"... Tolkien believed that all good people could come together on the same side. This is one of the biggest questions that humanity faces: can we have a world consensus by which we're all partners in finding a solution? Or, like the Hoarde vs Alliance situation in WoW, are we doomed to be in separate factions competing ultimately to the death? It touches on very serious issues but in a playful way."

People have used cards, sticks, coins, bones, and heavenly bodies for hundreds of years trying to divine the future. Many of these past-times, such as the Chinese I Ching, the Tarot and astrology live on. People are almost obsessed with knowing the outcome of the future, both in the short term and in the long term, and this includes scientists.Sociologist William Bainbridge uses a non-traditional method of divining the future. He studies human behaviour in on-line virtual reality games, such as World of Warcraft, to look at societal belief systems and to forecast the future of human beliefs. Bainbridge notes alternative reality games like World of Warcraft can answer real-life questions through play because the game deals with current real-life issues.In an interview with New Scientist reporter, Samantha Murphy, Bainbridge likened World of Warcraft to Tolkein's Lord of the Rings, sayingDr. Jane McGonigal has taken questions like these and created an alternate reality game that aims to change the real world. Evoke is a short-term game in which creators hope to impart skill sets on players -- real skills that can be applied in the real world. Evoke takes gamers through ten weeks of set goals to achieve, and at the end of the game, players will have viable business ideas and will be matched up with mentors -- all with the idea of changing the real world. The game got underway earlier this month.Bainbridge wrote alternate reality games "foreshadow future developments," including sociological research. Bainbridge has hosted a three-day science symposium in World of Warcraft, in which participants had to create avatars in order to participate. The environment is perfect for sociologists, he maintains, providing an instant laboratory for researchers.The on-line alternate world has grown tremendously over the past few years, something pundits credit to mobile technology and social media, which allows gamers to participate in huge collaborative games wherever they are. Alternate Reality Games (ARG for short) have been used to promote real-life events, such as video games (Halo 2) and movies (Artificial Intelligence). The ARG universe is so big, it even has its own news network Games can be big, played by thousands of people over a period of years, such as World of Warcraft, Beast, and Second Life. ARG cam also be very small with few players. They can be short-terms games that involve real-life activities and social networking, a format successfully used by musical group Nine Inch Nails in 2007 to promote a cd. One game mimics registration into an institution of higher learning, Thelema College. The "college" explores "magick" and other spiritual beliefs.People can earn real-life money through alternate reality games, and there are many business people who create products and earn a living primarily through games like Second Life.Evoke's creator, Dr. Jane McGonigal , has created two other AR games that used future forecasting, or technology forecasting . One was called Superstruct, the other called World Without Oil. The use of games for future forecasting is a twist on mathematical models created by scientists to predict the outcomes of human behaviour. Using ARG constructs for forecasting might provide valuable insights into potential situational outcomes because the format allows scenario thinking The US military uses virtual reality games to train soldiers, as does Canada. The format has also been adapted into an educational tool for children and for those who have autism. With the popularity of the format for both social activities and applied technology, there is speculation that the world depicted in James Cameron's movie Avatar is not far off from reality.