An event in a meeting this morning prompted me to post this topic; good timing anyway, since it's the last few days of the pre-expansion silly season.

I work as a lawyer in real life. One of my clients is a pharmaceutical sales company.

Among the things discussed in the meeting this morning is that they're considering a name change.

To "Gold Pharma".

Happily I didn't have to give an opinion of that name. Although I wonder... is the gaming market (and WoW subscription more specifically) now pervasive enough that I have a professional duty to suggest that the name might have negative connotations to some people when they hear it? Implies to some people that they're a Chinese company instead of local? (Not in this specific case, since the customers of this company are highly unlikely to be WoW players, but in general).

Be interested on hearing if anyone else has tales of WoW invading their professional lives even in tiny ways like the above. Elendril excepted :)

The computing world is filled with acronyms and I have found myself wondering why people were talking about EQ or WoW spells or locations before when learning new things. :/

Bahahahahahahah... that's hilarious.

Haven't gotten any WoW-job collisions yet; closest was when some coworkers played a prank on one, and redecorated his cubicle with girl's belongings to make it look like he was replaced when he was on vacation. Among the items was a bottle of Orly perfume.

The company I work for does some advertising work for Vivendi.. it's a bit strange to hear someone (who has never played WoW) muttering "what the fuck is a Dreenie??" while working on a design.

I was interning at Sun Microsystems last summer, doing gooky financial things and stealing office supplies at every concievable opportunity. My immediate supervisor was a lanky, middle-aged man with a balding head and the harassed look of a man constantly between wives. We worked in the "corporate" wing of the building complex, which is to say that the immediate area had been well sterilized in advance, with anyone of even a remotely geeky bent having been long since shipped off ingloriously to the tech/programming departments. It was a seriously depressing work environment; one of those places that spawn middle managers on damp floors and in darkened recesses. I have no idea why I was tolerated.

Anyway, at one point I was opening a bottle of rootbeer (also stolen) with my keychain multitool thing and my supervisor immediately noticed my Blizzcon murloc keychain. He freezes in place, exclaims "my God, normalcy!" and crushes me in a viking norse man-hug. Or what passes for viking norse man-hugs in southern California.

It was profoundly disturbing.

A friend of mine started work at a web design company about a half a year ago and overheard some of his coworkers talking about level 40's(ish) quests in STV. He kept to himself while he listened to the conversation, and then after going back to his desk, linked one of the guys in the conversation the ctprofile of his tier 2 druid.

There was a crowd of geeks at his desk within seconds.

Curse you Elendril. Give me back my friends!

I've never encountered someone talking about WoW nor do I know anyone who plays WoW (that I know of), with the obvious exception of guildmates and such that I've met through the game, but they don't count. Go figure.

However, I have only ever used the copy of Microsoft Excel that is installed on my office PC to create and edit 4H spreadsheets, so I guess that counts as WoW invading my job. :ssh:

This really doesn't qualify as the type of discussion thread that people have come to expect here but......we're approaching the eve of the expansion, and we're all a little giddy, and I'm going to say I'm officially sick of serious discussions.

This is a picture of my daughter (Ookami) and our Welsh terrier not eating a hot dog:

OK, I've got a good one.

I went out for dinner and drinks at a prissy French place in downtown Vancouver with a couple of friends, and the event somehow expanded to about a dozen people, most of which I did not know. There was one woman there who was in her late 20s, brunette, fairly overweight but elegantly dressed, engaged in a seperate conversation at the opposite end of the table. At some point, I heard her mention the words "world of warcraft," and immediately pointed at her and almost-yelled "YOU PLAY A FEMALE NIGHT ELF DRUID!" at which point the table silenced itself at my sudden outburst.

She looked at me in shock and demanded how I knew that. Everyone laughed. What a noob.

I was sitting in my school's cafeteria and overheard a bunch of nerds talking about the best rogue specs for leveling. Man that was pretty funny. Also I was on the MAX on my way to school and some dudes were talking about the story behind the battle of Mount Hyjal.

I used to work at a netcafe, so I'd be harrassed with "HAY CAN I PLAY UR PRIEST PLAZ" when customers discovered my instant messaging address. My new job does not involve sweaty customers, however my coworkers harrass me for strategies.

Also, does your dog only have one eye Kaubel, or is it in desperate need of a haircut.

Two working eyes. He was going for an emo look that day.

So I had some old tax issues in Canada that showed up (things get complicated when you go to another country for a few years). I googled up a Tax Accountant in Vancouver to help me get things sorted out. He asked what I did for a living and I told him, turns out he's a huge WoW player, just got his third level 60 (dwarf priest) over the holiday break.

That's probably the most WTF WoW player moment for me.

I don't hear a thing about Warcraft until I approach the IT department and I don't think they actually ever talk about anything else.

By the way, a question to EJ members. Do you ever got a "WoW celebrity" moments, when you tell somebody what guild are you in ?

What do you do that leads conversations to WoW?

I work for a web applications development company in Denver. I was interviewing a candidate for a junior-level programming position and the conversation eventually turned to personal interests. He mentioned that he played a bit of WoW on the side and when I responded that I, too, had dabbled in WoW, he spun off into a rant on how he truly felt that the best levelling combo possible was that of a Paladin and a Warlock, and then began to go into great details on some of the exploits of his own Paladin.

After about 5 minutes of this, he asked what I played.

"I play a Shaman", I responded.

And...an uncomfortable silence followed.

I've actually had people who upon learning I was mt for my guild know my character's name without me telling it to them. That was... frightening.

I was up at school a semester or two ago, and cracked open my laptop to check on some auctions... sitting there at a long laptop table (best feature ever... complete with little electrical plug ins and a Starbucks within "order by shouting" distance) eating my taco bell and looking for deals when this guy comes up behind me and is all like Oh My God, what server do you play on?!? Is that T2? PvE server? WTF PvE server sucks.... lemmie see that... getting all up in my space and trying to get a better look at my character.

I suddenly had the sensation that I was /inspected irl.

It wasn't pleasant o.o

During my 9 month contract at a local computer graphics company, I stumbled across one guy who had altered his photo in the staff directory to be a different photo of himself (not taken at the security building on-site like everyone else's) and it had his nickname in it, which happened to be the same as the name of his wow character. Until he quit the game 6 months prior, I was his warrior class leader and raid leader.

I couldn't resist bringing it up at one point and enjoying the ensuing rather awkward conversation :)

What would make it more awkward is if you found out you were class/raid leader for your boss...