Talk:World of Warcraft

Pic

Somone take off the picture of the "mod" before and after. The player was bragging on the wow forums, and it should be like the last pic with no name so nobody gets advertised. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Virus Errupt (talk • contribs) 00:31, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Done Sir. Denton22 (talk) 16:30, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

In other media

How about the swedish comedian Björn Gustafssons joke? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azE5ueU22jo Egon Eagle (talk) 21:08, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Probaly not. See WP:TRIVIA Gazimoff ^Write_Read 21:53, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Credit to other games, from Blizzard

I was thinking about adding a small topic on the page about the Larion and Muigin (Mario and Luigi) and Linken (Link, from Zelda) in Un'goro Crater, showing how blizzard is giving credit to Mario and Link series', both of which were revolutionary to gameing.

Thoughts? --Recipies (talk) 23:05, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

As Gazimoff said above, WP:TRIVIA recommends we keep trivia out of the article. Now, there used to be an entire article devoted to "Cultural references in World of Warcraft" or something along those lines but it was deleted because it was essentially one giant trivia article. -- Atama^chat 23:42, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

WP:HTRIVIA is another guideline to consider as well. -- Atama^chat 23:46, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Delisted Good Article

I've removed this article from the Good Article List. The "good article" version should never even have been promoted considering it had a maintenance tag, lousy prose, poor sourcing, etc. The problems with the current revision:

• Poor prose: Lists where prose will do; one-sentence paragraphs; poor grammar; one-paragraph sections, excessive wikilinking to WoWWiki (this is confusing to new users, who may not know the difference between our website and theirs)
• Poor organization: No logical flow/structure in the article; bad summary style for criticism/controversy
• Insufficient breadth of coverage: Critical reception and development are way too short; in-game related material is too long

On top of this, there is still a "cleanup" tag from April. The article needs some serious work.-Wafulz (talk) 17:08, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not too surprised at this, we've been struggling to keep the cruft out of the article but it creeps in. I dispute the WoWWiki criticism, the only alternative is to not Wikilink much of anything because there's no way we're ever going to have that information in Wikipedia, deletionists will firebomb any WoW article that's not heavily sourced and thoroughly notable. The WoWWiki links are a pretty smart compromise. If they're not okay, we'll just have to leave those subjects de-linked I suppose, which is a shame.

I also don't understand the "Critical Reception" length complaint, is it the Reception or Criticism section that is too short? Criticism is spun off into another article due to length, while Reception could indeed be expanded, sure. The Development section is actually a relatively new section, when the Good Article status was granted it didn't even exist yet. The "poor sourcing" criticism isn't very helpful... How is sourcing poor? Not enough? This article will be improved, though, thanks for your feedback. -- Atama^chat 17:35, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

"Critical reception" means "Reception" in this case. Comparing it to featured video game articles highlights the deficiencies (see Halo 3#Critical reception and impact, for example). The WoWWiki links should be used sparingly - users may get confused if they're directed to another Wiki. I don't know of any other articles that link to external wikis. The sourcing comment refers to things like unsourced paragraphs, citations without full information (publisher, title , accessdate, etc), and ambiguous citations (the citation is placed in the middle of a sentence or paragraph).-Wafulz (talk) 18:58, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I've turned all the regular inter-wiki links into refs to make it clear that they're not local. There are a few non-standard interwiki links which I left as-is. - Denimadept (talk) 19:09, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that's worse; we'll get crapshot at GAC/FAC for having them in references. This is a rather frustrating point...
As for the delisting, this should probably have been taken to GAR, rather than arbitrarily delisted. I disagree with the process, but do feel that the article does not meet the criteria of a good article. --Izno (talk) 19:20, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Feel free to revert it. - Denimadept (talk) 19:54, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I've finished the spinoff Gameplay of World of Warcraft. I'd now suggest we trim this down and start some heavy cleanup work. I'll do what I can on the reception, legacy and popular culture side of things to get the ball rolling.Gazimoff ^Write_Read 20:22, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do to trim it down. One or two paragraphs, maybe? --Izno (talk) 04:55, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I've got a sandbox at User: Gazimoff/wow sandbox that I'm working on at the moment in order to sort out the article before merging it back in. Feel free to give me a hand there on performing some open-heart surgery on it before bringing it back in. Hope this helps, Gazimoff ^Write_Read 12:46, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Player Characters (PCs, or simply "players") This statement was correct at one time the term at the moment is Toon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bladeyama (talk • contribs) 01:29, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

No, "toon" is slang, and not only slang but fairly unpopular slang. In fact, I personally don't remember ever hearing anyone actually use the term "toon" in my years playing WoW. I've heard "avatar" a number of times. Officially, however, Blizzard refers to them as PCs or players as the article states. -- Atama^chat 15:46, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I've expanded the Reception sections with citations. I'm going to start work on compressing down the Gameplay section next and merging content into either Legacy or Development. Anyone who wants to help, please feel free to lend a hand. I'd like to shrink down the Pricing section into Development as well, removing the fees table but keeping in the important distinction on the differences between subscription and pay-as-you-go models used in different regions. Any thoughts? Gazimoff ^Write_Read 21:12, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Easter egg

Adding a small topic on the page about the Larion and Muigin (Mario and Luigi) and Linken (Link, from Zelda) would not be inappropriate because Blizzard is not giving credit to the games. These are just Easter Eggs with some similarity in the names nothing more. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bladeyama (talk • contribs) 01:59, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

There was some discussion of this sort of thing at Talk:World of Warcraft/Archive 6#Pop references. I think it is generally reckoned that there are far, far too many such easter eggs to put into this article; and that a separate article on them would be unavoidably Original Research. --Stormie (talk) 02:17, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

There actually was a separate article at one time if I recall and it was nuked in the "Great WoW Article Massacre". -- Atama^chat 15:48, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

And people deny the Holocaust existed, nobody denys the massacre existed Grimreape513 (talk) 14:25, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Most Popular

I think it may be innacurate to call it The most popular as this page says that Maplestory, a different MMO has 71 million subscribers.

http://www.wonderlandblog.com/wonderland/2008/04/maplestory-71m.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by HappyDragon (talk • contribs) 11:15, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

The comment says that it's according to the Guinness Book of Records, here. As it's a reliable source, I see no problem with keeping the comment. Gazimoff ^Write_Read 11:25, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Also on the Maplestory article in wikipedia says it has 50 Million

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapleStory —Preceding unsigned comment added by HappyDragon (talk • contribs) 11:29, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

You can't really compare subscription figures between a pay-to-play game like WoW and a free-to-play game like Maple Story. I'm sure the Guinness record was for paid subscriptions. --Stormie (talk) 12:09, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

The business model of the games companies do not matter at all. Simply saying "you are sure" still leaves room for doubt. Wikipedia kind of has a bad name for being unable to verify their references we must try and change this by being as rigorous as possible. We are currently contradicting ourselves with these two articles 124.169.136.30 (talk) 06:21, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

The statement says "...holds the Guinness World Record for the most popular MMORPG."The reference backs this up, stating that it does hold the Guinness World Record. If the holder of the world record changes, so can the statement. Until then, the article accurately reflects what the sources state. If your issue is with World of Warcraft holding the world record, you may want to take this up with Guinness, as articles can only reflect what the sources indicate. Hope this helps, Gazimoff ^Write_Read 09:04, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Also note that a similar argument was made before, see here where the argument was about how Lineage II had larger numbers than WoW, however this article states that WoW is the largest MMORPG in terms of monthly subscribers. The same argument applies again, where MapleStory does not have a monthly subscription. As far as the popularity question goes, as Gazimoff stated, if you contest the statement find a more reliable source that Guinness. -- Atama^chat 18:42, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

WoW Addiction

Addiction is a big issue in the popular culture surrounding the game, and perhaps more should be written in this section. One common situation that seems to occur is when conflict arises from either long play hours or scheduled raiding, or both. It's a fact that some guilds require significant playtime dedication in order to achieve greater rewards in the game. Oftentimes, it seems that players feel like they must dedicate large amounts of time to the game in order to be successful and experience the artistic content to its fullest potential.

The section is large enough already. To add more to it would be to give it undue weight. Remember there is a whole other article devoted just to WoW controversies, Criticism of World of Warcraft. If you want to expand on this subject please do it there. Just remember that if you do, you're not allowed to add your own personal experiences, theories, or opinions on the matter as that is original research, everything has to be properly sourced. -- Atama^chat 20:23, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Active Subscriptions Graph

I think it would be a great addition to the article to have a graph showing the evolution of the number of subscriptions (see http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart11.html) Chandrasonic (talk) 00:01, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Recruit-a-friend program mentionable?

should we throw in the new recruit-a-friend deal that they have had going on for the past few months?

No Further Mention of Character Customization

There is no mention of how customizable is your character avatar. Could someone include an entry on it, as I would like to know - and I'm sure others do as well - about how much personalizing can be had on WoW? Psypho (talk) 20:19, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

We have to be careful how much we get into detail in describing game features. Too much and it begins to resemble a game guide, and that is beyond the scope of this encyclopedia. -- Atama^chat 17:53, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Addition to setting

The setting speaks of Draenor, but it is more commonly known as Outland. I think it would be appropriate to add this for the sake of clarity, so that people unfamiliar with the history or people who haven't played that far into thew game will understand.--Loknidas (talk) 14:56, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

How about adding something like "(aka Outland)" to it? - Denimadept (talk) 15:10, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Semi-protection

Why is the article under semi-protection? (Regardless of the reasons, I think it should be made clear what they are) Karbinski (talk) 15:47, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

When it wasn't it was being vandalized constantly. Vandlism is still not rare but it's no longer happening a dozen times a day. -- Atama^chat 16:36, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Instances: related to factions in Outland

The nature of TBC instances is to be related to a faction. Perhaps this should be woven into the Instances section... Karbinski (talk) 18:00, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

We're looking at trimming down the gameplay section of this article now, as we have the spinoff Gameplay of World of Warcraft. Having said that, it's important not to venture too far into gameguide material. Mentioning the reputation system and how it rewards players is great, but I think that discussing it in further detail without having sources to back up that increase in detail is probably unwarranted. Remember, if you can't cite it, don't say it. Gazimoff ^Write_Read 19:16, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

We should call you "Gameplay Gazimoff" now. -- Atama^chat 20:17, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Har har :) I've finished rewriting the gameplay section on this article, although I think I could be a bit heavier with the knife. I'm going to be working on the development section next before moving on to cleaning up the legacy section and finally the lead. I'm going to remove the part on pricing, but merge some of it into development in order to demonstrate the subtle differences in subscription methods between territories. I'm sure that there's a guideline somewhere that states that pricing information shouldn't be included in articles. Gazimoff ^Write_Read 20:43, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Starting paragraph

In the starting paragraph they say that World of Warcraft has 10 million subscribers, which is true, then basing off a graph which im not sure how old it is, says it has 62% of all MMOG's. I went to a couple of other MMORPG's and found they also had around 10 million, so I was wondering how this information could be correct. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brandox1 (talk • contribs) 23:39, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

The confusion often arises from comparing WoW's 10 million paying subscribers to the player figures of free-to-play MMORPGs. But one thing I notice - we should not say "The current subscriber base for all MMOGs is 16 million" and use mmogchart.com as a reference. Whilst Bruce Woodcock does sterling work with mmogchart, he says "I am the first to admit that the data is not always reliable."[1] I have revised that sentence to "As of 2008, the current subscriber base for all MMOGs has been estimated at approximately 16 million." --Stormie (talk) 03:36, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that 16 million subscriptions does not equal 16 million people playing the game. I have multiple accounts myself, and it seems to be a big practice to have more than one account. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.158.61.140 (talk) 16:41, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

At the same time, I've shared an account with my wife in many games, so it's possible for one account to have more than one player. It's impossible to keep track of any of that stuff, so "subscriptions" is the best we can do. -- Atama^chat 16:56, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Scientific Conference in World of Warcraft

John Bohannon: Slaying Monsters for Science, Science 20 June 2008, Vol. 320. no. 5883, p. 1592, doi:10.1126/science.320.5883.1592c, material -- Cherubino (talk) 14:25, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Two new games

Since I'm not allowed to edit the main article (only this discussion article), can someone change this: "World of Warcraft has inspired a board game produced by Fantasy Flight Games, as well as a trading card game produced by Upper Deck Entertainment.[citation needed]"

to: "World of Warcraft has inspired two board games (World of Warcraft: The Board Game and World of Warcraft: The Adventure Game) produced by Fantasy Flight Games, as well as an upcoming miniature figure game (World of WarCraft Miniatures Game) and a trading card game produced by Upper Deck Entertainment."

Sources for the two additional games: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/wow-adventure/ http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/wowmini/en/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lowlevelio (talk • contribs) 21:46, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd be glad to do the corrections. Do you know if these games have been picked up in any news sources, or if there's any press releases announcing them? Many thanks, Gazimoff_{(mentor/review)} 22:01, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Well the second board game certainly seems to be released and available, based on the link provided ([2]), and Amazon is listing it for sale currently ([3]). I can't find an official press release (although it is on Fantasy Flight Games front page news ([4]). Here's an article about it's release from a gaming blog: [5].

As for the upcoming miniatures game, there's a microsite for it on Upper Deck's website, including a FAQ ([6]) listing it as "slated to launch in fall 2008". Aha, found an initial press release from Upper Deck announcing it: [7]. --Stormie (talk) 00:10, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Okies, I'll get on to it tomorrow - getting a bit late for me now. I also need to get some information on the action figures, the figure Prints stuff, the other various bits and pieces and maybe the Jinx clothing range before rounding it off. Gazimoff_{(mentor/review)} 00:16, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I put the new games in as requested by Lowlevelio, with refs for all the games. Please tweak if you think it needs tweaking. --Stormie (talk) 08:54, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Reminders for Gazimoff

Who deserves a barnstar for his work on this article. Anyway, reminders as requested (advertisements for other people to work as well!):

• Use the tools normally used at FAC. Includes refchecker and other items.
• Legacy, Development need improving
• Copyedit
• Lead needs redone (this I might do).

Cheers. --Izno (talk) 00:45, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Some references for wow

Most of the following references are from the field of games studies. Some of them are on SSRN (they usually are), unless they are within one year of initial publication, then they are usually embargoed. I will try to link to a freely available version when possible but a considerable amount of these articles are gated and may not be accesible to the general public. I can access them but I won't republish them broadly for obvious reasons. If you want an excerpt or want to see a copy, let me know on my talk page and we'll work something out so that we aren't violating the spirit and the letter of my access agreement.

First off, Nick Yee's work. He's a researcher at PARC and does empirical and other work within and about WoW.

• Building an MMO With Mass Appeal (gated)
• From Tree House to Barracks:The Social Life of Guilds in World of Warcraft (gated)
• Alone together? (gated) This is a good one. controversial, as it basically says that people socialise a lot less (on the whole) than most game researchers think or would like to hear.

Constance Steinkuehler works in games and learning theory. Her research has moved on to Lineage, but there are some good papers there on WoW (non gated papers are linked directly from her info page). She has a conference paper on WoW forums, interestingly enough.

Some other researchers:

• Mark Chen has a few papers in stages of publication about guilds, raiding and learning in WoW. Some are linked here (Check this cite for a good way to cite a conference presentation without an associated PDF). the paper is a draft, but it is based on a received and reviewed conference talk given in 2007. Also, he has a talk from 2008 discussing "relearning" the game at 60/70 and how this correlates to some different learning models (ZOMG huge .gif).
• Krista-Lee Malone has produced what is basically the first paper on DKP out there. The work is still a draft (accepted for publication in Games and Culture), so it probably won't fly as RS, but when it is published it should make for an interesting anchor.
• conference paper (gated) on collaboration in WoW.

RMT research

• Ted Castronova (kinda the guy who lit the fire under modern games studies) has a paper on cost/benefit analysis of RMT in WoW and online spaces in general. Be aware, Ted is kinda anti-RMT, so the gist of it may be slightly POV. ungated
• T.L. Taylor's work in virtual worlds is very well known. This paper discusses emergent behavior and regulation in those worlds generally, but mentions RMT as well. gated
• Julian Dibbell is not a scholar per se, but his work skirts the boundary between reporting and novel scholarship. Any discussion on RMT ought to include his piece in the new york times on chinese gold farmers. ungated
• A very brief rundown (basically because the readers of the duke law review don't usually play wow) of the "legal status" of goods in WoW ungated
• A similar review in the Loyola Law review (accepted but not published) ungated
• Again, similar but very detailed, in the UC Davis law review. ungated

That's a start. A lot of it is parochial and technical. A lot of it will seem remedial to people who play wow. this is mostly because about 1/2 of the intro of the paper (and, as you will see, 1/2 of the paper sometimes) is devoted to explaining what WoW is and why it is worthy of scholarly attention. Part of the problem is that this field is REALLY young. Most of the good work was formative and is about EQ (Castronova, TL Taylor, etc). Some really good work is done by grad students and most of the work is in conference papers or in Games and Culture. That makes scholarly sourcing hard for wikipedia, but I think it is important to include serious study of WoW in this and daughter articles in order for them to get past FAC. You can ask me questions about this stuff on my talk page or here (for a while, I might unwatchlist this page if it is really heavy traffic). I will try to contribute as best as I can, but I'm not very good at getting articles beyond GA, I'm more of a create/save from deletion kind of guy. Hopw this helps. Protonk (talk) 02:56, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Armory

References to the Armory and to alternative Armory sites (armorylite.com, armory-light.com, warcrafter.net) are completely missing. Seeing how the WoW Armory is a great technological feat (XML source) and how it has allowed hundreds of player-hosted sites to exist, there should be at least a mention of the Armory in this article. 80.109.144.111 (talk) 13:19, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Is there a reliable source that talks aout the armory? Protonk (talk) 13:26, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

There should be... A good Article on the armory can be found here: User:Gazimoff/World_of_Warcraft/#The_Armory and here are a few news sources that talk about the armory: http://news.mmosite.com/content/2007-03-02/20070302223948674.shtml http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=315766880.109.144.111 (talk) 07:32, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

The old article was in my sandbox, and I should have deleted it (I think it is now). In terms of sources, I don't think mmosite qualifies as a reliable source, but 1up definately does. In terms of placing it, I think that the information should go in Gameplay of World of Warcraft#Miscellaneous features, also mentioning it in World of Warcraft: the Burning Crusade under the development section. Thanks for reminding me about it - I'd been doing a lot of article cleanup recently and it slipped off my stack. Hope this is alright for you. Gazimoff 11:16, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Of course, thank you. I just noticed your Article in your user page when googling for the Armory and thought it would be a great and well-written addition. If you add the section to the original article, it would be great if you could specifically mention the technological feat (one of the first websites presented fully in XML) and some of the existing spin-offs (http://www.armorylite.com and http://www.armory-light.com) since they are an important source for players with hundreds of thousands of cached characters and a high user base. Besides, Blizzard decided to present the Armory in real XML (no easy feat, considering how graphic-rich the site is) in order to allow other websites to access the character information 80.109.144.111 (talk) 13:16, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll look at what we can gather together - I need to make sure we have good quality sources to back up what's added to the articles, which usually counts out any forums, blogs and so on. Once that's done, we should be able to get something in to the articles. If you know of anything from Gamespot, IGN, Kotaku or similar. We proably won't be able to link to any spin-ff sites like the ones you mentioned due to the policy on external links, but we'll see what the sources bring up. Hope this helps, Gazimoff 13:30, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll have a look too. Would a seperate article on the Armory be a better idea? It would allow to link to spin-off sites... As I said, I believe that Blizzards choice in implementing the Armory allowed several hundred sites to exist. This is a notable feat. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.109.144.111 (talk) 14:53, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

"one of the first websites presented fully in XML" is a fairly bold claim that would need some serious sourcing. --Stormie (talk) 22:43, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

You're right. make that: one of the - or probably even the - most graphically enhanced XML websites. All websites I know of which are presented as structured XML (not xhtml) are pretty basic and not at all like the armory. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.109.144.111 (talk) 13:08, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Subscription Prices?

While I myself am not a player of WoW, I think it should be good information if someone were to add to the entry the actual subscription price of WoW (maybe even compared in different regions. There are references to getting discounts and that each region is different, but since things like the WoW pre-paid cards could be similar to XM Radio Pre-Paid cards (example), where you buy a block of money and it would cover as much as a couple months depending on usage. (Example: a $30 card would would cover the "average" single XM radio listener for 2 months with a remainder carrying over to the next month of anywhere from $2-$4 depending on tax [@$12.99 a month], a 2 radio subscription would be covered for only about a month and have about $8-10 remaining as a credit for the next month {@19.98 a month]).

Pricing seems to be one of those things that unless you know someone who plays WoW, you won't find out how much it is without alot of looking around online. ZyphBear (talk) 13:33, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Pricing was one of those things that was talked about, but was eventually removed. Wikipedia is not a directory, catalogue or price guide. Hope this helps. Gazimoff 15:33, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Error in Usage Problems Section

{{editsemiprotected}}

There is a minor error in the final sentence of the 4th paragraph in the Usage Problems section. The sentence that reads:

The token generates an one-time password based code that the layer supplies when logging on. The password is only valid for a limited time, thus providing extra security against keylogging malware.

Should read:

The token generates an one-time password based code that the player supplies when logging on. The password is only valid for a limited time, thus providing extra security against keylogging malware. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Swotam (talk • contribs) 17:39, 11 August 2008

I've now completed this. Should you spot anything else, please feel free to drop me a note. Many thanks, Gazimoff 17:52, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Collectible Card Game -- Should it Have its Own Article?

I think this is worth considering. The board game has its own article and the TCG has at least as much notability. What do others think? Gilbertine goldmark (talk) 16:12, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

It's worth a try but before you do it, you'll need to make sure you have reliable sources to establish notability. I'm not kidding when I say that if you create an article on the card game and don't have really good sources right off the bat it will get flagged for deletion. WoW-related articles seem to draw a lot of deletionist attention to themselves, probably because so many of them have been very crufty in the past, and I think certain editors are touchy about them in general. Gazimoff did a really good job when he created the Gameplay of World of Warcraft article; he created everything in a sandbox first, including references, before creating the real article. That thing is now pretty rock-solid and it would be difficult to put it through AfD at this point if not impossible. -- Atama^chat 17:59, 27 August 2008 (UTC)