Deedlitt Enters the World of Warcraft

Hello and welcome to my first blog posting! This blog primarily serves as a place for me to provide updates on my GSP475 Emerging Technologies course project, in which I will be tracking the progress of a freshly-created World of Warcraft character and commenting on the nature of social interaction within the virtual world of Azeroth as I explore it.

Today was my first day venturing forth into the world as my level 1 Blood Elf Mage named Deedlitt. My inspiration for creating this character comes from an old fantasy series called Record of Lodoss War. I tried to model my character to be as close in likeness as I could be to the character "Deedlit" from the series.

My journey begins in Sunstrider Isle, a small coastal region towards the northern tip of the Eastern Kingdoms continent. There I was greeted by a fairly large crowd of players all clamoring about to begin their own treks. The central goal of World of Warcraft is to level up your character through doing quests provided to you by non-player characters (also known as NPCs). These quests vary in length and the objectives involved with them. As your character gains levels, he or she becomes more powerful and is able to travel to new regions of the world that were previously too dangerous to explore. Despite this, many players in the crowd opted to instead stand around and visit for a while just for the sake of conversation. I even saw a few players of other races than Blood Elves make their way to Sunstrider Isle just for conversation, which requires quite a bit of running on-foot if you don't start there. I saw everything from petty name-calling to surprisingly people looking for dates. After a few minutes joining in on the chatting, I decided to snag a few quests and get moving on my way.

Sunstrider Isle

I immediately offered everyone to join a group with me so that quests can be shared and we could level up together, but it seemed that initially no one was interested, or it's possible that most of the crowd consisted of new players who did not yet understand the concept behind grouping for quests. Whatever the case, I continued onward by myself and completed several quests until I reached Falthrien Academy. With Falthrien Academy being the location of the final quest in Sunstrider Isle, it required taking down a boss NPC located at the top of the highest tower at the academy. At this point I no longer bothered asking anyone to join a group, I just immediately doled out invite prompts to anyone waiting for the boss to make an appearance and this turned out to be a much more effective strategy for grouping in the "newbie" zone. Everyone accepted my requests and we all were able to get credit for taking down the boss together so that we could turn the quest in for rewards.

Falconwing Square

Afterward, my group disbanded and I made my way south toward Falconwing Square where a new set of quest chains were available. While doing the quests I saw someone advertising their guild called "Paranormal Estate" in the chat box, so I sent them a message to receive an invite and joined them. Guilds in World of Warcraft are essentially player-generated communities that form together to help each other and build relationships. It is useful to join one early on as a new player because more veteran members of the guild will often assist you with currency, items, and leveling your character. I was greeted with a warm welcome to the guild from several of its members and finished up my quests in Falconwing Square.

Eversong Woods

From this point on, my options for quests to choose from expanded as I was introduced to a much larger region to explore known as the Eversong Woods. I made my way westward toward the Sunsail Anchorage where there was another quest involving a short boss fight at the top of a tower. Taking into account my experience from the last boss fight, I made no hesitation to send out group invites to anyone in the area waiting to get the kill. Sure enough, everyone accepted once again and we all got credit for the kill. One member of the group, Thelinddra, complimented me on a job well done and then we parted ways.

Sunsail Anchorage

I continued further westward until I hit the Golden Strand shoreline where I was sent as part of a quest to exterminate some rather silly humanoid fish known as murlocs. After that, I continued to explore the Eversong Woods accepting a multitude of quests every chance I got and continued to increase the power of my Blood Elf. I picked up two professions along the way, with one being in tailoring and the other in enchanting respectively. In World of Warcraft, professions (also known as trade skills) serve a useful purpose in the economy of the virtual world. In addition to leveling up to make your character stronger, you can also equip items to permanently increase your stats or consume certain items for temporary bonuses. As a tailor, I can craft useful cloth items for my mage to wear, and as an enchanter I can add permanent magical bonuses to my equipped items, further increasing their power as a result. I can also use these skills to sell as goods and services to other players who then pay me using the in-game gold currency.

The Golden Strand

While continuing my sojourn through the Eversong Woods, a member of my guild by the name of Damglorand made note that he had some extra bags to get rid of, so he was giving them away and it just so happened that I had use for them. Bags allow you to increase your inventory space for carrying items so less time has to be spent running back to town to sell off the goods you've found, and with three of my bag slots still empty at this point, it was just the break I was looking for. I headed north up to Silvermoon City, the capital of the Blood Elves, so that I could retrieve the bags that were sent to my mailbox.

Silvermoon City

As it turned out however, when Damglorand was sending the bags along with some gold to my mail, he accidentally spelled my character's name wrong and ended up sending off the goods to someone else! Nonetheless, I still thanked him for the thought, but he was feeling bad enough about it that he instead offered to help me with some quests and level up my character. At this point however, I declined as it was getting late and I was ready to take a break for the night.

Meeting up with Damglorand.

Whew, and so ends my first day as Deedlitt the Blood Elf Mage. I made a few friends and joined a guild along the way in a rather short amount of time. Overall, it was a pretty fun experience; in large part due to the social aspects of World of Warcraft.

So what exactly is my take on the social nature of World of Warcraft after all these shenanigans? Well, in order to get to the bottom of that, I'd like to first contrast it with another virtual world known as Second Life. Second Life differs from World of Warcraft drastically in the nature of its social interaction in large part due to the fact that social interaction is the entire central focus of Second Life. In Second Life, the main attraction of the experience is being able to meet new people for the purposes of potentially picking up new friends or business contacts which you may even end up meeting with in your real life eventually. There is no real "goal" or objective-based system in Second Life. You make and set your own goals within its world. Contrast this with World of Warcraft on the other hand, where the main attraction of the game is focused on evolution of your character through gaining power. As your character gains more levels, he or she increases in power and acquires new items and abilities. Seeing your character evolve in this way gives a sense of fulfillment and reward that makes you want to keep playing.

As a result of WoW's system, social interaction primarily comes into play as a means of assisting with this goal of making your character stronger. You want to interact with other players because they can help you become stronger more quickly. Joining groups of other players allows you to kill monsters and complete quests faster, and in some instances, help you traverse dungeons in search of valuable gear that you otherwise would be unable to acquire by yourself. That all being said however, building relationships for the sake of friendship is clearly still present in this game as I saw with the huge crowd in the beginning quest area, but it tends to take more of a backseat to other motives of the players overall.

Ultimately, the two main ways players converge in this online community are through grouping and guilds. Forming groups allows players to work cooperatively in completing quests, and guilds allow players to stay more permanently connected to each other for further assistance and continued adventuring together in the virtual world. Another aspect of convergence comes from competitive play, as the players are divided into two main factions based on their races known as the Horde and the Alliance. As a Blood Elf, this makes me a member of the Horde, and as I venture further through Azeroth, I will inevitably do battle with players of the opposite faction; the Alliance. The main purpose of this kind of online community basically boils down to facilitating fun and entertainment. As World of Warcraft is above all else a video game in a fairly traditional sense, its goal is to entertain you, and one way that it does so is through the various interactions with other players.

That wraps up my commentary for my first day. I don't think my future posts will be quite as lengthy as this one now that I've explained most of the basics to the game for those that are unfamiliar, so next time my musings will hopefully be more meaty and less lengthy. Bye now!