the WOW servers it will be the game and the burning crusade.
Do not! I repeat do not buy the litch king upgrade until you get all that armor set from the BC exapansion. But does Blizzard tell you this? No They expect all level 70's people to wear cheap level 70 greens and they want the level 80's to whoop your butt in the BG's while your team in BG fails repeatedly for not being a twinked 70 toon.
On top of this rip off they continue to nerf warriors so they can be killed with 3 hits from the front side or back.
The lore of WOW does not stay firm with the totality of lore cartoon/cartoon fantasy/fiction.
Rougues in all of Cartoon history and or Fantasy were weaklings but WOW makes them into some skinny villan who even though he weighs just 70 pounds could take on the hulking warrior with no problem. It is this mindset that fails WOW to the extreme and the WOW dev who created the rouge needs to be fired/punished and water boarded.
I can see that for the rest of the life of WOW that each patch the warrior has been made into a false paper image of itself and is no longer a warrior at all and the names have been switched between the warrior and rogue. The warrior is just now a wimpy sad reminder of itself that sit at the bottom of any poll in terms of strength,dexterity and stamina and power and the first people to cry that teh warrior is over powered are the rogues themselves who drool at 2-3 hit kills. The warrior has no defense against this at all and LTRP(learn to role play) is not a valid reply.
So yes there is stress and Blizzard does not care how you feel in the least.
As crazy as the guys seems I hope he wins in court and I hope the blizz dev who did the player dissing gets fired.
Sorry you lost me around about Winona Ryder?! lol ... So if you want to meet Winona Ryder, you subpoena her, does that work (outside of his dream world?!). Wow why didn't I think of that one. (Let me guess, I bet in his dream world she is even happy to be subpoenaed to meet him, plus she obviously really likes court rooms?!). Bloody hell lol.
This guy sounds like he's already well off in some kind of a twisted dream world of wanting to meet celebrities, before he even tries to play Warcraft. Joking aside, it sounds like he has more than a few serious screws loose, so to speak. Not least of which, apart from his very evident dream world, he also really seems to like being in the center of attention. Which I strongly suspect is what he really gets out of these legal cases. The attention angle is also very likely to be why he also tries to drag celebrities into the case, because again there's that association with attention because celebrities get a lot of attention and he wants attention.
It's quite Simple.
Although the lawyer doesn't expect to win, this will take very little of his (the lawyer's) time to process up to the "thrown out of court" stage. Likely it will be up to the legal secretary to do all teh paperwork and the lawyer will just sign stuff.
However, in the extreme unlikeliness that this actually runs then the lawyer will quickly turn it into a class action and then reap fuckloads of fee money.
Like I say, unlikely to win but it only takes a few seconds on Google to find a big list of really stupid lawsuits that have been won so you never know........
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/06/16/
...ok, two things: First, if you're waiting for "the sweet enveloping arms of oblivion", you might want to be careful - Oblivion is a hell of a lot better than Warcraft, single-player though it may be.
Second, what the hell is wrong with these posters? Anyone can file a suit for any particular reason. The fact that the craziest guy out of TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILLION FREAKING PEOPLE did this doesn't prove that we're litigious any more than a drive-by proves that we're all gun-slinging drug dealers.
Seriously, people - get a grip. The whole point of the legal system in tort cases is to DETERMINE WHETHER THERE ARE DAMAGES. You're asserting that you shouldn't be allowed to file a suit unless you can win? And how, exactly, do you expect that decision to be made, geniuses? Maybe we could come up with some kind of official arbitration procedure....
who said he has a lawyer?
There is no rule in the US that says you have to be a lawyer to file a suit. He vary-well may have filed this himself, and will be representing himself. Generally it's not done, because most people are smart enough to realise they are not experts in the law (even most lawyers hire lawyers rather then represent themselves, because it gives a set of impartal eyes), but this doesn't sound like of the lawyers I know...
I'm going to sue Railtrack for its part in turning me into a trainspotter. My life has been ruined by years of hanging around station platforms jotting down numbers of locomotives and rolling stock......mmmmm......rolling stock.
Railtrack has known of this damaging side effect of its transport system for many years yet it has done almost nothing to help.
I'll get me anorak.
I actually want this to go to court, so I can (hopefully) laugh at the verdict of EPIC FAIL.
Apparently his lawsuit against Sony chucking him off their forums was because they were violating his First Amendment rights, to which Sony replied "we're not part of the government". I have no sympathy for the guy. Nobody forced him to play WoW and although the game is very addictive, Blizzard do remind us to take a break every so often and visit our friends outside of Azeroth every now and again on the loading screen. If you choose to ignore that advice then that's your problem.
I immediately knew this was a Sarah Bee article, she being the only person in this establishment to use "quoth" ...
and secondly he should either sue his parents or himself, for being such a total moron, he might even win against himself.
Oh well can't he just remove himself from the game of life instead and save us all the embarrasment of having to share air with him?
As stated earlier, you can file a lawsuit for anything. It doesn't mean it will get past a judge's first glance. There is no, "you must be this tall/smart/correct" ruling for filing a lawsuit.
I could file a lawsuit against someone across my street for "walking too loudly". It will get thrown out immediately, but I could still file it.
I've got this serious additction to t'internet pr0n, and I might have to start suing the pr0n industry for RSI, carpal tunnel and an arm that makes Arnie's look like a twiglet.
However... I might be prepared to settle out of court for a rasp on a few pr0n starlets who go for that wild monkey sex I've seen while typing this message.
Paris.....back in 5...