Thinking about my dungeon encounter last night (+ getting back into retail with pre-patch/SL hype), I wanted to talk about 1 of my favorite papers on WoW: Communication and Commitment in an Online Game Team by @dabbish, Kraut, & Patton. 1/X https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Kraut/publication/239761318_Communication_and_commitment_in_an_online_game_team/links/56f001b908ae52f8ad7f8913/Communication-and-commitment-in-an-online-game-team.pdf

Anyone who knows me knows that social interactions (or lack there of) in WoW have always been super interesting to me, & was part of why I studied vanilla private servers – players’ drive to (at least partially) recreate the sense of community from the early days of WoW. 2/X

This paper looks at retail WoW & the systems in place there, particularly Dungeon Finder. The hypotheses focus on: the impact of communication type (e.g task vs. social) & role (e.g. Tank vs. DPS) on others’ communication and willingness to stay with a dungeon group. 3/X

How did they do it? A research confederate queued up for dungeons & typed pre-scripted chat messages at scheduled points. Some were task-oriented (e.g. “Is everybody ready?”) & some were social-oriented (e.g. “I’m thinking of creating a new alt, any recommendations?”). 4/X

Then they measured comments from other party members & whether those players chose to stick around for another dungeon at the end of the run. They altered: 1) if the confederate was a Tank or DPS & 2) what kind of messages they sent to see if there were interaction effects. 5/X

WHAT WERE THE RESULTS? The TL;DR: Being proactive & sending a message to your dungeon group first sparked more conversation & folks stuck around longer. Social comments specifically had the strongest influence on folks sticking with their group. 6/X

So what does this all mean? If you miss social interactions with other people – START THEM. It doesn’t have to be anything big – just be a human. It’s easy to feel isolated when it’s common practice for people to just autopilot through groups. BREAK THAT NARRATIVE. 7/X

I love GUR because it inspires what could prompt change. In this case (IMO), the easiest change for more pro-social WoW experiences is your own behavior. Be the source of sociality you want to see in WoW. Send that first nice group message. Brighten someone’s day. 8/8