World of Warcraft

Games are created through the act of gameplay, which is contingent on player acts. However, to understand gameplay, we must also investigate contexts, justifications, and limitations. Cheating can be an excellent path into studying the gameplay situation, because it lays bare player’s frustrations and limitations. It points to ludic hopes and activities, and it causes us to question our values, our ethics. In comparison, the concept of the magic circle seems static and overly formalist. Structures may be necessary to begin gameplay, but we cannot stop at structures as a way of understanding the gameplay experience. Because of that, we cannot say that games are magic circles, where the ordinary rules of life do not apply. Of course they apply, but in addition to, in competition with, other rules and in relation to multiple contexts, across varying cultures, and into different groups, legal situations, and homes.

Virtual worlds, such as Second Life, World of Warcraft and Everquest, have demonstrated huge economic potential. In such virtual worlds, virtual items are bought and sold between individuals for real money. However, little empirical research has been conducted into players’ purchase behavior in virtual worlds. To help us gain a better understanding of factors influencing purchase behavior in virtual worlds, we embarked on an exploratory study. Four focus groups were conducted with 24 participants, selected according to demographic and experiential characteristics. Preliminary empirical evidence suggests that factors including effort expectancy, character competency, the quality of the virtual world system, social influence, virtual item resources, personal real resources, performance expectancy, and self-actualization are important for predicting virtual item purchase behavior in virtual worlds. The results showed that virtual item purchase behavior in virtual worlds has considerable variability involving a range of factors at different stages.

The annual incidence of insider attacks continues to grow, and there are indications this trend will continue. While there are a number of existing tools that can accurately identify known attacks, these are reactive (as opposed to proactive) in their enforcement, and may be eluded by previously unseen, adversarial behaviors. This paper proposes an approach that combines Structural Anomaly Detection (SA) from social and information networks and Psychological Profiling (PP) of individuals. SA uses technologies including graph analysis, dynamic tracking, and machine learning to detect structural anomalies in large-scale information network data, while PP constructs dynamic psychological profiles from behavioral patterns. Threats are finally identified through a fusion and ranking of outcomes from SA and PP. The proposed approach is illustrated by applying it to a large data set from a massively multi-player online game, World of War craft (WoW). The data set contains behavior traces from over 350,000 characters observed over a period of 6 months. SA is used to predict if and when characters quit their guild (a player association with similarities to a club or workgroup in non-gaming contexts), possibly causing damage to these social groups. PP serves to estimate the five-factor personality model for all characters. Both threads show good results on the gaming data set and thus validate the proposed approach.

This research aims to understand how gamers redefine their identity by extending, aggregating, and assembling the different dimensions of the self in experiential online communities. The authors conducted a series of filmed in-depth and in game individual interviews, group interviews, informal conversations, and observation of online game sessions. A framework of online identity construction shows how gamers assemble their identities combining different self-dimensions, using two different strategies: self-extension and self-aggregation. Self-extension strategies consist in the idealization, development, and manipulation of avatars (their digital self). Self-aggregation strategies refer to group participation and sharing virtual possessions within groups of players. To bring their identities from the experiential community to the real life, gamers combine these strategies by assembling and materializing identities. This framework has theoretical implications for the self, identity, and sharing in online contexts. Finally, the paper considers managerial implications and future research directions in online communities.

As we collectively devote enormous resources (especially time and money) to life in virtual worlds, we are reshaping the religious landscape. While the advent of virtual worlds will not produce a religious utopia or overwhelm traditional religious institutions, virtual worlds nevertheless create new opportunities for religious expression. This book describes 1) how World of Warcraft can operate as an "authentic fake" (a secular institution that does genuine religious work by providing communities, opportunities for ethical reflection, meaning and purpose, and even transcendent experiences) and 2) how Second Life provides both a location for religious migration from the conventional world and an opportunity to express transhumanist values and choices. Quantitative and qualitative data reveal that these virtual worlds are already a part of contemporary religion, and force us to rethink what religion is and what role it plays in the world.

Prior analyses of player interactions within massive multi-player online environments (MMOs) rely predominantly on understanding the environments as spheres of leisure—places to “escape” the stress of the “real world.” We find in our research on the World of Warcraft, a popular online role-playing game suggests that, in fact, social interaction within the game more closely resembles work. Successful play requires dedicated participants who choose to engage in a highly structured and time-consuming “process” of game progression. Simultaneously, players must also actively engage in the “emotional labor” of acceptably maintaining standards of sociability and guild membership constructed by their gaming peers. We posit that these expectations of both structured progression work and emotional maintenance work significantly blur the existing lines between categorizing work and leisure. While the assumption of leisure shrouds the general expectation of gaming interaction, we suggest a “play as work” paradigm more clearly captures the reality of the demands of The World of Warcraft.

This article is written in an attempt to navigate the reward structure in World of Warcraft (WoW). Alongside its analysis of the reward structure in WoW, this article draws upon the paradoxical design of desire itself. In doing so, it takes a binocular perspective that addresses both the interplay between WoW's reward structure and a player-centric approach that seeks to explain the transcendent design of desire itself. The interplay between game structure and the design of desire is approached by means of a narrated scene from a personal experience of WoW dating back from the time of classical WoW, where the level cap was 60 and the guild raids in the high-end instances demanded the participation of 40 players. The scene is intended to provide the reader with insights both of the reward structure of WoW and of player's experience of the game world.

The analysis of the reward structure has its point of departure in Charles S. Peirce's semiotics and his idea of infinite semiosis. From there it moves on to Jacques Derrida's philosophy on différance including his understanding of the sign. This perspective is fruitful when trying to understand the reward structure of WoW as a dynamic between desire as a field of tension and progression in the game world. Derrida's definition of the sign and his philosophy of différance cast light on an intriguing dynamic that arises between the players' desire and the design of WoW's reward structure, especially on how players lose themselves between present and future, between distance and closeness in a game world that has no finalisation. The analysis will show how WoW's reward structure successfully draws upon the paradoxical design of desire in a game world based on a deteriorating value system. The interpretation is further supported by Sigmund Freud's analysis of the pleasure principle, where fulfillment of desire yields to the acceptance of disinclination. In addition it has to be said that, although it takes an interpretation of epic items (highest quality items) as its starting point, the analysis expands into a broader perspective that encapsulates the entire structural design of WoW. Before I begin the analysis, let me describe a scene from Blackwing Lair in classical WoW.