Online Study: Community Within the MMORPG

[Deleted]

Hi everyone!

My name’s Patrick and I am currently a final year student at Leeds University (UK). For my final paper I am conducting a study on sociality and community within the MMORPG, and how it has changed with the development of the genre. My study involves measuring the ‘sense of community’ felt within a variety of MMORPG’s, and to do so I was hoping to collect some results from a collection of experienced players (ie. you guys).

As I’m sure most of you are aware, there are a variety of in-game mechanisms that MMORPG game developers utilise in order to build and create an online community. After conducting a fair bit of research into online community building methods, I’ve compiled a list of techniques that contribute to the ‘sense of community’ found within a certain MMORPG: collaboration, competition, accessibility, in-game communication between players, communal integration, provision of new content and activities, and in-game trading systems. How an MMORPG deals with these techniques greatly affects its online community.

Now, this is where I’m in need of some help. Although I have a little experience with a few MMORPG’s, in order to complete my study I really need the opinion of experienced players, and hence why I am here.

Essentially, I would like to rate how well different MMORPGs build and create online community.

To do this, I have created a survey (using the simple surveymonkey.com), and I was wondering - if people are interested, I could perhaps post a link to the survey here.

Answering the survey would only take a few minutes as questions are multiple choice, and even just a few responses would be extremely helpful for me. I believe the final results of my study would be extremely interesting – not just to me, and not just to WoW players, but to fans of the MMORPG genre as a whole.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to your replies (and the inevitable barrage of tl;dr responses ).

Thanks again!

[Deleted]

You should ask a moderator if they can edit your link via PM into your post, if they'd be so willing.

[llDemonll]

PM me if needed, I have no issue with this

[Treeskee]

Feel free to PM me the link!