Leet noobs: Expertise and collaboration in a World of Warcraft player group as distributed sociomaterial practice

Mark ChenUniversity of Washington

@mcdangermarkchen@uw.edu

This work is funded by the National Science Foundation through the Science of Learning Center program under grant SBE-0354453.

Some game play

World of Warcraft

MMOG 6 million subscribers in 2006

World of Warcraft

MMOG 6 million subscribers in 2006 Fantasy with races / classes

World of Warcraft

MMOG 6 million subscribers in 2006 Fantasy with races / classes Complete quests, kill

monsters for loot and XP

Raiding

Large group joint activity Highly coordinated Specialized roles Organization and leadership Molten Core

Leadership tasks required for raiding

Also see Reeves & Read, 2009

Ethnographic methods (Steinkuehler, 2004) Pool of 60 regular players, 40 per session Met 2-3 times a week for 10 mos (11/05-8/06), 4-5 hrs each time Larger ethnography has over 1000 hrs of chat data ~100 hrs of video + select posts on web forums Disciplined perception (Stevens & Hall, 1998)

Remember, ss target will change at Domo, but until then, your rezzer is to be ssed at all times.

Remember, who you give soulstones to will change when we encounter Majordomo Executus, but, until then, the priest or shaman who you’ve been assigned to should have your soulstone at all times.

a magic item that warlocks can give to others so that they can come back to life if they are killed

priests and shaman can bring others back to life (resurrect)

it’s important to give rezzers the ability to come back to life so they can rez the rest of the raid group

Theorizing the practice• Push-pull relationship of objects in a

network of activity…– Actor-Network Theory (Latour, 2005)

– Distributed Cognition (Hutchins, 1995)

– Mangle (Pickering, 1993; Steinkuehler 2006)

– Assemblage (Deleuze & Guitarri, 1987; Taylor, 2006)

– Arrangement (Stevens, Satwicz, & McCarthy, 2009)

– Object-Oriented Ontology (Bogost, 2006, 2009)

– Roles and responsibilities constantly renegotiated, redistributed, and reconfigured to adapt to local settings

Analyses1. Expertise as sociomaterial practice2. Communication, coordination, and camaraderie3. A new addon and its effect on raiding

Expertise in game mechanics?

unit frames showing health and status of raid members

my health and status

enemy health and status

cooldown timers for temporary effects

threat meter enemy

debuffs

ability buttons

more ability butt

ons

tank targets

chat window

various bits of info to keep track of

temporary bonuses or impairments (buffs

and debuffs)

minimap and

addon buttons

streaming combat text

name and health of enemy

the jumble in the middle is the actual in-game fight

Expertise as sociomaterial practice Emergent through push-pull of constraints-workarounds Limited by access to the right social networks

World of Warcraft wiki

Regular chat channels and specialized ones by character role say whisper party raid healsting madtankin rottentranq madsheep soulburn madrogues

Communication, coordination, and camaraderie

Hierarchical and interwoven

Communication, coordination, and camaraderie

19:30:00.953 : [2. madrogues] Rebecca: good... poison up... assist wei

-'good' refers to the fact that no Rogues said they have not done this fight. Even so, Rebecca clarifies our role—use poisons on our weapons and focus-fire on Wei's target.

19:30:02.484 : [5. madtankin] William: where is wallace tonight?

-madtankin channel for the Warriors. wallace is a character who usually comes to our raids.

19:30:07.703 : [Raid] Maxwell: Henry peels to Marcie

-role assignment

19:30:10.468 : [3. healsting] Drusella: *runs around like crazy people*

-Druids are getting a little silly now...

19:30:12.656 : [3. healsting] Sven: We could... DPS shaman, Holy Nova priests?

-more suggestions on turning certain healers into damage dealers instead

19:30:15.312 : [5. madtankin] Wallace: I didn't make it in time. Rawr!

-Wallace is still subscribed to the madtankin channel even though he is not part of the raid. These custom chat channels exist independently from any other channels in the game.

19:30:17.453 : To Lori: May I have a healthstone pretty please?

-Healthstones made by different Warlocks sometimes have different amounts of healing they can do (depending on how a player has 'specced' the character) which means they can be stored in one's inventory at the same time. In this case, I know Larry and Lori create different types of healthstones, so I've requested one from each.

19:30:17.687 : [Raid] Maxwell: Horace peels to Mary

-role assignment

19:30:19.640 : [4. soulburn] Lori: Les-for this fight you will be ssing Derek.

-what to do with that one soulstone that Lester has available

Trust/performance evidenced by joviality, level of chat

Communication, coordination, and camaraderie

I love our raid. I know we are all going to get burned out at times and frustrated and upset and disagree with one another. It is part of being human. We are like brothers and sisters really. Stuff like this is going to happen.

Meltdown prevented by realignment / reiteration of group values

Communication, coordination, and camaraderie

Fight continued Look at coordination and use of addons

A new addon and its effect on raiding Tripartite roles: tank, healer, DPS

Threat and aggro KTM = no longer keeping it in our heads Yet KTM only used temporarily in Rags fight KTM used on multiple scales of time and actor

networks / mangles (Latour, 2005; Pickering, 1993; Steinkuehler, 2006)

Tripartite roles: tank, healer, DPS

rogue (DPS)

warrior(tank)

priest (healer)

mage (DPS)

pew pew!

Yeah, hit me!

SS, SS, Eviscerate!

+300 +120

Has the most threat and monster “aggro”

Threat and aggroTime 1

Player Ability Activated Threat Generated (hypothetical)

Existing Threat

Total Threat(hypothetical)

Wendy (tank) Sunder 260 780 1040

Rand (DPS) Sinister Strike 140 560 700

Shaun (healer) L. Healing Wave 400 400 800

Mandy (DPS) Frostbolt 500 0 500

Time 2Player Ability Activated Threat Generated

(hypothetical)Existing Threat

Total Threat(hypothetical)

Wendy (tank) Sunder 260 1040 1300

Rand (DPS) Sinister Strike 140 700 840

Shaun (healer) L. Healing Wave 400 800 1200

Mandy (DPS) Frostbolt 500 500 1000

KTM (KLH Threat Meter)

• Knockback• Rogues

getting aggro

this is a steady high dps fight, no bursting, bursting will get you aggro, in my experiance, anything over 1000 gets rags to say hi to ya unless you are feint everytime its up, and a split second after your burst.

I got aggro on that one. Not sure how, was using the same technique as last time.

so, I have threatmeter on... noticed I wasnt very high up and did a cold blood evis just fine.I strongly suggest you get the mod... so you can judge how good you are on aggro

i hit him once. that made no sense

Roger, they [the tanks] may have been out of position for just a second which is enough for anyone else to get aggro who is in melee range.

• KTM configured to help diagnose aggro problems• Enrolled in a temporary rather than designed role

Conclusions• Becoming expert depended on access to expert

groups and expert practice (Collins & Evans, 2007)

• Not all players could gain access• Group success depended on coordinated action and

trust in others to play their roles (Hutchins, 1995)

• Disruptions in the network required renegotiation of roles; failure required reconfiguration (Latour, 2005)

Take-aways• Cognitive frameworks for expertise don’t account for emergent

situated practice that depend on available sociomaterial resources.

• New actors to a network require a redistribution of roles and responsibilities and is situated in local practice (e.g., KTM)

Final look at video