Coat Tails, Guides, and Career Choices

Facebook ads seem designed to make me chuckle and shake my head at the same time.  Tonight I got a two-fer.

First there is a little riding on coat tails.  Maybe somebody will confuse our game with that successful Zynga game!  Dumber plans have worked before… just not that frequently.

And then a plug for a WoW leveling guide!

Really, I don’t want to bag on WoW here, it is what it is for better or worse, but in the post-Cataclysm game is there really any call for a leveling guide?  Isn’t “talk to the NPC with the exclamation mark over his head, follow the arrow on your mini-map to the spot highlighted, complete the requirement listed on the right side of your screen, then turn the whole thing in” about as simple as it can get?  And doesn’t the game pretty much lead you around on a leash through at least the first 60 levels?  And hasn’t the cuts in the experience required pretty much guaranteed that you will out level content long before you finish it all?

Of course, P. T. Barnum was right, though with the increase in world population, I am going to guess that suckers are born at an interval much smaller than one minute these days.  Some such will buy this guide, and a few will no doubt think that their $35 has been well spent.

Then, on a more disturbing note, I have to wonder what aspect of my Facebook profile triggered this particular ad.

I suppose it is possible that this ad will end up being excellent career advice for somebody, I just cannot picture the scene.  There you are on Facebook and suddenly, “Oh, psychology! Why didn’t I think of that?”

But then, I see 308 people already clicked the “like” button, so what do I know?