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©Copyright 2010 Mark Chen This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ Leet Noobs: Expertise and Collaboration in a World of Warcraft Player Group as Distributed Sociomaterial Practice Mark Chen A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2010 Program Authorized to Offer Degree: College of Education University of Washington Graduate School This is to certify that I have examined this copy of a doctoral dissertation by Mark Chen and have found that it is complete and satisfactory in all respects, and that any and all revisions required by the final examining committee have been made. Chair of Supervisory Committee: ___________________________________________________ Philip Bell Reading Committee: __________________________________________________ Philip Bell ___________________________________________________ Jennifer C. Stone ___________________________________________________ Beth E. Kolko Date:_________________________________ In presenting this dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the doctoral degree at the University of Washington, I agree that the Library shall make its copies freely available for inspection. I further agree that extensive copying of the dissertation is allowable only for scholarly purposes, consistent with “fair use” as prescribed in the U.S. Copyright Law. Requests for copying or reproduction of this dissertation may be referred to ProQuest Information and Learning, 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346, 1-800-521-0600, to whom the author has granted “the right to reproduce and sell (a) copies of the manuscript in microform and/or (b) printed copies of the manuscript made from microform.” Signature:________________________ Date:____________________________ University of Washington Abstract Leet Noobs: Expertise and Collaboration in a World of Warcraft Player Group as Distributed Sociomaterial Practice Mark Chen Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor Philip Bell College of Education Group expertise in socially-situated joint tasks requires successful negotiation and distribution of roles and responsibilities among group members and their material resources such that the group is a network of actors all in alignment on shared tasks. Using ethnographic methods, the author documents the life and death of a player group in the online game World of Warcraft as it engaged in a 40-person activity called raiding, which consisted of highly coordinated battles against difficult game-controlled monsters. The group took 7 months to master an in-game zone known as Molten Core, defeating all of the monsters within, including the last boss monster, Ragnaros. Part of the group’s success depended on its members’ ability to reconfigure their play spaces, enrolling third-party game modifications and external web resources into their activity. Before joining the group, the players had successfully built-up enough social and cultural capital to be recognized as expert players. Once joining the group, however, they had to relearn and adapt their expertise for this new joint task that required them to specialize, taking on different roles depending on the types of characters they chose to play, and structure themselves for efficient communication and coordination practices. They also needed to align themselves to new group goals and learn to trust each other. Thus, once-expert players became novices or noobs to relearn expert or leet gameplay, yet they were not true novices because they had a good understanding of the game system and ways to configure their individual play spaces to be successful players. Rather, they were “leet noobs” who needed to reconfigure and adapt their expertise for new norms of sociomaterial practice suited for joint venture. After 10 months, the group experienced lulls in performance due to a change in membership, and the group disbanded as members were unable to renegotiate and agree upon shared goals and responsibilities. Their network had been irreparably disrupted. Understanding how group success depends on alignment of goals and responsibilities helps us plan for future collaborative endeavors across both formal and informal settings. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures .......................................................................................................................... iv List of Tables ........................................................................................................................... vi Prologue: In the Fiery Depths… ............................................................................................... 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 4 Learning and Expertise in Games?...................................................................................... 4 Social and Cultural Capital ............................................................................................... 10 Why World of Warcraft? ................................................................................................... 13 Description of Dissertation Chapters ................................................................................ 17 The Major Assertions of the Dissertation ......................................................................... 21 A World of Warcraft Primer.............................................................................................. 24 Setting, Group, and Data Collection ................................................................................. 28 A Note on Stance and Positionality................................................................................... 37 Pugging the Chicken Quest ..................................................................................................... 40 Chapter 1: Expertise in World Of Warcraft Players as Distributed Sociomaterial Practice .... 47 Expertise Understood Through Ethnography .................................................................... 47 Stage One: Leveling Up .................................................................................................... 53 Stage Two: Raiding ........................................................................................................... 62 Reflections on Studying Expert Practice ........................................................................... 71 i Role-Playing Takes So Much Time; We Could Be Killing Things Instead... ........................ 74 Chapter 2: Communication, Coordination, and Camaraderie ................................................. 84 (Computer) Game Theory ................................................................................................. 85 A Typical Night in Molten Core ....................................................................................... 90 Gathering and Chatting ................................................................................................ 90 Pulling, Coordinated Fighting, and Division-of-Labor Roles ..................................... 93 Making Encounters Routine by Finding Balance ...................................................... 102 Welcoming Failure in Golemagg and Other Boss Fights .......................................... 105 Socially Constructed Social Dilemmas ..................................................................... 109 An Atypical Night in Molten Core .................................................................................. 112 Issues and Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 121 Reflection on Chat ................................................................................................................ 126 Chapter 3: The Enrollment of a New Actor and the Redistribution of Responsibilities ...... 130 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 130 Mangles, Networks, Assemblages, and Arrangements ................................................... 131 Roles, Responsibilities, and Aggro ................................................................................. 139 Threat Management......................................................................................................... 141 KLH Threat Meter (KTM) .............................................................................................. 148 Using KTM as a Temporary Actor that Diagnosed Problems: April 28, 2006 ............... 155 Discussion ....................................................................................................................... 173 ii Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 177 Walt and Thoguht ―Theorycrafting‖ Amidst a Server Shutdown ......................................... 181 Chapter 4: The Death of a Raid ............................................................................................ 187 Changing Schedules and Changing Roster ..................................................................... 187 The Controversial Forum Thread .................................................................................... 189 Making Sense of the Meltdown