DEEP INVOLVEMENT IN THE WORLD OF WARCRAFT: AN ‗ELFNOGRAPHY‘ by NICHOLAS A. HOLT (Under the Direction of Douglas Kleiber) ABSTRACT This study presented is a two-year cyber-ethnographic investigation of the deep involvement and commitment observed in participants of the online game, The World of Warcraft. This game was selected as the context for the study based on its enormous popularity, evidenced by 12 million subscribers worldwide and a scarcity of prior leisure research concerning virtual world participation. The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate and examine the socio-technical dimensions of deep involvement and enduring commitment of its inhabitants from within their ludisphere, inside the online game and its related meta-game resources. The primary exploratory goal was to experience and describe the disembodied developmental process of playing the game on a regular basis. This aim was approached through the creation of several avatars and advancing them naturally from the beginning of the game up through the endgame content, eventually participating in the culture of raiding. Additionally, the study investigated how guilds, in-game social groupings, impacted participant involvement. While advancing the avatars, essentially surrogate researchers, key informants were discovered that guided and informed the research process. Taking advantage of the study‘s naturalistic constraint of remaining immersed in-game allowed for a third question to be conceived which investigated what players revealed about their ―real‖ lives during the course of play. Robert Stebbins‘ (2007) Serious Leisure Perspective was used as a conceptual framework for the study in order to describe player investments by means of the framework‘s leisure activity-centric taxonomy. The study revealed evidence of players self-actualizing via their avatars, and conceptualized as ―Avatar-actualization.‖ As the most experienced players persevered to improve their avatars they engaged in a research-like process described as ―amateur scholarship‖ which was in effect peer reviewed by other players as an ongoing effort to progress their characters to higher levels of specialization within the game. Gleaning a deeper understanding of player involvement in online multiplayer virtual worlds and games is important to leisure studies, clinical psychology and education. While educators would be pleased to find students as engaged as some of the players observed, therapists might simultaneously be concerned by these same behaviors. INDEX WORDS: The World of Warcraft, Serious Leisure, Massively Multiplayer Online Games, MMOG, Role-Playing Games, MMORPG, Raiders, Flow, Leisure Specialization, Learning, Netnography, Cyber-ethnography, Virtual Worlds, Play DEEP INVOLVEMENT IN THE WORLD OF WARCRAFT: AN ‗ELFNOGRAPHY‘ by NICHOLAS A. HOLT B.A., University of Georgia, 1992 M.Ed., University of Georgia, 1996 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2011 © 2011 Nicholas A. Holt All Rights Reserved DEEP INVOLVEMENT IN THE WORLD OF WARCRAFT: AN ‗ELFNOGRAPHY‘ by NICHOLAS A. HOLT Major Professor: Douglas Kleiber Committee: Corey W. Johnson Michael Orey Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia August 2011 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There were so many wonderful people (and avatars) who made this work possible. First, I would like to thank the remarkable designers at Blizzard for creating such a magnificent play space and all players who inhabit it regularly. Especially, thanks to all those players who I encountered across my realm and provided me with the most amazing journey, one I will never forget. I would like to thank the members of my dissertation committee: Doug Kleiber, for supporting me and keeping me tethered to the scholarly endeavor, Corey Johnson for pushing me to be creative and stay true to myself. And to Mike Orey who challenged me with the big questions like what is ―fun‖ and what is ―learning,‖ and gave me the opportunity to work with Liz Fogel on a project led by one of the pioneers of MMOGs, Star Long. Above all I want to thank my mother, Margaret Holt, for her unequivocal support and attention in every conceivable way and to her husband, my friend and hero, Stell. Also thanks for the support from my father, Nick Holt, and his wife Jean. I offer special thanks to Rose Tahash for her tireless attention to detail and the formatting of this work into its current state. And thanks to my brilliant friends at the ―triangle of truth‖ each week, Dave, Jeff, Michael, Ria, Rich, and Zach for providing me the much needed playful reprieve from writing and research. My cat Jobey must also be recognized for his contribution of abundant affection. This amazing cat has witnessed three successful dissertations, and perhaps deserves an honorary degree for that most remarkable feat. v Finally, I thank my lovely wife, Apisata, for loving me and supporting me, in both the ―real‖ word, and in Azeroth. She continues to inspire me to be better than I am. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iv PROLOGUE: DISCOVERING NEW WORLDS ........................................................... viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................1 A Brief History of Multiplayer Online Games ............................................1 Statement of the Problem .............................................................................6 Purpose of the Study ....................................................................................6 Significance of the Study .............................................................................7 II LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................13 Massively Multiplayer Online Worlds .......................................................14 Play and Games..........................................................................................16 Flow, Involvement, and Serious Leisure ...................................................24 Ethnographic Roots and 21st Century Variants ..........................................32 III METHODOLOGY AND METHODS ............................................................35 Methodology .............................................................................................35 Site Selection: Realm Selection in WoW ...................................................36 Participants: The Avatars and Guilds of Dagger’s End .............................38 Data Collection ..........................................................................................46 Data Transformation, Analysis, and Writing .............................................50 IV ANA‘S ODYSSEY ..........................................................................................55 vii Part One: Getting Started ...........................................................................55 Part Two: The Social World ......................................................................81 Part Three: Raiding Culture .....................................................................115 V CONCLUSION ..............................................................................................151 Summary of the Study .............................................................................151 Interpretation of Findings ........................................................................156 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................179 APPENDIX: GLOSSARY OF WARCRAFT JARGON ................................................190 ix PROLOGUE: DISCOVERING NEW WORLDS "The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together." ― Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars: A new hope. It was already hot and muggy outside as the semester ended in late spring of 2007. I was the lab manager in the Learning and Performance Support Laboratory (LPSL), in the college of education at the University of Georgia. Traditionally, this was the time of year when the faculty and staff breathed deeply and thanked God that the students were gone. The halls got a lot quieter and everyone relaxed a little bit. This was the atmosphere in which I was first exposed to the unique culture and psychology of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). ―Hey Nic, I need you to check this game out and tell me what you think,‖ Tom asked, poking his head around the corner of my office door. Dr. Thomas Satwicz, was the newest addition to the LPSL, and his research, most generally, investigated video games as informal learning environments and the nuanced relationships among the in-game and in-room discourse between games and players (Satwicz, 2006). Within a few minutes, he had sent me a web link to create a free account in a new text-based MMOG called Astro Empires (AE). My role in the lab was to provide the technical and systems level support for Tom as well as the other research scientists, and their collective army of graduate students. So, when Tom asked me to create an account in AE, I obliged. For me this event represented one of those rare and wonderful moments when one‘s work and one‘s