From Role Play to Behavior: How Cultural Background Influences Western and Eastern MMOG Players in World of Warcraft A Thesis Presented to The Academic Faculty by Jihan Feng In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Masters of Science in Digital Media in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication Georgia Institute of Technology August 2014 Copyright © 2014 by Jihan Feng From Role Play to Behavior: How Cultural Background Influences Western and Eastern MMOG Players in World of Warcraft Approved by: Dr. Celia Pearce, Advisor School of Literature, Media, and Communication Georgia Institute of Technology Dr. Janet Murray School of Literature, Media, and Communication Georgia Institute of Technology Dr. Amy Bruckman School of Interactive Computing Georgia Institute of Technology Dr. Bonnie Nardi School of Information and Computer Sciences University of California, Irvine Date Approved: May 16, 2014 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest appreciation to dear Dr. Celia Pearce for encouraging me to accomplish my research and reading my humble English writing. The completion of my thesis would not have been possible without the support and guidance you have given to me. I would also like to extend my deepest gratitude to my committee advisors: Dr. Janet Murray, Dr. Amy Bruckman, and Dr. Bonnie Nardi. I must thank Ms. Jane Chisholm for patiently revising my writing. I am extremely grateful to my parents, Mr. Bin Feng and Ms. Juan Wu, who had support me to accomplish my master’s degree. Without your love, care, and encouragement, I would not be able to be here and make all the achievements. I really love you. Thanks should also go to my brother for patiently answering all my stupid questions. I very much appreciate Mr. Yuanchao Yao for bringing so much happiness to me. Thanks Mr. Yiheng Wu for giving me the lucky bracket for my birth year. Many thanks to all my friends at Georgia Tech. The world is so big, and I have such honor to know all of you. I believe this is what we called destiny. iii Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................. iii List of Tables ................................................................................................................. vi List of Figures ............................................................................................................... vii List of Symbols and Abbreviations ................................................................................. x Summary ...................................................................................................................... xii Chapter 1 - Between Reality and Virtual World ............................................................ 1 1.1 Research Questions ......................................................................................... 2 1.2 Background .............................................................................................. 5 1.2.1 Introduction to the World of Warcraft ...................................................... 5 1.2.2 Before WOW Came to China .................................................................. 14 1.2.3 Immigration to Other Servers ................................................................. 15 Chapter 2- Literature Review ....................................................................................... 22 Chapter 3 - Methodology ............................................................................................. 30 3.1Setting up the Study ............................................................................................ 32 3.2 Participant Recruitments ................................................................................... 35 Chapter 4 - Raiding ....................................................................................................... 42 4.1 Gold Raid Model ................................................................................................ 45 4.2 Dragon Kill Points (DKP) Model....................................................................... 52 4.3 EPGP Model ....................................................................................................... 55 4.4 Call Loot Model ................................................................................................. 56 4.5 One Need Multiple Greed Model ....................................................................... 57 4.6 Suicide Kings ..................................................................................................... 61 4.7 Cultural Conflicts and Merging between Chinese and Taiwanese Players ........ 62 4.8 Attitudes to Real-Money Trading (RMT) and Gold Farmers ............................ 70 4.9 Attitudes towards “Newbies” ............................................................................. 72 iv 4.10 Recruitments for Raids ..................................................................................... 73 4.11 Gold Raids on American Servers ..................................................................... 75 4.12 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 81 Chapter 5 - Social Interaction ...................................................................................... 89 5.1 Individual Activities ........................................................................................... 90 Play with Friends .................................................................................................. 90 Virtual Love Relationships ................................................................................... 93 Solo Players .......................................................................................................... 98 Facing Cheaters .................................................................................................... 98 Emergent Behavior on Individual Scales ........................................................... 100 5.2 Guild Activities ................................................................................................ 106 Emergent Behaviors on Group Scales ................................................................ 110 5.3 Extra-Virtual Activities .................................................................................... 114 5.4 Offline Game Activities ................................................................................... 117 5.5 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 120 Chapter 6 - Conclusion ............................................................................................... 123 6.1 Summary .......................................................................................................... 123 6.2 Future Extensions ............................................................................................. 128 References ................................................................................................................. 132 v List of Tables Table 1.1 Only certain races can choose certain classes. ........................................ 7 Table 1.2 Certain classes play certain roles. ........................................................... 7 Table 3.1 Names of the participants and servers from different countries that they have played on. ....................................................................................... 37 Table 4.1 A comparison diagram of gold raids running on different servers ........ 85 Table 4.2 A comparison diagram of different types of raid teams on different servers. .................................................................................................... 86 vi List of Figures Figure 1.1 This statistic shows the number of active subscriptions for the MMORPG World of Warcraft online game from the first quarter of 2005 to the third quarter of 2013. In the last quarter of 2012, World of Warcraft had a subscriber base of 9.6 million. (Statistic, 2014) .... 3 Figure 1.2 The Worldwide Subscriber distribution of WOW in 2008 (unit: millions) (Leigh Alexander, 2008). ....................................................... 3 Figure 1.3 The release date of each expansion on the US, TW, and CN servers. 17 Figure 1.4 Four immigrant waves from Chinese to Taiwanese servers. ............... 19 Figure 3.1 Basic structure of an activity (Kuutti, 1996) based on Engeström’s (Engeström, 1987) conceptualization. ................................................. 32 Figure 4.1 Distribution models of raiding on Chinese servers. ............................ 46 Figure 4.2 An auction on Chinese server, the price of the loot starts from 250,000 and goes to 1.16 million (gold), which is approximately $360 in real money trading (provided by interviewees). ......................................... 47 Figure 4.3 Gold raid distribution model ............................................................... 51 Figure 4.4 Different DKP methods on Chinese servers. ....................................... 53 Figure 4.5 Taiwanese server distribution model in raiding before the immigrant waves. .................................................................................................. 58 Figure 4.6 One Need, Multiple Greed model ....................................................... 58 Figure 4.7 The Taiwanese players in a gold raid are lining up to receive wages from the