The learning curve of WoW

World of Warcraft

First Week of school
September 2, 2008

I was originally considering doing an independent research project on social technologies. Social Technologies is a broad category and we use them in many ways, daily; we use Instant Messenger, text messages on our phones, Twitter, Blogging, etc. And how many of us use many of these technologies both in our social life and for business? I am even using a blog and response forum to communicate with my professor regarding this project.

The first idea tossed around of looking into a social technology was to study Second Life, an online community where each customer logs on and creates their own avatar to interact in a virtual world that the customers create.

http://secondlife.com/whatis/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life

While researching SL as a topic, I discovered that there were less than 500,000 people worldwide that logged on to spend an hour a month.

Second Life population


In comparison to other online communities, such as popular Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs), this is not many people. The press likes SL because of its direct tie to real world economy, but MMORPGs are not without shadow economies and with a larger, more active, more dedicated, growing community, maybe this is were young entrepreneurs should be looking at “selling”.

One example of a highly populated MMORPG is World of Warcraft (WoW). As of July 2007, they had 8.5 million players (Snow, 2007). Once I decided on studying this game as a social technology, I had to go out and purchase it. I walked into the local Best Buy during the first week of school to quickly “pick up” my software. There was an isle dedicated to computer games, and half of them were probably MMORPGs. Despite researching the popular MMOs, I did not recognize all the games and could only assume they were also competing for the same audience as WoW.

Popular MMOs
MMORPG games available

There are many choices out there, some of which I have played before – EverQuest (EQ), City of Heroes, and many more I have not played - Diablo, Lord of the Rings, Warhammer, City of Villans, etc. WoW, however, had the largest number of active users, and therefore the largest online community to study.

Focusing on my choices of software in the store, I discovered there were about four different boxes of WoW. I wanted the one with the most updates and expansions, so I selected a double box containing what appeared to be the original WoW and an expansion called “Burning Crusade”. I went over to the lady at the cash register and asked if this was the latest version and did it include all the updates. She thought it did, but as we were talking a male colleague of hers approached and he said that there were additional pieces, one of which they did not have in stock. I decided I needed to review the choices myself and I left without making a purchase. This is obviously not a spontaneous “buy” nor a community you join on a whim.

After reviewing all the choices, there were only two releases (expansions) and I ended up picking up the same software later. There is a third release, Wrath of the Lich King, that is coming out on November 13th of this year. This was just a little taste of all the setup I was about to do just to start playing a video game.

One of the first things to consider was if I could play WoW reasonably on my computer; I do not have a gamer’s computer. In the end it took 4 hours to set up since I had some conflicting software, but I was able to get online reasonably well if I keep all the graphics turned down. I was still hours away from playing however, since I still had to choose a server and create a character: what race (there are eight playable races), faction (two factions, Alliance and Horde, which are similar to the idea of good and evil), and what class (there are 9 classes, but each is specific to certain races). A character’s race determines what starting city you begin in.

I logged onto a player versus player (PvP) server mainly because I know some people on that server. I am strictly speaking, more comfortable with a player versus non-player characters (PvNPC) server, but since I wanted to study a community and get involved quickly, I selected a server where I already knew someone in real life (RL). I created my first character, choosing a Night elf, and making her an Alliance Priest. The manual says you should create a character that you connect with, and give them talents you enjoy using. I picked clothes, hair, and styles for my character and once I was happy with that, I logged into the game.

As soon as I landed in the middle of the starting “city”, someone asked me to join their group. I wasn’t even sure how to type a response, so I had to hit decline without telling them anything. It took me a while, and a phone call to a friend, to easily access all my important information (hit/s to say something). As soon as I placed my spells into hot keys and understood how to move and talk, I started to run around and pick up quests. The quests in that area are organized to help people try to get used to the game. One quest is to go talk to a trainer, who gives you another spell, another quest is to hunt and kill certain types of non-agro (they don’t all attack if one is attacked) level 1 animals.

Quest 1: Kill 7 young nightsabers and kill 4 young thistle boars
Quest 3: Gather 8 fel mos and deliver to druid Athridas Bearmantle in Dolamaar
Quest 4: Kill 7 mangy nightsabers and kill 7 thistle boars