Talk:World of Warcraft/Archive 12

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Reminders for Gazimoff

Who deserves a barnstar for his work on this article. Anyway, reminders as requested (advertisements for other people to work as well!):

• Use the tools normally used at FAC. Includes refchecker and other items.
• Legacy, Development need improving
• Copyedit
• Lead needs redone (this I might do).

Cheers. --Izno (talk) 00:45, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Some references for wow

Most of the following references are from the field of games studies. Some of them are on SSRN (they usually are), unless they are within one year of initial publication, then they are usually embargoed. I will try to link to a freely available version when possible but a considerable amount of these articles are gated and may not be accesible to the general public. I can access them but I won't republish them broadly for obvious reasons. If you want an excerpt or want to see a copy, let me know on my talk page and we'll work something out so that we aren't violating the spirit and the letter of my access agreement.

First off, Nick Yee's work. He's a researcher at PARC and does empirical and other work within and about WoW.

• Building an MMO With Mass Appeal (gated)
• From Tree House to Barracks:The Social Life of Guilds in World of Warcraft (gated)
• Alone together? (gated) This is a good one. controversial, as it basically says that people socialise a lot less (on the whole) than most game researchers think or would like to hear.

Constance Steinkuehler works in games and learning theory. Her research has moved on to Lineage, but there are some good papers there on WoW (non gated papers are linked directly from her info page). She has a conference paper on WoW forums, interestingly enough.

Some other researchers:

• Mark Chen has a few papers in stages of publication about guilds, raiding and learning in WoW. Some are linked here (Check this cite for a good way to cite a conference presentation without an associated PDF). the paper is a draft, but it is based on a received and reviewed conference talk given in 2007. Also, he has a talk from 2008 discussing "relearning" the game at 60/70 and how this correlates to some different learning models (ZOMG huge .gif).
• Krista-Lee Malone has produced what is basically the first paper on DKP out there. The work is still a draft (accepted for publication in Games and Culture), so it probably won't fly as RS, but when it is published it should make for an interesting anchor.
• conference paper (gated) on collaboration in WoW.

RMT research

• Ted Castronova (kinda the guy who lit the fire under modern games studies) has a paper on cost/benefit analysis of RMT in WoW and online spaces in general. Be aware, Ted is kinda anti-RMT, so the gist of it may be slightly POV. ungated
• T.L. Taylor's work in virtual worlds is very well known. This paper discusses emergent behavior and regulation in those worlds generally, but mentions RMT as well. gated
• Julian Dibbell is not a scholar per se, but his work skirts the boundary between reporting and novel scholarship. Any discussion on RMT ought to include his piece in the new york times on chinese gold farmers. ungated
• A very brief rundown (basically because the readers of the duke law review don't usually play wow) of the "legal status" of goods in WoW ungated
• A similar review in the Loyola Law review (accepted but not published) ungated
• Again, similar but very detailed, in the UC Davis law review. ungated

That's a start. A lot of it is parochial and technical. A lot of it will seem remedial to people who play wow. this is mostly because about 1/2 of the intro of the paper (and, as you will see, 1/2 of the paper sometimes) is devoted to explaining what WoW is and why it is worthy of scholarly attention. Part of the problem is that this field is REALLY young. Most of the good work was formative and is about EQ (Castronova, TL Taylor, etc). Some really good work is done by grad students and most of the work is in conference papers or in Games and Culture. That makes scholarly sourcing hard for wikipedia, but I think it is important to include serious study of WoW in this and daughter articles in order for them to get past FAC. You can ask me questions about this stuff on my talk page or here (for a while, I might unwatchlist this page if it is really heavy traffic). I will try to contribute as best as I can, but I'm not very good at getting articles beyond GA, I'm more of a create/save from deletion kind of guy. Hopw this helps. Protonk (talk) 02:56, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Armory

References to the Armory and to alternative Armory sites (armorylite.com, armory-light.com, warcrafter.net) are completely missing. Seeing how the WoW Armory is a great technological feat (XML source) and how it has allowed hundreds of player-hosted sites to exist, there should be at least a mention of the Armory in this article. 80.109.144.111 (talk) 13:19, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Is there a reliable source that talks aout the armory? Protonk (talk) 13:26, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

There should be... A good Article on the armory can be found here: User:Gazimoff/World_of_Warcraft/#The_Armory and here are a few news sources that talk about the armory: http://news.mmosite.com/content/2007-03-02/20070302223948674.shtml http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=315766880.109.144.111 (talk) 07:32, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

The old article was in my sandbox, and I should have deleted it (I think it is now). In terms of sources, I don't think mmosite qualifies as a reliable source, but 1up definately does. In terms of placing it, I think that the information should go in Gameplay of World of Warcraft#Miscellaneous features, also mentioning it in World of Warcraft: the Burning Crusade under the development section. Thanks for reminding me about it - I'd been doing a lot of article cleanup recently and it slipped off my stack. Hope this is alright for you. Gazimoff 11:16, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Of course, thank you. I just noticed your Article in your user page when googling for the Armory and thought it would be a great and well-written addition. If you add the section to the original article, it would be great if you could specifically mention the technological feat (one of the first websites presented fully in XML) and some of the existing spin-offs (http://www.armorylite.com and http://www.armory-light.com) since they are an important source for players with hundreds of thousands of cached characters and a high user base. Besides, Blizzard decided to present the Armory in real XML (no easy feat, considering how graphic-rich the site is) in order to allow other websites to access the character information 80.109.144.111 (talk) 13:16, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll look at what we can gather together - I need to make sure we have good quality sources to back up what's added to the articles, which usually counts out any forums, blogs and so on. Once that's done, we should be able to get something in to the articles. If you know of anything from Gamespot, IGN, Kotaku or similar. We proably won't be able to link to any spin-ff sites like the ones you mentioned due to the policy on external links, but we'll see what the sources bring up. Hope this helps, Gazimoff 13:30, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll have a look too. Would a seperate article on the Armory be a better idea? It would allow to link to spin-off sites... As I said, I believe that Blizzards choice in implementing the Armory allowed several hundred sites to exist. This is a notable feat. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.109.144.111 (talk) 14:53, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

"one of the first websites presented fully in XML" is a fairly bold claim that would need some serious sourcing. --Stormie (talk) 22:43, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

You're right. make that: one of the - or probably even the - most graphically enhanced XML websites. All websites I know of which are presented as structured XML (not xhtml) are pretty basic and not at all like the armory. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.109.144.111 (talk) 13:08, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Subscription Prices?

While I myself am not a player of WoW, I think it should be good information if someone were to add to the entry the actual subscription price of WoW (maybe even compared in different regions. There are references to getting discounts and that each region is different, but since things like the WoW pre-paid cards could be similar to XM Radio Pre-Paid cards (example), where you buy a block of money and it would cover as much as a couple months depending on usage. (Example: a $30 card would would cover the "average" single XM radio listener for 2 months with a remainder carrying over to the next month of anywhere from $2-$4 depending on tax [@$12.99 a month], a 2 radio subscription would be covered for only about a month and have about $8-10 remaining as a credit for the next month {@19.98 a month]).

Pricing seems to be one of those things that unless you know someone who plays WoW, you won't find out how much it is without alot of looking around online. ZyphBear (talk) 13:33, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Pricing was one of those things that was talked about, but was eventually removed. Wikipedia is not a directory, catalogue or price guide. Hope this helps. Gazimoff 15:33, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Error in Usage Problems Section

{{editsemiprotected}}

There is a minor error in the final sentence of the 4th paragraph in the Usage Problems section. The sentence that reads:

The token generates an one-time password based code that the layer supplies when logging on. The password is only valid for a limited time, thus providing extra security against keylogging malware.

Should read:

The token generates an one-time password based code that the player supplies when logging on. The password is only valid for a limited time, thus providing extra security against keylogging malware. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Swotam (talk • contribs) 17:39, 11 August 2008

I've now completed this. Should you spot anything else, please feel free to drop me a note. Many thanks, Gazimoff 17:52, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Collectible Card Game -- Should it Have its Own Article?

I think this is worth considering. The board game has its own article and the TCG has at least as much notability. What do others think? Gilbertine goldmark (talk) 16:12, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

It's worth a try but before you do it, you'll need to make sure you have reliable sources to establish notability. I'm not kidding when I say that if you create an article on the card game and don't have really good sources right off the bat it will get flagged for deletion. WoW-related articles seem to draw a lot of deletionist attention to themselves, probably because so many of them have been very crufty in the past, and I think certain editors are touchy about them in general. Gazimoff did a really good job when he created the Gameplay of World of Warcraft article; he created everything in a sandbox first, including references, before creating the real article. That thing is now pretty rock-solid and it would be difficult to put it through AfD at this point if not impossible. -- Atama^chat 17:59, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Recruit-a-friend program mentionable?

should we throw in the new recruit-a-friend deal that they have had going on for the past few months? Wish i had a few links to show it in full detail...Grimreape513 (talk) 14:28, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

With promotions likr this, they have to be notable, such as being covered in multiple reliable sources. Places like mmo-champion.com aren't really considered a reliable source on topics like these. If there's mention of the promotion outside the usual fansite circuit it might be possible to include it, but it's probably unlikely. Hope this helps, Gazimoff 14:48, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Huge work

A huge work has been done since last I came and it's nice. However, sometimes the paragraphs are way too long to read. I know you've been working on trimming, but perhaps just subsections would be easier to read. Zandalia (talk) 16:36, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't see any paragraphs of excessive length, at least comparing to quality Wikipedia articles. The Manual of Style has no provision for paragraph length either. Even if it were necessary to break up the paragraphs, I'm not sure how that would be done efficiently. -- Atama^chat 17:01, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Some content is just plain out of date. For example the paragraph Players having difficulty finding groups to venture into a dungeon with can use meeting stones, which attempt to match characters with groups requiring particular skills or abilities.[32] High end dungeons allow more players to group together and form a raid. These dungeons allow up to forty players to enter at a time in order to face some of the most difficult challenges This usage of meeting stones has been replaced by a LFG group matching interface about two years ago. And the old system never had the matching system that the article suggests, they just joined players into groups as soon as they queued. Because of this players considered the meeting stone system to be worthless and unusable, as it always produced an unusable group of 5 random players without any consideration for required skills. This change of 2 years ago also changed the meeting stones into summoning stones so the meeting stones don't exist anymore. Also raiding in the Burning Crusade is limited to 25 players with 20 and 10 player raids also existing, so the statement that any raid allows up to 40 players is just wrong.

The article claims Victory rewards the character with tokens and honor points that can be used to buy armour and weapons. However, defeat also rewards the character with this, only in a lesser amount. A player can fully complete his goals by losing consistently, it just takes longer. The way it is now incorrectly suggests winning matches is mandatory. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.202.221.228 (talk) 10:24, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Meeting stones still exist and I believe that the LFG system is only available to those who have the Burning Crusade expansion. So for the - dozen or so? - people who still play WoW without the BC expansion, meeting stones are all they have. Good luck finding anyone with one though. I do know that the language you cite has been changed back and forth but I don't know why they settled on what is effectively outdated information, I'm with you on that. I'll leave it up to someone else to change it though, or give someone else a chance to argue the other way. As for the comment about tokens and honor, you're correct. When I used to do Eye of the Storm as an Alliance player I think at least half of my tokens came from losses. I'll go ahead and change that section. -- Atama^chat 15:35, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

The 'Reception' & 'Usage Problems' sections are indeed huge & largely unncessary, they should be downsized to a few sentences within the article. Barrel-rider (talk) 02:19, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Update to 12 million players (229 US realm)

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2008/09/05/lapin.albrecht.game.on.cnn —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rasmasyean (talk • contribs) 07:42, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

That video doesn't work for me, can you elaborate on what it said? Given that a Blizzard press release from September 15 put the subscriber base at 10.9 million[1] I'd be dubious of a news report from a week earlier that claimed 12 million. --Stormie (talk) 00:26, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

As I see it, the video has nothing to do with the subject. Nice segment on projectlore.com, talking about their speeded-up videos of raids, with wipes edited out ... to me this seems to be an advertisement for the site. 5:46 lost out of my life. Even if there was a mention of 12 million that I missed in the babble, it isn't RS, just idle on-camera chatter. This is entertainment, not news. sinneed (talk) 01:57, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

You didn't need to watch the whole video, the reporter says "World of Warcraft is all the rage with 12 million users" within the first fifteen seconds of the video. --Silver Edge (talk) 04:33, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Ah, thanks, that explains it. For me, the first several seconds were stuttering... unintelligible. I struggle to call the commentator for "Get your game on" a reporter. :) "users", not subscriptions... I think we can safely stick with the earlier 10Million and later 10.9 Million numbers. I wonder how high the numbers are going to jump about 13 November. :) sinneed (talk) 13:18, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Heh, I guess if it comes directly from Blizzard, it's probably the figure that should be used. That's not just a game commentator, however. That's Nicole Lapin, one of the youngest anchors in history who started college at 15 and even graduated valedictorian. But I suppose sometimes news agencies tend to exagerate things. :) Rasmasyean (talk) 03:16, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

New External Link Suggestion

Hi i would like to suggest www.wowvillage.com for the external link section, it contains very detailed information about the races, classes and complete class skill/ability lists, all the information has been collected from ingame. I belive this would be benficial for readers wanting more information on ingame information.

Clusterman (talk) 07:27, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Looks like a pretty poor-quality loaded-with-ads site to me, I can't see anything that it would add to the article. --Stormie (talk) 10:20, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I went ahead and removed the eq2village site from the external links section of the EQ2 article, which is the only other edit this editor has made. Thanks for bringing my attention to that Clusterman! -- Atama^chat 15:38, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Total MMO/MMOG numbers

There is a section that has been removed and replaced regarding MMO subscription base estimates as a whole. Since it followed the WoW subscription base, I reverted its removal as the total number provides some perspective for the reader whereas the number of WoW subscribers does not. In comparison, the EQ article should (dunno if it does) note the number of subscribers to EQ in 2000 in comparison to the number of subscribers of MMO's in total (otherwise a # like 200k doesn't look so big). I appreciate the OR concerns about comparing two separate estimates involving different methodologies, but I would prefer to discuss it here rather than revert back and forth. Also, in the spirit of WP:BRD, I would ask that Celtic Muffin self-revert the second removal of the content. Thank you. Protonk (talk) 20:15, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Just as another viewpoint, I believe that this section should be left in, as it shows how much of a grip that WoW has on the overall MMO subscriber base. As others have said, saying that there are 10 million subscribers is fine and dandy, but if you don't have anything to compare it to, what's the point?

Anywho, I think that the disputed section should be kept in. Corath (talk) 21:21, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

You don't need anything to "compare it to". It already says it has 62% of the market. Anyone with a calculator and basic arithmetic skills can figure out the total MMOG population, and I agree it's beyond the scope of the WoW article to start describing figures for the entire market. I'm guessing the both of you missed that percentage figure. -- Atama^chat 21:53, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

In addendum, the removed reference can stay to support that 62% figure. -- Atama^chat 21:55, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Yep, my bad, didn't see the 62% reference. So yeah, I agree with removing the section in question. Corath (talk) 22:09, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I am actually very dubious of the active subscription estimates. If the game publisher wants to announce numbers, I think that is grand. For myself, and for informal game discussions, I use MMMOGCHART and other estimators... but those numbers are blurry indeed. The EQ article, unless I missed an edit, does not have estimates... it cites the "official" numbers and mentions that there are secondary sources and estimates if someone wants to pursue them. I did not even leave an external link for it. I think that, for a formal encyclopedia article, that is best. sinneed (talk) 03:27, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I am going to look up the 10M number (it has a good source), but the 62% number I am going to flag for verification. I don't see a reliable source for it... as I understand it. Done. Painfully. My machine crashed. A kind person finished the edit for me. sinneed (talk) 03:27, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

DrNegative and Stormie made a couple of edits which I think make this much better. The link to the April 2008 MMOGCHART is probably not RS for a FACT, but it is now clearly marked as an estimate, and is a widely valued source for estimates of various qualities (and the author grades them and acknowledges that they are indeed estimates and certainly not perfect). A more knowledgeable Wikipedian than I may know if the estimate in the lead-in is a Good Thing or not. sinneed (talk) 23:19, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

It's probably Good Enough. -- Atama^chat 23:59, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Per WP:LEAD, "The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview of the article. It should establish context, explain why the subject is interesting or notable, and summarize the most important points—including any notable controversies that may exist." Considering "World of Warcraft" is notably a dominating force in the MMORPG market in terms of subscribers, the lead in its article should prominantly display this, even as an estimate, its explains why the article is notable. In this case, subscriber count. DrNegative (talk) 04:33, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Doc, the COUNT is not an estimate. It is the 62% that is an estimate. Blizz blitzes us with their counts regularly. *blink* Sorry, couldn't resist. It is the estimate for all-the-rest that makes the 62% iffy. sinneed (talk) 04:55, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes thats true, but the author of the site has also noted here[2] as to how he came up with his numbers (Official Corporate Data, Corporate Press Releases, Corporate Documents, News Articles, and Public Comments from the game developers themselves, etc..) and notes that he rarely ever uses educated guesses, saying it would be noted if he did. He simply goes further than most for the info of the subscriber base that Blizzard gloats about publicly as you mentioned. When the approximated counts are gathered, he gets the 62%. Unless someone else can show another source we can go by to contrast, its pretty much all we got. Nontheless, it should be noted in the lead. DrNegative (talk) 05:22, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

---

:Proposal for consideration:

I don't think the 62% number has reliable source... there are just too many MMOGs with too little firm data. However, we can cite the next largest paid subscription game Lineage, at about 1 million (source there is press release), to give the 10million number a scale. I think that belongs in the body, rather than in the lead-in. Thoughts? We can't prove the negative... that there is nothing larger... but if someone produces a reliable source to counter it then Poof we have another candidate for scale. sinneed (talk) 04:32, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Edit war relating to subscriber numbers

Can y'all discuss that here rather than in an edit war? - Denimadept (talk) 20:22, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

^^^^^ :) Protonk (talk) 20:25, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

You're waaaay ahead of me! Good. - Denimadept (talk) 20:26, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Vote to remove section about the Corrupted Blood incident?

Is there really any reason to have this in the article? It doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the article, and it really is of minor relevance (besides a "cool factor") compared to the rest of WoW development. I suggest it be deleted. Slinky317 (talk) 17:07, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

It was apparently a major incident, with wider interest than just that of people who played the game. - Denimadept (talk) 18:14, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

It was indeed a major incident with it's own article at Corrupted Blood, as it was used by academics as a study of how epidemic infection would be spread in the real world. It should definately be kept. Also, we don't use votes, we develop content based on consensus. Wikipedia is not a democracy. Hope this helps, Gazimoff 20:25, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

I concur on both counts, if you have a strong objection to its inclusion we can discuss that but we don't vote on whether or not to keep it. I'm opposed to getting rid of it because it was an event that brought not only popular attention, but scholarly interest to the game. -- Atama^chat 00:56, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I like the section remaining. As far as I know, it remains unique in computer gaming.sinneed (talk) 12:46, 22 October 2008 (UTC)