The Campus of Stony Brook Meets the World of Warcraft

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A group of World of Warcraft players.

By Amanda Mayo

Snow sparkles on the mountaintops outside of the city. Further down the road, wolves, bears, and other creatures graze on ground covered by a thick white blanket. Dwarves roam the land inside and out of this place they call home. Walk through a large entryway, and the scene changes. There are no mountains, no snow. People buzz about inside a torch-lit city where shops and mini-villages line a great, molten forge.

The city is called Iron Forge. It is one of the major centers of commerce inside a video game that has rippled through the lives of millions of users. The game, World of Warcraft (or WoW), is the largest massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) in the world, with nine million players gathering daily inside cities like Iron Forge.

The game’s nine million players are split up into hundreds of different servers, depending on their time zone. The reason for this split is that it is simply not possible to hold this many players on any one server because the server would probably crash and die.

For some, the game is a casual diversion; for others it’s almost a way of life. Real people, each of whom create their own character, gather daily in the World of Warcraft to defeat monsters, establish friendships, buy, sell and trade merchandise. The economic system in this game is almost as intricate as the game itself.

A small, female dwarf with big, blonde pigtail braids jumps around Iron Forge. Her pigtails bounce as she hops on the ground from tile to tile. She looks human, but her proportions seem a little strange; probably because she’s about as tall as she is wide. Players identify closely with the characters they choose. Although the dwarf, whose name is Hellga, is not the most attractive character in the game, the person playing her might get a bit defensive if he ever heard she was being described this way.

Hellga is the character played by a thirty-something businessman. For about three hours a night, Hellga helps 24 of her friends and guild mates defeat monsters in dungeons that are home to some of the most fearful creatures in the game.

The businessman, who is an entrepreneur from Ohio, will be the proud father of a baby boy in December, and although his son will take priority, he says he will not put Hellga on hold.

“It’s my way of unwinding from work,” he says, as if playing World of Warcraft in your thirties is the norm. For anyone who knows anything about the game, they would think it actually is pretty normal for this man to play. In fact, he says many of his thirty-something friends play, too.

There are two planets that sit side by side in the World of Warcraft. Players can travel between Azeroth and Outlands whenever they please, as long as they are of high enough level. The city of Iron Forge lies in Azeroth, and you can't enter Outlands until you are at least level 58.

To level from 1-70, a player obtains quests from non-player characters (NPCs) in the game. These quests may include anything from killing monsters to gathering items for the NPC, or even something as simple as traveling to an undiscovered region. Through these quests, players gain experience. A bar at the bottom of the game’s computer screen calculates experience, or XP. As soon as the XP bar is filled up, a player reaches the next level.

At level 70, players may join in on groups of 10-25 people to defeat monsters and overcome huge obstacles in areas of the game known as dungeons. The groups are guilds of select players who usually have to go through an application process if they want to join a top ten guild on the server.

As far as guilds go, there could be hundreds on any one Warcraft server, but only a small number on each server are recognized for their efforts and progressions through level 70 dungeons. Progression is most often designated by the type of gear your character and other characters in your guild have.

Gear is literally the clothing items, weapons, necklaces and trinkets that a character wears. The best gear is from the hardest level 70 dungeons, and that sort of gear usually adds many stats to a person’s character that enable them to perform even better in the game. Some stats include additional spell damage, additional stamina (so it’s harder to be killed), and additional agility in using a melee weapon.

The game has drawn in a myriad of people, from different cultures to different age groups, who can interact with millions of people around the globe. For most, this game is about teamwork.

There are nine different classes of characters within this game: rogues, warlocks, mages, warriors, hunters, priests, shamans, paladins, and druids. Rogues are able to turn almost invisible and sneak up on their opponents with melee weapons. Warlocks use dark magic like curses, and their own demon-pets to overcome obstacles. Mages prefer a softer magic that is usually just as powerful as a warlock’s.

Warriors are the backbone to any group within the game; they act as a tank to powerful enemies and monsters, and are able to keep the enemies focused only on them through taunting abilities. Warriors wear plate gear, so they have much more hit points than cloth-wearing mages and warlocks do. If a powerful enemy was focused on a cloth-wearing player, he or she would surely die in an instant.

Hunters use their ranged attack skills with a bow and arrow to kill enemies. They also have pets that help them out in combat. Priests are the official healers of a group; they make sure that everyone has full health to avoid deaths. When a player dies in the game, all they have to do is run back to their corpse in order to resurrect. However, when a player dies in a dungeon with other guild mates, it could pose a threat to the defeat of a huge enemy or monster, known as a boss. When you lose too many players in a battle, all the players have to run back, resurrect, and attempt the battle once more.

Shamans are an extremely versatile class. They may specialize in healing abilities, or ranged magic attacks. Paladins can also be versatile. Their main job is to heal members of a party or group, but sometimes, with the right gear, they can act as a tank almost exactly like a warrior can.

Druids can also have different roles. They are usually used as extra healers in a group, but they can also do a serious amount of damage to any enemy or boss if their gear is right for that role.

Alma is a level 16 Draenei mage. The Draenei are a race of playable characters within the game, and a mage is the class of character. Mages are known for their expertise in frost, arcane, and fire magic.

Alma is tall, with slightly paler blue skin than most Draenei. Her black hair is cut neatly and flows along the back of her unassuming horns. She wears plain robes, a symbol of her limited experience in the World of Warcraft. She is, after all, only level 16.

She is currently walking the blackened sands of Darkshore, a long stretch of beach where ghosts and evil animals dot the landscape, and the flora is barely alive. Alma is seeking out the elusive reef crawler, cleverly hidden further down the beach. The water is slow moving, but hides dangerous creatures just beneath the waves.

Alma’s player is a 20-year old graphic design major at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill named Alex. He is physically moving his character along Darkshore with his mouse, as he types to friends via a chat box inside the game.

Alex also has a character at level 70, the maximum level available right now. He’s playing Alma because his Internet connection is too slow at school to participate in level 70 activities such as 10 to 25 person dungeon groups, or player versus player battle.

Alex plays WoW about 2 to 3 hours a night, but says he has more time on the weekends. During the week, schoolwork and the shoddy Internet connection inhibit a longer play schedule.

Players have come into contact with the World of Warcraft in a number of ways. For some, the game becomes a burden and an addiction they try to break. There is no end to this game; no one ever “wins”. The game continues to expand and evolve through downloadable updates, and besides from that, there are still undiscovered obstacles available through even harder raid dungeons that hardly any guild across the world has yet been able to defeat.

The initial game that was released in 2004, World of Warcraft, is available to buy at any local video game store for the price of $20. In 2007, the company Blizzard, who produces the game, released an expansion pack called the Burning Crusade that is available to buy for $30. This expansion pack increased the level cap from 60 to 70, and opened up new dungeons and hundreds of quests for hungry players. It also introduced a new planet to players called Outland. According to an official Blizzard press release, the company expects to release a new expansion pack by 2009 that would further enhance the game, and raise the level cap to 80. There is also a monthly fee of about $15 in order to play the game.

The nature of many MMORPGs is the same for many people. Blizzard released a different game, called Starcraft, well before World of Warcraft was ever released. Many of these games do not have a real end to them, making them even more addicting.

Mark Silva is a medical student at Stony Brook University. He has never played neither WoW nor Starcraft, but he came into contact with the Starcraft game during his undergraduate career at Trinity College in Hartford, CT.

“In college, one of my friends played Starcraft enough to fail out of school,” Mark said. “He would go to class, but whenever he was at his room he’d be playing. He just never did any work.”

Non-MMORPG players may seem some strange patterns in the life of a true gamer. Another med student at Stony Brook, Greg Sheehan, said his friend’s mom even plays.

“I was in Texas over the summer for a wedding, staying at a friend’s house, and we came home from a bachelor party at four in the morning, and his mom was still playing,” Greg, 22, said. He added that his friend’s mom just started working from home so she could play more, and his friend’s dad plays too.

“I thought it was ridiculous,” Greg, said. “She’s 55 years old, mother of five, and a professional woman.”

Jeremy Overbay is a junior at the University of Tennessee where he majors in Enterprise Management. After a long relationship with WoW, he decided to quit for good.

“I finally got the common sense to get in shape,” he said. “It’s really unhealthy to play as much as I used to.”

Jeremy used to be the mastermind behind Grimier, an Undead warrior who specialized in the arts of weaponry. There was a time when Grimier’s protective plate gear covered an otherwise lifeless, fleshless being that is known as Undead, but since then, Grimier is long gone, possibly in the hands of a different college student somewhere else in the world.

It’s not easy for characters to be transferred from one person to another. Usually, people sell their characters on EBay, and the desire for a character at a maxed-out level that holds huge dungeon progression is extremely high. Usually, this means that the character with the best dungeon progression has the best gear that adds to their abilities. Legal forces hired by Blizzard often filter out this transfer of characters, but sometimes, if an ad is worded right, a character can be bought or sold for hundreds of dollars. Jeremy recently sold a different character, a warlock, for $1200.

Although he claims to have maintained a 3.3 grade point average while playing WoW for almost 10 hours a day, Jeremy realized the mental and social strains the game can cause.

Jeremy now fills his time with schoolwork and hanging out with friends.
Although he’s enjoying his new lifestyle a lot more now, he admits it was still hard for him to quit playing WoW.

Half-joking, he explained, “It was really hard for me to quit because online I’m a badass, the people are afraid of me, but in real life I’m just a tall fat boy with low self-esteem.” Perhaps Jeremy was poking fun at real statistics that show many WoW players become overweight and antisocial. A lot of people find it hard to balance a life online and a life away from the computer. It’s easy to be drawn into a world where fantasy meets reality, and there is no end in sight for this game.

“It felt good cooperating with those 24 people to kill new monsters and progress. Critics say ‘congratulations on killing pixels’, but it’s so much more than that,” Jeremy said.

Many players find it difficult to explain the World of Warcraft lifestyle to family and friends. Sometimes, it’s mandatory to dedicate at least 15 hours a week to the game in order to overcome new obstacles, whether it be defeating new monsters or earning a prestigious in-game title. If a player joins a high-progression guild, there are certain bragging rights they may expect. “When you make those connections online, you don’t want to disappoint the friends you make,” Jeremy explained.

Back in Iron Forge, a female warlock runs across the bridge that connects a bank with an auction house. She is a human. Her robes are long and dark, and a mask that has white vortex-like swirls on a midnight blue background covers her face. Her specialty is magic much darker than a mage’s. She uses demons as pets to help kill monsters and hostile players.

She jumps from tile to tile in the area near the bank. A crowd of tall elves, tiny gnomes, humans and dwarves are gathered around a mailbox. Some of them possess weapons that glow in shades of green, yellow, and blue. Some of them are on horseback, or mounted on other creatures such as rams, tigers and mechanical striders. Leave the mechanics to those clever gnomes.

The warlock stops jumping right in front of the bank. She waves hello to a few friends, and clicks the little computer icon at the bottom of the screen. She clicks on “Logout”, and retires from the World for another night. Tomorrow, players around the world will gather again in cities like Iron Forge to start their day in the World of Warcraft.