After losing a schoolyard fight, a 17-year-old boy in Beijing recently covered a classmate with gasoline and lit him on fire, claiming he "had lost himself in World of Warcraft and when he committed the crime he had transformed into a Fire Mage."

The boy has been sentenced to 8 years in prison and ordered to pay the victim and his family a restitution of 760,000 RMB (approximately $103,140 USD).

While this crime is both shocking and bizarre, we have to applaud the Chinese officials for offering a sane punishment as response. Had this occurred here in the United States, the blame would have landed squarely on Blizzard, and a multi-million dollar lawsuit followed by a governmental inquiry into the evils of World of Warcraft (possibly helmed by Tipper Gore) wouldn't be at all surprising.

I so read this wrong first time around, I thought he got 8 years in prision for giving a chinese burn, I now upon re-reading it noticed my slight mishap

mad story though

time to let Jack Thompson out of his box again

after i pull that bank job i've been thinking about i plan to blame Kane and Lynch

Better watch if you said this on xbox live someone might call the thought police on you!

i threw a icecube at a kid at school and claimed i was a frost mage...but he got a kick out of it so it didnt matter.

batistablr writes...

Yeh, but my money is that something like this will happen in the US. I ain't a WoW fan, just a gamer sick of people blaming computer games for their childrens bad behaviour. I got news for you. It's down to the parents to prevent their child playing violent games deemed unsuitable! Not the developers or publishers! Age ratings are their for a reason!

Rant over.

i don't think playing violent games or seeing violent movies or hearing inflamitory music is going to cause someone to go off and commit a violent act by itself. surely the cause of this kind of behaviour has a lot more to do with this kids personal life at home. i personally have see all kinds of violence in every form of media and shockingly have never enacted an act of violence on another. scapegoating is the great american pastime.