Published on 18 January 2007
in WoW and games.
The first World of Warcraft expansion, The Burning Crusade, was released on Wednesday. For those who don’t know what an expansion is, in computer game terms, it refers to a release of new content or features that substantially adds to a game. (Wikipedia also has a definition.)
Even though neither of us has been playing much WoW lately (Morgan, if you’re looking at the screenshot, yes, Tatanka is still level 17), we couldn’t resist and had to get ourselves each a copy of the expansion. There has been so much talk and anticipation that I guess I had to take a look. So I now have a level 8 Blood Elf Paladin named Ingmar (not a very elfy name but I wasn’t feeling very inspired when I made him). A male character because I have discovered that this is the easiest way to avoid stupid comments about boobies from teenaged boys.
It’s quite challenging to play in the new areas at the moment, because there are so many other players all trying to do the same quests. No doubt there are far more new Blood Elves around than there are Draenai (the other new race) - why are elves always so popular? I did also make a Draenai - Drogheda - but I think I will reroll a male character even though I like her name.
Joi Ito in a Japan Times interview, on games, and specifically World of Warcraft:
Video games have always been kind of stigmatized, and they are kind of a working-class entertainment. When I go to my WoW guild, my raid leader is a night-shift nurse. We have bartenders. We have unemployed people, lots of military folks, policemen — there is a community made up of a very diverse set of people. And what’s interesting is that every single MBA who has tried to take the leadership role in the guild has failed. Leadership in these kinds of situations is much more about listening, and leadership is not exclusive to people in the leading class. It kind of translates into, say, understanding how open-source projects work, or how Firefox might be managed. This may all sound like a very long, elaborated excuse for playing lots of World of Warcraft. (Laugh) But I can learn a lot of things in places where typically people don’t think there is learning.
I wonder if anyone has done any studies on the social/economic backgrounds of the people who play WoW… (thinking about it, this could be difficult to do - you don’t provide such information when you create an account on WoW.)
I like what he has to say about financial success:
I’m financially successful enough so I’m able to give a reasonable amount of money to organizations I want to give to; I’m able to eat just about anything that I want to without worrying about how much it costs.
By this reckoning, I’m a financial success too! 
And Joi’s life focus:
The focus of my life is to try to make my environment better. “Better” to me means surrounding myself with stimulating people and ideas, continuing to learn. My company name — Neoteny — has negative connotations, too, but it means retention of childlike attributes in adulthood. Child-attributes include, but are not limited to, the feeling of wonder, curiosity, joy, funny things, growth — and those are all things that I want to always continue to have in life.
The negative side of that is I tend to lack persistence sometimes. I don’t want to be the CEO of a company where I do the same thing every day. As a personality type, I’m much more of a network person, where I’m part of connecting things together, and probably less about repeating production activities. But I think you need all types. If everybody in the world was like me, it wouldn’t work. (Laugh)
Boredom avoidance is not necessarily a bad thing, then!
(Via Lawrence Lessig’s blog)
Addendum: I should have added that I am fascinated by interviews and love reading them. I’d like to learn how to conduct them, as well - especially via email, for blogging purposes. This article on e-lis is interesting: E-Mail Interviewing in Qualitative Research: A Methodological Discussion.
There’s a lot to learn when you first visit a virtual world (Second Life) or MMORPG world (eg. Norrath or Azeroth). Being able to move around is one of the most important factors. It’s usually done with a combination of using your keyboard, for the general direction (forwards, backwards, right, left) and the mouse (pointing for finer nuances of direction and to look around). One criticism I have of Second Life is that you don’t seem to be able to change the movements your keys are mapped to - you have to use the default keys (tell me I’m wrong!). And using the mouse for movement is something you have to toggle on and off, rather than a natural function. I suppose this is something to do with the fact that the mouse in SL is used to interact with objects.
With moving, the only way to get less clumsy is to practise, practise, practise. It can get very frustrating when your character is constantly running into walls or off cliffs because you can’t control them.
Getting around the world can be a challenge, too. Game worlds can be so big that in some cases it would take many many Real Life hours to get from one spot to another. Most game worlds now have built-in modes of transport. The original EverQuest used to be very challenging to get around as the only means of transport, besides running, was to beg or pay a character with teleporting skills to take you somewhere. Eventually they added portals anyone could use which simplified travel significantly.
In WoW and EverQuest II you can take a “bird” from place to place. Azeroth, the WoW world is traversed by numerous flight paths from location to location.
In SL each avatar can fly from place to place. Rochelle talked about flying in SL:
I hightailed it out of that area by “flying,” and found myself over a body of water, which freaked out my virtual self as much as my real self is freaked out being in an airplane over water.
I could really relate to this statement. I don’t have a fear of flying but in Real Life I can’t swim - can’t even doggy paddle - and in all game worlds I always have a fear of swimming/drowning. In-game swimming is not difficult once you get the hang of it - you just have to remember to move UP so you don’t run out of breath and drown - but I never ever relax when I have to “swim” in-game. M can tell you about my first ever character drowning in the moat in Kaladim in EverQuest, and how stressful that was for me even though it wasn’t a real drowning. I fixed that by eventually becoming a very proficient swimmer in EverQuest (where your swimming improved the more you swam). Once I learned how to swim in EQ, swimming in other game worlds came naturally (even if the mechanics might be slightly different in each world). If only RL swimming were that easy!
Speaking of fears and phobias, game developers seem to love to create giant spider monsters. All I can say is, I’m glad they don’t seem to bother with giant cockroach monsters. I don’t think I would be able to get over my cockroach phobia enough to play if there were such beasties in any game world.
Even though neither of us has been playing much WoW lately (Morgan, if you’re looking at the screenshot, yes, Tatanka is still level 17), we couldn’t resist and had to get ourselves each a copy of the expansion. There has been so much talk and anticipation that I guess I had to take a look. So I now have a level 8 Blood Elf Paladin named Ingmar (not a very elfy name but I wasn’t feeling very inspired when I made him). A male character because I have discovered that this is the easiest way to avoid stupid comments about boobies from teenaged boys.
It’s quite challenging to play in the new areas at the moment, because there are so many other players all trying to do the same quests. No doubt there are far more new Blood Elves around than there are Draenai (the other new race) - why are elves always so popular? I did also make a Draenai - Drogheda - but I think I will reroll a male character even though I like her name.
