Norton Gaming Articles

Well, we all know that playing games can influence your real life, even if it’s just the lack of sleep you get from spending whole nights playing online games. But there’s more to it. There are several crucial points that have to be considered when running around virtual fields with your character. Unfortunately, as in life, some people don't play by the rules.

Sometimes those virtual worlds are not as peaceful as one might think or hope. You, or more precisely your avatar, might get blackmailed for protection money or bullied by others. Destruction of virtual goods can happen if you don’t pay. The discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Second Life confirms this point.

But, there are other entrapments to watch out for. We already reported on gold farming and the problem with in-game spam in a previous post. It’s no wonder that this business is growing, as selling virtual objects has become very lucrative. Sometimes, it’s even more profitable to sell online game accounts than stolen credit card numbers.

The people behind those offers are always trying to come up with new ways for advertising their services, such as some weeks ago when puzzled World of Warcraft players saw hundreds of dead gnomes falling from the sky. This on its own might have been awkward already, but the falling gnome corpses then spelled out a URL – a bizarre form of ASCII art, if you will. The spammer made quite an effort to get the message across, much to the apparent bemusement of the other players.

That stunt was harmless enough, though this next entrapment wasn’t. Last month, China View reported where, in Brazil, a player of the popular game GunBound was lured to a date in real life. The lovely girl he thought he was going to meet from the online chat turned out to be a local gang member that threatened him at gunpoint into transferring his game scores to the gang’s account. They later tried to sell his goods for about $8,000 USD. Luckily the police were able to arrest the gang.

Sad but true, these cases show how threats are evolving in virtual worlds and why gamers need to be aware that their online world is just not the harmless escape it used to be. If they can’t get you in the virtual world they might try it in real life - where many of us just don’t have "+2 shield of damage protection.