World of Warcraft on German TV

For the small part of my readership able to understand German, I have a rare example of intelligent TV about video games. A half-hour documentary on World of Warcraft, describing the game, tracing its roots to pen & paper roleplaying and previous games like UO and EQ, and describing the social effects in a balanced and mature manner. So instead of hysterical "WoW destroyed my marriage" we get a futurologist speculating what the fact that WoW destroyed your marriage said about the quality of your marriage in the first place.

The film even explains concepts like tanking, and shows a Blackwing Lair raid. But also touches on issues like powerleveling or Chinese gold farmers, again in a non-hysterical way. The film neither falls into the "Second Life" hype trap of declaring this to be how the world looks in the future, nor does it spew the usual anti video game hatred. It shows how the game is played, in a necessarily condensed, but realistic way. Very well done.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:09 PM Permanent Link