World of Warcraft, also referred to
as WoW, is a massively
multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released by
Blizzard Entertainment in November 2004.
World of Warcraft has a subscriber base of ten million, the largest
amount among role-playing games of its type.
In World of Warcraft, teams of players gather to tackle dungeons,
complete missions, which is known as raiding, or to accrue experience for their
characters, known as leveling.
Communication is a key part of playing World of Warcraft. Players of World of Warcraft communicate both
inside and outside of the online game experience in order to better co-ordinate
with each other, plan out strategy, or just as friends.
There are people who are intimidated
by World of Warcraft. They watch videos
of the game being played and see images that can be very hard for someone
unfamiliar with the game to understand.
People who are not familiar with World of Warcraft can also hear people
who play the game talk about the game and become more apprehensive toward this
product. Some may argue that this is purposeful,
that the language used by people who actively play World of Warcraft is
designed to keep people away from the game.
Is this really the case? Is the
language that is used by active player of World of Warcraft truly exclusionary?
In
order to attempt to answer this question, I chose to listen to a group of
people who actively play World of Warcraft talk about the game. For this purpose, I chose to listen to a
podcast produced independently of Blizzard Entertainment, produced instead by a
group of people who play World of Warcraft.
The Best Little Horde House In Azeroth, or Horse House for short, is a
podcast focused on World of Warcraft.
The hosts of the podcast talk about news, issues, and their own
experiences playing World of Warcraft. The
purpose of Horde House is for the hosts to gather and talk about their
experiences playing World of Warcraft, and also to give other players of World
of Warcraft something to listen to that pertains to the game. For this paper, episodes seventy-four,
seventy-five, seventy-six, and seventy-seven are used as material.
The regular hosts for the show are
Rob, Shane Xtopher, and Grandpa. Rob and
Xtopher are present for all four of the episodes used for this paper. Shane is present for episodes seventy-four,
seventy-six, and seventy-seven. Grandpa
is present for episodes seventy-four, seventy-five, and seventy-six. A special guest host named Sunshine is
present during episode seventy-five. The
hosts of the show seem to have a lot of experience and knowledge about World of
Warcraft.
The
Best Little Horde House In Azeroth is a show that integrates the internet into
the production and execution of the show.
The hosts of the show call each other, using the online
telecommunication program Skype. Each of
the hosts brings a news story, obtained from the internet, which is presented
and discussed. Listeners of the show can
interact with the show either through the show’s Email, Twitter, or Facebook
segments. The program is recorded and
disseminated by one of the hosts, most likely Rob.
One kind of language to be explained
is the way that patches are explained. A patch is a piece of software designed to fix
problems with, or update a computer program or its
supporting data. During episode
seventy-four of The Best Little Horde House In Azeroth, Shane describes the
latest patch to World of Warcraft like this:
Shane- Yeah, this isn’t big news though. This is just a little news story called “They
Updated The Game With A New Patch”. It’s
a very minor patch, 5.0.5, and most of it seems to be tool tip corrections,
because of the random rebalancing they’ve been doing constantly to the
game. But there are a couple of neat bug
fixes that people can appreciate, like the spell graphic for the Arcane Bomb
during the, uh, Queen Azshara encounter, and, um, you know that instance, that
stupid one, Eternity. It’s been reduced
to what they call a reasonable size, because if you’ve played that instance since
the patch came out, 5.0.4, it takes up, like, the entire screen. I think it goes on a little bit to the wall
behind my computer monitor.
(Rob, Xtopher, Shane, & Grandpa, The Best Little Horse House In
Azeroth- Episode 74- Quit being so fat, you guys!, 2012)
Shane
is basing his description of the effect of the patch from the World of Warcraft
Patch 5.0.5 Notes and is also adding in some of his own experience. While Shane is describing the effect of the
patch in a way that some people may not understand, it can be argued that Shane
is merely cutting through the technical jargon that is found in the source
material. This is an excerpt of the
World of Warcraft Patch 5.0.5 Notes, including the section Shane referencing
the Arcane Bomb:
Bug Fixes
·
Well of Eternity
·
The spell graphic for Arcane Bomb
during the Queen Azshara encounter has been reduced to a reasonable size.
Ulduar
·
The Silence and Pacify effects from
Conservator's Grip are now removed from players once they step within the
appropriate area radius of a Healthy Spore mushroom.
Dragon Soul
·
Player pets should no longer
experience pathing issues when attacking Deathwing's Arm Tentacles.
·
Congealing Bloods now move at slower
base speed.
Master Looters can again assign loot
to players in other groups within a raid.
The Refer-A-Friend Summon should
again function as expected.
Worgen players on pre-Cataclysm
accounts should be able to accept and complete all Gilneas quests.
Players should again be able to
teleport out of the Firelands Hatchery in Hyjal if they have completed
Aessina's Miracle.
Players should be able to use the
new Fishing spell where appropriate.
Crossing coalesced zone boundaries
should not duplicate profession recipes.
Players should no longer
inappropriately receive the "Requires master riding skill" or
"Requires artisan riding skill" errors when attempting to mount
certain mounts.
Items in the Auction House UI should
no longer display in reverse order when sorted.
The PvP node capture bar should be
back in expected locations such as Wintergrasp, Tol Barad and Venture Bay.
Players should no longer be placed
into battlegrounds that they have downvoted while queueing for a Random
battleground.
Flying over Wintergrasp when no
battle is active should no longer cause a forced dismount.
Accepting a quest that flags you for
PvP combat should no longer prevent you from accepting further quests.
Resolved a Mac issue related to CPU
usage.
As he deserves, Crithto should
now be attackable by both Alliance and Horde players.
(Kaivax, 2012)
The language seen in these patch
notes assumes the reader has a high level of knowledge about the things being
references, as well as a small amount of technical knowledge. The use of this kind of language is not
unique to Blizzard Entertainment and World of Warcraft. This is a small section of how Apple
describes the security updates made in the latest patch to the iTunes software,
10.7:
iTunes 10.7
§
WebKit
Available for: Windows 7, Vista, XP SP2 or
later
Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website
may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution
Description: Multiple memory corruption issues
existed in WebKit. These issues are addressed through improved memory handling.
CVE-ID
CVE-2011-3016 : miaubiz
CVE-2011-3021 : Arthur Gerkis
CVE-2011-3027 : miaubiz
CVE-2011-3032 : Arthur Gerkis
CVE-2011-3034 : Arthur Gerkis
CVE-2011-3035 : wushi of team509 working with
iDefense VCP, Arthur Gerkis
CVE-2011-3036 : miaubiz
(Apple Inc., 2012) This description of
the security update goes on for several pages in this kind of form.
This is how Adobe describes the 11.5
Update to Adobe Flash Player:
ADOBE FLASH
PLAYER 11.5 (WIN AND MAC) AND 11.2 (LINUX) - 32 BIT AND 64 BIT DEBUGGER (AKA
DEBUG PLAYER OR CONTENT DEBUGGERS) AND STANDALONE (AKA PROJECTORS) PLAYERS FOR
FLEX AND FLASH DEVELOPERS.
11/6/2012
– Updated debugger and standalone versions of Flash Player. These players
contain fixes for critical vulnerabilities identified in Security Bulletin APSB12-24 . The latest
versions are 11.5.502.110 (Win and Mac), 11.3.276.12 (Windows 8) and
11.2.202.251 (Linux). All users are encouraged to update to these latest
versions.
(Adobe Systems Incorporated, 2012)
While this kind of complex technical language used to
describe software updates seems to be common among most computer companies, a
question arises if this language is also common among video game companies. Assassin’s Creed III is a video game released
on October 30th, 2012 by the Canadian based developer Ubisoft. This is an excerpt of how Ubisoft describes
the Assassin’s Creed III Thanksgiving Patch:
Multiplayer
Multiplayer Modes
- ASSASSINATE - Instances where it was possible for players to kill players
that were not their target in Assassinate have been corrected.
- ASSASSINATE - Bodyguards no longer fail to stun when they are locked by the
pursuer of the player they protect.
- DEATHMATCH - In Fort Wolcott, fixed a bug where players would remained stuck
on warmup screen.
- MANHUNT - The cooldown boosts for loss streak bonus are not permanently
active for all abilities during a manhunt round anymore.
Multiplayer Abilities
- Loss Streak now correctly triggers when players lose their contracts five
times in a row.
- Disruption now breaks the hitting player’s lock.
- The Smoke Bomb’s drop behavior has been updated. It now drops at the user’s
feet instead of dropping in front of them. However, if players drop it from a
ledge, it will drop below them.
- Throwing Knives used against players hiding in haystacks will now make them
get out of this haystack.
- Using Throwing Knives against a target now prevents the target from
contesting the kill.
- Players are no longer stuck after using the Money Bomb from a ledge.
Multiplayer Ladders
- Several issues which occurred when players would quit a Manhunt pre-session
lobby and join their friends the same session later have been corrected.
- After a session ends on a draw, both teams will now receive the same rate for
Abstergo ladder, instead of one team getting a winning rate and the other
getting a losing rate.
- Players are now granted Abstergo points normally even if one or several
players get the idle state at the end of the session (The idle players do not
get any Abstergo points)
Multiplayer Misc
- It is now possible for players to lock their target when their target has
just stunned them.
- Changing the ability set three times during a game can no longer reset the
ability’s cooldown.
- The X icon no longer inaccurately persistently displays.
- It is no longer possible for players to get up and perform a kill under
certain conditions while they’re vulnerable.
- Transitions to join Multiplayer sessions after an invite now work
correctly.
- Warm up games are no longer interrupted when the host player leaves.
- It is now possible to stun a vulnerable pursuer.
- The X icon no longer displays above the pursuer’s previous target when they
have been stunned after being vulnerable.
(FredEx919, 2012)
The kind of
complex technical jargon may be difficult for even people with knowledge of the
product being described to understand, much less people who are new to the
product. Shane’s attempt to cut through
the jargon allows people who may not readily understand the language commonly
used to describe the patches software companies make to their products
understand the effects of the patch. So,
in this example, the language Shane used is not exclusionary.
Another example of language people
who don’t play World of Warcraft might not understand comes from episode
seventy-five of Horde House.
Rob-
What’s you plan for Pandaria?
Who’s your first character that you’re taking to ninety?
Sunshine-
I don’t know. I mean, probably my
Death Knight. I mean, she’s still, kind
of, my main, but I don’t know. Probably
my Druid after that, and, I don’t know.
Rob-
You know you’re going to roll a Monk somewhere.
Sunshine-
Oh yeah. That, honestly, that
going to be, probably, my first thing I focus on actually, because I’m not
really going to be in a rush to hit ninety.
(Rob, Xtopher, Grandpa, & Sunshine, The Best
Little Horse House In Azeroth- Episode 75- Cataclysm, Sashay Away!, 2012)
In this excerpt, Rob and Sunshine
use several different terms to describe the various characters Sunshine plays
in the game. Similar descriptive
language is used by Rob and Shane in this excerpt from episode seventy-four of
Horde House, responding to a question from a listener named Phantamous.
Rob- Monk or Priest? Shane, I haven’t played around with
Monk. What would you say are kind of the
differences that Phantamous needs to consider?
I mean, at the end of the day, I don’t know, what fits your play style,
right?
Shane- Well, the first thing is what spec are
you going? Because if he’s doing,
choosing between those two, I assume, the only thing they really share is
healing, since their DPS is ranged or melee when one tanks. So, if he’s going Priest, you might be able
to speak to that a little bit more, but for Monk healing, it’s all about, like,
how your spells work with one another.
And it looks like you better be prepared so melee some too.
Rob-
As far as Priests go, if you like to play with the bubbles and the shields,
the Disc Priests get to do a lot of that.
It’s really about anticipating damage, whereas Holy is a little bit more
about reacting to damage. I think Holy
is a little bit underrated, because a lot of people are like “Holy Priests are
so plain”, but there is a lot of flexibility within Holy Priest because of the
chakras. There are different, because
you could be a tank healer or a raid healer all in one. I gotta hand it to Holy because it’s got that
ability. Disc you can kind of do that to
an extent too. They’re both very
flexible kinds of healers. I would
imagine Monk is going to have one particular kind of style to it, whereas with
a Priest if you really want to heal you can have that flexibility. And, of course, there’s Shadow Priest.
Xtopher-
And, if you wanna be the best, be a Druid.
(Rob, Xtopher, Shane, & Grandpa, The Best Little
Horse House In Azeroth- Episode 74- Quit being so fat, you guys!, 2012)
There is also this excerpt where
Sunshine goes in depth about one of his characters.
Sunshine- I’ve
been leveling my Warlock, who I hadn’t really touched since the beginning of
Cataclysm, because Warlocks were really, kind of like, really overbloated in
Cataclysm with the rotations, and stuff.
You know, one of the things they were touting with the new talent
overhaul and class overhauls is that each Warlock spec is going to have its own
resource system now. They’ve cleaned up
the rotations. So, my Warlock, she’s
mainly affliction, but I also decided to give her a destruction spec, because
destruction always felt, kind of, like just a firery version of a regular
Warlock. It’s so different now. It’s really weird. You have a passive skill that increases you
mana regen by, like, I think 625%.
Basically you’re just like spamming you nuke, pretty much, and hitting
some things whenever they’re charged up, and your building up burning
embers. So, it’s kind of really
interesting and unique caster spec. But,
I still prefer affliction.
(Rob, Xtopher, Grandpa, & Sunshine, The Best
Little Horse House In Azeroth- Episode 75- Cataclysm, Sashay Away!, 2012)
Setting aside the question about
what “spamming you nuke” means, a person who doesn’t play World of Warcraft may
be puzzled about some of the terms used to describe the characters being
played. What do words like Death Knight,
Druid, Monk, Priest, and Warlock mean, and how do they relate to the characters
being discussed?
A way to answer this question is to
think about a busy office workplace.
Usually in an office setting everybody doesn’t do the same job. Different people work on different things,
based on that person’s skills and expertise.
In an office that works in a coherent fashion, different people with
different skills work on different parts of a task to accomplish a common
goal. Such is the case with World of
Warcraft.
Death Knight, Druid, Monk, Priest,
and Warlock are examples of different job classes in World of Warcraft. When a player creates a new character in WoW,
there are nine different job classes to choose from, with a tenth class that
can be unlocked later in the game. Each
of these job classes come with different attributes and abilities that the
character can utilize. These different
attributes and abilities help the player, as well as people in that player’s
group, achieve the goals they wish to accomplish.
World of Warcraft is not alone it
its use of job classes. There are many
video games that utilize a job class system.
Final Fantasy X-2, a role playing game like World of Warcraft, features
seventeen different job classes, ranging from Alchemist to White Mage to
Mascot. Guild Wars 2, an online role
playing game that competes against World of Warcraft, features eight different
job classes broken down into three different character professions. Even Battlefield 3, a first person shooter
played primarily online, features four different classes to choose from,
representing the different roles that a soldier can take on the field of
battle.
The use of job classes in other
video games shows a commonality in the use of this language. Different games use job classes differently,
and different names are used for what may be the same kind of job class, but the
concept is the same. However, a problem
arises in the following example:
Rob-
You know, I think Allen is going through something similar. Now, he’s not here to defend himself, but
since he lives with me, I’ll feel the need to speak on his behalf. He’s been having a hard time adjusting to the
talents too. He’s not been playing WoW
as much, and I think that a lot of it too, and he’s a Boomkin, and I think a
lot of it is, like, “What do you mean there’s no Insect Swarm?”
(Rob, Xtopher, Grandpa, & Sunshine, The Best
Little Horse House In Azeroth- Episode 75- Cataclysm, Sashay Away!, 2012)
In this case, the use of the word
“Boomkin” may be particularly perplexing for people who do not play World of
Warcraft. Even people who play other
role playing games may be confused as to what this word means. Describing something as a “Death Knight”
causes people to make an association with a Black Knight, common in medieval
lore. Describing something as a “White
Mage” causes people to make an association with someone who uses magic for a
positive end. What association is made
with a “Boomkin”? What is a Boomkin?
A search for an explaination of the
word “Boomkin” brings up the following answer:
Players have
given the moonkin form many nicknames. These are normally short and end with
-kin; some of them are: Boomkin, a moonkin druid with a high damage output;
Oomkin, a moonkin with poor mana regen; Doomkin, a good PVP moonkin (rarely
used); Noob/newbkin, a bad/inexperienced moonkin druid; and Panzerkin, a
tanking moonkin. Sometimes these nicknames are used to describe a particular
druid, but most of the time players use them as a general term. Many moonkin
druids find some of these nicknames insulting.
(Wikia, Inc., 2012)
The use of the word Boomkin to
describe this character may have the effect of alienating people who do not
play the game. There is no ready
association between the character and the word used to describe that
character. Other problems of this nature
come when looking at language used to describe how the game is played.
This excerpt is from episode
seventy-four of Horde House:
Shane- And then, LFR is stupid. And it just teases you with stuff.
(Rob, Xtopher, Shane, & Grandpa, The Best Little
Horse House In Azeroth- Episode 74- Quit being so fat, you guys!, 2012)
This is an excerpt from episode
seventy-five of Horde House:
Sunshine- I thought LFR was great. I mean, even though the other people in it
aren’t always great, just, you know, the steps that they took to make the game
more accessable, which has really been something has started really back in
mid-Rath, when they introduced the dungeon finder, and stuff.
(Rob, Xtopher, Grandpa, & Sunshine, The Best
Little Horse House In Azeroth- Episode 75- Cataclysm, Sashay Away!, 2012)
In both of these excerpts, something
called “LFR” is mentioned. Shane
expresses a dislike for LFR, while Sunshine says he likes LFR, but neither of
them says what LFR is. In fact, nowhere
during the four episodes of Horse House used as material for this essay is LFR
explained.
There are places online where LFR is
explained. According to Wowpedia,
“The Raid Finder (or “Looking For Raid”, commonly abbreviated as
“LFR”), similar to the Dungeon
Finder, is a tool that helps players find and join a
random or specific raid instance with others.”
The problem with this is that if you were unfamiliar with World of
Warcraft and wanted to know what LFR was, you could not rely on the players of
World of Warcraft to explain it. An
outsider would have had to use an online source because those on the inside
spoke in a way that only those on the inside understand.
Another example of this behavior
occurs during episode seventy-four of Horde House.
Grandpa-
Have you ever tanked, Rob?
Rob-
Not- No- Ah, actually I take it back.
I do have an endgame character, my Warrior is eighty-five, and I use
that player. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it.
Shane-
I plan on becoming a Druid tank again in the next pack.
Rob-
I, on Drenden, where the official Horde House guild is- Best Little
Horde House on Drenden Hordeside- on Drenden server, I have a level twenty-five
Paladin that I was tanking with. Jamie
and I were leveling characters over there.
That was a lot of fun. I love the
Captain America tanking. That’s fun.
Xtopher-
And with the change to Holy power, it actually, I hear, makes tanking a
lot of fun on Paladins.
Rob-
What about you Grandpa? You have
a tank?
Grandpa-
I have everything.
(Rob, Xtopher, Shane, & Grandpa, The Best Little
Horse House In Azeroth- Episode 74- Quit being so fat, you guys!, 2012)
In this excerpt Rob and Shane
discuss their experience tanking. Shane
talks about how he wants to be a druid tank, while Rob talks about how he used
his level twenty-five Paladin as a tank.
Neither host gives an explanation as to what tanking is. This is despite tanking being an activity
that one must prepare themselves to do, as is shown in this excerpt from
episode seventy-five:
Xtopher-
Also, I have this interest in tanking this time. But, ah, I didn’t realize that with the
talent reset they actually kept you two specs that you had before, you know. So, I didn’t really venture into respecing yet. Plus, I don’t have any gear for the other
specs.
(Rob, Xtopher, Grandpa, & Sunshine, The Best
Little Horse House In Azeroth- Episode 75- Cataclysm, Sashay Away!, 2012)
Tanking
also appears to be an enjoyable way to play the game, as is shown in this
excerpt from later on in episode seventy-five:
Rob- Let’s get into some Warcraft Tweets at
Twitter.com/HordeHouse. FlacoJones
starting us off tonight. “My favorite
part of the scenario was tanking as an Elemental Shaman. Reminded me of early WoW, we did more
unorthodox stuff.”
(Rob, Xtopher, Grandpa, & Sunshine, The Best
Little Horse House In Azeroth- Episode 75- Cataclysm, Sashay Away!, 2012)
There
are several conclusion that can be drawn from these examples of how players of
World of Warcraft speak. The general
tone of The Best Little Horde House In Azeroth seems to be friendly, comical,
and generally non-confrontational. All
of the hosts seem to be friends who know each other and how each of them plays the
game. The familiarity had between the
hosts of the show allows them to feel free to talk about things that go on in
the game. This friendly atmosphere may
explain why the hosts discussed things in the way that they did without feeling
the need to explain what they were talking about. Even people who have knowledge and experience
in playing other video games, and even other role playing video games, may have
a problem following the discussion had in this podcast. Not all of the examples presented here are
purposefully exclusionary. Some of the
exclusionary tactics are a result of the way that companies communicate with
the public, or how the normal public may be unaware of the mechanics that video
games are commonly built on. However,
these exclusionary tactics are there, and are a part of the reason that people
who do not actively play World of Warcraft are intimidated from doing so.
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