World of Warcraft as an Information Ground
World of Warcraft is an online game that allows people from all over the world to get together and form a diverse community and a tremendous information ground. The game consists of a virtual world similar to the one we live in with a fantasy twist to it. All of the key aspects of our world, such as cities, transportation, money, trade, alliances, wars and much more are also represented in the game. Each player controls one character in the world at a time, interacting with the world itself and with other players. World of Warcraft caters to a teamwork oriented environment where teamwork and cooperation are essential to succeeding in the game. In addition to the game play, there are many forms of communication between players through by means of chat channels such as general chat, trade chat, looking for group chat, private messages, or even through an in game mailing system where players can send other players mail.
This enormous community of players, about 10 million, fosters one of the biggest information grounds in today’s online community. The amount of information shared between people everyday is easily on par with the amount of information someone shares throughout their day doing normal activities. That’s a lot of information! People interact with each other through the game in many ways; for example, because of the game mechanics, people partake on quests where it is impossible for them to do on their own, this essentially forces a player to interact through forming groups to work together to complete the quests, which is a big part of the game. In addition to quests, people interact with each other through the many chat channels, where all kinds of information flourishes, such as someone trying to sell something in the trade channel or the discussion of current events that have occurred reality. In fact, many people play the game mainly for the social aspect; they use the game as a platform for social networking between friends and the rest of the world. This is very common because the game allows people from all over the world to communicate and interact with each other despite the distance barriers in the real world.
Below are screen shots of some the means of communication.
Daniel Nguyen and Raman Ahluwalia, Alex Poon, Evan Hwang, and Daniel Arroyo