Ding! World of Warcraft Well Played, Well Researched
Crystle Martin, Sarah Chu, Dee Johnson, Amanda Ochsner, Caro Williams, & Constance Steinkuehler
World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online (MMO) role-playing game that takes place in the fantasy realm of Azeroth and boasts over ten million players. WoW was vast in scope when originally released, and has since added on more territories and character customization choices. Originally consisting of two continents, Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, two expansion packs added the realm of Outland and the continent of Northrend to the map, and, have also expanded the content of the game with the addition of new races, lands, quests, etc., and raising the level cap (highest attainable level). When designing a character, the player is offered a variety of choices, such as selecting a character’s faction (Horde or Alliance), race (10 playable races which include Night Elf, Troll, and Undead), and class (9 different classes which include Made, Paladin, and Druid). The player is able to further specialize their character by selecting two professions, as well as spending points to develop talent builds. In addition, during gameplay, decisions must be made about what armor to wear, what weapons to wield, and in what order to cast spells. The choices are vast and are able to be molded to fit a variety of playing styles, especially considering the social interactions that raids and guilds support, the wide variety of gear choices that are made and re-made regularly, the complex role-play opportunities, and the various patterns that different players develop (and swear by).
As such, WoW offers a tremendous number of avenues for the player’s enjoyment and just as many avenues of study for researchers interested in informal learning, especially in online collaborative spaces. We all play WoW but our backgrounds vary beyond that, ranging from a professor who researches informal learning and MMOs, four graduate students with a variety of research interests (including math, visual studies, and literacy), and a high school senior who is an avid gamer. As players and researchers of WoW, we could ramble endlessly about the game but we have instead decided to talk about nine of our most loved things. In this essay, we delve into how WoW has redefined gaming, narrative and raid centric playing styles, as well as the multi-level social interactions in WoW, as an exploration of what we love about playing the game. Then, we explore character aesthetics and player-produced visual models, the use of math and information literacy, and finally a player’s experience with time in WoW, for our more research-oriented pursuits. Though we cannot go into much depth for each section in this short essay, we do cover a breadth of topics to offer the reader an overview of the wide variety of perspectives from which to think about WoW as players and as researchers.
WoW <3 from the Player Perspective
World of Theseus (Lead: Williams)
According to Greek legend, the ship of Theseus was replaced bit by bit as oars wore out and planks became rotten, until the whole of the ship was rebuilt with new and stronger pieces. Philosophers promptly began a fight—that continues even today—over whether that new ship was the ship of Theseus or a completely different ship altogether. If all the parts of something are changed or replaced, is it still that same something? Is there an essence that persists beyond the surface details? WoW, that living shifting persistent world that millions visit daily, is our modern Ship of Theseus, changing bit by bit and becoming stronger, newer, and completely familiar.
WoW was originally released in 2004 by Blizzard, and they have been consistently remaking it since. Two expansions (with a third in the works) brought drastic changes to the game for those who paid, but the real story of Theseus is in the patch notes—the long and informative list of changes that serve as the primary reading material during the long (seemingly infinite, sometimes) installation process of each patch. Those notes51 describe in detail the ways in which Blizzard has been striving to balance their incredibly complicated world, in pages and pages of text, carefully organized. And while some of these changes are small—a bug fix here, a change of gear stats there, an increase of spell-casting distance—others are incredibly large—a map change here, a new quest there, the complete and repeated revamping of talent trees52.
As mentioned in the introduction, when creating a character in WoW, there are 10 different races to choose from. Next, the player must choose one of nine different classes,53 each of which approach the game quite differently. For example, the rogue class sneaks around and gains extra power for attacks that are unexpected, members of the hunter class capture and train attack animals, and warlocks deal elemental magical damage from a distance. Within each chosen class, the player then must decide over time what type of that class s/he wants to be. This choice is made through the use of talent trees, where the player can unlock special skills and strengths by spending painfully earned talent points. Each class has three different talent trees—druids, for instance, have the trees of Balance, Feral Combat, and Restoration to choose from, and each tree supports a particular type of gameplay (in this case, nature spells, shapeshifting melee, and healing, respectively). Using a talent point in the Balance tree unlocks more powerful Balance options, and lessens the options that the player has with Feral Combat and Restoration, so each talent point is an influential decision.
In every single patch they’ve released, Blizzard has modified some talents, but even more dramatically, they have so drastically changed the talent trees of every class at least twice that talent points were completely refunded so players could re-design their character from scratch. For druids, the talent points were refunded a full four times, which means that someone who’s been playing a druid since day one has re-designed this important aspect of his/her character repeatedly. This sounds a bit frustrating, as with each new specialization, called a “spec”, players have to learn new spells and form new habits. But what these changes indicate is that Blizzard is constantly improving the balance between classes and types of classes, fine-tuning the distribution of power in the game. In other words, Blizzard has responded thoughtfully to play patterns and player preferences, working constantly to refresh and polish their world, in a fashion that challenges the often-static nature of conventional games.
Not all games are static; in fact, many of them are static in some ways but offer new downloadable content or expansions or second releases or bug fixes. But WoW changes or adds all of those new pieces. Games like Tic-Tac-Toe don’t have anything like expansion packs, really—they are just classics and they stay the same. Monopoly gets new makeovers all the time, including gold and diamonds, but I use the same rules and strategies I’ve always used despite the appearance of the game. Starcraft 2 is released over a decade after Starcraft 1, and they are just as dis(similar) as WoW in 2004 and WoW in 2010. When I encounter bugs in Red Dead Redemption, I wonder when Rockstar Games will fix them, but the question is really whether they’ll be fixed. I’ve been spoiled, that’s all—I expect fixes and new things and dexterous changes as a part and parcel of gaming, as if that’s what game companies should do as a matter of course. The truth is, though, that that expectation was created by my WoW playing—it may be slowly becoming more normal for game companies to continue working and polishing long after a game’s release, but that bar was originally set, met, and exceeded by WoW.
It was during the analysis and design of the game, captured in “Math as narrative in WoW forum discussions” (Steinkuehler & Williams, 2009), that the unusual nature of WoW caught my attention. I realized that I couldn’t retrieve the spells being talked about—I mean, I know what “mindflay” looks like now, but what did it look like back in 2006 when the data was retrieved? All of these little parts of WoW had changed, bit by bit, which changed the way certain classes were played and the way they interacted with other characters, which changed the make-up of raid groups and player-vs-player battles, which changed which classes were being recruited by guilds and started as alts, which meant that everything changed. The WoW that I play now is not the WoW that I played back in 2004, but somehow, simultaneously, it is the same WoW, and I get that same sense of recognition and wonder when I log on. Perhaps, to steal Douglas Adams’ (1990) phrasing and use it for my own purposes, “to be overly concerned with the original design and details, which are merely sentimental souvenirs of the past, is to fail to see the game itself.”
Narrative Immersion and Identity Exploration (Lead: Ochsner)
The Warcraft universe has an incredibly well-developed history. Known as lore, this history spans thousands of years and can be explored in great detail on the official Blizzard website, numerous fan sites and wikis, as well as novels, comic books, and manga that delve into this universe’s defining events and its most important characters. The level of importance that any player ascribes to the game’s lore is entirely a matter of choice. For some, being engaged with the game’s narrative elements is the reason to play; for others, narrative features are irrelevant. It is through exploring this engagement (or lack thereof) with the game world’s narrative that we can truly begin to see the depth of gameplay options that WoW offers to
its players.
Taliaraz is my newly-created Draenei shaman. She is a dark-skinned female with wavy black hair and harsh, hostile-looking facial features. She is alien to the game’s primary setting Azeroth, having just crash landed on the planet with a group of fellow Draenei who are fleeing a demon army referred to as the Burning Legion. Overjoyed to have solid ground under her feet and filled with a passionate hatred of all Orcs, who were corrupted by the Legion and then betrayed her people on their former homeland Draenor, Taliaraz is eager to begin exploring this newfound world. As a shaman she feels a deep connection with the earth, and as she nourishes that sense of closeness she hopes to be able to learn increasingly powerful magic. Curious about the properties and potential powers embedded in the earth of Azeroth, she has taken up jewelcrafting, believing that diligent study will reveal some of the world’s secrets.
This inductive description serves as much more than an introduction to Taliaraz’s character – it indicates a certain play style for WoW, and it is one of many possible approaches. My choice to place an emphasis on Taliaraz’s story and personality shows a play style that focuses heavily on narrative experience. Much of the story introducing Taliaraz comes directly from Blizzard at the very beginning of the game through an opening cinematic that describes the plight of her people. Her physical features and role as a shaman were choices that I made, but from a set of options that the developers provided. Finally, I supplemented the developer-created story and features with my own attempts to further develop and connect with her character. For example, her eagerness to explore the new world and her dislike or orcs are personal touches that I came up with on my own as a way to be more deeply invested in the experience of playing Taliaraz. However, these are features that are believable and consistent with information provided by WoW’s developers. With this approach to play that is heavily focused on role-playing, I would try to experience the world as Taliaraz would and protect her integrity by making choices that make sense for her character. As I play her, I would try to think as if my thought process was hers, and under the most ideal conditions it would be as if my mind and her mind were one and the same. This coming together of player and character is what James Paul Gee terms projective identity (2007, p. 50-54), which he uses to describe both the player’s act of projecting their real-life identity onto their virtual character and to the player’s process of making that character into an ongoing project or creation to be worked on and perfected over time. When players engage in an act of projective identity, they feel responsible for their character and consider what experiences they want that their characters to have throughout the trajectory of the game. They are then careful to play the character in a way that is consistent with that path.
One of the advantages of taking this approach to playing WoW is that it allows players to reflect on their character’s place in the game world, answering questions about where their loyalties lie and what their goals are. The character might take the time to get to know the people of each region s/he stops to quest in, and s/he might examine her/his reasons for helping them. This approach to play allows the player to explore different facets of her/his identity, trying on personality traits that s/he finds desirable or intriguing. S/he may also be able to play out possible fantasies, such as having a more striking physical prowess, being more assured in her/his powers of persuasion, or possessing more freedom and a greater sense of autonomy. With this kind of play, the player’s focus remains concentrated on the game world and on her/his character more than social experiences. The player’s experience is largely introspective and involves her/his using the developer-created fantasy universe to create a character s/he can use to explore her/his own identity. The projective identity occupying the space between the player’s real-world and virtual identities reflects her/his “own values, desires, choices, goals, and actions” (2007, p. 50), which Gee explains creates a sense of ownership. This experience of creating, controlling, respecting, and developing a virtual character can be deeply pleasurable.
A Non-Narrative Social Approach: Raiding (Lead: Ochsner)
WoW is not just a world of history and lore; it is also filled with characters controlled by players from the real world. While the complex game world might be deeply engaging for some players, others enjoy WoW for entirely different reasons. For many, this game is at its core a social experience that players use to hang out with friends, play a role in a group, or compete against other players. A player can be oblivious to the current situation of her/his character’s race, might not be able to explain why certain groups are at war, and may not give a single conscious thought to her/his character’s personality or motivations. While it might initially seem like this player is missing out on crucial parts of the WoW experience, this isn’t necessarily the case. An equally valid and popular approach to the game is to value player-focused social experiences over narrative and character elements.
While there are a number of ways to play WoW that focus on the social elements of the game, one play style in particular seems to be a direct foil to the narrative-focused approach described in the last section – that of a raiding guild member. Guilds are self-formed groups of players who support one another and play together. When guilds raid, they form groups of characters that have reached the level-cap and go into dungeons to defeat their faction’s more difficult enemies. Serious raiding guilds are demanding and selective, accepting only the most skilled and the most committed players. They often have very specific character requirements determining which players are allowed to join, and many follow strict time schedules.
A raiding player utilizes her/his character to play out a prescribed role as efficiently as possible. Take my own raiding mage character as an example. The main role of a raiding mage is to deal as much damage as possible to enemies. While this sounds like a very simple role, successfully playing any role in a raid group requires a precise process. My mage would be expected to deal a certain amount of damage per second (dps) to enemies. If I want to be considered a valuable member of the group, that damage figure needs to consistently fall within a certain range.
The mage’s skills and strengths should be based off of a carefully researched “build” of talent points, which I would research online, often seeking additional advice from my more experienced guild members. Other players have poured countless hours into determining the most successful skill set for a mage, and I am best able to help my group by relying on their expertise. Raiding players are responsible for keeping track of any changes that the developers make to the game because the most successful raiding build can change quickly. For example, for a long time, using arcane spells was the best approach for raiding mages in WoW, but recent updates and changes have made fire spells a more successful spell type. Not only is the best type of spell set predetermined for a raiding player, there is also a specific spell rotation (the repetition of certain spells cast in a specific order) that must be used.
Raiding requires participants to play out very specific roles and yet the play style itself acts as a foil to a role-playing approach to the game. A story-focused, role-playing type of play involves the player navigating the game’s vast and open world with a character that allows her/him to explore various identities that s/he chooses. Raiders follow a relatively linear path through the raid dungeons and are expected to perform specific sets of actions at very precise times. Yet, raiding is a challenging activity that requires players to take on a lot of responsibility. This type of play offers players fewer choices, but the high level of challenge makes it an extremely gratifying experience when it is done well, especially since it is a highly organized and complex group accomplishment. While the reasons to value each of these play styles might differ greatly, they are both meaningful and valuable, having a lot to offer their respective players. Ultimately, players who take a narrative and character-based approach to WoW are essentially playing a different game than raiding players, finding pleasure in different activities and gaining vastly different skills. Whether it’s feeling a sense of ownership out of taking on a projective identity, effectively playing out a critical role in a group activity, or achieving another accomplishment from an entirely different play style, any approach to World of Warcraft has the potential to be both gratifying and offer the player a powerful sense of agency.
Multi-Level Social Interaction in WoW (Lead: Johnson)
The impact of video games on my life has been enormous. WoW is a wonderful illustration of what a virtual world, inhabited by players scattered around the globe, can provide to an adolescent male such as myself. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of players in WoW are not adolescents, nor are they all male. In my case, this has led to exposure to peer groups that under other circumstances would have remained unknown to me. Late night discussions about politics, gender, and race, although uncommon, are not unheard of in these spaces. Other Internet phenomena tend to make their way into WoW as well, popular memes born elsewhere on the Internet almost always pass through chat54 demonstrating that although the world of Azeroth is insulated, players enjoy throwing information at each other and seeing what happens.
My first encounter with WoW took place in the most stereotypical environment for gaming possible: my mother’s basement. Games were by no means a new media to me. In fact, first-person shooters defined most of the peer groups at my school. I remember my first attempt at creating an avatar. I was so puzzled by the User Interface and could not figure out why anyone would want to sit alone and play a video game online with no face to face contact with other players.
Since those heady days of youth I have learned quite a few things about virtual worlds. All of the built-in services are available at all times from any location with an Internet connection and the appropriate computer gear. They can provide the social interactions of a playground, the wonder of watching an elaborate storyline unfold, and learning experiences that, under the right circumstances, parallel those found in the most well-equipped classrooms. The ability to be social with such a broad population in a low-risk environment is a skill no other generation has had the opportunity to master in such great numbers at such an early age. The fact that WoW is a persistent world means I can wake up at three o’clock in the morning and find a group to run a dungeon with. It may be made up of four other white males who are staying up too late, but the number of times I’ve had the opportunity to connect with say, a stay-at-home mom or siblings waiting for their parents to get home seem to contradict any preconceived notion that WoW players are a homo-genized population.
If you’ve ever read science fiction classics, you know that virtual worlds and the unique social situations they facilitate have long been discussed. Groups that differ in many aspects - age, nationality, and gender, to name a few - occupy the spaces provided by games like WoW. Over the course of the standard ninety-minute play-session I have no difficulty executing hundreds of player-to-player trades. Through thick and thin, WoW has promoted an exchange of perspectives between myself and otherwise disparate peers. The feeling of actively contributing to a narrative whenever you play is intoxicating—and of course, there are two million other players participating in a comparable narrative simultaneously. MMOs have mediated the barrier for engagement among groups that other formats of play cannot due to their social or geographic locations.
WoW provides a space for individuals to create and exchange values, be that through virtual goods or friendships with other players. Within my guild alone, there are sixty members playing four or more hours daily. Each of these players maintains a complex social network as well as participating actively in both personal and private chat channels. Many of them also participate in the frequently lewd and rebellious “Trade” chat channel that is usually used for buying, selling, and trading in-game goods and service. These multiple layers of discourse take place at the same time and most players don’t realize the complexity of the social networks they are building.
WoW grabs many players’ attention not because of the differences between it and their real lives, but because of the similarities. The conflicts I have moderated as an officer in a guild are not different from the classrooms I have taught in. Completing a long and tortuous progression through the newest content is intended to leave a player with the same feeling of accomplishment gained by completing a project in school or at work. Being mentored by a more experienced player feels the same as being mentored in any other situation. Most importantly, participating in varied and overlapping human interaction is an integral and necessary part of WoW, just as it is fundamental to everyday life.
Some of the rather menial tasks that players are asked to perform once reaching the level-cap, such as daily quests, resemble the small hardships that we all face in our day to day lives. Almost all quests boil down to a ‘fetch this item’ ideal, which can get really boring really fast if progressing through levels is your goal. However, when an element of competition is added between either the player and their compatriots or their sworn enemies, an enormous jump is made into the realm of engaging social play. Now, when out searching for an item used to complete a quest, interaction with others is almost always the most efficient way to achieve the desired goal. In many cases, specifically with quests that can be completed repeatedly at the level cap (called “dailies”); players with a shared objective will form a group regardless of the difficulty of the task at hand. To avoid boredom at work during coffee breaks, we group up around the water cooler to gossip. At home, we largely follow the tradition of sitting down at the table to eat. Yet, all of these spaces remain engaging despite repetition. Conflict and reconciliation take place between individuals and groups inside virtual worlds in the same way they take place in any other venue viable
for discourse.
In Blizzard’s upcoming expansion to this world, social aspects of the game are receiving heavy attention from developers. There are more incentives for a player to both join a guild and stay committed to that guild’s well being for an extended period of time. The fact that the creators of this virtual world are emphasizing the game’s social aspects is a statement about their importance. These spaces are given depth and reek of humanity because of the people who inhabit them virtually. Disregarding the rich, engaging, and thoughtful storylines, it is not the game environment itself that instigates many interactions in MMO, but it is the players who are using the space that make the space rich, engaging content.
WoW <3 from the Researcher Perspective
Looks Matter (Lead: Chu)
It started with a staff. Long, slender, and tipped with ruby gemstones. They called it the Emberstone Staff, and it was a much-coveted rare weapon dropped by a boss in the Deadmines dungeon. My first WoW character was a night elf druid with shiny blue locks, and, like most low-level players, I sported a mish-mash of gear, which could only do a three-year-old who dresses herself proud. I spent countless hours in front of the bank in Darnassus organizing the items in my vault storage space and equipped bags. One evening, while I meticulously arranged my linen and wool cloths by type in rows—I was a slight neat freak even with my in-game bags—another night elf druid who bore a striking resemblance to me approached the bank. What caught my eye was less her uncanny similarity to me both in hairstyle and mismatched armor, and more that I could not help but notice her shiny weapon as it beamed in all its glory. “Hey there,” I said, as I swiveled the game screen’s perspective and zoomed in to take a closer look. “Where did you get that staff?” Though only the two of us stood at the bank, it took her a moment to realize that my question was directed at her. “Me? From Deadmines.” After bombarding my in-game twin with a series of questions about the details of her cool-looking staff and the dungeon, I asked my guildmates to lead me to the so-called Deadmines, determined to claim an Emberstone Staff as my own.
In retrospect, as I leveled three different characters to the 70-somethings, the Emberstone Staff was one of the least attractive items I would come to own. My adoration of how cool other players’ gear looked and my determination to obtain these items for myself, however, remain unchanged. This gawking often took place inside cities, where a high number of players congregated, many standing idly, resting. In their study of the social dynamics of WoW, Ducheneaut, Yee, Nickell, and Moore (2006) observed that a common occurrence was that players would leave their characters equipped in high-level gear parked in front of the auction house in densely populated cities, almost as statues for others to admire. The researchers likened this practice to how spectators would crowd around the best pinball players at an arcade. In WoW, the items that players equip signify social status and prestige. They tell other players where you have traveled, what bosses you have slain, and how much wealth you hold. An experienced player can “read” another’s outfit and be able to construct a good portion of that character’s history and experience with the game. Less experienced players are still able to distinguish between low-level and high-level items by how decorated the pieces are. Armor sets formed with matching pieces take longer and more skill to obtain, so those wearing such sets are therefore more attractive to other players. When playing in groups, wearing good gear is one of the major determining factors for a player’s inclusion in a group. Those in immediately recognizable high-level gear are hugely favored in dungeons and raids. In fewer words: looks and aesthetics in WoW matter.
Owning appealing gear in order to advance in the game is not the only reason that players collect attractive weapons and armor. Klastrup and Tosca (2009) found that, “many players spend time acquiring clothing with no value to the mechanical game-performance,” but items available in the game such as tuxedos, dresses, and Santa suits allowed the players to play a bit of dress-up. They observed that most players, not only role-players and female players, took an interest in looking good and being fashionable. For these players, what they equip act as visual cues to their status or expertise, and often their humor, which motivates other players to obtain similar visible markers for themselves. For me, with three high-level characters, the Emberstone Staff was only the beginning of years of admiring and chasing fashion.
Over the years, there has been growing academic attention being paid to aesthetics in games and their power to visually communicate meanings and values. T.L. Taylor (2009) has investigated the use of mods (user-created game modifications) in WoW and describes how mods help to “reconfigure play,” by changing the aesthetics of the user interface in order to make what is visible more useful, and often what is hidden more visible, to help players advance in the game. One mod that Taylor discusses, CTRaidAssist, provides options and visual cues (such as broadcasting vital information on players’ screens during a boss fight) that are so heavily relied upon it is as though the mod is the 41st member of a 40-player raid. With the understanding that video games are a highly visual medium with imagery composing a large part of gameplay, I take interest in the kinds of visual cues that are displayed on game screens, such as the gear that players equip or the visible warnings that CTRaidAssist produces. As a researcher, I am fascinated by the layout of game interfaces, and in particular, how and in what ways visual elements on a game screen are significant in communicating complex ideas and concepts during player/user interface interactions. In the following section, I consider further the visual culture of games and its role in game studies by discussing a scenario in which the use of visual models is an essential part of WoW gameplay.
Learning to Slay Monsters Using Visual Models (Lead: Chu)
I never anticipated that I would be asked to complete homework for my guildmates. After all, I often played WoW to avoid studying. Occasionally, I would help a guildmate in high school generate essay ideas for his history class or work through a calculus problem with another who just started college—with the aid of several math tutorial websites, of course. However, this particular request was different. I was reminded of my assignment when a guildmate asked me, “Did you study those boss fights for Thursday?”
At the time, The Burning Crusade, WoW’s first expansion, had been released for about two months. My guild then had just enough players leveled to 70 and sufficiently geared to attempt Karazhan, a raid dungeon, together. Our guild leader possessed stellar managerial skills that could be the envy of top executives; he posted weekly on our guild message forum the highly detailed work plans for the raids taking place each week. Click the “Sign Up” tab to fill in your availability. Sign up for only the raids you will show up for. Meet at the portal 10 minutes prior to raid time. Ensure that you have all the gear, pots, and mats55 you will need. Go to the Bosskillers website and study all the fights. If you don’t know what you’re doing and wipe56 the raid, you will be replaced.
Bosskillers, along with numerous other strategy websites and YouTube videos illustrating tactics for conquering WoW bosses, have saved me from ever being kicked out of a raid group. In using these resources, I was able to exhibit the appearance of competence and experience with the instances. Little did the other raid members know, I was only a noob57.
While countless player-produced strategy guides exist, numerous are text-only. As a visual learner, I value the complexity that a simple diagram can convey. Lengthy descriptions of room setting, player positioning, and fight tactics can be easily illustrated with a few screenshots of the room, marked up with symbols, arrows, and labels. A strategy guide on WorldofStrats.com for killing High King Maulgar in Gruul’s Lair, for example, includes a diagram that shows the ideal positioning of enemies in the room. In the diagram, a screenshot of the boss room sits beneath a layer of arrows and symbols: different colored translucent circles show the original positioning of the enemies (where they stand as a group on one side of the room), with arrows leading out of these circles and into solid circles that indicate the ideal positioning of these enemies (spread out around the room). This positioning is ideal since some enemies’ attacks affect their surrounding area and thus these enemies must be held away from the other raid members to keep them from harm. As circles in the diagram, the enemies are reduced to abstract shapes. The diagram, then, has stripped the raid down to its core, making them easier to comprehend; to illustrate the strategy, the actual appearance of the enemies is superfluous and the use of symbols is more efficient. Many videos made by players show such diagrams in action by animating the enemies moving from their original positions to their ideal locations in the room. Video captures of a group’s actual encounter with the enemies, often with text or voice overlay, can be found on numerous video-sharing websites such as YouTube, and also act as useful models for successfully
defeating enemies.
And that is precisely what they are; these fandom artifacts are models. Models are significant in their ability to represent abstract ideas and explain processes, as they capture the predictive features of a given system, situation, or phenomena. In scientific inquiry, models guide scientists in their work by helping to explain data and by inciting further exploration, engaging scientists in deeper inquiry that will lead to the revision of these models (Passmore, Stewart, & Cartier, 2009). However, model-based reasoning and inquiry at large are difficult to foster in even formal science learning contexts (Crawford, 2007). Yet, within the WoW community, we see players routinely create, circulate, and consume complex models in preparation for play.
If the infamous Leeroy Jenkins video58 fails to be a testament to the importance of preparation work done in and out of game leading up to a boss fight for you, then you simply need to stroll into a high-level dungeon without any knowledge of the fights for further proof. You likely will be slain faster than you can say, “I told you so.” If there is one thing I learned about being a successful raider, it is to do your homework. And sometimes, that could mean watching countless hours of
YouTube videos.
Math and WoW (Lead: Williams)
I love math. Like, really love it. Really, really love it. I love math the way Santa Claus loves eggnog, the way Night Elves love their pointy ears, the way that kittens love you in the morning before you’ve fed them.
But it’s a secret. When someone asks me what I do in school, I say, “I study education.” Or, “I study video games.” Because when I say, “I study math,” people flinch. There’s some horrific visceral reaction, and suddenly the fight or flight instinct wakes up, and I’m in front of someone who has no interest in being in front of
me anymore.
So I study video games. And in this case, I’m studying WoW, and I’m studying the way that suddenly math is okay, possibly even cool, because, boy oh boy, can math make you an amazing player! WoW is all about identifying patterns, then shifting those patterns according to specific stimuli. And it’s all about maximizing this (like damage-per-second, and regeneration rates, and efficiency for leveling, and auction house profit) and minimizing that (like damage taken, or the likelihood of running out of mana during a battle, or wiping completely in a raid). And it’s all about messily testing out different ideas and combinations, trying different armor and different weapons against different enemies, working to identify which is the elusive best. And it’s all about navigating various maps (can we say Cartesian coordinate plane, anybody?), and seeing what happens to some stats when others go up (can we say modeling unknown functions?), and always finding the best place to grind for each level (and although it sounds almost unachievable when put this way: can we say maximizing unknown functions?).
Don’t tell anybody, but WoW is crammed full of math, everywhere you look. It’s informal math, for the most part, and it bears more than a passing resemblance to math we often encounter in “real life.” When we have to run a few errands (buy milk, deposit check, buy stamps, drop off book at library), we minimize the distance traveled, trying to complete the errands as efficiently as possible given the constraints of roads, traffic, and locations. When we schedule two appointments at opposite ends of the town, we try to leave enough space in the middle just to travel from one to the other—we don’t want to be late, nor wait an uncomfortably short and uncomfortably long 45 minutes in a funny smelling waiting room with old magazines. So we estimate our speed and distance based on prior experience and have some idea of how much time we need. But there’s one big fabulous difference between math out here on Earth and math in there.
In Azeroth, we talk about it. When was the last time you systematically and thoroughly compared the efficiency of errand routes? Or examined class requirements and figured out a way to get your bachelor’s in 3.5 years, and compared your plan to that of your friends? Or calculated the likelihood of getting sick after eating that raw cookie dough, and evaluated the risk-reward ratio with the baker? Or added a numerical critique to the discussion page of a Wikipedia entry? (Well, maybe you do do these things. I mean, I do.)
In “real life,” some people discuss these types of things on a regular basis. In Azeroth, everyone is involved in those discussions (or rather, the mathematically parallel ones). Part of just being a WoW player is being up to snuff on the pros and cons of talent tree distributions, learning how to get places and meet up with people (memories just flooded my brain of groups waiting impatiently for me as I headed for the wrong dungeon!), of figuring out whether to use this piece of armor or that piece of armor (“This one adds to those stats, while this one adds a lot to those stats, but takes some away from these”), being able to read complex displays filled with numbers—all of these skills are expected of an experienced WoW player. And the way you learn these skills is a mixture of doing (repeatedly, in some cases) and talking—talking to guild mates or strangers, posting and arguing on forums, building mathematical models and comparing them with the models others have built.
My fascination with this topic began back in 2004, but only recently have I begun digging further into the mathematical activities that surround WoW. Relevant forums, such as those hosted by Blizzard, serve as a nice snapshot of what players think about and talk about. And when examining those forums, math rears its head repeatedly—in the service of scientific argumentation (Steinkuehler & Duncan, 2009), and, in a particularly fascinating case, deeply embedded in a complex blend of narrative and mathematical modeling (Steinkuehler & Williams, 2009). Future research, following in the footsteps of these studies, will hopefully continue to map out what the role of math is for the WoW community, and—I suspect—will confirm what resonates with my gameplay experience: math is used consistently as a powerful tool that you ignore at your own risk.
Wonderful math—if only I could share my love of it, like a contagious disease or fleeting smile. Wonderful WoW—it’s pretty fabulous what this game can do to so deftly change terror into temerity. Wonderful Azeroth—where everyone speaks
my language!
Information Literacy and the WoW Info Sphere (Lead: Martin)
WoW is an amazing place for the study of information literacy skills, which is very important both as a 21st century literacy and a lifelong learning skill. Information literacy has been defined by many different groups all with their own variations, but in general it can be described as the skills needed to find and use information when you have an information need. Typically, information literacy is written about in standards or processes designed for K-12 or university settings, focusing on institutional information sources and institutional uses for the information. However, these skills are imperative in all information use in life, and are especially valuable in being successful in WoW.
The information needed to move through WoW is a vast sea and requires navigation so as not to get lost on it. Navigation across this sea requires information literacy, for quite a few reasons. First, you have to realize that you need information. This happens to players all the time with questions arising like: Do I want this piece of armor? How should I spec my character? Where can I buy my mount? Next, you try to find the information you need by one of two methods — you either ask fellow players or look it up.
Looking up information for WoW is relatively easy. The information community surrounding the game is enormous, offering a variety of wikis, forums, and websites devoted to information about WoW. These resources, especially the wikis and forums, are extremely useful information resources because they are kept up-to-date and are vetted by a knowledgeable expert community. In this sense, for use in the game, these information resources would be on par with those you would use to research for a paper in an institutional setting. This comparison can be drawn due to the fact that both sets of resources (WoW wikis and published articles in library databases) are vetted and peer reviewed by their respective communities and each are refreshed by new information as either new research is completed or changes are made in the game (and the WoW wikis tend to be more up-to-date because the publication time is much shorter and peer-review is done in real-time). This comparison is not meant to lessen what academic publishing offers, but to raise the status of these WoW resources within their own context.
Asking for information through in-game chat channels is the other way that information seeking occurs in WoW. This is possibly the easiest way to seek information but not always the easiest way to have your information needs met. The usefulness and quality of the information received relies on the knowledge and willingness of the other players to share at a particular time. Most of the time people are willing to share the information they have or point players with information needs to resources outside of the game. It sometimes takes the player who needs the information asking the question multiple times but someone usually answers, and, oftentimes, gives a variety of sources that enrich the information literacy experience.
One of the most interesting aspects of information literacy in WoW is the fact that it is a different type of information literacy process than that described in traditional information literacy standards. It is collective information literacy (Martin & Steinkuehler, in press), information literacy that relies not only on resources but the collective intelligence (Levy, 1997) of the community. The knowledge of the individuals of the community creates the knowledge web that supports the information needs of the community. The collaboration within the game, as in many MMOs, has fostered this new type of information literacy using a range of information literacy skills, changed, recombined, and optimized for collaborative settings.
Crossing Time Maps (Lead: Martin)
WoW, being a persistent virtual world, has a clock that runs continuously and—unlike other types of games—WoW’s clock matches the solar/mechanical time that a player is experiencing in the physical world. Time functions very differently in different types of games. Time in games where missions or storylines are the driving force is rarely cyclical. Most often time is advanced by the story so that it does not matter if it takes five minutes or five hours to finish the mission, it will be midnight at the end either way. The only missions where time makes a difference are the complete this mission in x time style. For example, you have five minutes to escape before the nuclear bomb goes off ala Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent, and numerous other escape the burning/blowing up structure situations. In open world games, time is cyclical day after day. In Elder Scrolls: Oblivion or Grand Theft Auto 4, two open world games, time only moves when you are playing the game, so if you save and quit, then re-enter the game two days later, time will start exactly where it left off no matter what the solar/mechanical time of the physical world is. Also, in these games, the game time—although cyclical—moves at a pace much accelerated compared to our solar/mechanical. However, in WoW time is cyclical and moves forward at the same pace as that of time in our daily lives.
Gell, building on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory (1977), describes two types of time-maps in which people live (1992). Most people in developed nations would be considered to live in a B-series time map, living a highly structured life where time is cyclical. Times are fixed, i.e., school time, work time, appointments, etc. In this structure time must be scheduled, even time for leisure. A-series time maps are based more on natural activities, such as hunting, cooking, farming, etc., so time is viewed in larger chunks encompassing activities that happen on a freer time scale. WoW exemplifies A-series time maps in that many activities, like gathering herbs or mining minerals, falls to the exploration of the player and not to a set time. This looser time structure allows for and encourages exploration of the surroundings. Despite the fact that the game clock runs in B-series time it does not hamper the A-series feel of the game: e.g., no matter what B-series time you go to town, it is never closed and people are always there to buy your goods).
These time maps, according to Gell and Bourdieu, are mutually exclusive, each person lives in one or the other. Curiously, however, when it comes to WoW, this mutual exclusivity does not entirely hold. In the “real world,” you and I live in B-series time maps where our lives are structured around school and/or work and game time is usually scheduled in the time left for leisure. In the “virtual world” of WoW, however, you enter a world that is much more structured around A-series time maps, where activities include gathering raw materials, crafting, and defending yourself against attack can take a great deal of time. Thus, in game playing episodes, players must in fact negotiate the demands of both time maps at once. Such as, when my group is moving through an instance and a member of my group runs into a B-series time conflict (e.g., movie night with their significant other) that causes a problem within the A-series time map in-game. The instance that I am moving through does not necessarily constrain me to B-series time, being that it can take many tries to successfully complete an instance, and the instance does not have a time constraint other than the time it takes is based solely on the skill and organization of the group. So the player with the conflict wants to leave but is held there by her commitment to our group.
Thus, while Gell and Bourdieu argue that a person can only function in an A-series or B-series time map, WoW allows people to move beyond this and function in both time maps which are entwined and entangled. This crossover into a time map that players do not normally inhabit may be the reason players lose track of time despite the fact that a clock giving the time experienced in the physical world is always available. The deep level of engagement experienced in WoW may be connected with the entanglement of the two time-maps, sometimes evoking “addiction” discourse by some. The ability to cross time-maps offers a unique ability to experience time that most people do not get to experience, experiencing a new time-map gives the player not only a perspective on this new map but also a unique perspective on her/his original map.
Conclusion
We have taken you on a journey across the expanses of WoW, sharing with you a modicum of topics that we have explored as players and as researchers. The topics we cover in this essay may seem disparate but two concepts tie them together, participation in an online social environment and informal learning. Whether it’s learning and relearning the game as it changes, or learning, creating, and using math, visual models, and information literacy skills to improve your game play, or developing social skills and relationships while exploring the narrative structure of the game, working in a group to raid, or working with your peers to negotiate cross time-map conflicts, the social skills and informal learning opportunities are at the heart of all of our topics. The pleasures of WoW as a player are not at odds with those of a researcher, it is not players versus researchers. These pleasures are intimately related, for instance without the complex social elements of the game artifacts we would not be available to study mathematical and information literacy practices. Or, the ability to play WoW with different intentions (i.e. narrative based or raiding) affords the opportunity to study the visual elements created to help other players navigate the story or the dungeons. Researching games means playing games, in order to research a game well it is absolutely necessary that you play the game and love to play the game, that you become an insider to the game and the community, because we love what we study, we study what others love and why they love it.
References
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