World of Warcraft Study

I know I haven’t been updating as often as I’d like, but I’m still around! I’ve been actively playing my Warlock alt, Tuque, in between raids with Amoothyst. Mostly because I need a character to be able to farm with easily, as a resto Druid just doesn’t farm as effectively as a DPS class. Then came dual spec. How fun is that? Now I can spec between Moonkin and Resto as needed for solo stuff and raids. But you know… after setting my secondary spec as Moonkin, I realized that perhaps what I really want to do is go feral as my alt spec. I kinda miss the prowling around in cat form. We’ll see. Either way, it has helped to breathe new life into Amoo, since I can now switch quickly to a better solo spec for grinding out that 5k needed on Tuque for epic flying *cough*

This weekend my husband and I participated in a very interesting World of Warcraft study by Kelly Bergstrom of the University of Calgary. As you can read from the article, Kelly is focused on interviewing couples who game together in MMOs, specifically WoW. We got together with her at Starbucks on Saturday (Outside? Real life? I know… what are those things?) and talked about our general gaming experiences and WoW experiences together. Though Lucas doesn’t play WoW these days, we have played it together in the past and we play other games together, too.  Kelly is very interested in the idea that the virtual world in an MMO like WoW can be a “third place”  for socialization, and that perhaps couples who game together stay together because they have that extra place to retreat to and stay connected. 

Kelly’s research is fascinating, and one topic she brought up in our discussion that really hit home with me was that a lot of times, the class that you choose to play is reflective of the type of person you are or your personality. In looking at this possibility, I think there really are some parallels there. What do you think? Are you the in-your-face type who enjoys being in charge of the aggro of the conflict, such as a tank/toe-to-toe DPS, or are you more of a support role, helping to keep others afloat? (Like a healer.) Maybe you’re even more of a hang back and support without getting in direct contact with the fray, such as a ranged DPS class type? The concept is very interesting, and I think that your favorite/main class choice says a lot about the kind of person you are in real life. (There’s that ‘real life’ thing again… does that really exist?)

Anyway, Kelly is still gathering research on her topic, but once the results of her study have been posted, I’ll be sure to point you in the right direction to read what conclusion she came to. I personally can’t wait!

Have a great week :)