It's good to see Blizzard actively policing its virtual world. The Irvine-based developer announced recently that 59,000 World of Warcraft accounts were banned this June. Not only that, but more than 22 million in gold was removed from the total economy across all the WoW servers. In an official post on the WoW message boards, a Blizzard representative writes, "While we regret having to take such extreme action, these accounts were participating in activities that directly violated World of Warcraft's Terms of Use, including the use of third-party programs to farm gold and items."

The post goes on to say, "Such behavior not only negatively impacts the economy of a realm, it diminishes the achievements of those who play legitimately. We will continue to aggressively monitor all World of Warcraft realms in order to protect the service and our players from the harmful effects of cheating." The post ends with a request for subscribers to report any players using illegal third-party programs to farm gold or items. This is just another strike in what's turning into a long battle against gold farmers.

As usual with an Onion article that targets one of my personal hobbies or lifestyle, I'm never 100% sure whether to laugh or be offended -- but in the end I pretty much always err on the side of laughing. Actually, looking the "game" closely, it almost looks a bit like The Sims. You have a character who's modeled after a modern real life person, and you have to keep them happy, well-fed, rested, and entertained. And really, WoW is a pretty legitimate form of entertainment, I'd say. In that case, maybe The Onion is just looking forward to that day when all games are connected in some sort of seamless on-line mishmash of characters and personas. Then again, maybe it's just a funny video. Anyway, go watch it.