Communities at Play
By
Steven Perriam (13053479)
Background
World of Warcraft, developed by Blizzard Entertainment is one of
the most recent additions to the growing genre of Massively Multiplayer Online
Role Playing Games (MMORPG). World of Warcraft, set in the fictional world of Azeroth, has a rather large player base consisting of at
least 1.5 million players worldwide. Some of the countries that players come
from include, but aren’t limited to
As with the majority of existing MMORPGS, players are required to
pay a monthly fee to be able to take part in the game. In World of Warcraft
this fee is $14.99 USD, or roughly $20 AUD. If players feel that at some point
the game takes a turn for the worse, they can stop playing at anytime they
wish.
The setting behind Warcraft is just over 10 years old, having
grown through the Warcraft series of Real Time Strategy games. World of
Warcraft picks up a short number of years after the conclusion of the previous
game in the series, and gives players the opportunity to take part in and
explore the Warcraft world for themselves.
Software shaped community
From the first time a player loads up the game, the World of
Warcraft software can be seen helping to find somewhere for the player to
settle into. In World of Warcraft, players don’t play all together in one
single world. Instead, there are multiple copies of the world – 98 at the time
of writing – which are inhabited by players. One of the very first things
players must do is decide which one of these copies – realms – to play on. This
is narrowed down through deciding which realm type to play on. The three
different types are:
·
Player vs Environment (PvE,
·
Player vs Player (PvP)
·
Role-Play (RP)
This choice is important, as it will define the basic experience that
will be had during the course of the game. In PvE,
player vs player combat is purely optional. Here,
players can focus on completing quests or other goals. For those that play PvP, combat with players of the opposing faction can
potentially take place anywhere, adding another layer to the basic gameplay experience. Lastly, for RP, players are expected
by other role-players to keep in-character whenever possible – playing their
character as if they and the world they are in is real.
The 98 different realms break down as follows:
·
PvE – 43 Realms
·
PvP – 49 Realms
·
RP – 6 Realms
Each separate realm will be an experience different to that of
others. For example, on the Blackrock PvP server, items may cost more in the auction houses than
they would on the Spinebreaker PvP
server.
After realms, community is broken down again by the software. This time into one of two factions –
The World of Warcraft software encourages players to work together
to accomplish goals, although it is still possible for players to do things on
their own, should they choose to do so. The software encourages working with
others through being able to share quests with others, and even through
requiring players to group together for certain quests which take place inside
instances. Working with others is also encouraged through the creation of
guilds – groupings of players from the same faction with a shared group name
and identity.
Unfortunately, players will usually at some point encounter other
players while in groups, who will ruin the experience for others. Whether this
is through taking an item that isn’t meant for them then leaving the group, or
rushing ahead in a dungeon and consequently causing the rest of the group to
die, wasting the time spent getting there, there isn’t much that players can do
about this.
Communication
World of Warcraft players are given a number of methods through
which they can communicate with one another. The most obvious method of
communication is that of the chat system. In the chat system, players can talk
to one another privately through ‘whispering’, or they could decide to yell,
with only those within a certain radius being able to see what was said.
Players can also chat with those in the same area as themselves using the
pre-existing chat channels that exist in each area (Usually general, looking
for group, and local defense, although the trade
channel is also available when inside a city). Players are also given the
freedom of creating their own chat channels to communicate in. Should players
happen to be in a party or a raid group, they can use the party and raid chat
commands to communicate with only the members present in those groups.
Another communication feature present in the game software is that
of the friends list. With this, a player can enter the name of another player
and from that point on be aware of whenever they login or log off, as well as
being aware of their level, and what area they are currently in.
Also present within the game is a mail system. Through this,
players can send and receive messages, items and also money. Players can use
the mail system by simply locating one of the many mailboxes that are present
within the game, usually inside cities and smaller outposts.
A limitation of the mail system and the friends list is that it is
impossible to send mail to a player of the opposing faction, as well as have a player
of the opposite faction as a friend. This is done by design to keep the
communication barrier up between the two factions.
While different in-game communication methods are mentioned above,
there is also the official World of Warcraft forums created, maintained and moderated by Blizzard
Entertainment for the players. Here, players are able to communicate on a much
larger scale – there are no realm or faction restrictions in place. These
forums are also the main place of interaction with employees of Blizzard Entertainment.
These forums contain 121 different sub forums in total. One
for each individual realm, as well as for discussion on other topics such as
professions, quests, PvP, RP, tech support, and
general game topics.
These forums can quite easily be seen as quite hostile, with such
a large number of users present, each with an opinion of their own on one
subject or another. That said, the forums can also be
a good source of information relating to game. The World of Warcraft forums are
even used by players to show their own video recordings of in-game happenings.
Other players have taken this one step further and created machinima
type video using World of Warcraft.
Rules
As with almost any other community, there are rules that players
need to follow. If players choose not to follow these rules they run the risk
of being banned temporarily, or even permanently as players are able to report
the actions of others to Game Masters (GM’s) within the game. Also, players
must watch their actions on the forums. As players use the same account for
accessing the game and posting to the forums, they run the risk of being banned
should they break the rules in place on the forums.
Conclusion
Rheingold (2000) defines virtual communities as “… social
aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public
discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal
relationships in cyberspace”. Koivisto (n.d.) states the following about communities in relation to
games:
“Communities do not exist without communication. Game mechanics affect how important it is for the players to co-operate and compete with others and how useful it is to form different kinds of sub-communities, such as guilds. If the game supports player created content it typically strengthens the game community. The game environment provides settings for player-to-player interaction and can encourage collaboration and inspire the players to create their own stories around the sub-communities.”
As was made evident previously, the mechanics of the game go to
great lengths to make the players of World of Warcraft communicate (or not
communicate, when dealing with players of an opposing faction) with one another,
and co-operate towards achieving common goals with other players of the same
faction. Without the software to provide this, the community wouldn’t exist as
it currently does.
One could say that due to the nature of the community, it couldn’t
exist without the presence of the software at all. How long the World of
Warcraft community continues to exist for largely depends on how long Blizzard
Entertainment decides to keep the game operational.
References
Koivisto, Elina M.I., (n.d.). Supporting Communities in
Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games by Game Design.
Retrieved
Machinima
(2005). Retrieved
Rheingold, H. (2000). The Virtual Community.
Retrieved
World of Warcraft Community Site (2004). Retrieved
World of Warcraft Forums (2004). Retrieved