scholarly journals World of Warcraft, the aftermath: How game elements transfer into perceptions, associations and (day)dreams in the everyday life of massively multiplayer online role-playing game players

2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (7) ◽  
pp. 1137-1153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karolien Poels ◽  
Wijnand A Ijsselsteijn ◽  
Yvonne de Kort
Author(s):  
Craig Pragnell ◽  
Christos Gatzidis

This chapter presents an investigation in determining whether players are addicted, or show signs of addiction, to the Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft. Criteria to ascertain addiction in World of Warcraft players were developed based on well-documented theories in the area. A questionnaire was used in order to obtain data for analysis. This was distributed to a population of World of Warcraft players by use of advertisement on guild websites and on the official game forum. The results of the questionnaire show that 11.86% (n=21) of respondents matched the developed criteria of addiction in World of Warcraft. These respondents are considered to be addicted or are at “High Risk” of being addicted. This figure is confirmed by other studies of addiction levels in MMORPGs undertaken by existing research.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dean Anthony Fabi Gui

World of Warcraft® (WoW), a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) extends to its members a virtual landscape of live gaming opportunities through such platforms as “dice” rolled character stats, open-ended story development, and interactive AI. These affordances are underpinned by a kind of virtual sense of community bringing players together in order to develop relationships and the self, adventure together, build up wealth, and overcome obstacles in order to complete quests. In addition to live game-play (or “in-world”) communities, WoW residents create alternative communities through rich online forums—here, new members are recruited into guilds, disputes are spawned and slayed, and seasoned warriors reminisce over worlds and lives that once- were. However, a third type of community is also evident through particular threads crafted within forums specifically for collaborative storytelling (or roleplaying). This paper examines sense of community—a sense of “belonging to, importance of, and identification with a community”—through one particular thread, “The Darkening Grove Tavern” under the forum World’s End Tavern using an adaptation of McMillan and Chavis’ theory and Boellstorff, Nardi, Pearce & Taylor’s ethnographic data collection methodology for qualitative analysis of virtual worlds . Findings from players’ story text (or “turns”) suggest that online storytelling forum threads exhibit a linguistically and semiotically branded sense of virtual community. 


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren B. Collister

Players of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW) are accustomed to a transformative culture that appropriates off-line events and personas into virtual-world representations inside of the game. Following this culture, players have transformed an off-line event—the Race for the Cure, to benefit breast cancer charities—into an online event called the Running of the Gnomes with parameters and participation properties appropriate for the virtual world. This transformative event is a disruptive form of civil disobedience including elements of hacktivism. Though the event conforms to the game's culture and rules, the mass collective action of the Running of the Gnomes disrupts the player experience by flooding the game's chat boxes with messages about an off-line concern (breast cancer) and also disrupts the game itself by crashing the server through the sheer volume of player participation. This disruption is embraced as an integral part of the event and is one of the primary causes for the event's success as a fundraising activity.


MEDIASI ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-27
Author(s):  
Deddy Stevano H. Tobing

This research discusses the popularity of Faerlina US which is one of the game server of the game World of Warcraft Classic (WoW Classic), a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) game version which is one of the World of Warcraft game version released on 26 August 2019. This study uses several qualitative research methods, namely participatory observation, in-depth interviews, and studies of previous studies. The results of this study indicate that the popularity of Faerlina US tends to be driven by the popularity of twitch.tv streamers who play on these servers. This research also shows that Faerlina has also become popular because it is interesting to be a place to conduct economic activities such as selling virtual items and conducting gold-virtual currency transactions into real money.


Author(s):  
Diego Lourenço Sá Pinto ◽  
Cláudio Xavier

World of Warcraft (WoW), a game of the genre MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game), has proven to be a valuable field of study for researchers interested in understanding the functioning of online communities and social relationships in those communities. This chapter seeks, through literature review and interviews conducted within the game itself, from player/researcher immersion, to discuss the relationships of a group of players in a new context of relationship and (in)formation, considering the significant screen time, communication processes, identifications, and identity building.


Author(s):  
Nuttakritta Chotipaktanasook ◽  
Hayo Reinders

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have been dramatically used in language education and identified in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) research as playing a central role in second language acquisition (SLA). This chapter addresses the integration of a commercially developed MMORPG Ragnarok Online into a language course as a basis for digital game-based language learning and reports on its effects on second language (L2) interaction. Thirty Thai learners of English who enrolled in a 15-week university language course were required to complete 18 face-to-face classroom lessons and six gameplay sessions. Learners' language use in both text and voice chats during gameplay was recorded and analysed to measure the effects of the game. The findings show that participating in MMORPG resulted in a significantly more considerable increase in L2 interaction that used a wider range of discourse functions compared with English interaction in the classroom. The authors discuss some of the theoretical and pedagogical implications of these findings.


Author(s):  
Gabriella M. Harari ◽  
Lindsay T. Graham ◽  
Samuel D. Gosling

Every week an estimated 20 million people collectively spend hundreds of millions of hours playing massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). Here the authors investigate whether avatars in one such game, the World of Warcraft (WoW), convey accurate information about their players' personalities. They assessed consensus and accuracy of avatar-based impressions for 299 WoW players. The authors examined impressions based on avatars alone, and images of avatars presented along with usernames. The personality impressions yielded moderate consensus (avatar-only mean ICC = .32; avatar plus username mean ICC = .66), but no accuracy (avatar only mean r = .03; avatar plus username mean r = .01). A lens-model analysis suggests that observers made use of avatar features when forming impressions, but the features had little validity. Discussion focuses on what factors might explain the pattern of consensus but no accuracy, and on why the results might differ from those based on other virtual domains and virtual worlds.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document