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Social Web and World of Warcraft
Here's the paper I wrote for my Social Web Homework:
Background
Before discussing the different social aspects, I wanted to give a short overview about the way I tackled this assignment. The assigned research condition was to create a human character, first play a couple of hours solo and then a couple of hours with an assigned group. Reaching level 6 soloing, I considered my character ready for group play.
My main character:
Wanting to explore the world a bit more, and not risking running away with levels, I created an alternate character on another realm. This time I picked a dwarf priest which I also quickly reached level 5. After playing with my assigned group for a couple of hours, I had reached level 8, 2 levels shy of the 10 goal. Unfortunately, a new expansion was released just then and the realm of my main character was regularly completely congested. So I continued playing with my dwarf and eventually reached level 10 and visited both Ironforge and Stormwind City, taking the Deeprun Tram to go in the one direction and a Gryphon to get back.
My alternate character:
A more detailed account about my experiences can be found on my blog: http://pratchettfan.blogspot.com/search/label/WoW
Social Aspects
Learning the Ropes / Encouraging Newcomers
WoW tries to show new players how the game works through displaying context sensitive tips. So the user is not overwhelmed with a flood of information, but successively learns new things as they become relevant to him. This works very well for people who have played similar role-playing games, because they are familiar with the principles behind the game mechanics. So I had no problems finding my way around, picking up the first quest and getting started. However, a complete newbie to these kinds of games might be so distracted by the myriad of controls and things going on, that he might miss these tips. A possible improvement would be an optional meta-game tutorial, which would describe the function of the key elements on the screen (such as health bar, map, and tips) before the user is let loose in the world. Experienced users can choose to abort this if they are already familiar with the concepts.
There are two different elements in play which encourage newcomers to continue playing:
1) The quests which start out being quite easy to accomplish and then incrementally get more difficult, taking more time and effort to complete as the game goes on.
2) The other players which have reached higher levels and can from time to time be encountered. Such an encountered leads to a wow effect. The newbie sees how cool and powerful his character can become if he only dedicates enough time to it.
The first element definitely was a conscious design choice of Blizzard, whereas I’m not so sure about the second element. I’d guess that it is something that just naturally occurred as more players reached higher levels and kept on playing.
What can we learn from this? Even though there are advantages to keep newbies separated from the harsh reality of the game until they have got their bearings, a complete separation would eliminate the second point. So it may be a good thing to strike a balance, starting the player in a low threat area, but still giving higher level characters incentives to visit these places from time to time.
Solo vs Group Play
Playing solo at the start of the game worked well for me; it gave me enough time to get used to the controls and the quests were simple enough, that I didn’t need other people to finish. However, speaking with one of my group members, I realised that this may not be true for players inexperienced with role-playing games. All he did to level up was killing monsters; he wasn’t aware that there were quests which made levelling up more meaningful and easier.
As the game progressed and the quests got more difficult, group play became almost mandatory. With my dwarf healer I stood no chance of completing some quests, because I was regularly overwhelmed by the number of enemies around. Fighting with other players helped distribute the aggression of the enemies and dramatically increase our chance of success. So knowing a couple of people with the same level and the same goals works well at this point. But even solo players are not completely at a loss. There being so many other players around and I often was invited into short term parties were trying to complete the same quest. Nevertheless, finding a party can be quite hard for certain quests and requires a fair amount of luck and good timing (at least with the trial account and its limitations).
So we can observe two kinds of group play in WoW. First, partnerships of convenience of solo players who happen to be in the same region and have the same goals and second, groups which have a long term goal of playing together and completing several consecutive quests. More often than not this second type of group is organised around a guild.
Early in the game the first kind of groups seem to be more important than in the end-game phase, this is mainly because the quests early in the game do not require a lot of coordination and time to solve and even strangers can easily step in and help. In the end-game, however, when quests and raids become long and dangerous, coordination and trust are key, both things which don’t come naturally to partnerships of convenience and so guilds start playing an integral part in the game.
Dying
Keeping the consequences of failure low is key to keep people from becoming frustrated and quitting the game. WoW’s concept of dying strikes a fair balance between punishment and continuing the game. Whereas it is annoying to walk back to the corpse, achievements a player completed so far are retained and he can continue with his quest. In many solo games the consequences for dying are that you have to start the level / quest from the beginning again. This can become very frustrating, especially when you die close to completing the quest. Nevertheless I had a couple of problems with this mechanism of dying. Exploring the area I ventured into the Gnomeregan mines. There was no one to stop my decent. However, once at the bottom I was promptly killed by monsters far above my level. Walking back to my corpse I saw that the entrance now also was crowded with these powerful monsters, apparently a party marched in just before I ventured inside, and so was promptly killed again trying to flee the dungeon.
Having to do this several times can be extremely annoying. So in the spirit of encouraging newcomers to continue playing, I would welcome an emergency exit which becomes available if the dungeon one finds oneself in is drastically overpowered.
Conclusion
Blizzard did a good job keeping the game fun for newcomers as well as old timers, offering a wide range of activities to pursue which address the interests of the different player types, such as Achiever, Explorer, Socialiser and Killer. And so I can understand how people get addicted to the game. And if the game had come out a couple of years earlier, even I might have started playing it. But at the current moment in time there are too many other interesting things going on, not leaving enough time to play WoW economically (playing enough to warrant the monthly fee).Labels: cmu, games, WoW
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Level 10!
Trying my luck again this morning, I discovered that the glitch was resolved and the elevator worked again as it was supposed to. Nevertheless, I took two times to get all the way out, because there were Addled Lepers on the way to the exit as well. At first I thought it might take longer, but fortunately a big group marched in and cleared the way for me ^^.
Now that I was back in the game, I wanted to try to solve some of the bonus assignments. And so, after reaching level 10, I went Ironforge to find transportation to another major city. After walking planlessly around for a while, I stumbled upon the Deeprun Tram, which took me to Stormwind City. From there I wanted to find an alternate way back, so I first ventured to the harbor, but had to discover that no ships were leaving for the moment. After a while I did find the Gryphon Master and took a Gryphon back to Ironforge. The view on the way was quite impressive, giving me an idea what powerful monsters await more advanced players...
So here ends my quest for World of Warcraft. My trial period is almost over and tomorrow, I'll write the homework paper about some social aspects of my experiences. Even though I found it to be a fascinating game, and I can see that several problems I had were related with the trial account, I won't continue playing, at least in the US. First, because it is very time consuming, and I have many other things I need and want to do (tonight I missed out on a game of Arkham Horror with a new expansion because I had to get back to reach level 10), secondly, it's too expensive for casual gaming, and thirdly, since the US and Europe are completely disconnected in the game, I might need to buy the game again if I wanted to play back in Switzerland...
Here's a compiled screenshot of my character:
Labels: games, WoW
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Unhappy Ending
Since my assigned server was full again, I continued to play with my Dwarven Priest. I made good progress but was a bit annoyed by the amount of walking around involved, I never seemed to be able to find the right spot...
The highlight was when I was invited to join a party about to raid a dungeon. That was a pretty cool experience and this time I tried to act the priest offering healing and shielding where necessary.
Playing alone I often encountered players in distress and I was more than willing to help. Most often I got a thanks and sometimes even some help in return. Only one gay walked out on me, leaving me with one of the monsters he was fighting before...
Unfortunately, it didn't have a happy ending for me. I was doing the first quest outside Gnomeregan, when I discovered the entrance to the mine (or whatever that is). Curios I stepped in and took the elevator down... big mistake... because I couldn't get out again. I'm not sure if it was a glitch in the game, or on purpose, but whenever I stood on the elevator and it moved up, I stayed at the bottom (inside the elevator)... help would be greatly appreciated!
Update: Some research this morning revealed that it is indeed a glitch in the game, which has already been reported. Unfortunately, this means the end of my dwarf because I doubt they are going to fix it till tomorrow (when my trial account ends). And I would have needed just one more level to get to level 10...Labels: games, WoW
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Trial account woes...
Yesterday, my group managed to meet up for our assigned WoW group play. To overcome some of the trial account limitations, you cannot form a party, you cannot participate in private group chat channels, we decided to physically meet in the same room, to at least simulate effective voice communication.
The first problem we then faced was that every player had completed different tasks and so it took us a while to find a task at least two of us had not yet completed. But then it got really complicated. Since we weren't in the same party we couldn't share experience and treasure, in addition, if I, who had done that quest before, attacked a monster first, it wouldn't drop the quest item. So we had to settle for playing alone together. But this ended in disaster as well, because we couldn't see the location and health status of the other players and we were constantly swarmed by Kobold miners. After dying three or more times we found our way out of the mine and started to attack enemies in a more ordered fashion. This gave us a better success rate but also decreased the fun in the game because loot and experience couldn't be shared...
After completing a couple of quests we visited Stormwind City. That was an impressive experience, first because of its size and second because of the high-level players posing all over the place ;). However we didn't find a quest adequate for our level so we had to return to Goldshire to pick another quest.
I can see the advantage of group play, however, with these limitations in place it doesn't make much sense.Labels: games, WoW
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Join the fray
Since my server was busy and as a trial account user I had the lowest priority, I switched servers and created a dwarf priest (which would have been my first priority, if I had complete free choice). The first couple of tasks were pretty boring. But then I got into the troll cave. There I stumbled upon a group of adventurers and was invited to join their party. Charging into the fray with four people around was indeed a lot of fun. From a social standpoint it was interesting to observe that as long as everyone was in the cave the team worked great and we killed trolls left and right. But once outside the cave the group dispersed quickly, lacking a common goal, respectively communication and coordination towards what should be done next. Additional tools such as voice communication may have helped in this situation to quickly exchange the different player's goals and needs and to find a common understanding of what to do next. Now I'm really curious how it will be to play together with my classmates...Labels: games, WoW
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Death after Character Creation...
This morning I started playing WoW (World of Warcraft). I chose a human fighter (race and faction were assigned), figuring it would be easier to get the first couple of levels in solo play. However, searching for kobolds I got slightly lost and ended up in the dominion of brigands, they weren't pleased to see me and I didn't stand a chance. So now I know how dying feels like... ;)
After that it went better and I managed to complete a couple of quests and gain a couple of levels until I ran into a kobold ambush in a mine... Now I know to be more careful in mines. ^^
Getting started was actually pretty easy and through a little bit of trial and error I figured out most of the important key and mouse interactions. Two things struck me while playing: First, it was also encouraging to see other low level players around solving the same quests I had already done, and second, it was impressive to see a couple of high level characters with their mounts passing by. Some even gave me a helping hand in passing.
So far it has been more of a playing alone together, than interaction with other players and just running around and killing monsters didn't strike me as extremely fascinating... let's see if this changes in the group phase (next we have to play together with two other students from our class).Labels: games, WoW
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Last innocent post ;)
Many of my friends played World of Warcraft (WoW) and I was frequently asked why I didn't play, my answer was always: "It just doesn't sound that fascinating to me." So peer pressure had no effect on my desire to play the game, even when I ended up being the only one at the table who couldn't join the latest WoW discussion.
But now Carnegie Mellon does what peer pressure couldn't, they get me to play WoW... It is one of the homework assignments in the Social Web class I'm taking this year. We were assigned a race and two team mates and should play about two hours solo and two hours in a team and then analyze this experience in light of the social theories we covered in class. Fortunately, there is a 10 day free trial, so we don't have to invest money for the homework, and we are guaranteed to return to the real world within ten days, at least that's what the teachers hope...
I try to keep writing about my experiences, but in case I disappear from the radar send a search party to US server Alleria ;)Labels: cmu, games, WoW
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