Felicia Day, writer of The Guild, also plays Codex

The Guild is an amusing online comedy whose storyline revolves around a group of on-line gamers playing an unnamed Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing game bearing a considerable, not entirely coincidental, resemblance to World of Warcraft.

Not surprisingly, because The Guild represents a satirical commentary by actress Felicia Day, best-known for the role of Violet on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, on her own on-line gaming addiction.

The Guild premiered on-line in 2007. Its first season consisted of ten 3-to-7-minute episodes. A second season of only six episodes ran the following year. But The Guild has attracted corporate sponsorship. Microsoft bought the exclusive right to release the first episode of Season 3 on Xbox starting this week, for one week prior to the general release September 1st.

The musical number Do You Wanna To Date My Avatar is a good introduction and has links to episodes.

WatchtheGuild

The NY Times reports on Chinese workers paid for playing online multiplayer games in 12 hour shifts in order to accumulate early level advances in rank, wealth, skills, weapons, and artifacts for people in more affluent countries who prefer to skip the slow and laborious process of developing an advanced player persona. The practice is known as “gold-farming,” a name referring to the accumulation of imaginary on-line currency used for purchasing training and items within the universe of the game by repetitive tasks.

There have got to be worse jobs.