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>I mostly play with two "real life" friends, and most of the groupings of people I know in my guilds are couples, friends from college/home, coworkers, and similar. It's usually not "oh we know each other after we found out in-game that we're geographically close". Yeah, but that's partly because when you meet a random person online, odds are that they don't live near you because any two random internet denizens aren't likely to live near each other. The point of geolocation would be that you could feasibly meet if you wanted to. I don't see what the problem would be with opt-outable geolocation. You could set your location to private, or don't enter it at all, and join a guild/clan/whatever that isn't local to a specific area. A game or a guild that geolocated should also be harder on creeps, banning people who were creepy and not letting in 15 year olds in the first place if that's not who they wanted. It would be more like a real life social group. If you don't want to hang around with someone in real life, you don't, and if you're not in high school yourself, you probably don't socialize with 15 year old boys who aren't related to you. I understand your concerns but I think there are solutions to them, and there will always be alternatives for those who want to keep it strictly anonymous and online. >And really, I'm sick of the people that think that WoW can't be real life. I have come across some of my best friends online, and WoW is no different from IRC or AIM or email or any means of online communications. It is as real life as it gets without being face-to-face with someone. But there are still some things you're missing without face to face. And having a social life centered around electronic communication with people you don't know in real life is almost as stigmatized as WoW addiction anyway. |