Friday, February 6, 2009

World of Warcraft: Subliminal Messaging

Just a brief reminder about "The MMO Experience" raffle going on. If you want your free 60 day World of Warcraft subscription card, remember to sign up here. Now on to the post!

A little rumor going around in the World of
Warcraft community is the possibility of the Spirit Healer's unearthly whispering is in actuality some subliminal messages. According to rumors, the messages range from..

"Play World of
Warcraft..."

--to--

"Give us your money.."

Here is a brief video found on YouTube
demonstrating the event.




A few interesting facts one should should note is..

1: This person plays on a private server.

2: He states this is (or part of) the reason World of
Warcraft is so successful.


I must say I was curious when my wife brought this to my attention. So she promptly died in-game so we could listen in on the supposed brain washing done by the evil hypnotists known to us publicly as Blizzard Entertainment. All sarcasm aside, we actually did hear the phrase "Give us your money". Rather or not this was due to us actively listening for that particular phrase and hearing something LIKE it I can't tell.

So listen to the video, and discuss what you think about this. Even if IT actual subliminal messaging, do you find yourself insane with righteous anger toward Blizzard? Do you even care? What are your thoughts toward more...questionable forms of advertisement?

24 comments:

  1. first
    and i think if you're looking to hear it you do
    But it may just be noise

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  2. Sounded more like seamus su madre to me after hearing it repeated over and over. umm... that would loosely be translated from spanish, "seamus your mother". You can make it sound like "give us your money", but in a syllabic breakdown it sounded nothing like that, at least not to me.

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  3. I though it said "Islam is the light" ;-)

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  4. it totally sounded like Play World of Warcraft and Give us your money... if you dont hear that you better clean your ears. i think one could sue Blizzard because of sublimal messages!

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  5. i thought it said, "this is pure bullshit. please write about real news instead of this pice of crap looney speculation." But hey, i guess we all hear different things, ey?

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  6. I guess what you hear depends on:

    1) If you're actively listening for any words in particular

    2) Your mindset, personality, and interests (outside of gaming that is)

    Myself? I love reading sci-fi and fantasy novels. I can't "read" what the guy's really saying, but I hear the elf lingo Tolkien created for LoTR.

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  7. Looks like "Sheevara ur mother". You hear what you want.
    This is just noise, nothing more.

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  8. "... Rather or not this was due to us actively listening for that particular phrase and hearing something LIKE it I can't tell."

    Learn to read please.

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  9. I just would like to know how this would ever possibly contribute to WoW's success, even if it were somehow true by some stretch of the imagination? From what I understand, a subliminal message needs to continiously heard for it to have ANY effect at all, so unless somehow they have placed some way of repeating that throughout the towns, instances, and randomly as you are exploring, there is no subliminal message here.

    People don't hang around the Spirit healer often enough to make it into anything other than gibberish, and that certainly doesn't even have enough time to set into the subconscious. I am sure also that a lot of people play with the sound low, or off (as I do), and I am sure that many people just run up to the rez point without even thinking, caring, or paying attention to it. Thus they would only hear it for maybe 3 to 4 seconds.

    It's grasping at straws, and if this fellow thinks that is why WoW has it's popularity, then he is really desperate for attention, or is simply hating something for the sake of causing problems. Nothing more, and nothing less.

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  10. Good answer, Doug. I would have to agree with you on this for the simple fact I think I may have paid attention to the Spirit healer ONCE, when I first started playing and was all starry eyed by everything.

    It's an interesting rumor, an interesting story, but nothing more.

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  11. well I am not so sure it's actually subliminal messages, it could sound a bit like what he states if you listen closely, but I am not sure it's enough for say a court of law. Regardless, the spirit healer would be a perfect place to put the sublimininal messages Doug. The phrase play world of warcraft f. ex is short enough to be heard everytime you die, doesn't really matter how fast you run away from it, even partially would be enough after a long enough exposure. The point is it is something that would remind you to keep playing everytime you die. It's a very commonly known fact from the game developer view that the most common. Other developers have tried making death non existant to avoid this, but this has often made people claim the game is too easy. This would be much the same thing. It's about keeping you in the game, keeping you hooked. Again I am not so sure this is really true, but I do think the spirit healer would be the perfect place to put it.

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  12. EDIT:

    It's a very commonly known fact that from the game developers view the most commone reason for people turning a game off is dying.

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  13. OK, as I test, I put my hand over the video and had the girlfriend listen. I heard "give us your money" because that was written on-screen. When the woman listened, without visual cues, she didn't hear "give us your money."

    And a big LOL to the person who said he thought it said "Islam is the light" up above. If you don't get the connection, see here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,435164,00.html

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  14. "I though it said "Islam is the light" ;-)"

    Awe, Anonymous beat me to it!

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  15. Pete

    Cool you got my joke ;-) LOL! I was wondering how long it will take for someone to make the connection. I saw thir article a short while ago on N4G and I find it really silly.

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  16. First off, its stated its on a private server. Second blizzard is not in anyway pleased about private servers. Third, it is not difficult to change, or really alter in anyway, the game on a private server.

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  17. It says "yvan eht nioj"!

    On a more serious note, it does sound like the audio is playing backwards, someone should record it and play it back in reverse.

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  18. PS: if you didnt get the reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OORs9IQolQ

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  19. I think this thought about subliminal messaging will always exist. But the question is does that help in the sale of the game, or is it just that the creator of the game wants humanity brainwashed and conforming?

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  20. LOL even if it was you have to play the game to here it so they already got your money

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  21. a friend of mine at school told me that if you turn down certain types of sound during gameplay and keep certain ones up (referring to the slide bar for how loud or quiet you want the noise) you can actually here them saying give us your money. and sometimes, even on retail, when i'm alive and moving i hear the ghost spirits voice even though i'm no where near a graveyard. so i believe this rumor somewhat true. i still yet have to hear it. but if it is true shouldn't that mean private server's are ok? in my opinion yes. not only because of the possibility of sumbliminal messaging but also Blizzard knows about the private servers and they didn't do anything.
    Well that's my thoughts on this whole thing.

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  22. Guys, can't you see? it's clearly a subliminal message. Just think about it. It seems like not many in here know that what is a ''subliminal message''. It's not ment to be heard. And, keep in mind, that they have RECORDED all of the sounds/noises/speaks in the game! Why is the spirit healer even talking/(making noises etc.)? Why do you have to run to your corpse?

    Wow offers a 10 day free of charge trial. In every of the starting place's, there is a cave with spiders(or something) inside the cave. First time player is definitely going to die in there(various times, remember when you started?), and it's a long way to run to the cave.

    My friend just started playing wow, and i was there when he was first time playing it. At beginning, he wasn't interested at all, but i told him to play just a moment more. Then he died(INGAME OFC). Ofc, he didn't have a idea what the spirit healer is/what do i have to do/how to get back. So he stood next to the spirit healer for 30 secs or so, then i told him to run back to your corpse. And what the hell happened then? He didn't want to go out (we were supposed to go) that day anymore.

    I guess you'll know the rest.

    This is REALLY,REALLY low from Blizzard.

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  23. "LOL even if it was you have to play the game to here it so they already got your money"

    So you're saying that all the players have subscribed for a ridiculously long period because they're sure that they'll want to play forever?

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