The Scarlet Cathedral

It's solo night again for Deedlitt! Well, sort of anyway. Udderwin was gone for the time being, so I queued up for a dungeon by myself and landed in the Scarlet Monastery Cathedral. This is a short little dungeon, but it is not to be underestimated.

The Cathedral Courtyard

There are a lot of guards stationed throughout the cathedral and its courtyard, and it's tricky to avoid pulling too many of them at once. We ended up pulling a bit too many guards in several fights, but due to the skill of our team we were able to survive most of the encounters.

Most.

Entering the Cathedral

As we burst open the cathedral doors toward the end of the dungeon, our tank pulled a massive crowd including the boss and we wiped. After that point we finally managed to pace ourselves and stopped trying to take on so many mobs at once.

Carnage After the Battle

We sneaked around the back rooms and found the hidden chamber of High Inquisitor Fairbanks, a secret boss of the Scarlet Monastery.

High Inquisitor Fairbanks

After he was disposed of, it was now time to take on the main threat, Scarlet Commander Mograine.

Scarlet Commander Mograine

Mograine was simple enough to take down with a coordinated effort, but then the back doors of the cathedral flew open and High Inquisitor Whitemane emerged. This assistant resurrected Mograine and we then had to fight two foes at once. With all the hordes of baddies we had fought at this point though, this was still relatively a cake walk by comparison.

High Inquisitor Whitemane

Mograine and Whitemane have fallen. Yay.

But enough about that. So I've got three questions to consider this week:

1. How do the 3D spaces used by different people online in WoW reflect their interests and personalities?
2. What type of informal and formal behavior are visible in WoW?
3. How many compare to rituals in everyday life?

In order to fully address these questions I would like to draw some contrasts with Second Life. To the first question, WoW differs in its usage of 3D space from SL. In Second Life, players can more or less mold the world and their characters to their design in order to fully express their personalities. In World of Warcraft on the other hand, not so much. Customization is more restricted, but this is because WoW is less focused on the personal expression aspect and more concerned with immersing you in its own world. However, this isn't to say that there are not still things we can observe about people's behaviors to determine characteristics of their personalities. By observing what 3D spaces within WoW that specific players spend their most time in, we can deduce some traits. For example, players who spend a lot of time in the capital cities rather than venturing through the world tend to enjoy the more social aspect and generally have a taste for humor. This is because the general chat channel is frequently populated with silly conversations throughout each capital city. Players who spend a lot of time in battlegrounds and play on PVP servers tend to be more competitive individuals who enjoy the challenge and pride that comes from defeating other players. These are just a couple examples of how depending on where people spend their most time in the game can be good indicators of what kinds of personality traits they have.

Regarding the second question, to my knowledge there really isn't much in the way of formal behavior in Warcraft. It is generally appropriate to reply "GF" after a duel with another player, which means "good fight", but even something like that isn't entirely necessary and most people won't look down on you for forgetting to say it. Once again, World of Warcraft differs significantly from Second Life in that it is much more centered around gameplay objectives rather than social interaction, so players are overall less concerned about following rigid behaviors and more about simply enjoying themselves.

And as for the final question, it is difficult to say that many of WoW's rituals are comparable to anything in real life in most ways as the medieval MMO environment is significantly different from real life situations. There are a couple of examples I can think of however. Daily quests (quests that can be repeated once per day) remind me often too much of having a job. After a certain point they are no longer really done for fun; it is strictly for the monetary reward involved. Inviting friends to dungeons and battlegrounds on a regular basis mirrors that of hangout sessions with friends and real life as well.

This once again concludes my analysis this week. More still to come. :)