Hi, my name is Sherrie Chavez and I am a senior majoring in Operations Research and Engineering. I’m taking this class because like many typical college students, online communities like Facebook and Myspace tend to take up more of my time than I’d like to admit. Being an engineer, these online communities are not exactly conducive to academic success yet I still can’t seem to pass up checking my email, Facebook and Myspace accounts on a routine basis.
One internet-related phenomenon that has particularly interested me is a massive multiplayer online role – playing game, World of Warcraft. In terms of Wallace’s internet environments, World of Warcraft would fall under the metaworld category. Having a significant amount of friends who enjoy playing “WoW”, I’ve always wondered what it was about the game that kept my friends glued to their computer screens for hours on end. For a game that was just released in November of 2004, World of Warcraft has gained much popularity over the years, attracting nine million subscribers worldwide.
WoW players control avatars, or graphical personas, within a vivid and imaginative game world. These avatars explore the landscape, fight monsters, and perform quests. Money, items and experience denote success and advance a player’s skill and power. Players can level their avatars from level one all the way up to level seventy.
Watching my friends play WoW with such great interest in their avatars’ progress, the game always seemed so pointless to me. To be completely honest, watching an online character wandering around some fictitious online gaming world isn’t exactly my idea of a good time.
It was not until I came across a couple of clips on YouTube posted by WoW gamers that I realized how many people were actually addicted to the game. I was shocked to find that it wasn’t uncommon for these online gamers to post odd things like music videos featuring their avatars wandering the game world. One post I found disturbing featured a funeral ceremony held in the WoW gaming realm for a gamer that had recently died in real life. The gamer’s friends had posted this ceremony on WoW message boards and later in the ceremony, some other gamers raided the ceremony and attacked those players who were paying their respects. The clip is a prime example of how some WoW players tend to lose touch with reality and neglect the distinction between the real world and the gaming world. Once I had seen this clip, I later found that World of Warcraft has in fact received much criticism due to serious online gaming addiction issues.
In my opinion, it’s scary to think about how addicted some online gamers can become to games like WoW. What is it about these online role playing games that causes some gamers to delve into the imaginary gaming world and lose touch with the real world?
2 comments:
Have you seen the World of Warcraft episode of South Park? If not, I highly recommend it. I think you would enjoy it. On a more serious note (serious, but still lighthearted), I can relate to everything you said. When my boyfriend and I pass the video game sections of Wal Mart and Target, we often half seriously consider buying the game just to see if the game is really worth the hype. Every time this occurs, one of us will pick up the game and show it to the other. We’ll exchange smiles, place it back on the shelf, and continue our errand. But I really don’t understand how people could be addicted to the point that they would rather stay in and play World of Warcraft than meet a friend for lunch, for example. It’s absolutely insane! I firmly believe in the need for regular human contact in order to successfully develop.
In the last several years, many adults have lost their jobs and families as a result of addictions to online games such as World of Warcraft. Would these same individuals have become obsessed with Mario on Nintendo twenty years ago? Or are their addictions fueled by the idea that they are actually playing an actual person instead of a computer? Do those individuals with addictive tendencies in the online world face these same temptations in the real world? I have met some people that purposely avoid these online games from fear of becoming addicted.
Post a Comment