Waiting on a queue for a battleground I wonder why I am even bothering, my avatar is too low level to perform correctly, I don't know my class well enough, I will be a burden for the other players, and I HATE waiting. Eventually an instance of the Warsong Gulch battleground becomes available, I enter; much of the time I get killed by other players when I fight , in fact, because of my low level players go out of their way to attack me, but when the Horde wins Warsong Gulch yet again it feels like a victory.
Setting: World of Warcraft http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/index.xml
For those of you who have never heard of it World of Warcraft is an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), that is a computer game that people all over the world play on the internet. Perhaps the easiest way for me to describe it would be a computer game with a complex chat room attached. Though these are virtual worlds they host complex social realities that users navigate through as they play the game.
My project: to get an insider's perspective on what it means to play WoW, more precicely to better understand Player versus Player (PvP) practices in World of Warcraft.
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Hi there,
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you've seen this already, there's a new post on Savage Minds related to World of Warcraft.
http://savageminds.org/2009/01/08/an-anthropologist-digs-into-wow/
The post links to an interview between WoW insider magazine and Alex Golub, the anthropologist. It's fun to see the researcher getting interviewed by his subject group.
Can't wait to see what you have say about World PVP / rewardless pvp
ReplyDeleteCan't wait to see what you have to say about World PVP / rewardless PVP
ReplyDeleteInteresting Snowrunner, I have not encountered many anthropological discussions of gaming, thanks for that link.
ReplyDeleteHey fun topic. I am an ex-wow fiend, and PVP god. I don't play anymore, but when "world pvp" was removed from WOW in exchange for "arena" battles, the psychological fun of surprising people disappeared. (ala what Slayer01 says).
ReplyDeleteThe rules on each server really changed once Blizzard decided to "instance" PVP. You could consider interviewing Blizzard reps to discuss how pvp was a problem, and why they took the measures they did to change it. [ie, one issue was world pvp crashed servers. When we got 1000 people together to storm the enemy city, the game would just crash... In this way Blizzard has to actively "govern" how players are allowed to interact. What other ways has Blizzard changed the game to work around pvp issues since its launch? ).
Check out Dominic Arsenault's blog "le ludophile".
http://www.le-ludophile.com/About.htm
Also, if you haven't already - the gamecode project has produced a number of great video game studies.