More Warcraft

I don’t usually watch South Park and I’ve never played World of Warcraft, but last night these two super popular bits of pop-culture came together in a celebration of gross/nerdy humor. The episode basically lampooned the sad existence of gamers who play their game of choice to the point of ending all other activities (including bathing and walking). This isn’t exactly a novel idea, but I have to say that South Park did it in a ridiculously funny way. At the same time, though, especially in light of other posts about gaming, the whole thing was pretty sad in the old obvious ways: grown men who have no lives outside of their computer screen, kids who don’t play outside so they can spend more time on the computer…
But we’ve already touched on those ideas. What I wanted to post about, think about was that the social network that these gamers have erected has become so “real” that people have developed a series of laws (commandments maybe) that if broken, ends in chaos for the community and leaves the person who broke the law a hated outcast.
In the South Park episode, a character cruises through the lands murdering other characters without asking them to “duel” ( I think, I don’t know the technicalities of how the game is played, or even if the episode was true to World of Warcraft). The result of this nefarious killer is that no other player feels safe anymore, and the game comes to a stand-still.
What I wonder is how World of Warcraft and similar games avoid this problem of people breaking the rules? Is it because these games are so well-made that people simply don’t have the option of causing trouble? Or is it because people feel a moral responsibility to play fairly and thus feel betrayed when things don’t work out that way? Where does this sense of community and responsibility come from? I don’t think I could find it from a virtual reality…