I used to be an adventurer like you...

Today marks the end of Deedlitt's journeys through the world of Warcraft. Many friends were made, frostbolts fired, regions explored, and dungeons conquered. Deedlitt concluded her adventure with an assault on Scholomance, the Lich King's school for students of dark magics. But rather than entertain you with the details of it, I'll just let the screenshots do the talking while I instead take a moment to look back on my observances with Warcraft's social structure and economy.

First Boss of Scholomance

In week one, I took a look at what the overall social nature of Warcraft was. I did this by contrasting it with Second Life. In Warcraft, social interaction is primarily built around the game's main objective of improving your character. Cooperation with other players is essential to acquiring better gear. However, this isn't the sole driving force of interaction within the game. Other factors naturally draw players together as well, such as the usual desire for friendship. Gaming is always better with good company.

Rattlegore

In subsequent weeks, I noted how much to an extent that player interaction could affect the gameplay experience. It can mean the difference between continuing playing and unsubscribing from the game. Keeping players constantly interacting with each other keeps the experience feeling fresh and unpredictable when otherwise mundane quest objectives aren't enough. Social interaction can only carry an MMO so far though. What initially lures players to an MMO of Warcraft's flavor is the well-executed gameplay; the social interaction in combination with this is what keeps players hooked thereafter. Both elements are important factors in crafting a quality MMO experience.

Ras Frostwhisper

Keeping a steady economy is important to the game as well. If it's too easy to acquire high quality items, players will lose interest because they no longer have objectives to strive for. If it's too hard, they will equally lose interest because they feel like they'll never be able to reach their goals. Warcraft strikes a careful balance with this, which likely explains one major aspect to the game's wild success.

Illucia Barov

As an aspiring game developer, I should consider these lessons carefully with my own games. Much of game programming is like solving a puzzle; you need to find a way to make all the pieces fit. If any are missing or out of place, then the experience will feel wrong or incomplete, and players will notice.

Darkmaster Gandling

Even still, World of Warcraft is not without its own problems. The game world has gotten so big as a result of the game's expansions over the years that it has created a scarcity of players when traveling the continents. This results in middling segments of the game becoming fairly dull as there are too few players to interact with. The gameplay then picks up again when approaching the level cap as you can join in with all the seasoned players at the top, but many players may give up before then. Also, the game still lacks enough content to satisfy more competitive players. While Warcraft provides numerous dungeons scattered across the world for players to work cooperatively in raiding, PVP content is limited to only a handful of instanced battlegrounds and arenas. It would appeal more to competitive players to have more open world PVP-based objectives.

Regardless, World of Warcraft still remains at the top of the MMO food chain, and developers would do well to study and learn from it. Farewell and thank you for following the adventures of Deedlitt in World of Warcraft!

Slaying the Two-Headed Beast

It was now time for us to strike at the leader of the Gordunni ogre clan, Cho'gall, who was hidden deep within the ruins of Dire Maul. With the aid of an army from the Stonemaul Hold, we interrupted their meeting and stormed their defenses.

Disrupting the Meeting

Cho'gall was powerful, but he couldn't handle all of us and we brought him down. Our tenure at Dire Maul was not over yet, however. Before we progressed further into the ruins once more, Udderwin and I had some business elsewhere to take care of.

Battling Cho'gall

Specifically we had reached level 40 and could now acquire epic mounts that run significantly faster than our old ones. I grabbed my new hawkstrider as soon as I arrived in Silvermoon City. Then, I used a teleportation spell that I had learned through my mage training to return to Orgrimmar immediately.

A New Hawkstrider

From there, I worked on my tailoring until Udderwin returned with his own new mount. Once he had arrived, we were now ready to head back into Dire Maul. We entered the Capital Gardens section this time to hunt down Immol'thar, a fearsome two-headed beast that has been the cause of much distress for the region. It was going to require a full party to bring him down.

Fighting in the Capital Gardens

Joined by Miaku the priest, Silabus the warlock, and Brenal the rogue, we battled through the Capital Gardens tirelessly in search of the beast. It was a long journey however, as the gardens were expansive in scope. We had to stop a couple times throughout the dungeon to let certain group members take care of real world business.

Rocking Out Awaiting Miaku's Return

Finally we encountered Immol'thar's chamber, but it seemed to be protected by magical energies. We needed to destroy several pylons transferring power to it before we could gain access.

Immol'thar's Chamber

With the barrier down, we were finally ready to do battle with Immol'thar himself. Our first attempt at bringing him down was close but we failed. His swarm of eyes overwhelmed us and took us out. It was clear if we were to defeat him we would need to make sure his eyes are eliminated first as soon as they spawned so that they did not slowly build up and overpower us.

Preparing for Immol'thar

Our second time we stayed clumped together so that I could cast my arcane explosion spell and be in range to take out all the eyes at once as they appeared. The strategy worked very effectively and we defeated Immol'thar this time. Udderwin and I also made new friends with Miaku the healer in the process.

Battling Immol'thar

The last of Dire Maul's tribulations were now behind us.

Shrinking Giants

There were still quests that remained to be done before leaving the ogre encampment of Stonemaul Hold. Today Udderwin and I aimed to finish them off. We started off with another quest involving that strange device that shrinks beasts into a container. This time they wanted us to collect hippogryphs (giant bird creatures) with it.

Hunting Hippogryphs

Afterward, we took to the western shorelines of Feralas where we were tasked with collecting elemental cores from the water elementals that patrolled the coast. The drop rate for these cores caused a slight contention between Udderwin and I, as the cores seemed to conveniently keep dropping for him but not for me. Eventually he was able to collect all ten cores while I still needed six more.

Collecting Elemental Cores

Our business with the coast was not finished after gathering the cores however, as we were instructed yet again to use a shrinking device; this time on the shore strider giants. Apparently the goblins we've been working for seem to have an obsession with shrinking the local populace here. Although this time, we needed to collect the residue left behind from the device after slaying the shore striders rather than placing them into containers.

Hey, pick on somebody your own size!

There we go.

With the residue collected, our final quest for Stonemaul Hold was to take out the Gordok Clan of ogres to the northeast near the ruins of Dire Maul. They were the last source of trouble for our little encampment that needed to be dealt with.

The Gordok Ogres

The ogres were defeated, and now it was time for us to take our leave. We received orders to head further east toward another camp in Feralas, Camp Mojache. I grabbed a flight on a wyvern over there and headed to the local inn to log off.

Deedlitt in Camp Mojache

It seems during these middle stages of the game, the number of players we've come into contact with has taken a significant dive. It is interesting how the social aspect of Warcraft can impact the gameplay. We've been tending to play in shorter bursts now that we aren't spending as much time with other players. This is something significant to note for game developers considering creating their own MMOs in the future. Do not underestimate the need for social interaction in these games. I unsubscribed from SWTOR as noted in a previous blog posting for similar reasons. MMOs following Warcraft's gameplay structure tend to suffer during the middle portions of the game due to failure to provide enough opportunities for player interaction. It would be wise for developers to consider and address these problems in the future.

Robot Chickens and Zombie Deedlitt

Deedlitt has arrived at the Ogre Camp! The half orc presiding over it looks like serious business too. O_o

The Ogre Camp

Good thing I'm there to do some work for them then. My first order of business was to track down a lost robotic chicken homing beacon for a goblin who was using it for research on some Yetis. Yep, the story is as absurd as it sounds. Why a robotic chicken as a homing beacon you ask? Because why not? Derp.

The Robot Chicken

Moving along, my next objective was to test another goofy device that shrinks larger beasts so that they can be placed into a container. Interestingly while doing this quest my client bugged while I was trying to loot a corpse and Udderwin used the device on it at the same time. The animation got stuck and Deedlitt now looked like a zombie running around the jungle.

Deedlitt need brainnnsssss...

It turns out that other ogre clans don't like the fact that some chose to align themselves with the Horde, so our next task was to teach the Gordunni Clan a lesson.

Ogre Slaying

Our final quest for the day took us back up toward the northern end of Feralas where another Yeti cave was hidden in the mountains. It was in someone's interest that we collect some hides of these Yetis for them. While on the way there, we got a good laugh when Udderwin jumped off a steep waterfall and died, failing to land in deep enough water in the pool below by only inches.

Trekking Down the Waterfall

Before logging off, I decided to mention to my guild that I was actually playing this game for a class project. The general reaction was that they thought it was pretty awesome. Other friends of mine that I have told about it have remarked that it seems silly and absurd. Not unexpected reactions given the nature of the project.

Speaking with Rehab

So the big question this week is how closely does behavior in World of Warcraft correspond to that in real life? Well, as mentioned before, it can differ greatly from real life due to a number of factors. First is the anonymity provided by the online environment, which tends to make people less inclined to care about being courteous to each other whereas they otherwise would make more of an effort in real life. Second, you have the gameplay environment that's based around a medieval fantasy universe, so you're dealing with a lot of problems and challenges that are of a completely different nature than in real life. Most people in the real world aren't concerned with working together to collect swords and armor pieces for themselves. On the other hand, there are aspects which very much relate to real life behaviors. The auction house economy for example functions and fluctuates much like real world economies do. Supply and demand will significantly affect pricing. If an item is very abundant, its pricing decreases; if it is scarce then its pricing increases. Also, the cooperative aspects of WoW's gameplay to some extent offset the social problems created from anonymity. Because certain items and objectives can only be obtained through cooperating with other players, there are advantages and incentives to making friendships as you would in real life.

That is it for my gameplay recap and analysis this week. Stick around for my final week of WoW blogging! That's right folks, the project is almost over already. See you next time. ;)

Now you're thinking with portals.

With several more dungeons now conquered, Stranglethorn Vale's quests were beginning to become too low level for Deedlitt. As much as I would have liked to teach Zanzil a lesson and get that raptor back, it would not be efficient to continue leveling there.

Tailoring in Orgrimmar

Thus, I returned to Orgrimmar for some much-needed work on my tailoring profession before meeting up with Udderwin in preparation for our departure to a new region to explore. After some cloth crafting, we decided to head forth to Feralas, a jungle region on the southwestern end of the continent of Kalimdor.

Harpy Slaying in Feralas

Our first quest involved taking out a band of pesky harpies north of the encampment. In particular we needed to draw out their leader, which required looting one of their horns and blowing it in a special location. For a while we slayed countless harpies before we realized that we already had looted a horn and finally used it to summon their leader, Edana Hatetalon.

Summoning Edana Hatetalon

Edana was slain and we now were given new orders to seal a Dream Portal in which dragonkin creatures were pouring through and invading. With some stealthy work involved, I was able to avoid the majority of the dragonkin guards to reach the portal, but a giant ethereal dragon, Lethlas, stood watch directly in front of the portal and was unavoidable.

Battling Lethlas

Nonetheless, Lethlas was surprisingly not too difficult to dispatch, and I made my way up to the Dream Portal. There, I cast a spell to seal it once and for all.

Sealing the Dream Portal

With the Dream Portal sealed, all of our quests were complete for this encampment, so we received orders to head southeast where surprisingly an ogre camp had allied itself with the Horde and was in need of our assistance. For now however, Udderwin and I decided to rest.

The Ruins of Dire Maul

Another short update today. Udderwin is MIA again and I struggle to hold a group for Dire Maul. Apparently it's not a very likeable dungeon. My first group assembled through the dungeon finder completely disbanded after only a few minutes into the instance.

My First Dire Maul Group

I reassembled a new group only to have our tank leave again a few minutes in, but luckily the dungeon finder quickly replaced him and we continued onward. Dire Maul itself is a fairly dull-looking place; it's composed of old ruins inhabited by ogres. It's easy to see why players quickly lose interest in it.

Traversing the Dungeon

On the other hand, once you get far enough into it you encounter some gigantic creatures such as the tree ents which help spice it up a bit.

A Tree Ent

Eventually we defeated the boss, but I accidentally ended up exiting the dungeon before I turned in my quests for it, causing me to teleport back to Orgrimmar and having to make a long trek back to Feralas, the region where Dire Maul is located.

Entrance of Dire Maul

With Dire Maul out of the way, I returned to Orgrimmar once more to get some much-needed profession training out of the way. I had been saving up several items in my inventory that I didn't need but would serve as good practice for my enchanting skills, so I used them all up to increase my skill.

Enchanting

That summarizes my progress for today. Hopefully I'll be able to have some bigger updates this week as Udderwin and I rip through some more quests.

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. :)

Pillaging Razorfen Kraul

I decided that today I would take a break from Stranglethorn Vale and do some more dungeon crawling. It had been a while since I had last attempted this, and some of my gear was starting to get outdated.

While queuing up for some dungeons with Udderwin, I saw that Jessicaloveu was logged on, and to our surprise she had in fact surpassed us in level. She has come a long way since our first encounter when she did not even know how to tame pets as a hunter class character. I took a moment to congratulate her while I waited for the queue.

Chatting with Jessie

Our first dungeon we landed on was the armory section of the Scarlet Monastery. This was a relatively short dungeon that didn't take us long to blast our way through.

The Scarlet Armory

We reached Herod the Scarlet Champion and defeated him on our first attempt. The run was a success and completed without a single death among our party.

Herod

Moving forward, Udderwin and I queued up again and landed in Razorfen Kraul, a stronghold of the quilboars. These little critters can best be described as humanoid pigs, and they have a reputation of being a thorn in the Horde's side during their expansion throughout the continent of Kalimdor.

Razorfen Kraul

Razorfen Kraul is a long dungeon. We had to fight through several bosses over the course of roughly an hour to finish it, including Death Speaker Jargba, Overlord Ramtusk, Agathelos the giant boar, and finally Charlga Razorflank. Luckily we had another competent group, so there were no complete wipes throughout the entirety of the expedition, but we did have one death along the way.

Death Speaker Jargba

Because this was a longer dungeon, it started to drag on and get slightly tedious, so Udderwin and I decided to add some conversation into the mix along the way, mostly cracking jokes back and forth at each other. Hoping that we could get the other party members to join in, instead they largely remained silent except for Poctraz the healer, who only wanted to remark that we should stop messing around and focus on finishing the dungeon. Just goes to show as I had noted in previous blog entries; it seems WoW players assembled for dungeons are generally dead set on completing the dungeon and aren't interested in social interaction during these segments of the game.

Overlord Ramtusk

Of course, that didn't stop Udderwin and I from taking more jabs at each other. By this point we were having too much fun with it anyway. Eventually I finally managed to get Poctraz to join in a little bit as well.

Charlga Razorflank

Finally with Razorflank fallen, Razorfen Kraul had been conquered and we returned to Stranglethorn Vale victorious. I had some new gear, but not as much as I would have liked. Nonetheless, it was a good round of dungeons. Interestingly enough, as of logout time Jessicaloveu was still ahead of us in level, but I intend to change that once again in due time. ;)

In Pursuit of Zanzil

It's back to the jungle again this week; now in pursuit of Zanzil, one of the troll leaders behind the raptor abductions. We kicked off with a flight to one of his hideouts along the coast, using spirit gargoyles as scouts to spy for us.

Spying on Zanzil

After picking up the information we needed, we headed out toward the coast personally, but while on the way there, we accidentally encountered an Alliance encampment and got taken out by the guards.

The Spirit Realm After Death

One clean shot was enough to kill us; they were quite high level guards. Needless to say, the next time we attempted to reach the coast we made sure to move off the main path to avoid the Alliance camp. Once we made it to the hideout, we began dispatching the guards around the perimeter to hunt down Zanzil himself.

Hunting Zanzil

By the time we reached Zanzil however, he created a portal to Zul'Gurub and eluded us. Not that this stopped Udderwin and I from pursuing him though. We trailed after him through the portal, returning to Zul'Gurub no longer through the eyes of the raptor using the Mind's Eye, but with our own flesh and blood ready to take him head-on.

Zul'Gurub

Zanzil first attempted to summon forth a powerful serpent creature called Venoxis in order to defeat us. Unfortunately for him, we didn't give him a chance and beat him into submission before he could complete the spell.

Battling Zanzil

Still, Zanzil had more tricks up his sleeve. He suddenly invoked some kind of dark magic that trapped us and we couldn't move while he charged up for a final attack to try and kill us with one blow. Then surprisingly the goblins showed up in one of their zeppelin airships to rescue us. They threw down a rope which I immediately grabbed, but Udderwin failed to see it and ended up dying as a result. Luckily for him, because I managed to complete the quest, it counted for him as well and he didn't have to redo it.

Captured by Zanzil

A narrow escape for me, but those raptors still need rescuing, so my next quests in preparation for another assault on Zul'Gurub took me to Booty Bay.

Flying to Booty Bay

From there onward, it was a hunt for giants with Deedlitt and Udderwin. We took down Gorlash along the coast, as well as a giant gorilla named King Mukla, followed finally by Negolash, another sea giant.

Gorlash

King Mukla

This short expedition concludes Deedlitt's journeys for today. The struggle against the trolls of Stranglethorn Vale continues for now.