Virtual Sense of Community in a World of Warcraft® Storytelling Open Forum Thread

Abstract

World of Warcraft® (WoW), a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) extends to its members a virtual landscape of live gaming opportunities through such platforms as “dice” rolled character stats, open-ended story development, and interactive AI. These affordances are underpinned by a kind of virtual sense of community bringing players together in order to develop relationships and the self, adventure together, build up wealth, and overcome obstacles in order to complete quests. In addition to live game-play (or “in-world”) communities, WoW residents create alternative communities through rich online forums—here, new members are recruited into guilds, disputes are spawned and slayed, and seasoned warriors reminisce over worlds and lives that once- were. However, a third type of community is also evident through particular threads crafted within forums specifically for collaborative storytelling (or roleplaying). This paper examines sense of community—a sense of “belonging to, importance of, and identification with a community”—through one particular thread, “The Darkening Grove Tavern” under the forum World’s End Tavern using an adaptation of McMillan and Chavis’ theory and Boellstorff, Nardi, Pearce & Taylor’s ethnographic data collection methodology for qualitative analysis of virtual worlds . Findings from players’ story text (or “turns”) suggest that online storytelling forum threads exhibit a linguistically and semiotically branded sense of virtual community.

The Role of Virtual Communities in Gambling and Gaming Behaviors: A Systematic Review

“… Multimethod 75 N/A N/A Gaming Game forums; in-game community Griffiths and Light ( 2008 ) Qualit. Field study N/A N/A N/A Gaming In-game community Gui ( 2018 ) Qualit. Ethnographic 190 N/A N/A Gaming Game forum; MMORPG Hickerson and Mowen ( 2012 ) Quantit.…”

“…According to reviewed studies, online gaming communities inherently exist inside the game. This is especially true with MMORPGs (Badrinarayanan et al 2014 , 2015 ; Ben-Ur et al 2015 ; Fang et al 2009 ; Gui 2018 ; Hota and Derbaix 2016 ; Jin et al 2017 ; Park et al 2018 ; Pinto et al 2015 ). MMORPG playing typically takes place in guilds, that is, long-lasting social groups where players collaborate in order to better game success.…”

“…MMORPG playing typically takes place in guilds, that is, long-lasting social groups where players collaborate in order to better game success. In guilds, players share their skills, knowledge, and virtual resources, such as money, with each other (Gui 2018 ; Pinto et al 2015 ). The player roles in guilds are important in terms of teamwork contributions.…”

“…In gambling studies, online communities are typically discussion forums and other virtual spaces that exist outside a game (Caputo 2015 ; Hing et al 2015 ; Howe et al 2019 ; Järvinen-Tassopoulos 2016 ; McGowan 2003 ; Mudry and Strong 2013 ; O’Leary and Carroll 2013 ; Parke and Griffiths 2011 ; Rantala and Sulkunen 2012 ; Rodda et al 2018 ; Schüll 2016 ; Sirola et al 2018 , 2019 ; Wood and Wood 2009 ), but also some in-game interaction tools exist particularly in online poker (Khazaal et al 2017 ; Schüll 2016 ; Smith et al 2012 ) and in social casino games (Gainsbury et al 2015 ). Gaming communities, on the other hand, exist inherently embedded inside the game, as is the case particularly in MMORPGs and their guild-based systems (Badrinarayanan et al 2014 , 2015 ; Ben-Ur et al 2015 ; Fang et al 2009 ; Gui 2018 ; Hota and Derbaix 2016 ; Jin et al 2017 ; Park et al 2018 ; Pinto et al 2015 ), but also external communities such as discussion forums exist for gamers (Ben-Ur et al 2015 ; Y. B. Kim et al 2015 , 2017 ).…”

“…In addition to in-game communities, there are also game-related discussion forums where gamers can interact (Ben-Ur et al 2015;Goodfellow 2015;Gui 2018;Huang et al 2012;Y. B. Kim et al 2015Y.…”