Sunday, August 23, 2009

The Problem with WoW/Schools Metaphors

The problem with people making comparisons and analogies between World of Warcraft and schools is that they tend to be overly impressed with WoW. WoW is, essentially, a theme park. An immensely popular and well-executed theme park where you can kill the things that jump out at you in the fun house (or are just milling around) and the prizes you win are weapons and armor. You can call it this:

Literally. The expansion, called Cataclysm, actually destroys and re-creates the entire multi-continent virtual world that WoW players have come to know over the past few years.

But really, it is more like refurbishing the spent rides and tatty haunted house on the Midway. The World of Warcraft is static, repetitive and, to use an education term, prescriptive. Of course, millions of people love it, and that's fine, but a little perspective would be nice when people try to marshal it for their education rhetoric.

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