WoW Learning

Thanks to everyone who participated fully or partially in my first survey Why Do You Play World of Warcraft. The survey, which opened April 4th, is now closed.

For those who entered the contest for Blizzard Store pets (one of which will be the new Celestial Steed mount released on Thursday), I’ll be accepting entry codes for the rest of the week and announce the winners next week. If you didn’t get a code to participate but you did complete the full survey, you can get in touch with me at the project’s e-mail address of wow.learning AT sussex.ac.uk and I’ll see if I can sort it out.

I was hoping for at least 25 responses and ideally around 50. 51 people completed the first page on in-game demographic details and 39 people completed the whole survey, so that’s not too bad at all. For me, now the fun begins: data analysis. Starting next week, I’ll begin the process of going through all the short answers provided and coding them as to motivational themes. Results will eventually be posted here, so stay tuned.

Again, many thanks to those who took the time to help me by participating in the survey or by letting others know about it!

You are invited to participate in a study of World of Warcraft™ (WoW) player motivations as part of Michelle A. Hoyle’s (AKA Elsheindra, EU- Thunderhorn) Ph.D. research. This survey is predominantly intended for EU-Thunderhorn players, but you’re welcome to participate if you play elsewhere.

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The WoW Learning project will have several phases and use mixed research and data collection methods. I’m gathering demographic data about World of Warcraft avatars as well as about their human operators. I’m posing subjective questions via surveys, like “Why do you play World of Warcraft”, to examine people’s motivations and goals. I’m also going to be engaging in a substantial amount of ethnographic research, which has me observing and participating in activities with my own character—activities not too dissimilar to what I have been doing for the last five years in the game—but recording observations and conversations as things occur. As a result, some people will be interviewed in-game; others may be asked for interviews via voice chat systems. Finally, I expect to be looking at communication that occurs on forums.

As with all university-level research involving the participation of people, the WoW Learning project needed to secure approval from the relevant ethics committee in Informatics at the University of Sussex. In the interests of transparency and full disclosure, I’ve attached a copy of the approval to this posting, which you can download yourself.

The submitted proposal also had a project information sheet and an online survey consent form. I have not included those here.

If you have any comments or suggestions for improving the transparency or quality of interactions, I’d love to hear them. Virtual worlds ethnographic research and online data collection via forums is a relatively new area and the issue of what constitutes “informed consent” is still evolving. I’d also love to know if you found this a useful resource document for you own work.

Downloadable Resources

• WoW: Learning Ethics Approval (PDF – 312 kB)