It's your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen. According to a story on the Ocean County Register's web site the University of California at Irvine has received a whopping $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct a study centered around Blizzard's hit MMO game World of Warcraft.

Specifically the study is supposed to look into why Chinese players of the game tend to play it as is while American players tend to try to use mods to play the game. UCI informatics professor Bonnie Nardi, who will head up the study, says, "We are examining the many reasons for this disparity, including cultural and institutional factors," We will leave it to our readers to debate whether a government agency should be spending our money in this matter.

[Via Massively]