I’m rather intrigued by the sort of self classification that World of Warcraft has.  Different players play different races of characters that have aesthetic as well as skill based differences.  I wonder if people who line up in different personality types tend to play one kind of character or another.  I could see a very helpful person wanting to be a helping class such as a priest.  Priests are healers that typically play in the back to heal the group (or themselves.)  When I played AION I was a priest because the priest was not so squishy.  WOW seems to do a good job stratifying the strengths of the different races.  I am electing to be a paladin because I have been lead to understand that these characters can level easily in individual play.  Because I am a very pragmatic person, I seek the most efficient character.  WIth that in mind, does my character speak to who I am and--do I inform who my character is?  The correlation seems very obvious, but it seems very likely that there would be exceptions to this rule.

The Magic Circle!

My wife played WOW one summer while I was working.  I did not get it.  She was clicking a screen, not getting anything done.  However, to her she was levelling her druid and spending time with her friends (she was playing with her IRL friends....in a common location).   To her, WoW was an adventure, a break from the “real” world.  It was a chance for her to spend some quality time with her friends.  I was not in the magic circle.  I later joined the game (and had to quit as school started) but I got to see a bit of the allure of being in the circle.  This does draw a major line in the sand for me -- Work Or Play.


Often to me, video games can feel like work.  I like to play with people or I get board questing on my own.  But, I have very little patience for PUG groups or for not taking the game seriously.  That being said, I am not super competitive in gaming.  The scarlet raven guild sounds like a good kind of guild to be in as they factor in that characters in wow are real people living in the real world.  I do not often have the patience to play a video game all night long, because at some point I feel like I am putting off the things in the real world that demand my attention.  I’m not sure if this is “true” or not, but it is my feeling anyway.

The word “grinding” seems to be very fitting.  Ultimately, that is what you do (in some instances) to quickly level and to get good loot without having to be bothered with pick up groups or with disappointing quest mates.  Grinding.  Kill 10 monsters.  Kill 10 more.  I’ve done some grinding- it gets old- quick.  The interesting part about this is that if I am grinding for a quest or if the drops are particularly good it is more thrilling.  This notion supports the idea that the opportunity for occasional award coupled with the ability to complete a step in a sequence is a powerful thing.  

I’ve noticed lately that many web surveys have a bar at the bottom that show the surveyed how close they are to being through with the survey.  This seems very much like an XP bar in WOW.  It gives an abstract reference so that you know where you are in relative terms to completing the activity.  It seems that we (as humans) are constantly seeking new tools to inform us of our relative positions in the world (geographically) or within a process (XP bars).  There seems to be a driving sort of desire to constantly *know.  These notions can (and are) being incorporated into all sorts of every day things.  The survey that I referenced is just one example.  As games become more and more the norm, I expect that things based on “games” will become more prevalent.
At another point Nardi discusses Group play.  I hope that I have the opportunity to play with some of the people in class.  While I know that the low level areas are mostly just for getting a hold of the games basic tasks these are still things that could be made more interesting with a group of people.  I am fascinated by the notions of different people bringing different tools together to complete a task.  Wow takes that to the extreme with the idea that people have different innate strengths and so do their characters. This combination of self and character makes for a very rich environment to study and discuss the notions of group dynamics and leadership.