Assigment 10: One time I don't feel like a complete nerd for blogging about World of Warcraft.

I will admit, I am a huge fan of video games. In fact, the reason why I posted this blog assignment so late is because I was playing Guitar Hero 3. But anyway, World of Warcraft is once again a great subject for me to write about, because I spent upwards of 30 days worth of my life playing the game (which is probably below the mean time played), let alone one hour, and even now I occasionally play for a few hours at a time.

As I pointed out, World of Warcraft is something that I have become more than well-acquainted with. The basic premise of the game is this: you start out as a level one newbie, you kill monsters and complete quests to gain experience points, and do this until you reach maximum level (which is level 70 now). Of course, this is a very simplified view of the game. There are also different encounters against other players in both controlled and spontaneous instances, and you can also band together in groups and enter dungeons, where the monsters are a lot nastier but the rewards are so much sweeter.

My experience playing the game was varied. The problem is that unless you are leveling your avatar with a group of friends, getting to max level can be extremely tedious. I remember trying to level with my friends who have much more free time than I do (thanks Cornell Engineering), and after a few weeks they would be many levels ahead of me. In all honestly, the game is more like a job than anything else until you get to maximum level, because that is when you start getting the really powerful and cool-looking items. It's also when the game starts becoming competitively fun against other players, with both objective-based and killing-based competitions. Some of the best times I have had in the game, though, were the forty person raid dungeons to get the best items in the game (at the time). While battling our way through the dungeon there would be forty of us talking on Ventrilo (an internet-based voice chat program), making fun of each other and making ridiculous jokes. I think the best part about video games in general and large scale games like World of Warcraft in specific is the community, and I sincerely believe that without it, these sorts of games would not be nearly as fun to play.

In their paper, Yee and Bailenson describe something called the Proteus effect, which is similar to SIDE in some respects. Basically what the Proteus effect claims is that an attribute of your avatar (tallness, for example) will cause you act in a manner associated with that attribute (dominant in this case). In my experience, this has only been somewhat true. For example, I have always played as attractive female characters, and although I did act more female, it was for completely different reasons. The female to male ratio in video games is almost negligible, and female players tend to get more help, both with advice and pseudo-tangible items, so I "act female" strictly for the benefit of free stuff. Additionally, the authors hypothesize that having a tall avatar will be associated with aggression, leadership, and confidence. My guild leader was a gnome, which is by far the shortest and least-threatening race you could choose to play as in World of Warcraft, and he was probably one of the toughest people I know. However, the authors' second hypothesis, that those with attractive avatars tend to disclose more, is most definitely true, at least for female avatars. Again, because of the unbalanced male to female ratio in World of Warcraft, girls tend to receive the most attention, and when engaged in casual conversation, I noticed that those who play as the more attractive avatars tend to disclose more when conversing.