I am still waiting for the day when the Chinese suddenly appear on the scene en masse and tear the competitive gaming world apart like a soggy spring roll. Apparently, ‘electronic heroin’ is frowned upon in China, so Sweden can continue to bask in their glory as the world’s premier gaming nation, for another while at least. But an educating, morally beneficial on-line experience cannot be considered heroin - and this part of the reason why articles such as this one speculate that the new game “Learning from Comrade Lei Feng” is going to overtake World of Warcraft as the biggest MMORPG in the world.
Lei Feng was Mao’s model soldier; China’s “good example”; the selfless “revolutionary screw that never rusts” after whom “Learn from Lei Feng Day” was founded. Falling on 5th March of every year, this is when people get involved in the community and perform good deeds.
Instead of running around killing Elder Sabretooths, in LFCLF a new player will initially level up by performing low level jobs such as mending socks or sewing.
“Every time you are promoted to a higher level, your clothes will become more average,” he said. “You have to do good deeds in order to upgrade, such as contributing and volunteering on building sites. The more you do, the better and higher you get. Thus boosting your reputation.”
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Enemies in the game are “secret agents,” Xinhua said. Players can replenish their strength after battling such evil forces by talking with the Party secretary, en route to a final meeting with Mao himself.
Although all the voices in my head are telling me that this sounds like a terrible game, I am really intrigued. Thank god I’m not Chinese, because I would probably become addicted to this. Its also likely that all of the Lei Feng supporters who renounce the evils of Quake and Counter Strike are in for a bit of a shock when they see the glazed look of addiction on their children’s faces as they sit in front of their computer screens for 9 hours a day, mending electronic socks and helping scripted old ladies cross non-existent roads. I’m hoping that the developers will release a slightly modified version for the rest of the world: “Learning from Chuck Norris”.
At least the increased competition might cause Blizzard to value their customers a bit more. There was some controversy in the World of Warcraft this week over a permanent ban against the level 60 player Infernix, for “Witnessed and confirmed use of third party program - Boting”. Infernix has mirrored his correspondance with Blizzard on the his website, here. The 24 year-old network engineer was running WoW on Wine in Linux, and he was using a common programmable keyboard. I’d love to know Blizzard’s official stance on programmable keyboards, as they even sell custom WoW keyboards (such as the Zboard) on their own online shop. Some people speculate that the fact that he was running under Wine confused whoever it was that investigated this at Blizzard’s end.
Infernix was training weapons by idly fighting a lower level mob which regularly healed itself, while he watched movies on his other monitor. I’ve encountered this exact same thing in other MMORPGs, and the rules are always the same - if you suspect that someone is playing while afk, then a GM must whisper to them, and if they respond, then clearly they are not breaking any rules. Whatever the case, Blizzard’s response (or lack of) was unacceptable - they were tight-lipped in their replies to email, deleting and banning users from the forums when the issue was raised there. Obviously its not a very big deal, but I can see how Infernix would be so angry after spending a lot of money and 1000 hours at this game, to be dumped out of it permanently without so much as a proper reason given.
I would advise him to forget all about the tedium of repetitive levelling and long instance quests, and the annoying 14 year-old uber-competitive Dutch kids who wear sunglasses indoors, bleach their spiked hair, and spam ‘n00b’ at every given opportunity… forget all that and immerse himself in a world without Game Masters who will ban you for no reason… a mythical magical place where the streets are made of cheese: Tamriel. Yes, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is being released next week, and I am looking forward to it very much. Before I leave the subject of WoW for another six months, I have to mention the hilarious “LOTR meets WoW” animated gif that someone had in their signature on the Gamecon forums.
If you don’t know who 
