Read more about World of Warcraft ➜ https://worldofwarcraft.mgn.gg
You enter a bright new digital world, exited to explore and hyped just to enjoy the vibe. Ten months later you’re yelling at someone for standing in fire. What changed?
Produced by Dan Olson
Written by Nathan Landel and Dan Olson
Choice’s channel – https://www.youtube.com/c/Choice_au
Bibliography
A Reports/Books/Articles
Ask, Kristine, ‘The Value of Calculations: The Coproduction of Theorycraft and Player Practices’ (2016) 36(3) Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 190.
Boellstroff, Tom, Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human (Princeton University Press, 2008)
Chen, Mark, ‘Leet Noobs: Expertise and Collaboration in a World of Warcraft Player Group as Distributed Sociomaterial Practice’ (PhD Thesis, University of Washington, 2010) [Not: College of Education].
Consalvo, Mia, Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames (MIT Press, 2007) 28.
Egliston, Benjamin, ‘Play to Win: How competitive modes of play have influenced cultural practices in digital games’ (Honours Thesis, University of Sydney 2013) [Not: School of Art, Communication and English] 24.
Genette, Gérard, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 1997).
Glas, René, Battlefields of Negotiation: Control, Agency, and Ownership in World of Warcraft (Amsterdam University Press, 2013).
Golub, Alex, ‘Being in the World (Of Warcraft): Raiding, Realism, and Knowledge Production in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game’ (2010) 83(1) Anthropological Quarterly 17.
Iser, Wolfgang, The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993)
Lehdonvirta, Vili and Edward Castronova, Virtual Economies: Design and Analysis (The MIT Press, 2014).
McArthur, Victoria et al, ‘Knowing, Not Doing: Modalities of Gameplay Expertise in World of Warcraft Addons’ in CHI ’12 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM, 2012) 101.
Prax, Patrick, ‘Co-Creative Interface Development in MMORPGs – the Case of World of Warcraft Add-Ons’ (2012) 4(1) Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 3.
Skare, Roswitha, ‘Paratext’ (2020) 47(6) Knowledge Organization 511.
Skare, Roswitha, ‘The paratext of digital documents’ (2021) 77(2) Journal of Documentation 449.
Steinkuehler, Constance, ‘The Mangle of Play’ (2006) 1(3) Games and Culture 199.
Taylor, T.L, ‘Does WoW Change Everything?: How a PvP Server, Multinational Player Base, and Surveillance Mod Scene Caused Me Pause’ (2006) 1(4) Games and Culture 318.
Taylor, T.L, ‘The Assemblage of Play’ (2009) 4(4) Games and Culture 331.
Taylor, T.L, Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture (MIT Press, 2006).
B Other
Crusader3455, ‘MIESTRO DOES A LEGIT 2v3 AT 2500 CR’ (YouTube, 30 August 2022)
AzAMOus, ‘It’s 2922 and You Enter Utgarde Keep’ (YouTube, 29 September 2022)
Mark Chen, ‘Mark Chen presenting Leet Noobs 10 years later’ (YouTube, 12 March 2021)
https://www.pcgamesn.com/world-of-warcraft/wow-legion-max-camera-distance
Crowdfunding: https://www.patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: https://twitter.com/FoldableHuman
00:00:00 Preface
00:01:28 Chapter 1 – Instrumental Play
00:17:58 Chapter 2 – Paratext
00:31:44 Chapter 3 – How Add-ons Ruined my Manchildhood
00:40:50 Chapter 4 – Join a Guild, They Said
00:56:45 Chapter 5 – WoW Classic, A Hellscape of Instrumental Practices
01:12:03 Chapter 6 – Decomposing the World
01:19:37 Conclusion
source
So we have you fers to thank for the development of private aura’s.
Could have done without the cringe pseudo-marxist dogwhistles, but interesting nonetheless.
3:03, i think its wrong, the "feeling bad" after losing its something humans have developed through the years, hard coded into our brains, because losing before was death, our nature its based on wining, ill watch the whole video anyway but thats something.
Very interesting. This video kinda killed any interest I had in getting into MMO's (because I assume WoW is the blueprint the rest follow) but still. I wonder how communities like these survive, when they're so hostile to beginners?
I like your content, but reading something on screen worth reading, and listening to stuff worth hearing—when what's read and what's spoken aren't the same thing—can't help but annoy somewhat.
Listening to the story about the vault, that's pretty sad. I run so godamn many mythic+'s extra for my guild because often they need a 5th person and that ends up being me. High or low I do not care, people need gear. Most people do not, have the time that I have. Also sadly being helpful like this is about all I have some days it seems like but that's just my life.
The quote at the end of this video has had me in tears. Ive been struggling with long-term anxiety and depression for years to the point of taking months of sick leave from my job and am recently working through therapy. Your conclusion has unintentionally rocked my mind more than anything ive ever heard. I care so much about WoW and the social/gameplay opportunities it provides, the fun times, the tough times n everything inbetween. In contrast, i feel very little care about the real world. Ive seen its ugly side so much that i thought i lost the ability to shed anymore tears. I was bullied mentally and physically by my family, friends and peers so much so that i have become emotionally deprived.
Now i know why i reject the life i have in the real world. You have completely enlightened me and for that i thank you from the bottom of my heart. I can finally go on living knowing that im gonna be okay 🫡
1:01:41
Me: Fan fiction
Dan: Speed running
Me: Oh. That too, I guess
this whole video is cope for boomers who cannot not git gud
I'm a Guild Wars 2 player, which is generally a more casual MMO than WoW but still has a thriving endgame. There's certainly a divide in the community between people who want to be accepted into groups without meeting requirements, and people who want to find groups of relatively skilled people. But here's the thing, if you want a clean run, you should be allowed to want a clean run. There's a nice feeling to working with people in the same skill range as you to achieve something. There's a very different feeling to teaching people – some also enjoy it but not everyone! If someone asks for 250LI (which means you defeated 250 raid bosses total) for IBS3(easiest group content in the game), so fucking be it, don't join with 249 LI.
There's a joke in the community about the "hi dps" player. When joining a raid group you usually say a greeting and then the role you're going to play, like "hi qheal"[hello, I will be playing a healer and providing the quickness buff.]. "hi dps" is the ultimate low-effort player, who does not care about learning the encounter they're playing and just wants to stand in one place and do damage to the boss. You might be keen to defend poor little hi dps, but consider: the point of a raid boss is learning the strategy to beat it. That's the reason there are mechanics. That's the part that people enjoy! And to be honest, yes it is frustrating when people actively hinder the progress of the party while seemingly being uninterested in the fun parts of raiding.
In conclusion, I suppose that's why elitism exists, because 1) some people think they're entitled to any group accepting them and 2) they're unwilling to improve.
I've been playing WoW since late TBC, in 2007 or 2008, I think? I'm a mathematical savantist, with the very unfortunate issue of (at least for most of my life) really not understanding things that can't be represented numerically, making things like social impact and the opinions of other people really not making sense to me, at the time. I can perform complex mathematical analyses and computations in my head, on the fly, including stuff like exact calculations concerning geometry and trigonometry, but also including things like percentile estimations (not exact calculations) of permutations and combinations, (statistical analysis) derivatives, and logarithmic formulae. This, combined with a passion for absorbing knowledge, plus some very carefully cultivated social skills that I lacked 15 years ago, has made me incredibly popular in my guild, in spite of what I'm kind of terrible at: appropriate reaction timing for dealing with boss mechanics and proper rotation execution, because what I lack in inability to understand math, I "made up for" in lower hand-eye coordination, at least in comparison to my peers. I focus my time, effort, energy, money/gold and care on what I call "Crunchy Spading" in order to intuit and calculate high-speed methods of obtaining the knowledge, understanding, and answers that my guildmates can make use of in coordination with me, and by including me, a "bad player," my guild has greatly increased their effectiveness. The thing is, I am not trying to "optimize the fun out of" WoW, and I've made it very clear that not only do I not aim to be nor become a "top player" in the guild, but rather, to build up and "buff" the performance of whomever wants such, because I've learned, after 15 years of playing WoW and other MMOs, that social cooperation makes-or-breaks a mid-tier raiding guild far more than "optimal numbers," and I've been applying those math skills to analyze ways to help my guildmates cooperate, better. For me, figuring out the numbers is emergent/free play, rather than instrumental, because I'm just finding out things that make my savantist, number-crunching brain happy, and if other people perform better or enjoy better the game that we share and are willing to tolerate my infodumps for that power and enjoyment, that's just a massive bonus
IMO this also applies to Final Fantasy XIV as well lol
“Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game”
Damn this line hit hard… I remember playing wow at the end of classic (was lvl 40 when TBC launched) and yeah, I was bad… We all were… Back in those days it didn't matter how good you were as a warlock (yeah, 1 button spec), you didn't use macros, keybinds or turned your character by using the mouse… But with every new expansion, the demands increased. I remember back in the day when all you were required to raid was deadlybossmods and maybe some add on for party health bars (I used x-perl for that) which were required for some boss fights. At the end of my WoW "career" you had to have like at least 5 to 7/8 addons which were mandatory, be it due to some boss fights (the bird boss addon in HFC) or just to make fights easier. Fights and mechanics got much harder too because people got better at the game or due to lots of people just out grinding normal and heroic mode raids so they strongarmed some easier mythic difficulty bosses and got further than they have any right to be given their skill.
I liked the original layouts and healthbars and stuff in classic/start of BC, but as soon as I got my hands on addons it felt like a completely new/different game. I would literally change from character to character the entire UI and adapt it to my character. It felt unique and amazing, even though it took lots of time. I mean there were even competitions on threads about who made the nicest looking UI and such. I for one think addons enriched the game and made it even more popular, and gave some people a tiny glimpse what is possible with mods/addons and coding/software development and what a complex and rich environment that is.
fantastic video, perfectly expresses how i feel about the game these days and why much better than i ever could. thanks
I’d like to share a story. A story about a shaman, and a death knight, who killed a boss, and caused an entire raid to fall apart.
T’was the early days of WotLK, a month or so in, naxx 25 was the primary raid. It was a fun raid in my opinion, a nice balance of mechanics, ambiance, and ease.
My cousin (the shaman) was more of an elite player, mostly bis, whereas I was a “pug only” DK tank. I was an unholy tank which was seen as off-meta at the time.
We had cleared 2 of the 4 quarters and were working our way through the third, the plague quarter. This quarter just so happened to have my favorite boss, Heigan the Unclean, notorious for “the safety dance”. This boss had a mechanic where the floor erupted and killed people that weren’t standing in a safe place.
We provide a brief overview of the fight and then we start the boss, but by about 75% Hp the group failed the safety dance… all except me the tank and my resto shaman cousin. We were both in my basement, absolutely giggling and laughing as we continued the fight while my uncle blasted a song called “safety dance” over the voice chat (was it still vent at the time?). In the end my cousin and I essentially 2 manned the boss, him and his infinite mana pool and me and my love of dancing and getting smacked by boss hands.
At this point you’d expect a roar of applause right? 2 manning a 25 man boss on current content?! Fucking legends…. Except the raid was gone!
There were only 10 or so of the original 25 raiders left. Understandably so when you realize it took us over a half an hour to finish the fight. There were multiple times where members were screaming at us to “just fucking die.” But we wouldn’t! We couldn’t! Destiny called upon us that day and we had to answer.
It’s a story we still reference today and makes me smile every time. Granted my cousin, the badass resto shammy, actually got a lot of acknowledgment from the fight, had multiple offers from the remaining raiders for him to join their guild and I the lowly “undergeared and off-meta” tank, was on top of the world with the fact that we did something we shouldn’t have, and succeeded where 23 others failed.
Idk, longer story than it had to be, but I fuckin love that memory. I don’t think I would do that again today seeing as I’m a dad instead of a teenager, and it was definitely “a dick move”in the eyes of the community, but it was a joy for the family (3 raiders besides us were family in my basement).
My best memories of this game are the off-meta ones. At one point in wow classic my guild was top 5 for clear times, I played the game like a second job, worked really hard, and it was never so easy for me to walk away from and I have maybe one good memory from the actual raids, but that will definitely be my last time ever being “sweaty”. I understand the appeal, but to me it just simply isn’t worth it when more fun can be had in other, less (or sometimes more in our situation) time consuming ways.
Sir, This is a wendys
I mean if you tell your friend that you want to jam with them and you show up with an untuned guitar and refuse to tune it there's going to be some issues. Also I tanked UK at WotLK Classic Launch, multiple times, on multiple characters. I never had any issue and GS was never referenced outside of a joke.
As someone with consistently high pvp xp and multiple RBG Hero titles, I've made it my main priority to ve as helpful and kind to as many players as possible.
I remember when I was noobish how dickish everyone was, and still is, to literally everyone, and I've seen how it affects participation.
Nothing has ever been as fun for me as low cr RBGs with my rp guild friends, and it annoys me that hyper competitive turds ruin that for everyone.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the wow community is full of children that only want you to play the game their way. You wanna do the quests in gnomegeran? Absolutely not you must follow the optimized path decided by the pros or you get kicked or they complain about loot in a level 30 dungeon where the loot isn’t Even valuable it’s just chaff for selling. I thought wow would be fun but any time I’m grouped up with other players it’s the most infilling experience. I love questing and the lore of the game. Visiting cool places and meeting legendary characters. But as soon as you ask players any sort of question in game they call you stupid and just tell you to look up a YouTube video. Where’s the fun in that wow doesn’t have a community. It has a bunch of toxic no life’s that don’t care about enjoying the experience of the mmo.
ive never heard anyone say guides were cheating in my life
The major issue with WoW and any other online game is that if you suck, you're wasting someone elses time. Let's say you did something in a 20-man mythic dungeon that caused a wipe and takes 5 minutes to get ready for the next attempt. You're one mistake is costing a collective 100 minutes of wasted time. As such players will do everything in their power to not be punished and thus gear scores, addons, achievments, etc are required. This is also why Classic Vanilla is simply better. The raids are easy and the content everyone enjoys is mostly a solo experience, which is leveling. There are a few group quest you'll want to group up for but for the most part the most fun thing in the game doesn't punish anyone else. Once you're ready to raid, it's going to be easy enough that you'll breeze through it.
What in the League of Legends is this…?
Rewatching this, still hate m+ and I'll never come back to retail raiding as long as it's forced.
This is phenomenal work. I’ve written more papers than I’d care to count about “psychology.” If you’ve got a grad degree, you know just how much writing is involved.
I also tutored undergrads to help make a dent in tuition, so I feel slightly qualified to comment on this video.
This writing/research/presentation is truly impressive. I feel INSPIRED to write on this subject: that’s not an easy emotion to elicit considering the overwhelming burnout I’m feeling.
This an exceptional graduate thesis WITH a video attached. Wonderful work.
I remember playing on a WotLK private server for some time, and to get into ICC raid groups you had to have a gear score that could only be attained by getting gear from ICC. Fun times.
As a wow player, preliminary thoughts before watching (can comment after to compare how I feel.) It's not rude to suck at wow, being bad at the game is 1000% fine. What is rude is to 1) engage in group content with some skill requirement which are bellow, be 2) unwilling to accept that the content might the beyond you and 3) be unwilling to try to improve to the level the content and group requires of you.
If you exclude the fucking crazies, which it is only reasonable to do as every game has them, the. The remained if the playerbase don't care too much if you are bad, we just don't like time wasters. Time wasting is not being bad, it's being unwilling to accept resosnsble criticism or try to improve.
To be clear this only matters if you are trying to join a group which values player skill to avlevel you can't hit.
Can I just make a point about your friend the MW? To be clear, him being bullied is not cool, it doesn't really matter, but as an experienced player you pretending that gear isn't a factor if you are behind the prog curve is disingenuous and you know it. With extremely rare exception gear ALWAYS makes the content easier than it was otherwise.
WoW community is sadly an awful cesspit mostly because of PvP side and attitudes in it. Game also is so stupidly lenient and even enabling for awful behaviour while lower level players cant retaliate against gankers and griefers in any shape of form. While World PvP is just praised by same pvp toxic fools as "classic experience". Its plagueing both retail classic and private servers, and it makes me hate blizzard retroactively for it among other things WoW done horribly wrong for no good reason, be it gameplay, worldbuilding or story in relation to Warcraft 3…
Even tho i still love it for other things like music and atmosphere.. I still enjoy playing doing just unorthodox/free-play ways and do fun things like climbing places i am not meant to climb interacting with opposing faction in friendly ways even tho blizzard done their darnest to ruin and limit it almost completely.