the adventures of teapot the cat

Studying Virtual Life

Posted on September 22nd, 2006

I have a level 56 Night Elf Hunter on a PVP server in a fairly new, mostly raiding guild. It’s my first ever character in World of Warcraft, and it’s been a challenge, super fun, irritating, and fascinating. The world is so detailed and complex, and the player - player interactions never cease to astound me. So when I came across PlayOn and Terranova - projects that seek to examine the development of virtual worlds - needless to say I was quite fasincated by the accured data and analysis they had done. They cover all sorts of topics from how a new AH in Stormwind & Darnassus affect city population to discussion of avatars & Orcs. One day I need to roll characters on PVE servers and RolePlaying servers to get a feel for how different the game becomes given those fundamental changes in game structure. I’ve tried Second Life but it just didn’t cut it IMHO. Anyone remember The Palace from back in the late 90s?

The PlayOn project at PARC is an investigation into the social dimensions of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) and virtual worlds - extensive, persistent 3D environments that are populated by thousands of players at any given moment. We have explored several virtual worlds including Star Wars Galaxies, EverQuest Online Adventures, Second Life, World of Warcraft, and EverQuest II. These and others represent the most successful virtual worlds to date and are laying the foundations for future environments which may be used for more than entertainment and sociability. In our studies, we are generally concerned with three basic issues: community, interaction, and culture.

Entry Filed under: Articles, SciTech