I am a huge student of gamer psychology...I will admit that I am the online version of a "people watcher" analyzing behvioral patterns I see in WOW and projecting theories as to why it is we spend so much time online, why people say / act the way they do online (ninja's, thread flamers, braggarts, people TOO quiet, etc etc etc)...
Admittedly I wasn't too sure what Asperger's syndrom was when I read this article about Asperger's and IT, but the following article gave me some good insight into the neorodevelopmental disorder and how the dynamics of a career in IT makes it kind of a hotspot for people with Aspergers.
Refer to this article:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9072119
After reading that, I wanted to know more about Asperger's, so I went to the wiki page, shown here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome
The big thing here that intrigued me was how this disease can make people seem misanthropic - they have a hard time dealing with social conventions like eye contact, chit chat, or distractions from a dedicated task, like fixing a server or grinding out 20 primal fires. People with Asperger's do WELL in online interactions, where you dont have all those social restrictions or subtelties.
Then, I run accross this, which basically says that people who spend tons of time playing wow (like WE all do - I am in this group as well after all =) , actually EXHIBIT a lot of Asperger and autism symptoms, whether or not they have the disease or NOT.
http://news.curse.com/details/8504/
Now...its easy to say that we are all Asperger sufferers or just avoid REAL social interactions becuase we are all misanthropes holed away in the basement of our mom's hous...HOWEVER, I have met quite a few WOW players IRL - and these people are all very socially viable, proto-typical people with ZERO noticaebly social problems IRL. Maybe they would prefer to be raiding Naxx, but they do pretty well raiding the local watering hole too. (On a side note though Nix kept trying to slip something in my drink............ =/)
So...getting back to the notion of "people watching" online...its curious to me that WOW is such a varied experience with so many layers that it can appeal to people with Asperger's who just can't socially interact on normal levels, but at the same time appeals to those who can, and BOTH types of people find an equal level of desire to play the game...I think its a nice testamant that the game can connect with so many people on so many levels...it defintiely makes observing the psychology of people online interesting lol
reading this has actually scared me to avoid shooting off i wont go into detail of why since i can never seem to hush when needed lol
This personality always made me laugh, viewers discretion advised
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/
*ps it was only the blue pill http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1T4GZHZ_enUS241US242&q=little+blue+pill (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1T4GZHZ_enUS241US242&q=little+blue+pill)
LOL....agreed...people do act differently behind the veil of anonymity
Referring to Arc's original article. I'd like to point out what one person said about the article:
"Also I dont think that they had enough people to have a credible study. WoW has passed 11 million subscribers so 391 isnt even a comparison."
Depends on the selection. I agree that the number is low, but if they took care to select people of different ethnicities, ages, and socioeconomic standings, they can get a general overview. Consider that the statistics you find in American media are usually the results of around 1500-3000 people in a country of 300 million.