The following is my term paper for SOCI 1510.007, Honors Individuals in Society. It really doesn't have enough research, and I could never quite pinpoint a main topic I felt was really good, so I ended up with this. Not my best, but I did what I could with the two days I had left to write it.

The Virtual Reality of World of Warcraft

and Why People Escape to It.

Jonathan Graham

Individuals in Society SOCI 1510.007

Introduction

The planet Earth is a pretty great place to be. There are tons of interesting places to go and people to meet, and while there are a few bad exceptions out there, its all mostly pretty cool. But in all the dark, dank, Cheeto bag filled basements around the world, there live monsters. These monsters thrive in the lonely darkness under the house, like cave trolls. When their defenses are finally broken down by hunger and full bladders, they are stricken by an agonizing blindness at the sight of sunlight, followed by spasms of panic and anxiety when attempting to make contact with the opposite sex. These monsters are generally known as “nerds,” but this rare species has an evolution tree with many, many branches. Some are known as the Dance Dance Revolution Nerd, or the Dungeons & Dragons Nerd, but a large rise in the population of a certain nerd, the World of Warcraft nerd, has led to a recent change in the perception and study of this creature. The research culminated in a expedition into the secret world of the nerds, and the amazing discovery of a portal to a dangerous world called Azeroth, the kingdom of the nerd.

Azeroth is the virtual world that the MMORPG World of Warcraft takes place in. MMORPG stands for “Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game,” a genre of video game that has steadily rose in popularity throughout the last 10 years, and continues to grow in the present. World of Warcraft is by far the biggest in the genre, with over 14 million paid monthly subscribers around the world. Blizzard Entertainment, the developer, launched the game on November 23, 2004. In the 4 years that the game has been active, a fully fledged community has grown and thrived. The recent release of the game’s second expansion, titled “Wrath of the Lich King,” sold 2.8 million copies within 24 hours of being released. This makes it fastest selling computer game of all time, beating out the former record holder which is, of course, the first expansion set, “World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.”

To be fair, World of Warcraft is not only played by nerds and people who have no social skills, it is actually played by a very diverse range of people. There are some who have full-time jobs and play maybe only an hour a night. These are the ones who constantly wonder why they waste so much time in a fake world and feel like they should stop and save the money they pay each month. While there are others whose job is actually inside the game world, through something which has become known as “gold farming,” in which they gain currency virtually to sell to other players, who pay in actual money. This allows them to basically play the game as their hobby and source of income simultaneously. A survey taken of another well known MMORPG, Everquest, even revealed that 40% of players would quit their jobs in the real world if in-game ones could yield a sufficient amount of income (Castronova, 2001). The wide range of reasons why people play World of Warcraft only serve to beg the question: Why do so many people play World of Warcraft, and what becomes of the “lives” that are being formed right now in the game?

World of Warcrack

The basic gameplay of World of Warcraft is not necessarily the most complex thing. There are many game genres, such as first person shooters, that at their base level are much more complex than that of WoW, at least in terms of playability. The player’s main goal in the game is to complete quests, which usually consists of running around the fictional world of Azeroth finding and killing a specific number of a certain type of creature to collect the item it leaves behind. Normally, this game mechanic of “level grinding” becomes a chore in other games and leaves the player bored to the point that they may just stop playing. But nevertheless WoW still has so much momentum, even with this tedious mechanic. The result of many hours of grinding is the eventual leveling up of a character, signaled by a bright ring of light that travels up your avatar and the now familiar “ding!” sound. Upon leveling up, new skills can be gained, and attributes like strength and endurance can be improved. This is one of the reasons why so much time is spent doing the same monotonous task for hours on end.

The natural addiction one feels while playing World of Warcraft seems akin to Flow Theory(Csikszentmihalyi, 1975). Flow Theory has four experiential states: anxiety, apathy, relaxation, and flow. Immediately apparent upon examination of the game is that the states of anxiety and apathy are intentionally avoided in World of Warcraft. When a player is defeated in battle, they are transported to a nearby graveyard where they may then travel back to where they died as a ghost and be resurrected with no loss of experience or items. There is no sense of “this game is too hard,” or “this is boring,” because they are constantly moving about with a sense of purpose as to what they are doing or where they are traveling to. What keeps players motivated is the constant feeling of being on a mission, rather than just wasting time. The state of ‘flow’ is what really keeps WoW’s hooks in its players. The feeling of constantly having a job to be doing, and enjoying it all the while moves the player into a sort of trance in which they could play forever if the human body didn’t have limits.

Within the optimal state of flow, nothing else seems to matter, as theexperience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at a great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). The optimal condition of deep enjoyment must be experienced under two prerequisites. First, there must be perceived challenges for action stretching existing skills, engaging at a level appropriate to one’s capacities. Second, clear proximal goals and immediate feedback of the progress must also be present (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2002).

The two prerequisites for the optimal state of ‘flow’ are met easily through simple game design. It is common practice for a video game to adjust the artificial intelligence and difficulty of enemies to give the player a fair balance of easy, relaxing moments and difficult, tense ones. Also, whether the game be a shooter, kid’s, strategy, or puzzle game, instant gratification is a concept central to good game design. Gaining experience points and leveling up in a video game is a very enjoyable experience, but it is not an original concept. It has been in practice for many years through the evolution of the games industry. But one thing sets WoW apart from others: virtual communities and personal interactions with other players.

The Power of Internet Anonymity

While it may seem like everyone plays World of Warcraft to just play the game that the developers created, there is much more under the surface. As with any other place online--message boards, blogs, youtube, etc.--the ability to be a completely different personality is an opportunity that many if not most individuals do not pass up. There is no pressure on physical appearance, and there are no real names to trace back anything offensive that is said. In an massively multiplayer game like WoW, this can add greatly to the immersion that the player feels.

The design of a MMORPG is such that it forces gamers to cooperate in high-crisis and trust-building scenarios. This leads to the establishment of relationships. This social aspect of MMORPGs, referring to the ability of gamers to construct friendships, build communities and engage in social interactions in the virtual world (Heckel, 2003), is often stated as one of the major motivations for the increasing popularity of MMORPGs (Burn & Carr, 2004; Friedl, 2003 Lazzaro, 2004; Rouse, 2001, Sherry & Lucas, 2003; Yee, 2004).

According to a 2003 study of MMORPG players, the social interaction aspect was the main draw to the experience, commanding 41% of the vote. Meanwhile the opposite side, the killing things to get stuff aspect, received only a measly 4% (Griffiths et. al, 2003). Were a sociological perspective to be placed onto Azeroth, it would most definitely be from the school of symbolic interactionism. The fictional world--though not a living, breathing place--is still full of life that was born and formed from the simple act of users speaking to each other through whatever form of communication they had available. After 4 years, those interactions have taken root and now continue to grow as more and more soon-to-be Death Knights and Blood Elves make the short but expensive relocation to Azeroth. There are even hookers! Well...not really, but they are female characters who will strip down to the least clothing possible and dance if you pay them.

Conclusion

World of Warcraft is a social phenomenon right now and continues to grow. But the reason behind its success is more than just a good marketing team. First, It’s a well made, well kept online video game, with a strong, successful company pulling the levers behind the curtain. But there are plenty of good games, online and off, that receive much critical praise but fall by the wayside in favor of more generic IPs that people feel safe playing. The reason that World of Warcraft succeeds is because of the balance that it creates between a challenging, satisfying game style, and a fully developed social network that expands in complexity as more Earthlings migrate to Azeroth. So when that rank, unshaven monster walks with exhausted steps up the stairs to the dining room for dinner 4 hours after you called him/her, remember: do NOT make any sudden movements, ask how the weather is in Ironforge, and wish them a good vacation.



References

Chen, V. , Phuah, S. and Duh, H. , 2007-05-23 "What Makes MMORPGs fun? An Explication of Enjoyment, Social Interaction, and Types of Gamers" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, TBA, San Francisco, CA Online . 2008-11-26 from http:// www.allacademic.com/meta/p173005_index.html

Forghani, S. , Sosnovskaya, E. , Chin, A. and Boyns, D. E. , 2006-08-11 "MMORPG Worlds: On the Construction of Social Reality in World of Warcraft" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Montreal Convention Center, Montreal, Quebec, Canada Online . 2008-10-22 from http://www.allacademic.com/ meta/ p104274_index.html