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Looking down from my screen after disposing of a dimetrodon with a frozen missile of death, I noticed something about my friends in "World of Warcraft."

My online buddies - grouped together in an informal social structure called a guild - aren't just a bunch of kids playing a video game.

We're a pair of generations, X and Y, the post-baby boom that has grown up with computer games as part of the fabric of our daily lives. And those games have become a big part of our social network.

Many of us are in our 20s and 30s. A couple in our 40s. And quite a few teenagers.

But despite varied ages we have a lot in common. We all share a set of oddball pop culture references. And we're all quite comfortable living in a digital, paperless world where we strategize together, talk to each other and spur each other on as we kill harder and harder foes.

The younger ones even pick up some of the older gamers' humor.

One day, a group of us all came on at the same time, and many, many hellos were being bandied about.

At that, one of our teens piped in with, "Hello, John Boy."

This was followed by one 30-somethings saying, "No. Not the Waltons!"

Any quote from obscure and not-so-obscure science fiction movies is also fair game.

The humor is often shared by the creators of "Warcraft," in items they make such as "The 1 Ring" - a ring that gives a point to each of a players stats, with a caveat on it that says "not quite as good as the 2 Ring." This, of course, being a play on the dangerously powerful One Ring in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings."

Those in my guild, who have never met in person, talk to each other every night on a system called Ventrilo. We also type messages to the group inside the game.

We have a Web site to post messages and a network of Myspace sites where we show pictures and e-mail each other during the day.

The group's members come from all over the world. We have folks in Hong Kong, Australia, Israel, Canada and across the United States.

We talk about politics (albeit carefully), world news, gaming trends and, of course, how to take down the high level monsters that hang around in this fantasy world we play in.

In some ways, "Warcraft" is a faster news system than some of the news services out there.

Only for certain topics however.

For instance, I think gamers on "Warcraft" were some of the first to find out about the deaths of Steve Irwin and Anna Nicole Smith.

The war in Iraq? That's a bit too heavy for us.

But if you watch our group carefully, you can also see players with unique skills emerge and develop. Skills that could be useful in real life and in some more serious situations.

I've noticed, for instance, some of my fellow guild members have emerged as natural leaders.

They disperse the strategy, tell people what roles to play and make sure the action moves along.

One of our best leaders is an elementary school janitor in real life. Another is a computer programmer. A third is a 20-year-old college kid.

In a disaster, I'd rather have these guys around than some cryptic government official. That's for sure.

Beyond that, there's a group of strategizers, looking at varying ways to destroy monsters or survive a dungeon.

Our best strategizer is a computer programmer. Another is a 19-year-old kid in Australia who can rattle off tactics for bosses in dungeons you haven't even heard of yet.

And of course, there are the jokers - who try to make sure everybody has a good time, don't take life too seriously and realize they are playing a game.

That's my job, although there's a group of 20-something college kids who are equally good at it. As is our member who is a singer for Disney in Hong Kong.

Our social network probably seems alien to the baby boomer and older generations that came before us. It seems weird that so much social activity could come through a game.

It's a trend, however, that I think will continue to grow and evolve as technology continues to transform our world.

And I think as the first group of us who have grown up as gamers start to move into leadership roles in society, you'll see the world finding more ways to put these often scoffed-at skills to use.

It will be interesting to see how a bunch of folks who are now spending their time discussing how to kill a 50-foot-tall parrot monster will change the world.

But I think the open-minded, multicultural, highly-skilled bunch can only change it for the better.