Make Love Not Warcraft – Emmy Nominated

The "dedicated player". 

The Blizzard team rush to Stan's house in an attempt to deliver the Sword in time, but find that he is not home. Stan's dad reveals that he is over at Cartman's basement with the other boys. After the Blizzard employees update Stan's dad on the situation, he reveals that he is also a player ('a noob at best') and would be able to deliver the sword in game, of course. Randy and the crew comandeer a civillian's vehicle and rush down to Best Buy to use one of their terminals to access World of Warcraft.

Randy manages to deliver the sword just in time, in which Stan is able to finally kill the 'dedicated player'. Upon finally killing this player, they ask Cartman "what now?", in which Cartman replies that they can finally start playing the game again.

The game draws not only parallels to the apparent WoW Dedication and addiction on a global scale, but the mentality of many (stereo?)typical MMORPG players in general. Alot of the terminology in the game was blatantly and incorrectly mis-used, which personally made the episode alot funnier. Soon after the episode aired it was reported that the episode's Wikipedia article was 'corrected' of all their  incorrect applications of the in-game jargon, you can read some more specific information here.

Players and non-players of the game alike deemed it an instant hit, the episode drew large audiences and even attracted several non-regular viewers of the show (however, I'm a self-confessed South Park fan). This is not the first time South Park has touched on Internet/Video game related culture with similar reactions. In the same season, we saw Cartman Freeze himself in an attempt to quicken the Nintendo Wii's release date (ends up becoming frozen for 540 years instead), and an earlier season yielded Chinpokemon – which was a blatant go at the Pokemon Craze and another recent episode ridiculed artists such as Britney Spears and Lars Ulrich (Metallica) of MP3s and peer to peer sharing.

Overall, this was definitely a great episode and proves that the writers of the show are on the pulse of current events, with online/internet phenomenons by no means playing an exception to their addictive, yet undeniable ridicules. Up against South Park is Family Guy (who they have also had an episode on), Robot Chicken, and The Simpsons (they have also featured an episode based on The Simpsons, titled "Simpsons did it"). The show has been nominated for an Emmy seven times, having only won with their Super Best Friends episode. Another Emmy nominated episode was the timeless Trapped in the Closet episode, where they satirise the Scientology religion and subsequent following of Tom Cruise. The second half of season 11 will commence in October '07, which I'm sure we're in store for some absolute gems.

You can read a bit more about this episode on Wikipedia here, where some of the more intricate details (production etc.) are disclosed.