Researching World of Warcraft

Climbing the scales at Digg this week is a story on How Stuff Works about World of Warcraft. Most intriguing was Section 2 of the article, entitled, “World of Warcraft Players.” Here, author Tracy V. Wilson lists a variety of research efforts focused on WoW, currently the most popular MMORPG.

First up is Stanford grad student extraordinaire Nick Yee:

According to one of Yee’s 2005 studies, 84 percent of “World of Warcraft” players are male, and 16 percent are female. The average player’s age is 28, and female players tend to be a few years older than male players. Regardless of their gender, players spend an average of 21 to 22 hours a week playing the game … Of course, these statistics may have shifted since Yee collected his data.

Yee continues to document his work at The Daedalus Project.

Next up is information on a report from the legendary Palo Alto Research Center:

According to research conducted at the Palo Alto Research Center in 2005, players tend to put in an extra burst of playing time when a character is about to reach a milestone level. The most dramatic spike occurs when approaching level 40, the level at which characters gain access to a mount, such as a horse or a tiger, and lots of new abilities and skills. The spike in play time leading up to level 40 is even greater than the spike leading to level 60, which was the highest possible level when the study was conducted. However, once people reach the highest levels, they generally spend more time playing than they did at lower levels

Finally, academic gaming luminary Richard Bartle is mentioned. Besides helping to invent text MUDs (multi-user dungeons/domains), Bartle was key in framing research questions surrounding online interactive environments. His four categories of players: achievers, socializers, explorers and killers, provide a taxonomy that remains relevant in today’s graphical MMORPGs. Bartle remains active in ongoing discussions, and is a regular over at Terra Nova, the Wonderland Blog, and elsewhere.

As the hunger for solid research on educational gaming, MMORPGs, and related popular phenomena shows no signs of abating, resources such as Wilson’s article in How Things Work will provide road signs on the Web to the research out there. Let’s hope folks find what they’re looking for.

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Other Links to this Post

1. Mathematics Education Blog » Blog Archive » Researching World of Warcraft — November 21, 2007 @ 12:05 am

2. SuperJogos - Todos os jogos da internet » Researching World of Warcraft — November 21, 2007 @ 12:06 am

3. androidsx » Blog Archive » Researching World of Warcraft — November 21, 2007 @ 7:26 pm

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