$100k Grant For Playing World of Warcraft
Posted on September 26, 2008
Filed Under Inspiration, News, World of Warcraft
How’d you like to get paid to study a MMORPG game? Well these guys somehow managed to convince people over at the University of California Irvine to give them $100,000 dollars for a study on World of Warcraft. Yea that’s right studying a pc game for college, what’s this world coming to.
So let me get this straight now, this prof Nardi wants to find out:
Chinese people play the more challenging form of World of Warcraft almost exclusively. They find the less challenging form of the game ‘boring.’ Here, about 50 percent play the challenging form of the game and there, about 95 percent do.
I’m not really sure what she means by ‘more challenging’. The game can be pretty challenging if you don’t use mods to your game such as damage meters or threat meters on very aggro picky boss fights. Also it might be downright hard for someone with lessor than optimal reflex skills to watch for heals or cures on other fights. I wonder if that’s what she meant.
Nardi also wants to find out why Americans product far more mods to the game than their Chinese counter parts to ‘enrich the gaming experience’. Can she not accept that Americans as a population are just plain lazy? Also here’s a hint to that answer in her own words.
Nardi is a WoW fan who has already done lots of cultural research on a game that has 10 million players worldwide. As I noted in an earlier post, she spent time last year observing WoW gamers in the Internet cafes of Beijing.
Where exactly are majority of the players in China playing from? The simple answer to it might just be that we play at home, and they play in internet cafes where they don’t allow mods to be installed on the computers.
So now that I’ve figured that out, do I get a sliced of that big $100,000 pie?
I wonder what she’ll be spending the money on. Lets see, $900 for an Alar mount, and $10,000 to buy a World of Warcraft char.
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I used to play WOW a lot and I must say I understand why some people like to play it on a harder level. That is, with less help and going into more risky situations. It’s because they are goal oriented, while many other players are just looking for fun. That’s why there are so many mods.
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I heard that Chinese people are making big money from playing this game.
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