Last night's new episode of South park was one of the best of the series, IMO. The four were deep into playing WoW, and they were using actual in-game footage as part of the show.

In an nutshell, the creators/writers totally nailed it with this episode, nailing the many themes that have been bounced around on the boards all these years. But, I wonder how much of this was also some sneaky advertising to increase exposure to the game world of WoW. The graphics looked fantastic, customer service was presented as wanting to really do everything they could, the ability to form relationships/friendships was displayed, and they alkso showed that there is a down-side to getting too wrapped in power-playing.

I am going to be sure to get this episode taped for many many more views.
I had expected to already see about two pages at least of folks talking about it.

Damn I missed it....=( sounded great... need this tossed up on the download section.

Gaediianiel started a thread on the Download with a link to the episode.

You really liked it that much? It was good - but I felt like it was a touch too much of a 21 minute Blizzard commercial broken up with 9 minutes of commercials for other stuff. If Trey and Matt just had at it like any other topic they disected this year it could have been a lot funnier I'd imagine ... the whole concept of not going outside to interact because you're chatting online with your friends is funny without any help. You and I know very well Blizzard paid them something to get that kinda coverage a few short months before their big expansion hits the store shelves.

Though, the highlights where I laughed my ass off:

1) when Butters showed up EXACTLY as Cartman - that was pretty hilarious
2) when Kyle's dad started playing and he was a n00b - that whole character was pretty enjoyable
3) some of the lines, like "Don't you realize this could be the end of the World ... of Warcraft" and "How do you kill that which does not have a life?" were quite laugh out loud funny

Along with what you mentioned as your highlights, I also liked the way they protrayed the "gaming public": the way the older guy was intruding on the kids play area because he obviously had no other interests; the way the kids were power grinding levels and putting everything else secondary (I caught my son doing this, and it messed up his HS graduation); the physical impact of sitting in front of a monitor for extended periods; the way the game world would carry over to real life, and so on.

Yes, the commercial aspect was what I was put off by, as it really did seem like what I said in the opening post (a sneaky way of exposing more to WoW), but I still think that they gave an accurate picture of what the world of EQ, WoW, CoH, DAoC, STG, and so many others really are like for many of those playing.

Watching a Comedy Central TV show with my son and his friends (and me, to some extent) and their immersion in on-line gaming was really a great half hour of my time; that is how well I thought the show was done.


Edit: Was rerun tonight, and I got it taped. Was able to se some of the stuff I missed last night. Wish the graphics looked that good in game, hehe.

I laughed my ass off when Cartman said "what do you think, play the game!" at the end. It was good times.