WoW is not Real Life

Attempting to bring real life philosophies into WoW is likely to create absurd statements. Many of the philosophies of real life are based on the limitations of our world. There are limited resources and people die permanently. WoW does not have these limits. Instead the limits are much looser, and created by 'gods' (devs) over whom we can exert some degree of control.

Welfare does not exist, for current welfare is based on a redistribution of wealth in absolute terms. It ensures the physical survival of those who cannot or do not generate sufficient wealth on their own. There is no WoW equivalent since we do not die from starvation or any other material lacking or inaction.

Economies do exist, however direct parallels will inevitably fail because the economy of WoW is optional. One does not need any professions to survive. The world overall does not need professions to generate wealth, in fact currency is destroyed through the auctioning of crafted items. While a strong economy is good, it should not be assumed that a weak economy means mass starvation and rioting. Furthermore, resources are effectively unlimited (except for some limits imposed by devs), so shortages are mostly due to failure to gather that which is plentiful rather than an actual lack of material.

Much of morality is distorted since all enemies are either unfeeling NPCs or other players on which we cannot directly inflict any pain or damage. Death is impermanent. Direct theft is impossible except due to misplaced trust and any player can make himself immune to theft simply through greater control of social interaction (ML in instances, control the guild bank).

To top it all off, WoW has a major flaw (or perhaps feature) which real life doe not have: the creators have told us it is a game. In life there are things which are necessary and must take priority over that which is fun while in WoW there is fun and the only necessities are those which are linked to the aspects of fun which we freely choose. Being a game means that fun takes priority over all else. Virtual economics, perceptions of superiority, nerd raging; they are all subordinate to fun. If it happens that the fun of somewhere else interferes with your own fun, something is going wrong.

To fully explain why trying to bring RL into WoW will fail, here's a strange bit of morality. As I said before, morality cannot be determined by pain, death, or injury since none are permanent or even felt. However, if we take the developers to be the 'gods' of WoW, the creators, then we can see that if they say it is a game and they are the root of all things, then fun must be the morality of WoW. In other words, if you're not having fun, you're not just wasting your time, you're also breaking a fundamental rule. Clearly we can see from this that not having fun should result in bans. To those who bring their twisted RL views into it, consider the implication of acting as if RL rules apply to WoW: you being gone.

Oh Creators of this Virtual World which we inhabit, we beseech thee to smite the infidels and cleanse the World of Warcraft of their corrupting influence!

See that was stupid. That's what happens when you put RL in WoW. Bringing RL-derived philosophies into WoW is only an abstract version of the people who complain about RL relationships in gchat and act as if we should care. That's right, you're just an emo teenager whose parents are totally on his case, like omg.

P.S. This is not a reference to lore or magic, but to the completely artificial and (as the devs create it) unlimited qualities of WoW, and so this can be applied to any video game. Concepts such as "earning" and "deserving" just don't make much sense when removed from their context of a real world where resources are scarce.