Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, that’s a mouthful, so most people shorten the full moniker to the acronym, MMORPG.

A little background for those who don't play games online. MMORPGs are just one flavor of many types of online games. MMORPGs include such games as World of Warcraft, Sims Online, Everquest, Everquest II, Second Life, Age of Conan, Hello Kitty Adventure Island, Free Realms, and dozens more.

However, that list does not include other types of on-line games such as Party Poker, Red Baron, Call of Duty, Enemy Territory, Quake, and so many others; I cannot begin to list them all here.

Currently there are over one hundred and fifty of these games being played by millions of people throughout the world, and there are over one hundred new games currently in development for release over the next two years.¹

These games have target audiences including games just for children such as Free Realms, Hello Kitty Adventure Island, and others. They can be played on personal computers, Playstation, and X-Box consoles and even on phones.

Online games have reached a level of popularity that means that you will more than likely encounter this type of evidence in a case at some point. World of Warcraft alone claims millions of subscribers. And that is just one game of literally dozens of online game titles.

Anywhere people congregate and interact over time you will find crime or some form of bad behavior. A quick Google search will turn up dozens of news stories where people are accused of committing real-world crimes where one of these games has played a part. Here are excerpts from just a few of those published news stories:

“A Houston mom is accused of luring a then 15-year-old Canadian boy into a sexual relationship after “meeting” him through the online game World of Warcraft, according to a report from Fox.

Lauri Price, 42, apparently thought this through. She decided she’d fly to Canada to have relations with the boy when he turned 16—as a way to sidestep U.S. statutory rape laws. (In Canada, the age of consent is 16.)”²

“A South Korean couple whose three-month-old daughter died of malnutrition while they were raising a virtual child in an online game pleaded guilty to negligent homicide on Friday.”³