How World of Warcraft Impacted PC Gaming Forever?

 

"By one analyst's calculation, the 11 million or so registered users of the online role-playing fantasy game, World of Warcraft collectively have spent as much time playing the game since its introduction in 2004 as humanity spent evolving as a species-about 50 billion hours of game time, which adds up to about 5.9 million years (Kate Cox)."

 

With over seven million subscribers as of July 2013, World of Warcraft is currently the world's most-subscribed MMORPG and holds the Guinness World Record for the most popular MMORPG by subscribers 

 

 "Blizzard Entertainment created an entire planet inside of a video game, and the result was a revolution. This online game was so game-changing that it instantly legitimized the entire genre of massively multiplayer online (MMO) games and, ultimately, earned a subscriber roster that outnumbers some European countries." One thing that really made World of Warcraft so innovative was its addictive quality. 

  

It is safe to say that World of Warcraft (WoW) popularized the MMORPG as a form of consumer entertainment. Since its release, millions of players have been a part of Azerothian lore, slaying demons, killing liches, and punching dragons in the face.

  

The Changes

 

"The first major positive WoW has brought to gaming culture has to be accessibility, both inside and outside the game. Anyone with a decent understanding of how to use a computer can easily play the game, and if you're stumped, the official site has beginner's guides to setting up an account and understanding the lore and game mechanics of each class. This is one of the guiding principles of current-generation MMORPGs and, prior to WoW, it can be argued that MMOs were a lot less friendly to non-gamers. "

 

"The second positive WoW shared with gaming culture is its forgiving nature towards death and loss. WoW introduced the notion that death penalties and shouldn't be so heavy-handed that it deters people from enjoying the game. Instead, it levied mild resurrection sickness and the ability to run to your corpse, minus mobs, from convenient spirit healing stations without significantly impacting your gear's usability."

 

"The third significant positive behind WoW would be its user interface customization. While we know now that most AAA MMOs either come with or eventually have some kind on UI customizing feature, such as window placement or add-ons, it wasn't exactly a big point for people till WoW came along, and along with it, the promise of a Hello Kitty UI."

 

"The fourth positive, albeit a minor one, is the rise of information databases for characters, quests, and items.  WoW did it by introducing its very own Armory, allowing players to research people, gear, and other esoteric bits of information for their needs."

 

"Perhaps the most significant cultural change to MMO gaming that World of Warcraft brought with it is the result of a mix of design decisions, business practices, and just plain luck. The most significant cultural change to MMO gaming as a result of WoW's popularity is that the themepark MMO will remain king long after WoW's decline and demise."   

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What makes World of Warcraft so Addicting?

 

 

"World of Warcraft was by no means the first MMO, but it was the game that perfected the rules and the experience, with a richly detailed, persistent universe for players to explore, and constant expansions ensuring that their characters would continue to grow and change as the game aged. Since the game's best treasures and biggest quests often required dozens of players to band together, World of Warcraft encouraged people to communicate both inside and outside the world of Azeroth, making the human element the secret heart of World of Warcraft."  

 

 

 

 

In looking into the addictive effects of World of Warcraft, one very interesting rationalization, that was posted online, was from  Dr. Maressa Hecht Orzack, a clinical psychologist at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, who claims "that up to 40 percent of World of Warcraft players are addicted to the game. She points out that MMORPGs typically use what is known in psychological circles as variable ratio reinforcement. Variable ratio reinforcement is the idea that the best way to optimize the desired behavior in the subject is to hand out rewards for correct behavior, and then adjust the number of times the subject is required to exhibit that behavior before a reward is handed out."  What she was pointing out is that the game uses operant conditioning to keep the players involved in the game. Reinforcement and reward is the way most video games involve their players and entices them to keep coming back and playing more. The psychology of gaming truly is a double edged sword, as you have the psychology needed for the strategies of the game, but also you have the underlying psychological causative effect due to the rewards of the game.

 

Another story that was posted online, was about Isaac Vaisverg, a college student who really got addicted to World of Warcraft. He didn't leave his apartment for five weeks, hadn't showered and gained 40 pounds from eating takeout food. He left the takeout boxes piled up in his apartment and just got used to the awful smell in his apartment from them. He had a full scholarship to study law, but never showed up for classes. He played World of Warcraft for 15 hours a day. Isaac is quoted as saying, "I'd completely neglected everything in real life, as my obsession with World of Warcraft took over and consumed my every thought." His five week gaming binge cost him everything, then his mom stepped in, and with her help he entered a rehab program for internet addiction, called ReSTART. This was not his first time going to ReSTART, he had been there 6 months prior, but had relapsed. 

 

ReSTART is the only rehabilitation center in the United States for addicts of the internet, video gaming, Facebook, texting, internet shopping and other technological time-killing habits. ReSTART was started in 2009, in Fall City, WA, at the Heavensfield Retreat Center. It costs $14,000 to attend a 45-day program and they only admit 2 to 6 people for each program session. They have licensed mental health workers and fitness rehabilitators to help the clients overcome their Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD), as it is referred to at the center, and to reestablish a healthy lifestyle. Internet addicts go through the same withdrawal symptoms as alcoholics and drug users: sweats, shakes, inability to sleep, depression, anxiety and irritability. They have found that being involved in a physical fitness regimen helps lessen these symptoms.

 

 

 

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The Effects of World of Warcraft on Sociability?

 

As I looked at the research on the effects of World of Warcraft on sociability, a common theme started to appear, which was, "World of Warcraft has both a positive and a negative effect on a player's sociability." Several universities have done studies of these effects on World of Warcraft players and have concluded that players are very social in the virtual world, but in the real world they can often lose their sociability, due in part to the time they spend playing the game. The studies showed that for normally non-social people (the "nerdy" people as one group described them), their "sociability" increased in the virtual world, but they stayed the same (non-social) in the real world. For social people, it depended on how many hours they played the game, as the more hours they played, the less time they spent with their real life friends and the less social they became. This is true for my family, as the more my family member played the game, the less interaction he had with our family and he finally stopped interacting altogether. The outcome of this was his wife and children moved out, he ended up divorced, and he lost all his real life friends because he was literally engrossed in the virtual world of "World of Warcraft." His virtual friends became his only friends and he would play the game non-stop for almost 24 hours. It was like a drug for him, he wasn't happy unless he was conquering something and going to the next level. We even tried an "intervention," but it was not successful. He finally stopped playing when he lost his house and had to go live at his best friend's house, which did not have any internet access. It was difficult to watch him try to mend the broken friendships that World of Warcraft cost him. Some of his closest friends reestablished their friendships, but some did not. His casual friends ignored him and those friendships never got fully reestablished, so his circle of friends decreased sufficiently.

 

To paraphrase one person's description "The game, World of Warcraft, is making non-social people potentially even more non-social." One article talked about how high school boys would spend their lunch time talking about World of Warcraft strategies, instead of discussing the normal high school topics - sports, girls or cars. Several studies mentioned how, as people become more and more involved in these games, the concept of one's "self" will change. The games are so engaging and the visuals so realistic, that the player gets lost in the virtual world and only interacts when they are online playing the game. They fantasize being in their virtual world and lose touch with the real world. Many of the players, who lack a real life support system, are easily immersed in the World of Warcraft clan, that they become a part of, and through these experiences they get their social fulfillment.

 

Two studies recently published by Jeffrey Snodgrass, associate professor of anthropology at Colorado State, examined different types of video gaming experiences and the effects they can have on players’ lives, including their levels of stress, satisfaction and happiness. In both studies, Snodgrass and his research team examined the popular online game, World of Warcraft.  In addition to their own in-game observations, the research team conducted surveys and interviewed World of Warcraft players to learn more about their gaming habits. For the survey, they developed a set of game specific psychological scales to measure how absorbed players become while playing the game. Many players reported that playing World of Warcraft serves as a stress or tension reliever. Players who became more absorbed in the game reported more stress relief.

 

"The idea is that if you lose yourself, you escape," Snodgrass said. "So it’s deeply relaxing, what some gamers describe as akin to meditation, or at other times positively challenging and stimulating, like a great chess match where you’re actually one of the pieces, and we show that there are strong associations between these various states of consciousness and the game’s health benefits. But it is important to note that the escape must be controlled and temporary to be positive, so that it leads to rejuvenation rather than simple problem avoidance, which in the end only increases the experience of stress."  Many video game studies focus on the negative aspects of gaming. Snodgrass hopes that people will start to understand that addiction is only one side of video game usage and that his recent studies indicate that video game playing can be healthy.

 

 

Ethnologist Peder Stenberg spent 250 days – the equivalent of three years full time work – participating in World of Warcraft in order to explore the development of social structures, common values and the worlds created within the game.  Stenberg states, “The core of online role-playing games lies in the players' mundane, often repetitive, work-like everyday life. I slayed dragons, traded goods and attended parties; I made friends, joined guilds and collected herbs and minerals. I took part in rituals and learned written as well as unwritten social norms.”  During his research, Peder Stenberg found that the social relations and the persona players develop within the game often has an impact on real life.  Stenberg’s thesis describes a ‘leakage’ between the game world and the real world. Early research into the gaming world often describe the borders between the real world and cyberspace as rigid, that players left their real selves behind and could become whoever they wanted. “I wanted to show that these borders really are quite hollow, and there is seepage between the worlds,” Stenberg stated. In his thesis, he shows several examples of where the real world and the game world mix, and the problems this can create. Stenberg's study casts the game in a new light. His research found that the social relations and the persona players develop within the game often has an impact on real life.  According to Stenberg, “I don’t think it is despite the resemblance to work, but because it has a resemblance to work that people play it. It gives players a feeling of usefulness that generally follows what we see as work. It is the players that determine what is important within the world, and it is also their reactions and responses that make the goals set up by the individual players important."  Some World of Warcraft players have put "leadership skills" on their resumes because they lead groups and handled conflicts within the game, but the question arises whether those are true leadership skills.

 

 

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World of Warcraft Impact on Culture  

 

 

 

"When it began it was just a computer game. Now it is seen as a cultural force that sparks love affairs, breaks marriages and creates “sweat shops” to satisfy a black market in virtual goods.  It has had an enormous cultural impact,” said Tom Chatfield, author of Fun. Inc, a book about the growth of the games industry. “It has proved that online gaming can make huge profits, making a billion in revenue a year. It has proved that gaming could be for a truly global audience.”

 

"But it has a dark side. A thriving black market for virtual goods to use in the game, such as swords and animals, has emerged. Some top-level goods take thousands of hours to earn, and impatient players are willing to pay up to $5,000 on eBay to get them.The real financial rewards on offer have created an underground industry, where players play in slave-like conditions to obtain the items and sell them on. “You effectively have sweat shops in China,” Mr Chatfield said. “If you were to visit one of these gold-farming things, you’d find a building with maybe 20-40 people in it, playing in shifts on banks of computers. They do it because they can earn more money doing that than producing garments in factories."

 

"Blizzard Entertainment, which owns the game, will not reveal the average time that players spend on it, but academic research estimates that it is between 25 and 40 hours a week."

 

"However, fans say that the game’s popularity stems from the social atmosphere that it has created. In the game, people often have to join together to compete quests. Mr Chatfield said: “I know of several people who have got married through meeting in games. I even play the game with my wife.”(Times Online)

 

Mike Morhaime, the president and co-founder of Blizzard, said: “We never expected the series would grow into a social and pop-culture phenomenon. We’ve always simply made the games that we wanted to play ourselves and I hope that approach will continue to serve us well in the years to come.”

 

"Perhaps the most significant cultural change to MMO gaming that World of Warcraft brought with it is the result of a mix of design decisions, business practices, and just plain luck. The most significant cultural change to MMO gaming as a result of WoW's popularity is that the themepark MMO will remain king long after WoW's decline and demise."

 

 

The Ugly Side of World of Warcraft

 

"Attempted murder In October 2008, ABC News in Australia reported that Zhenghao Shen, 21, a student, had stabbed a friend in the head with a knife and nearly severed one of his fingers. The reason for the attack? The victim had asked Shen to turn down the volume on his World of Warcraft game. When Shen refused to compromise, the victim challenged him to a fight. Shen responded, turning from his computer screen with a blade."

 

"Divorce A Californian woman, 28, who identified herself as “Jocelyn” told Yahoo Games that she divorced her husband of six years after he spent all his free time on World of Warcraft. Jocelyn ended her relationship with her husband, Peter, by explaining to him: “I’m real, and you’re giving me up for a fantasy land. You’re destroying your life, your six-year marriage, and you’re giving it up for something that isn’t even real”."

 

"Suicide The parents of a Chinese boy, 13, who died after jumping from a building, attempted to sue Blizzard Entertainment, the developers of World of Warcraft, because they believed that the game led to the death of their son. The boy’s parents said that he had jumped on the morning of December 27, 2004, after playing World of Warcaft for 36 hours without a break in a “game hall”. Zhang Chunliang, an attorney and a well-known campaigner against the game in China, supported the parents in their claim."

 

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How World of Warcraft Impacted Science?

 

 

Corrupted Blood Plague Incident

 

"The Corrupted Blood plague incident was one of the first events to affect entire servers. Patch 1.7 saw the opening of Zul'Gurub, the game's first 20-player raid dungeon where players faced off against a tribe of trolls. Upon engaging the final boss, players were stricken by a debuff called "Corrupted Blood" which would periodically sap their life. The disease was passed on to other players simply by being near infected players. Originally this malady was confined within the Zul'Gurub instance, but it made its way into the outside world by way of hunter pets or warlock minions that contracted the disease. Within hours, Corrupted Blood had completely infected major cities because of their high player concentrations. Low-level players were killed in seconds by the high-damage disease. Eventually Blizzard fixed the issue so that the plague could not exist outside of Zul'Gurub."

 

"The Corrupted Blood plague so closely resembled the outbreak of real-world epidemics that scientists are currently looking at the ways MMORPGs or other massively distributed systems can model human behavior during outbreaks. The reaction of players to the plague closely resembled previously hard-to-model aspects of human behavior that may allow researchers to more accurately predict how diseases and outbreaks spread amongst a population." (Wikipedia.com)

 

 

          

 

Impact of the Deadly Corrupted Blood Plague

 

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Game Inspirations

"WOW was inspired by previous games invented by Blizzard (Creator of WOW). Inventors decided to take a different outlook and give gamers an advantage; not limiting them like the other games .Vice-President of Blizzard, Chris Metzen reported that the gaming experience like WOW were bound to come this way, being a natural progression. As Executive Bill Roper stated on "The Making of World of Warcraft." by Rob Fahey, “The company was going to make a massively multiplayer game, letting people roam the Warcraft world as their own characters. Three playable races - humans, orcs and the bull-like tauren - were revealed, and each was going to be fundamentally different. You would be able to play from first-person, third-person or zoomed-out, isometric perspectives.” As successful as WOW became, not many people supported the game making."

 

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Other Aspects WoW Has Touched

 

 

 

Jenova Chen was inspired by WOW due its loneliness and inequality. “The more I played this game, the more people I encountered, the more I realized I had no connection with any of these people. They just reminded me I’m a lonely person….. Another thing I got annoyed was that people would always check if you’re a guy or a girl in these online games….. I wanted to see a world where everyone is the same……" published by the website Destructiod, article, "Journey Inspired by World of Warcraft, Loneliness." As article, "GDC 2013: Jenova Chen Reveals How Loneliness and World Of Warcraft Inspired Journey." by author, Matthew Kumar published, "When I was online I wanted to have a connection with the other players, but most of the other players didn't care about that; they wanted to talk about the strategy to kill the boss, for me to get out of their way, or that they wanted that loot….. The more I played, the more I realized I had no connection with any of these people, it was just highlighting that I was a lonely person.” Jenova Chen inspired to create a more interactive (social) yet better game experience, he successfully created Journey (2012). 

 

 

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World of Warcraft Books 

 

There are so many World of Warcraft books that have been published in correlation with this game that we could not put all of them on here. What we did instead was to put on book title per writer of the books so you can see who the most common writers of the World of Warcraft books are. The books are published in both hard cover and paperback. At last count, the book titles were at 40 and we were still finding more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the World of Warcraft Book writers is Christie Golden. She has also collaborated with

Aaron Rosenberg on a few of the books in the series. Prior to World of Warcraft, Christie wrote many of the books for the Star Trek series.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeff Grube is another of the writers that is part of World of Warcraft. He also writes short stories and comics. He has collaborated on several of the books in this book franchise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Richard Knaak has written most of the books in the World of Warcraft series.He previously was a resume' writer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Aaron Roseberg is a novelist and has taught college-level English and worked ingraphic design and book publishing before doing freelance writing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 There are presently five World of Warcraft book trilogies, they are:  War of the Ancients Trilogy,  The Sunwell Trilogy and The Shatter Trilogy.    World of Warcraft: Legends has 5 books in it and World of Warcraft has 4 books.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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World of Warcraft Merchandise

  

The marketing and merchandising aspect of this franchise is ongoing. If you can think of a product that you can put the World of Warcraft logo or character on, then you will be able to market it. There are so many different types of WoW  merchandise available, that you "virtually" find anything you want.

 

    

 

          World of Warcraft Horde Flexfit Baseball Cap Hat

                                                                                                               World Of Warcraft Horde Hoody

World of Warcraft Horde T Shirt

 

 

 

 

Decals 

 

 

WORLD OF WARCRAFT WOW Metal KEYCHAIN

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

                                               Sheet Music

 

 

Monopoly Game

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trivial Games

 

Mega Block Toys

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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