The Rotunda

Issue date: 11/12/08 Section: Features

World of Warcraft Icon.

By Courtney Jones
Rotunda Reporter

Brittany Kidd sits down at her desk at 3 o'clock in the afternoon on Friday, finally done with classes for the day. She immediately logs in to the World of Warcraft, after placing her headset in the correct position and making sure the audio works. World of Warcraft, called WoW by players, is a Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) with more than eight million users worldwide and two million users in North America alone. In an MMORPG, thousands of players exist in the same game world at the same time. "It's awesome," said Kidd, a junior at Longwood. "I can talk to my friends and my boyfriend while I play too."

World of Warcraft enables thousands of players to come together online and battle against the world and each other. Players from across the globe can leave the real world behind and undertake grand quests and heroic exploits in a land of fantastic adventure. "The cool thing about WoW is that you can play by yourself or on teams with other people since you can only do so much by yourself," said Alison Davis, a junior at Longwood and Kidd's roommate.

WoW players also do not just consist of teenagers either; young children, adults and senior citizens are active WoW players. Dr. Ed Hooks, assistant professor of biology, has been playing WoW since November 2005. "It is fun," said Hooks. "It's a good quality game with few bugs, which can be played by yourself or with or against others; and the game is constructed so that you never get bored." Being a college professor makes Hooks' playing rather sporadic, allowing him enough time to play once a week if school is in session. However, during the summer, Hooks said, "I usually play several hours a day for several days straight."

If WoW is anything, it is most certainly time consuming. "It's all a matter of self control and time management," said Hooks. While regular college students are busy seeking higher education, WoW-playing college students are dedicating certain hours of their day to the massive phenomenon that is WoW. "Be careful and don't sell your soul," said Davis. According to two students who dropped out last semester, former freshman Brian Herzog and former junior Aaron Peck, they left to work full time and play WoW.

In 2006, the American Medical Association (AMA) investigated whether or not obsessively playing video games might be a psychological disorder. MMORPGs were listed by its players as the most commonly overused video game. According to their findings, "There is currently insufficient research to definitively conclude that video game overuse is an addiction." Regardless of the need for more research, the AMA suggested to the American Psychiatric Association (APA) that video game addiction be listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. However, the APA manual did not include video game addiction.

There is one thing that sets Longwood WoW players apart from all the other college players. Due to a Longwood Internet server upgrade last spring, the game is now accessible at high speed twenty-four hours a day. Usually, WoW players have to play between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. so the game's Internet servers are fast enough to function. "I play whenever I'm not in class these days," said senior P.J. Alexandrowicz. "I don't have to stay up late anymore just to play WoW."

Over the past few years, the number of WoW players at Longwood has increased from a few dozen to a few hundred. Sixth-year senior Bobby Brown said, "I met Brittany and Alison at dinner and WoW was brought up, so it's definitely a good way to make friends on campus." According to the World of Warcraft official Web site, there are an even amount of guys and girls registered who play WoW.

Sometimes there is downtime in the game, which allows players to socialize with each other and make friends. Most players have headsets that they use to talk with everyone else in the game. Players can also just type what they want to say. "Brittany is the reason I play WoW, because we are roommates, so it's kind of a friendship connection between us," said Davis.

Unlike other MMORPGs, WoW allows players to play the game at their own pace, whether it is a few hours here and there or entire weeks at a time. Players choose roles and interact with each other in the world of Azeroth and work together to complete quests, raids, and gather tools or skills. Players can choose to be anyone from an engineering gnome, to a shaman spell caster, to a monstrous orc. Characters are chosen based on their story, mission, strengths and weaknesses. They are rewarded with experience and higher levels when they kill monsters. Higher levels mean more tools, more skill and more damage. They use tactics such as camping, which is when one character kills another several times in succession.

WoW also features a faster style of play with less downtime and an emphasis on combat and tactics against multiple opponents. Some of the features of the game include thousands of quests to complete, four different realms to explore, and an elaborate storyline that would take weeks to completely read about. "The game is constantly growing due to expansion packs and content patches that are released periodically," said Brown. "No matter what you do you can never win the game." Players can also get excited about expansions or updates that are created for the game. The next expansion, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, drops Nov. 13.

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