Samstag, März 18, 2006

World of Warcraft Survey - Community Building and Addiction


Dear WoW enthusiasts,

a student of mine is conducting a survey about community building and addiction in WoW. It would be great if as many people as possible would participate in this survey.

Rapid developments in economy, technology and society have caused online video games, in particular MMORPGS, to gain recent media focus. However, this does not mean that this form of communication and companionability is necessarily counterproductive, as the media has often portrayed. MMORPGs create a new type of pasttime and allow for communication that otherwise might not exist. In our survey, we aim to evaluate the positive and negative social aspects of this new genre.

Of particular interest to us is the way in which friendships that may otherwise have never been possible can be formed and whether or not you are able to develop personally whilst investing time in a virtual world.

We will be looking specifically at the popular World of Warcraft MMORPG, exploring the community structure and trying to find out what elements keep players absorbed in the social aspects of the game.

The following questions are to be answered based upon your experiences playing WoW (World of Warcraft).

Because the questionnaire is aimed at all players, some of the statements may be quite broad and across the board. Therefore we ask of you to keep in mind that:

- "Other gamers/players" refers to every player in WoW, not just your own guild or circle of friends in game.
- "Community" on the other hand refers to your own guild or another group that you regularly play with.
- "Problems/duties/questions" and "community themes" refer to any topic that could be relevant in your community, i.e. game mechanics, character development and improvement or new content (patches).
- The options available to you when responding to the survey are "does not apply" [1] "rarely applies" [2], "often applies" [3] to "always applies"[4].


To participate in the WoW-online-questionnaire please click this link:

WoW Online Study - please click here

After clicking this link use this username and password WarcraftUS and choose the html-format (not the PDF one).

All answers along with all other data in our research will be treated in an anonymous and confidential fashion.

You can find more infos about me at my work blog.