For this assignment I chose to play the extremely popular MMORPG World of Warcraft(WoW). I used a 10 day free trial account for the game to try it out, since regularily I would have to purchase and buy a subscription to play. Due to the game's massive popularity, I was quite excited to give it a try.
The World of Warcraft gamespace takes place in the world of Azeroth, a large virtual environment with several continents and even further sectioned zones within each continent. Before entering the world I was able to choose from several races and classes as well as various appearance options for my avatar. These races and classes were further split into two sides, the Horde and the Alliance. Whichever side I chose decided the continent and zone I would start on, as well as which group I would become a part of. There are amazingly intense intergroup dynamics within a WoW server, especially on the PVP(player v. player) type of server. PvP means players from both sides are allowed to attack each other anywhere in Azeroth. This causes a very strongly salient group identity, and much intergroup conflict.
My avatar in WoW was a Tauren Shaman. He is not the most attractive of characters, indeed his physique resembles that of a walking bull. After asking some people a few questions about how to get started, I was on my way to exploring the Azeroth. I started out killing boars and trying to gain a few levels doing the starter quests. A little while later I was in a zone called The Crossroads, when the Alliance attacked. A large group of Alliance players “raided” the crossroads and killed off both players and NPCs(non-player characters).
Yee & Bailenson studied something they call The Proteus Effect. The Proteus Effect states that “an individual’s behavior conforms to their digital self-representation independent of how others perceive them.” My actions agree in some ways to their studies. First off, I was immediately enraged at the Alliance for attacking The Crossroads, and wanted nothing more than to ensure their demise. Based on my short time playing, my unattractive avatar did possibly not allow as much self-disclosure and interpersonal distance as a more attractive one might have. However, the Horde side has only 1 race, which was added in the expansion, that can be considered attractive. This said, I believe that on the Horde side, attractive avatars are of less importance to the amount of self-disclosure. I also witnessed a direct contradiction to the second study which stated that those with taller avatars behaved more confidently in a negotiation task than those with shorter avatars. I saw a gnome character on the Alliance side with a much more aggressive attitude than the tall humans and night elves around him. I couldn’t understand the Alliance’s stupid language, however he was screaming in CAPs throughout the entire raid on our Crossroads.
2 comments:
Jeffrey, I really liked your post. You did a good job of giving us a play by play of how you completed the task for the assignment, and what you were thinking and doing at each stage in your WoW test. I especially thought it was cool that you included Comm 245 material other than the Yee & Bailenson. You’re mention of group identity and the concepts surrounding it shows a real grasp on the course. I know that when I write my blogs I talk exclusively about the theory or idea that we just learned, or the paper we just read. I think it’s good to include everything because we’re supposed to learn the course material in its entirety, not only certain bits at time and forget about it. I also found it interesting that there are different groups in this virtual space that might act differently, and that while you observed that your group goes against Yee & Bailenson’s research, the other group might not. That would be an interesting question to test.
Hey Jeffrey,
I enjoyed reading your post very much. I also played World of Warcraft for this assignment. My experience differed from yours greatly though. You mentioned that you played on a PVP server. I played on a role playing/ PVP server (if I remember correctly). I also played as a warlock, a member of the Alliance as opposed to your Hoard. I found it interesting how you mentioned in so many words that since everyone in the Hoard is not attractive, the physical traits were not important when it came to self disclosure. I found a similar effect to happen to me on the Alliance side. I guess I considered all of the characters on the Alliance to be attractive in some way. This led me to kind of put them all on the same level and not really distinguish one form the other. To me, it would be kind of hard to make an ugly Alliance member unless one deliberately tried, which none that I encountered did. I really would have liked to see how your experience would have differed with the one attractive race as your avatar. In a sea of unattractive avatars, you would one of the few attractive ones and then I think you could really see you were treated different or if the status as “the pretty one” would have changed how you acted while you played.
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