It’s 2 in the morning, and I’m hours past my
deadline. I had no excuse; I had all the materials for the story
““ the interviews, the research and finally, the game
that’s been taking over my life.
World of Warcraft, commonly referred to as WoW, is a Massively
Multiplayer Online Game ““ an MMORPG, generally referred to as
MMOG. MMOGs are games such as WoW and EverQuest where players
interact in a persistent online environment that exists even after
they log off.
According to studies, WoW is the largest MMOG on the market
today. As of September 2006, there were more than 7 million active
subscribers around the world. According to MMOGChart.com, a Web
site that tracks the growth of MMOGs, WoW takes 52.9 percent of the
market share.
The numbers, even for a computer game, are incredible. All over
the world, from Australia to the United States, players flock to
the digital realm of Azeroth in droves. Many are students avoiding
studying for that big midterm the next day, but even more are
adults with responsibilities, families and jobs. All, however, play
WoW ““ a game that demands, by its very nature, an incredibly
large spectrum of people from all walks of life to work
together.
I started playing WoW long before I was assigned to write about
it. I managed to get my hand on a copy from a friend, ostensibly
only to play during the free first month included out of the box
(WoW includes a monthly subscription fee), see what all my friends
were raving about, and then quickly quit just in time for school.
In hindsight, that was a lofty goal.
Within a week, I was logging at least three hours a day playing
my first character, a human warrior called
“Cmdrstarbuck,” modeled after the delicately butch
features of my favorite sci-fi heroine. She had short blond hair,
blue eyes and a sword that could cut through hordes of, well, Horde
““ the “evil,” savage enemy, played by gamers just
like me. She was, to put it succinctly, everything I was not.
It was empowering, but the problem was, I couldn’t stop
playing. Summer became fall quarter and fall quarter became a
desperate struggle to juggle classes, work and what little social
life I had.
It’s hard to ignore the horror stories of students
dropping out of class because they played WoW all day, of others
losing key scholarships and returning home. Like most stories, they
exist in that hazy realm of “I have a friend who has a friend
who … ,” but that doesn’t mean the risk isn’t
very, very real.
“One of our friends, Matt, had problems. He was the best
mage on the server, but he played way more than any of us. He had
problems staying in school,” said Edward Herman, a
fourth-year microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics student
and level 60 Undead Warlock.
For one UCLA student, the longer she played, the lower her
grades became.
“Quitting cold turkey became the only option for my
boyfriend and me. I didn’t like the direction my GPA was
going,” said Jaymie Lao, a fourth-year linguistics student
and a former level 52 Night Elf Priest.
“The problem with the nature of the game, that
there’s endless progression, there’s never really an
end. There’s always bigger monsters to kill, better
loot,” said Douglas Rosenberg, a fifth-year computer science
student, former Daily Bruin editor and level 60 Night Elf Druid.
“(But) if there’s something you’re doing that you
really don’t like, you’re going to find something else
to do, be it Warcraft or any other activity.”
However, WoW is hardly the lonely nerd mecca many might believe
it is.
Contrary to popular belief, it is nearly impossible to play WoW
without interacting with other people. There is no true solitary
experience in an MMOG, and with the way WoW is set up, the best
“loot” ““ better weapons and armor ““ can
only be attained while working with other people.
While a level of anonymity exists, many players first start
playing WoW through recommendations from friends or loved ones. For
Herman, WoW offered a chance to hang out with friends from back
home.
“(My friends) are scattered all over and it’s nice
to be able to hang out with them online. Since I don’t really
get a chance to see them, playing the game lets me keep in touch
with them,” Herman said.
Making a pact to level up their characters together, Herman and
his friends have played WoW since the beginning of the game back in
November 2004 and continue to play today.
Having a group of friends dedicated to helping each other out,
ironically, may be the most potent weapon in the game.
These groups of players working together can get large,
especially with the option of creating “guilds,” large,
player-run organizations in the game dedicated to everything from
helping new players (“n00bz”) to slaying dragons.
The battles, like the subject matter, can become epic in scope,
and the more people, the better. For many players, these guilds
become a sort of second family and an opportunity to become friends
with people they may never have met otherwise.
“My friend found his current girlfriend for over a year
through WoW completely by accident. I never thought any of us would
find someone through the game because I always thought it was
weird,” Herman said. “But she’s very nice and it
was cool.”
In the stereotypically male-dominated world of video games,
it’s easy to assume the real person on the other end of a
character is a man. After an uncomfortable encounter with an
insistent Dwarf Hunter, I started to pretend I was a guy behind my
curvaceous female avatar.
As I was playing, I befriended a female priest character; I
would kill the monsters for her, she’d heal me, and
we’d both share the loot. We grouped together for over three
weeks believing each other’s finely crafted lie until a
run-in on voice chat revealed our unexpectedly “girly”
voices.
It was a weird moment of disconnect, realizing we were both
girls pretending to be guys pretending to be girls. Speaking with
her later, I found out that she had hidden her identity for many of
the same reasons as me, and I was left wondering just how many
girls like us tried to avoid harassment in much the same way.
This is changing, however. With the sheer scope of WoW’s
player base, a new, changing face of gaming is emerging.
In the recent “Active Gamer Benchmark” study done by
Nielsen, it was revealed that two-thirds of online gamers are
female. While including online games such as those found on Yahoo!
and other casual game sites, the statistic also includes the recent
surge of the MMOG market.
For WoW, the number of female players hovers somewhere around
one-third, and compared to previous MMOGs on the market before, the
chance of the player behind that hot Night Elf Druid being an
actual woman has become progressively higher. In fact, it could be
anyone.
“I think you’d be surprised the people who you
wouldn’t think play, play. Some are parents with children,
others are doctors and professionals. It’s a little
surreal,” Lao said. “You play with these people every
day, and the next thing you know, you’ve built a sort of
friendship.”