WoW: It’s Where It’s At
WoW, for the uninitiated, is World of Warcraft, the most successful online game ever devised. If it’s not where it’s at, at least it’s where almost 12 million monthly subscribers are.
That’s a lot of people. And that’s a lot of people that are largely not being served by any Christian organization that I’m aware of. It’s pretty well untouched by Christians, as is most of the gaming community.
I’ve been a guild master and a guild officer in a WoW guild for about three and a half years now (a “guild” is your online family, the folks you spend all your time with, and I’ve been dubbed “guild mom”). There are several Christians in my guild, which I find interesting but not coincidental.
Part of the eccentricity of any gaming community is that you have to know the language, and know it well, to be accepted. You must be a gamer, and a gamer inside that game, to have a certain level of “street cred.” In my particular case, I don’t eat and breathe WoW like a lot of my guildmates, but I know the lingo and can relate. I genuinely care about the lives of the people in my guild, and I ask about them. I’ve met many of them in real life.
For me, these relationships aren’t virtual; they’re as real as my “real life” friendships. I talk to these people on a VOIP server almost daily. I’m privy to details in their lives that only their spouses and closest friends are (and sometimes not even those). I am friend and confidante, because I am willing to put in the time, listen, and care. I’ve asked several people if I can pray for them and have never had anyone say no, even those I know to be agnostic at best. In a few cases I’ve shared God’s love. It’s believable, because it comes from the guild mom, who clearly already loves them.
What’s your mission field?
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Great thoughts Lisa.
Is there functionality within WoW that allows deeper communication or is it better to move to a different space and consider WoW a connection point?
The chat function within WoW allows you to communicate to your guild (/g or guild command), to everyone in the zone (/y or yell), to people in the immediate vicinity (/s or say), or to one person only (/w or whisper, followed by that person's name).
Lots of people in WoW play with mods — I use probably 8 myself — and one of my current favorites is Wim, or WoW instant messenger. It keeps all my whispers separated out of my chat window by person and keeps a history for whatever period (and number of messages) I specify.
So yes, you can communicate pretty deeply within WoW. I also use our VOIP server, ventrilo, known as vent, for voice communication (I prefer that in some cases since tone is lost in text communication). You can have up to 50 people on our server at a time, but there are probably 25 different channels on the server, and you can talk to someone privately in a channel if you wish. Most serious players have vent (as it's called for short) downloaded for raids, so you can talk to them pretty easily.
Hello. Joining in here at the request of my friend Vince. My name is James, I’m an avid WoW player (amongst other games), I work full time in the video games industry, and I’m the Life Ministries leader at my church.
World of Warcraft has, without a doubt, created a global sub-culture that is a society unto itself. The way social hierarchy and guild structure has evolved over the (almost) 5 years that the game has been around is quite phenomenal. Lisa, you are right on the money when you talk about relationship depth within WoW. However, in my experience and in my subversion within the industry, there is also a significant presence of the ‘online persona’ phenomenon. This is a very real, very measurable effect of people not being 100% themselves or even 100% truthful when communicating online, and unlike other social media such as Facebook and Twitter, the anonymity granted by World of Warcraft (“Hi, my name is Thunderfly and I’m a level 80 Orc Hunter”) allows for a much deeper level of pretence than other mediums. Lisa, it sounds like your guild perhaps doesn’t suffer much from this. In my guild, of which I am a long standing officer and regarded as one of the guild leaders, we have a mixed situation. Some of the guildies are transparent people and the in-game relationship has extended beyond the game to the blogosphere and Facebook etc. Other guildies are very closed and very ‘fake’, and that’s their choice. But I would say that the ‘fake’ or ‘pretentious’ personality in MMO universes are more the rule than the exception. In fact, I’d go so far as to say your experience in your guild is more the exception than the rule.
All of this to say that I think MMO environments, whether it’s World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings Online or the upcoming The Old Republic, are best viewed as a connection point than a societal end point. There are some amazing people that I’ve met through WoW, but the relationship I have with them has only truly grown after being taken out of Azeroth and beyond the confines of Vent and Wim. Cultivating the relationships that way has provided excellent opportunities for me to share the gospel. And I think we all know that there are plenty of people engrossed in WoW that need the good news!
Also, I want to share one other thought. Let’s not underestimate the presence of gospel-believing, Christ-living people in the gaming industry. It’s no coincidence that epic games like World of Warcraft, the Diablo franchise, Prince of Persia, Gears of War etc., have strong underlying themes of hope and redemption and deliverance; those elements and stories are quite deliberate. My prayer is that God would continue to work in this industry to provoke thought and prompt people to look at what hope really is, for both those developing and publishing the games, and those who play the end product for hours on end. I’ve had conversations with gamers at conventions who have asked me about spiritual content because they recognize these themes, and that is so huge.
having not played WoW, i didn't realize there were spiritual overtones.
I noticed it in Halo.
there's bound to be some good conversations that can come from that
It's true that my guild is unusually close. Those who join from other guilds invariably comment on it. Several of us have been gaming together for 5 years or more on various games, so we're pretty tight. And actually, there are multiple groups of longtime friends that have come together here.
There's also a pretty high concentration of spiritual people in my guild, and since I don't hide my spiritual side, people regularly come to me with either their questions or their own faith. It's interesting to me how many Christ followers exist in my guild, and how many people want to talk about spiritual things over the course of years of gaming together. They know my door is open to them, and that's all it takes.
Loved your comments, James… hadn't really considered how the spiritual overtones were deliberate, but on further thought I'd assume they are. I too will pray that they continue!