When you consider how many people play World of Warcraft, it might occur to you that if every one of those 11.5 million people changed the way they lived to a more environmentally friendly method, it just might make a big difference to the planet. That's exactly what Professor Byron Reeves of Stanford University believes, and he's looking for a way to put it into practice.
Reeves understands that one of the main ways WoW works is by completing tasks as a team, also known as a group, raid or even guild. What if your performance in WoW, and therefore the performance of your team, was affected by how much electric you use? If you use too much, you won't do as well as someone else who lives very efficiently when it comes to using energy in the home.
The idea sounds a bit far-fetched, for example, how would the game be able to tell how much electricity you're using? Scientists have proposed using a Smart Meter which gathers information for billing purposes usually, then sends it back to the utility company; this is the method Reeves suggests.
Of course for this to work every WoW player would need one of these attached to their homes, which would then have to be fed into the game somehow. And what about people who play from net cafes, not to mention Blizzard's stance on it - you can imagine what it would do to all the carefully balanced class stats!
We've contacted Professor Reeves for more information on his idea.