The WAR at home

Texas and Rhode Island will field epic numbers of warriors to do battle.  South Dakota and Vermont, for the opposite reason, may resort to skullduggery with their fewer recruited fighters. Nowhere in the United States does Order reign over Destruction ... and the light grows dimmer by the minute.

This is America according to Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

WAR's ingenious little scheme to translate in-game realm vs. realm warfare into a real-world affair of state-ist pride is working.  With a Google-powered Tele Atlas, WAR's developer, Mythic (sans "EA" in name, but not in payroll), devised a Road to War metagame that punctures the worldwide landscape with little orange and black dots of allegiance.  Head to the site, register your email address, select your alignment with Order or Destruction, and choose your champion race.  Soon enough, your orange or black dot of allegiance will become apparent to the world.

Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are world powers in the Road to War, too.  But living here in the United States, the quote-unquote Home of the Brave, and watching the numbers depicting good against evil -- with evil clearly dominating -- started messing with my head.  I started taking the statistics personally. 

Would no state (none?) find a majority fighting for the side of Order?  If you've been following WAR's development, it's plain to see that "Order" is still synonymous with "We must break you."  So it becomes apparent that there's a deeper American psychology at work here, at least among MMO players.  We're living in a very unpopular country in this day and age -- yet even in fantasy realms are we siding with evil, perhaps presuming that that's the path of least resistance to victory?  Or are these results more benign in nature, and living good, orderly lives during our regular workday compels us to swing our state to the dark side in a video game?

I'll tell you one thing:  Were this fun little study in sociology to suddenly turn very real, and the world's armies were to be suddenly populated only with PC-loving, MMO-playing soldiers … I would completely avoid living in Delaware, Georgia, and Kentucky, the three most  Destruction-populated states per capita in the U.S.  And were I too look for the greatest number of warriors fighting for the side of Order, I would fall into formation with North Dakota, West Virginia or, in fact, stay right here in my home state of Oregon.  Those are the only states where the good vs. evil ratio even tries to strike for a 50/50 balance.  Though, as I alluded to in the first paragraph, no state currently has a majority of people registering with Order. 

Granted, this is only a snapshot at 10:00 p.m. on Thursday, August 14th.  Things will change, all up until WAR's September 18th release.  And, granted, there are some erroneous statistics that emerge right off the bat, like the fact that Rhode Island has 919,610 people registered on the Road to War map -- but Rhode Island's real-world population is only 1,067,610.  Is 86% of that state planning on playing WAR?  Pffft.  Rhode Island ain’t South Korea, no matter how much you skew the numbers.  The likely explanation?  Either Rhode Island has a hax0r cooking the books, or their entire MMO-playing populace decided to register a vote with every single email address they’ve kept open since 1998.  Doubtless there’s plenty of that.  But taken with a grain of salt, this is an entertaining little study.

For shins and giggles, I'll let the following table of statistics I cranked out speak for itself.  And to make it more dramatic when discussing percentages, I just point out the evil percentage of players in each state.  Click through to find yours.  Find out how evil and destructive your state’s populace truly is.

   [EDIT:  Upon further contempation of this Road toWar -- though the site doesn't clearly state this fact either -- the numbers collected below for Destruction and Order are probably not members that have registered on the map, but the amount of gold raised for Destruction and Order's sides of the conflict.  Think of the numbers below as campaign funds.  And realize that, while Rhode Island may not have an immense population, its evil MMO players are willing to work to work harder for their money.  I'm not sure that would make me feel any safer there.]