Animated Fairytale- WoW as a storybook

Bonnie A. Nardi opens her book, My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft, with a general overview of the makeup of the game and her investigative procedure with which to guide the reader through her book.  She makes a claim for her argument, asserting that WoW is “a new visual-performance medium” (7) (a claim which she will unfold throughout the book no doubt).

                Describing WoW as an “animated fairy tale” (8), Nardi provides us with a rundown of the game, the basic races, the fact that it is a virtual world that is still a game (unlike Second Life), and how guilds work.  Guilds are almost a necessity for players, as many monsters cannot be defeated alone and high-end loot cannot be obtained without other skills and other people, but most players do not begin to join guilds until they are at least level 20.  Guilds, according to Nardi, are controlled by officers and there are various levels of guilds—casual player guilds which are often filled with those who may have children, are busy with traveling, or have other obligations which would require them to step AFK and more hardcore guilds, where raiding is deadly serious and there is no excuse for missing it.

                Nardi then broaches an interesting topic, one which we are all probably very familiar with—the WoW stereotype.  Nardi acknowledges the stereotype of an overweight unemployed man living in his mother’s basement, but she then promptly dismisses it, speaking strongly about the varied groups of people playing WoW, the students, professionals, parents, and others.  She seems to try too hard to break this stereotype, and it’s commendable.

                Perhaps the most interesting thing Nardi does in this first section of her book is to discuss the ways in which she is conducting her research.  As the title suggests, Nardi approaches WoW from an anthropological standpoint, conducting an ethnography of the WoW world.  Her interest is in the ways in which people interact in these online worlds, and to do so she engages in “participant-observation” (30), with this particular project being more participatory than observant.  Nardi goes in undercover, so to speak, developing her character Innikka.  She participated in the culture, joining several guilds before settling on Scarlet Raven (not it’s real name), and throughout the two years in Scarlet Raven, Nardi raided with them and partied with them.  However, she never met any of them face to face.

                Aside from just participating, Nadi conducted face to face interviews, some online interviews, and attended Blizzard Entertainment’s BizzCon—their annual convention for their empire of online games.  She met with people who had met their significant others on the game, with those who play with family members and now have much better relationships with those members of their family.

                Most of Nardi’s research took place in America, within the game, on a computer that sat on her dining room table (as she mentions a few times within the book).  Drastically different from other ethnographic studies, she did not have to live in uncomfortable locations, struggle to speak a language, or stand out like a sore thumb.  She was able to completely assimilate into the culture of WoW.  However, she did do some research in China, where the players seem to be the most hardcore and they congregate in Internet Cafes together.

                Nardi’s prose is easy to read, fluid, and she peppers the chapters with the exact words of other players—offering up their experiences and their thoughts on WoW and other games.  Nardi’s ethnography is similar to Pearce’s which we read over the summer, though Pearce focused on Second Life, a supposedly very different game—more of a world.  Nardi, in this book, does not want to stand out as a research, whereas Pearce did within her world.  She grew attached to the Uru people in Second Life, but she was “researcher” which caused problems throughout her study.  Her friends/other players would get angry with her, upset that she had made them sound certain ways.  Nardi, however, does not single herself out, rather, she focuses more on the participation rather than setting herself apart as a researched.  It seems as though that this creates a much more involved ethnography than perhaps Pearce’s study.

Questions:

1) Nardi mentions on page 20, that “the presence of female players mitigated rough masculine discourse down.”  Is political correctness (especially in the cases of “profanity, homophobic discourse, and sexist comments”) more of a female thing?  Or do men feel as though women are “delicate flowers” so to speak?

2) Nardi does a very strong job of trying to fight against the stereotype of WoW players.  Is she successful?  Does she take too much of one side without acknowledging that the other side might also be true?

3) Are you excited to start playing WoW with this new information and with knowing that Nardi started with no experience either?