UNIVERZA V LJUBLJANI

FAKULTETA ZA DRUŽBENE VEDE

Deni Dagalev

Mentorica: Eva Vrtačič

The Culture in the World, Of Warcraft

Seminar Paper

Socialna in Kulturna Antropologija

Ljubljana, 2019

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 Izjava o avtorstvu pisnih izdelkov

Spodaj podpisani Deni Dagalev, z vpisno številko 21180437, s svojim podpisom zagotavljam, da

- bodo vsi oddani pisni izdelki rezultat mojega lastnega raziskovalnega dela;
- bodo vsa dela in mnenja drugih avtorjev oziroma avtoric, ki jih bom uporabljal/-a v pisnih
izdelkih, jasno navedena oziroma citirana (skladno s Pravili znanstvenega pisanja);
- se zavedam, da je plagiatorstvo – predstavljanje tujih del, bodisi v obliki citatov bodisi v obliki
skoraj dobesednega povzemanja bodisi v grafični obliki, s katerim so tuje misli oziroma ideje
predstavljene kot moje lastne – kaznivo po zakonu, prekršek pa podleže tudi ukrepom Fakultete
za družbene vede v skladu z njenimi pravili;
- se zavedam posledic, ki jih dokazano plagiatorstvo lahko predstavlja za oddane pisne izdelke in
za moj status na Fakulteti za družbene vede.

V Ljubljani, 10. 1. 2019 Podpis: Deni Dagalev

 

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 Table of Contents

Introduction 3
Figure 1. Number of World of Warcraft subscribers (2005-2015) 5

World of Warcraft: What is? 5

Social interaction and relation in WoW 7

Figure 2. Screenshot of players waiting in line to turn in a quest 7

Communication in WoW 9
Figure 3. Use of intolerant language Figure 4. Use of collaborative language
10

Guild masters and Raids in WoW 11

Figure 5. My in-game interface during a raid with my guild (Molten Core) 13

Figure 6. Table showing the top 3 guilds first kill progression in the raid Molten Core (my guild
as third best) 15

Conclusion 15

References 16

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Introduction

World of Warcraft (hereafter WoW) is for 14 years, more or less, bonding gamers from all over the
world. Online gaming, especially the massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG),
gained a huge momentum since the release of WoW in 2004.
“As players journey through the game, they participate in practices that are standard to the
MMORPG genre, such as completing quests and slaying monsters which reward items and
experience points, collecting materials to create items such as food or clothing with a number of
crafting professions, teaming up with other players to fight in dungeons and ​raids ​, and – not least of
all – interacting with other players via in-game chat channels such as party chat or guild chat”
(Friedline & Collister, 2011, pp. 195-196). Because its success is measured and ranged on a global
scale, WoW and its players themselves have been targeted in recent years upon hundreds of
researches, analysis and studies, predominantly focused on game's cultural and social impact, as well
as the physical and psychological benefits and disorders people face by playing the game.
As a day-to-day gamer and a WoW addict, although never been personally surveyed, and after
reviewing several already conducted studies and surveys, I indisputably find myself experiencing
numerous benefits and consequences shown on the results. The dilemma whether WoW can be taken
into consideration as a complete substitute for social life or in the least hand, knowledgeable, has
been in the upfront for many years, practically since day 1. To some it has brought happy marriages
and lifetime friends, and to some collateral health damage and bizarre deaths. These assumptions
cannot be taken for granted for WoW as any other game or activity can be best perceived and
interpreted on hundreds of ways via personal experience.
Consequently, the chief aim of this paper is not to explain how good or bad WoW is or why is it
played by millions of people, but rather to tackle the notion in understanding how and why do
players, through the processes of communication and interaction, perceive the fantasy world of
Azeroth as dynamic and real as the actual, real-life world.

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Figure 1. ​ umber
N of World of Warcraft subscribers (2005-2015)

World of Warcraft: What is?

O​riginally released in California, WoW is a fantasy-based game developed by Blizzard

Entertainment. Every 1 to 2 years the game goes through changes i.e. it is being expanded. New
features, such as maps, dungeons and raids, races, classes are being introduced. However, they are not
merely added for the purpose of making the game more broad or so, but accordingly to a specific and
profound background story, known as “lore” within WoW. Since 2004, there have been released 7
major expansions: The Burning Crusade (2007), Wrath of the Lich King (2008), Cataclysm (2009),
Mists of Pandaria (2011), Warlords of Draenor (2013), Legion (2015) and Battle for Azeroth as the
latest in 2017.
Nevertheless, the fact WoW is played throughout all continents it allows players to meet and greet
people from various nationalities, cultures and personalities just by playing a video game. The entire
player base is of course not settled within a single game server. It is dispersed over hundreds of
realms hosted on servers in the US, Europe, China and Korea. User players from US can play on
European or other region hosted servers and vice versa. In this context I will also mention the
existence of the private servers. The private servers are developed and ran by a team of volunteers,
with the goal to provide an authentic experience of an earlier version of the game since not always the
entire player base is satisfied from the new changes Blizzard introduces. In this matter, players reroll

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on private servers that are running one of the versions mentioned above. The stories of personal
experiences I will share in continuation come from a private server that ran the very first version of
WoW, Classic or commonly known as Vanilla. Because the server attracted hundreds of thousands of
players from literally everywhere, it was shut down by Blizzard Entertainment after 2 years of
existence due to copyright restrictions. The revolt within the community was so immense to extent it
successfully forced Blizzard Entertainment to announce a recreation of that version again,
legitimately ran by Blizzard. In some sort of way, the entire experience on that server seemed like a
revolutionary movement.
Sticking back to the previous point, having in mind there are different kinds players and playstyles, so
there are different types of realms with different in-game rules. Those are the Player vs. Environment
(PvE), Player vs. Player (PvP), Role-playing (RP), and Role-playing Player vs. Player (RP-PVP)
realms. For example, within a PvE realm, one player can’t immediately engage in combat with
another from the opposite faction unless they are flagged (option can be enabled through an in-game
command), while on PvP servers one can freely attack another. The PvE realms i.e. normal realms
tend to enjoy more loose environment and relaxed atmosphere.
“In WoW, human players create one or more characters and play the game through these avatars”
(Livingston, Gutwin, Mandryk & Birk, 2014), each fighting for the allegiance of its faction (Horde or
Alliance). “WoW is a game of movement. The game geography is huge. Characters travel on foot or
by beast, boat or air through fields, farms forests, jungles deserts, mountains, seas and other
distinctive scenery for which Blizzard artists have won many awards” (Nardi, 2010). ​Because the
game has no definite end mean nor final achievement that could suggest you have completed the
game and there is no a further reason to play, its wide amount of in-game fields of interests prompt
players to devote to their characters passionately and become deeply attached to them. When I started
playing WoW at the age of 7, practically in 2005, when it was officially released in Europe, I was
brought in to a new stage in life. I got summoned to join another world, the world of Warcraft.
Although to this day I still cannot explain myself what was the key motive that prompted me to
continue to play it back then for I was completely clueless in the first place, I know now with
certainty what it taught me to this day and how it reshaped my life forever.

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The complex world of Azeroth is not only seen and experienced as a battlefield of varieties of
characters, but as a cultural environment where lifetime friends are being made. The social benefits
this game can offer do not considerably differ from the manners and approaches we are taught in
school. For example, during the past 13 years of everyday gameplay, I met thousands of people from
different countries (most being older than me) with whom I exchanged great deal of life stories,
experiences and other views. Ergo, with the help of contemporary social network platforms, I even
met some of them in real life. Through the ideology of killing creatures, exploring zones and
completing quests, I today number dozens of friends coming from far distanced countries, including
United States, Brazil, Australia, and many other European countries.

Social interaction and relation​ ​in WoW

Figure 2 ​displays a screenshot I took from a vast queue of players patiently and in order waiting for
their turn to complete a quest because the NPC (non-player character) or the quest giver sought to
disappear for a short period of time after one turned in the quest, which is not a common thing in
other cases when interacting with NPC’s​.

Figure 2.​ ​Screenshot of players waiting in line to turn in a quest

There were of course players trying to abuse that unintentionally created common sense disciplined
order and go through the line, who after all received unpleasant messages on their address, but in
general they were not violating any game rules of which I will write in continuation of the section. As

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the picture also shows, there is a player that offers an amount of 10 silvers (WoW currency besides
gold) to buy a spot that would prevent him from waiting in queue. According to a research by Chen
and Duh (2007), there are 2 major in-game factors that determine the social interaction and relation
among players: instrumental joint acts and rules of conduct. While the first one focuses on player’s
spontaneous interaction for the purpose of in-game needs and services (trading, buying-selling,
grouping for particular quests), the rules of conduct, set by Blizzard Entertainment, pose the policy of
how should all those actions be carried out (right there). They ​also suggest that “different forms of
social interaction in WoW can be understood by self-other dynamic. In a role-playing game, everyone
can experiment forms of self-representation. The ways people express their views about others is
another element that construct social interaction” (Chen & Duh, 2007). They ​view the self
representation through the activity of the individuals via: staging oneself, gazing and superiority.
Prior to getting involved in such interactions, we know that players (before they enter the actual
world) are required to pick a race, class, faction and thereafter customize avatar’s physical
appearance, which means they represent an identity, specific role which is built and graded upon
their in-game behaviour and activity. Connected online, players can gaze one another’s character
progress (gear, achievements, rank), look after groups for particular adventures (quests and dungeons)
and observe goods’ market prices on the auction house or by joining trade and other larger world
chats. (Chen & Duh, 2007). ​Although majority individuals aspire to be better than the other, one
cannot dominate the game alone (solo). However, there are certain players who have higher authority
over others. These players in WoW are the guild masters who decide upon one member’s status,
frame guild’s policy and goals which determine its seriousness in terms of competing with other
guilds. Guilds are larger communities in which players join to play and work together with the goal of
improving their characters, by that and the reputation and status of the guild as well. Guilds too differ
from one another. Ones aspire to be the best, others aspire to just invite players and provide them a
place where they can casually talk and collaborate in dungeons or raids every now and then.
The “other” views Chen and Duh (2007) categorize as individual and collective. This presents a
categorical distinction where players comprehensively talk and interact between each other. Inhere, as
​ he
in real life, we see people being jealous at the status (social, economic, political etc.) of others. T
view of the individual other r​ ecognizes behaviours like giving compliments (e.g Your sword looks

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nice! Where did you get it?) and sometimes even insulting individuals or larger groups (e.g X guild is
racist) (Chen & Duh, 2007). These traits are common among players in WoW as there is a perpetual
ongoing jealousy in terms who has better gear or who is more respected among the community. Of
course, not all players are alike. Likewise, as player can point out an individual or a collective, the
player itself, in one way or another, belongs to a larger community. Despite its personal affiliations,
one that is a part of a guild must not disobey the common group goal. Coming from there, players
sometimes neglect real life tasks in order to enhance guilds honor and status in the community.
In 2015 I had led my own guild. To set suitable raid times and provide a happy median for 60 people
with different time zones, all having intimate and social life, is far from an easy endeavor, especially
when we are talking about a virtual game. On the other hand, there is always a group of people that
feels excluded from the collective activities. By being so, they often tend to violate both the written
and unwritten rules, just for the sake of harming and distorting the game experience of others. “While
it is fair play according to Blizzard, ganking is annoying to players, as is “corpse camping.” In PvP, a
player may kill another player and “camp” the corpse, remaining by the corpse and killing the player
after he resurrects and is in a weakened condition, sometimes repeating the action to the intense
frustration of the defeated player” (Nardi & Harris, 2006).
Other frequent circumstances are when one is stealing other’s items, leaving dungeon or raid groups
amid fights or in the most banal cases, refusing to help an ally that is in front of him. Such players not
only create a bad picture for the community as a whole, but sometimes provoke other friends to
engage in conflict or “help” entire guilds disband. Appropriately, they could be either suspended from
the game by the game masters (admins) if they are breaking the rules of conduct, or be placed on the
realm’s blacklist not to be grouped or played together with.

Communication in WoW

Brown’s and Levinson’s (Friedline & Collister, 2011, pp. 202-203) online survey on the language in
WoW makes a good distinction between a collaborative or polite language and aggressive language.
Their results show that the collaborative language is best explained when one is referring to the guild
leader, who’s considered to be superior and more authoritative, as I mentioned in the previous
section. The collaborative or the polite language helps players in group make good and rational calls

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easing their actual operation. In guilds, the collaborative language, used among all members not only
when addressing or being addressed by the guild master or other highly ranked member (class leader,
officer) plays an essential role amid raiding or in general. This language exponentially improves the
mutual respect, understanding and will to cooperate among guild members, regardless of their skills
and experience. Often times, even guilds that have less skilled and experienced players tend to prevail
over guilds that are considered as best on the server.
When it comes to the aggressive language, it is fairly common for fierce and tense controversions to
erupt, especially in hardcorely dedicated guilds. I can admit that from a drama that happened in my
guild, when guilds top 5 players confronted over my decision to hand a highly valued item to another
player they think did not deserve it. Our system for distributing items (loot system) was based on
one’s contribution in several segments. Those included in-game activeness (in-game availability),
solidarity in terms of helping other guild mates with particular endeavors, and most importantly, the
raid performance. Raid performance was measured upon the degree of following raid leaders
commands, class leader’s specific assignments and personal effort in slaying difficult bosses. Because
item’s chances to drop from the boss was low and therefore it was considered as one of the best
in-game items available, and all 5 players who competed for winning it were as I said guild’s top
players, it was a troublesome decision for a 17 years old me.
Also, besides raids, aggressive and intolerant language is frequently used in Battlegrounds, areas
where players from opposite factions engage in combat. Herein most of the time players yell in chat
at each other for not being focused or due to lack of skills. Because players usually join Battlegrounds
alone, they have no one above them being more superior by a set of rules, so they candidly use
impolite and insulting messages.

Figure 3.​ Use of intolerant language ​Figure 4.​ Use of collaborative language

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Figure 3 displays an abuse of a global trade chat with coarse and inappropriate messages, which
distort the stream of messages from players who want to actually sell or buy something. Such
occasions tend to appear regularly nowadays in WoW as there is still no definite code of conduct set
for it. Unlike on figure 3, ​figure 4 ​shows a collaborative conversation between 2 guild mates talking
about an upcoming guild raid.

Guild masters and Raids in WoW

Interaction between players can always go on another level. Throughout one’s game experience, a
player may and may not have the chance to reach the dungeons and raids of highest difficulty. Unlike
any other game, WoW requires considerable skills and knowledge in order to be good at it. By good,
several expertises can be taken in to account: content knowledge (zones, class abilities, boss
encounters etc.), personal class mastery, profound communication capabilities, teamwork abilities
and the list goes on and on. Raiding in WoW is by far the topmost achievement one can experience. It
is available only to players that have reached game’s current max level. “Players this powerful can
form groups of 25 people (or, in some circumstances, 40 and 10) to enter “instances”—castles and
temples whose content is reset once a week” (Golub, 2010). “Even though you have all your people,
you also need someone to be in charge and lead the group. This is commonly the Raid Leader’s job.
The Raid Leader will make sure that everyone is ready, starts the countdown timer before the pull,
and reminds people of things to look out for during the fight” (Guillot, 2015). To participate in raids
effectively, every player has to obtain an adequately powerful gear and a great amount of other
essential potions and elixirs that increase character’s performance statistic numbers like damage or
healing per second. Why are these details important is because one cannot make a leap in the game
from one stage to another by skipping these processes. During the process of guild’s core building,
players are tirelessly encouraged to help one another, which also echoes the notion of incredible
relation and connection among user players. Guilds tend to raid twice or thrice weekly, depending on
their hardcoreness and maturity. An average raid lasts around 3 hours. As I mentioned earlier, it is
guild master’s job to allocate permanent raid days and hours that would fit everyone. Related to
raiding, not all guild masters are raid leaders, but they are in most cases for they weigh almost all

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responsibilities. Some dedicated guilds raid even 5 times a week and most of them seek at least an
80% raid attendance in order to be granted items and status promotions. Besides the guild master,
there is also a set of high ranked players like officers, class leaders and recruiting managers. To be
able to execute such a position, one is required to devote a great deal of time within the game. Not
only guild masters and officers care for the stability and effectivity of the guild during raids, they are
also obligated to observe and track the progress of every individual member of the guild. In cases one
or more members are not able to attend on a particular raiding day, it is guild master’s and officer’s
duty to adjust the raid roster with a suitable replacement, just like in any sports game, by players that
sit on the bench. Bench players in WoW know that they will not be in the raid group in the first place,
but they must appear and remain online in case of emergency, whether someone has to leave amid
raiding or in most common cases, experience an internet breakdown and is offline for a while. Also,
guild master’s and the other highly ranked members need to have a profound knowledge not only in
the classes they are playing, but all others too. Without holding those information, one is incapable of
giving assignments or identifying the causes for one’s bad performance. Guild masters must be
ultimately skilled and experienced, and that of course plays an excessive role in being a reputable
guild master, but one will never be able to provide a healthy and amusing atmosphere in the guild that
will consistently strengthen the core if it’s not showing other attributes of leadership: long term
vision, optimism, emotional stability, self-confidence, passion, and most importantly, empathy
towards the other members.

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 ​ y in-game interface during a raid with my guild (Molten Core)
Figure 5. M

“Raid encounters are high-pressure, emotionally intense, ritualistic activities in which players learn to
repeatedly perform the same actions in a more or less identical way in a coordinated manner in order
to kill a boss. Malaby describes this sort of process as “collaborative action in urgent conditions,” and
suggests that it “is highly generative of trust and belonging” (Golub, 2010). The approach towards the
game my guild had been up to was unquestionably hardcore. We were in a constant race with several
other guilds competing for server first kills (being first in clearing the newest content) and best speed
runs (clearing the raid instances fastest). Being among the first in these competitions has an enormous
influence on how will the rest of the community see on you. The steadiness and focus every single
raider had to practice was extreme. Firstly, if a particular raid had been scheduled at 7.00 p.m server
time (European servers are under the GMT+1 time zone), that would be an early evening for
European based players but not to US guild mates. Everyone had to show up at least 15 minutes
before the raid time, so they could be invited to the raid group and join the voice communicating
software where we were usually talking while playing. Inhere I want to dispose the fact how
overwhelming it is to manage gathering the right people able to raid in a specific and particular hour.

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Before a boss encounter was started, I as a raid leader regularly needed from 10 to 15 minutes in
order to assign everyone’s correct spot, hand out commands who has to do what - basically make sure
every single player is ready and on spot for the fight. The fights were the moment of truth. Amid
fights, every player is from an equal importance to the group, regardless whether he/she is a member,
officer or guild master. The right to speak on the voice channel during boss fights is in most cases
forbidden and restricted for only leaders and officers may announce second-to-second actions. All the
rest are just following the announcements and play accordingly. “Wiping” (dying out in a fight) is not
something raid leaders have in preference. But it is of course an inevitable part of the game. That
means that the entire raid group has to be yet again instructed and positioned in order to defeat the
boss they wiped on. During the period of repreparing, a lot of controversions and hot debates occur in
case the entire group died because of one player’s irresponsibility. Sometimes in such cases a player
may be punished, by being suspended from the raid or in most severe cases, kicked out of the guild.
To a similar case I was forced to disband the guild, when the entire guild could not find an agreement
on adjusting the loot system following the controversion I mentioned in explaining the use of
aggressive languages.
However, disbanding the guild was just a partial separatization that did not had any future impact on
our already established relationships. The relationship we had established within our roster was
strong and healthy to the extent of becoming a family. We cared for each other like real brothers and
sisters. Strengthening the boundaries from within through a regular exchange of life experiences,
occupations and views on certain things taught me to understand better how people cope with life and
problems outside the fantasy world of Azeroth. As a 17 years old guild master, leading a guild of 60
people, I had been receiving endless support from everyone. Despite I was not the most
knowledgeable player in the guild, it was always me who had the lead and end call.

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 ​ able showing the top 3 guilds first kill progression in the raid ​Molten Core (​ my guild as
Figure 6. T
third best)

Conclusion

The power of WoW to congregate huge masses of people and thereafter help them reassemble on
different servers within even smaller guild communities, in which players not only interact and
cooperate for the purpose of becoming better in the game, but get to know to each other personally.
From giving birth to new relationships to destroying the old and unforgettable friendships, from
sharing and caring the unwritten to neglecting and abusing the written rules, from being awarded

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unique items to becoming server’s black sheep. This is what makes the culture of WoW (a)live for
more than a decade.
Through the examination of a few linked categories, and going through some of my own on field
experiences in the fantasy world of Azeroth, it is evident that WoW can indeed be a home for
someone that finds the actual, real-life world limited or unattractive, or at least perceives it in such
matter. In fact, there are multiple purposes why some prefer to spend more time with their friends
playing WoW instead of with their fellow schoolmates, colleagues and even family members in other
activities. Seemingly, even I, due to grueling guild master responsibilities used to spend two-thirds of
the day in-game caring about the progress of the guild.
Its influence and potential to attract and thereafter acclimate user players to present themselves as
‘true’ citizens of the fantasy world of Azeroth has been for years a research phenomena. Not only for
researchers, but for players too. Being present for almost 15 years, WoW has not only as a gaming
platform, but as a social network as well set the standards for how should one globalized virtual
world look like, not excluding the fact that it all began in the distant 2004.

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References

Livingston, I.J., Gutwin, C., Mandryk, R.L., & Birk, M. (2014). How Players Value their Characters
in World of Warcraft.​ CSCW.​ ​Retrieved from: ​ ​http://hci.usask.ca/uploads/445-how-players-value.pdf

Nardi, B.A, & Harris, J. (2006). Strangers and Friends: Collaborative Play in World of Warcraft.
CSCW.​ Available from ​https://artifex.org/~bonnie/pdf/fp199-Nardi.pdf

Friedline B.E, & Collister L.B. (2012). Constructing a Powerful Identity in World of Warcraft: A
Sociolinguistic Approach to MMORPGS. ​Dungeons, Dragons and Digital Denizens: The Digital
Role-Playing Game. (pp. 194-218). ​Retrieved from:
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/20470/1/Friedline-Collister-ConstructingAPowerfulIdentityInWoW.pdf

Golub, A. (2010). Raiding, Realism, and Knowledge Production in a Massively Multiplayer Online
Game. ​Anthropological Quarterly ​83(1), 17-46. ​Retrieved from:
https://evols.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10524/2116/1/golub_2010_being-in-the-world.pdf

Guillot, E.S. (2015). The WoW Factor: Leadership in World of Warcraft as Sociotechnical Practice.
(master’s thesis). ​Norwegian University of Science and Technology. ​Retrieved from​:
https://brage.bibsys.no/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/1911444/master_01_elisabethguillot.pdf?seque
nce=1&isAllowed=y

Nardi, B.A. (2009). ​My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of
Warcraft. ​Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ​Retrieved from:
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=toi;c=toi;idno=8008655.0001.001;rgn=full%20text;v
iew=toc;xc=1;g=dculture

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