In the cycle of expansions and patches, we are reaching the time when a lot of people feel "burned out" on World of Warcraft.  People have just stopped logging on and raiding guilds are opening up recruitment to re-fill their ranks (Lboc.wowstead.com BTW).  Fortunately, Blizzard is fully aware of this and has recently been building some hype by releasing details about class changes for the past week to get people excited about the upcoming expansion. 
For the uninitiated, classes in World of Warcraft are the types of characters you can play.  Warlocks, druids, mages, warriors and rogues are all examples of class types.  Blizzard is releasing details about new spells to get the player base excited about re-learning to play their class.

However, I want to mention something that will seem like jibberish to people who do not play, but bear with me.

If your goal is to build hype for the game, don't cut down a class of healer by giving us no new spells!  I know that it is petty, but I want a pretty new spell that will do something.  Priests are getting Life Grip, Shammies are getting an AoE heal, and Pallies are probably going to get Radiance Aura (I can't prove it, I just have a hunch).  I understand the argument that "Druids have a plethora of heals that we don't use, so why make new ones?"  But still, If I am faced with an entire expansion with my only new prospect being flowers sprouting under people I heal? Kill me now, I am rezzing my priest.

Secondly,  Tree of Life on cooldown is upsetting me.  I Don't especially like the Tauren model, but I do like the tree model.  I definitely like the idea of a cooldown that I can actually get excited about (Looking at you Nature's Swiftness)

Overall, I am glad blizzard is making it a game of resource management instead of Whack-a-mole. However, if you are building hype, give druids something to play with so we can get just as excited.  And we know that the ToL cooldown is merely a cosmetic change for something that could be fun, but can't you make us turn into a bad-ass tree for 30 seconds?  Like a palm tree.

hile Blizzard has many thousands of dollars to spend on advertising and pr, players of the game engage in pr-like activites every day without spending any money (usually). Today, I will cover how players practice advertising and pr in game, and tips on how not to suck at it.

Unlike the real world, the channels of communication are very restricted. The majority of communication on a mass scale is performed by means of a city-only channel called “trade chat” or “/2”.

As you can tell, it is cluttered at the best of times.  This activity is most likely related to advertising; however there are no pictures and a high rate of non-response.  Most often the people who are looking for a guild will not even read trade chat and you can expect one response for every 100 times you spam your message.

A more succesful means of advertising your guild for recruitment is a third party site such as wowprogress.com.  For players wanting to experience end-game raiding, they can easily see which guilds on their server have progressed and exactly how far they have progressed.  For example, my server of Akama shows the top 20 guilds on the first page.  You want to be in the top 20 guilds because most people never click more than they have to.  Once you click on my guild, we have provided more information on what we are about, how to contact us and how to apply to our guild.

Speaking of ways to contact us, a good guild web site is just as important as a good company web site.  If a web site looks terrible, you look terrible. This is the first impression anyone will have of you or your guild/ company. Do not make them squint and desperately search for the back button.




Blizzard recently announced Blizzcon, their large yearly event.  While it would be nice to be able to stage a large event like Blizzard, most of the players are happily insconced inside the game.  The solution by a few guilds is to hold events in-game.  PETA (yes, THAT PETA) even held an event in game to garner publicity in real life (though it didn't go as planned). Personally, my guild planned a night where we gave out raiding flasks (an item that increases your effectiveness in raids for those who do not play). If a player could recall a time they had an enjoyable interaction with one of our members.  However, if you are trying to establish a presence in the raiding community, plan your events before they are already inside the instances and therefore, unreachable.

The titles are starting to annoy even me.

Anyways, Blizzard announced this week the details for their main event, Blizzcon 2010.  For the uninitiated, Blizzcon is the yearly event where Blizzard announces what new developments they have planned for their various games.  It is also an excuse for Blizzard's designers to meet their consumers, for consumers to ask the designers questions, and for the costume contest!

This always makes me laugh.

I WAS going to discuss PR type activities that players use to communicate with other gamers, but recently a TED talk has popped up that makes a great argument.  Before I link it, you should be aware that many people who play online games will forego TV watching in favor of the online gaming experience.  Personally, I don't even have cable.  When I watch television, it is background noise to playing WoW with my significant other.

With this talk, Jane McGonigal argues that online gaming can save the world. At the beginning of the talk you can hear people giggling at her claims, but at the end she gets a standing ovation.

Why should I not share links?  For example this link illustrates the community that has been fostered by a class. This one does as well! Now I just need a catchy title to file it under.

In a recent interview I had with Dr. Cicchirillo, a professor of communication in the department of Advertising who focuses on video game play features and contexts on post-game play outcomes, we spoke mainly of video games as relating to advertising. However, he did lead me to someone who studies the motivation behind gamers.


Nick Yee is a research scientist at the Palo Alto research center, and since the fall of 1999, he has surveyed around 35,000 gamers to deconstruct and study their behaviors. His website, the Dadelus gateway, is a collection of his findings. For today’s post I want to study what motivates gamers.

Nick Yee (His name is one of those that just flows so well, I can’t help but say it altogether!) divides motivation for gaming into four broad categories: achievements, social appeal, immersion, and competition. He argues that what is thought of as one game is actually several games being played side by side, and I agree with this. Too often, I see people (raiding people’s, usually) who see the entire game as end-game raiding. Leveling is simply a means to an end, dailies and guilds are also a means to an end. There are some people that try to raid entire instances alone.  It should be noted that some people enjoy exploring every nook and cranny of Azeroth, some enjoy cornering markets, and some enjoy making friends. 
For me, I feel like I mix three out of four of the motivations. My favorite part of the game is indubitably the social aspect. Most of the time I spend online is spent talking to other guild members, to other tree druids I already know, and even talking to random people via /trade chat. I also enjoy the thrill of a first time boss kill, however, if I was forced into introspection I would say that is because I am the one who organized the raid. I have been recruiting people for two years, I have been refining loot systems and the fairest way to decide attendance, and when all of that comes together in a perfectly executed boss kill, it is a great achievement for me.

However, I know people who play for different reasons. For example, my boyfriend Andrew plays to fulfill the competition motivation. He likes to log on just for raids, or to complete a goal that will bolster his dps (damage per second) performance. Besides that he likes to play to amass large amounts of money, which is also a competition against other buyers and sellers in the virtual marketplace. Another example is Secondaidkit, a priest in my guild. I can tell he is motivated by the achievement system, because he has spent a large amount of time completing the Insane in the Membrane achievement, which requires spending a large amount of time grinding rep for little known factions. The amazing part is this achievement has no tangible reward besides a title, he has nothing to show for it besides “I completed this incredibly hard achievement, just because I can.”

Yee also divided those broad categories into smaller categories, and was even so kind to express them in chart form!

If you would like, you can also take Nick Yee's motivation assesment.  Here were my results: "The graph above is a visualization of your three main motivation components. Your Achievement percentile rank is 86%. Your Socializing percentile rank is 88percent. And your Immersion percentile rank is 34 percent. "




So does this system cover all of the aspects of motivation? Are there any you do not see listed that you think should?

Edit: RIGHT after I published this, I saw that Nick Yee is conducting another survey.

For my second post I wanted to try and be a bit more scientific. I am sure that everyone likes to hear me pontificate (great word, I feel like I should use it more) and ramble.  Occasionaly I think maybe I should interview someone who actually researches these subjects. For my first interview I went local and interviewed Dr. Cicchirillo, a professor of communication in the department of Advertising who focuses on video game play features and contexts on post-game play outcomes. Since I am flustered easily, I forgot to hit record on my netbook and therefore do not have very many specific quotes. Let’s call this a “conversation” instead.


Dr. Cicchirillo recently finished his first major study which concentrated on race perceptions in video games. Specifically, he let subjects play Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and watched how they reacted with characters of different races. The results showed that people were more likely to feel aggression to people of different races in a solo video game. Though when I asked if he had done any research into MMORPG’s I learned that not many people are studying MMORPG’s from an advertising perspective, the emphasis is on regular video games.

After we talked of his initial research, we started talking about online gaming enviroments and MMORPG’s and I learned a few interesting theories. Notably, why people socialize. He told me about the uncertainty reduction theory, which is a defense mechanism. Basically, you will tell someone information about yourself in hopes of reciprocation, this in turn reduces the uncertainty about that person, and reduces stress you feel about that interaction. However, anonymity can blur this by confusion about gender, race, and even what culture they belong to. Anyone can lie in a video game.

However, the advertising department is very interested in how video games can be used to advertise. While this is a new field, there have been several notable forays into advertising in online games. During the last presidential campaign, President Obama’s worked with Massive gaming to release advertisments in a popular Xbox Live racing game. While these ads were only visible during online play and did not last as long as a permanent item. According to Massive’s web site, they see large increases in recognition to advertisers in controlled studies.

However, that type of advertising would probably not do well in an enviroment like World of Warcraft, where escapism is the buzzword. While I personally think the Farmer’s Insurance Sword of Destruction would be fun to tout in dalaran, it would take away from the playstyle for the populous at large. According to Dr. Cicchirillo, the word for advertising conforming to the tenets of the video game it inhabits is called congruency. For ads that do not detract from the realism, but instead add to the realism, it will have a positive effect and promote a greater sense of recall.

While my interview with Dr. Cicchirillo was not strictly concerning public relations in WoW, I still feel like I gleaned some very useful information.