Thesis Research - Need some help!

[robyhetfield]

Hi everyone and Happy New Year!

My name is Roberto, I’m from Rome, and I’ve been playing World of Warcraft for over 20 years. I was Aranwe on the Hakkar server in 2005 :O!
During the first five years, I was a very active player and fully immersed myself in this incredible world, experiencing both positive and negative consequences along the way.

I’ve always followed this forum as a spectator, and now I’ve decided to join and reach out for your help! There are questions I’ve been asking myself for years, and now I finally have the opportunity to put them down on paper.

I’m writing a research thesis on virtual communities, exploring how players interact, form relationships, and create social dynamics over the internet. What better research laboratory than World of Warcraft?

So I'm here asking for your help; I'm so close to graduating! Join my party!

Your answers will be completely anonymous, and your insights would be incredibly valuable for my study.
The tips under the questions are just a guide. Write as much or as little as you like, however you feel. Every sharing is meaningful to me!

If you’re willing to participate in a short interview or share your experiences, please follow this link:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...orm?usp=header

Thanks a lot in advance and keep nerding guys! <3

Roberto

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Thanks for who sent me the answers! <3

[Narwhalosh Whalescream]

Why is it always mmo-champion.

[Zodiark]

Why is it always mmo-champion.

I feel like we have a unique little community over here that has maintained some semblance of unity through discord over the years for the love/or hate of World of Warcraft.

[Huntermyth]

filled the form, gl with your research.

[ablib]

I swear, if I had a nickel every time someone was doing a "thesis" or research paper on WoW, I could retire. This always sounds so scammy. Who the hell writes a research paper on WoW?

[Calfredd]

I swear, if I had a nickel every time someone was doing a "thesis" or research paper on WoW, I could retire. This always sounds so scammy. Who the hell writes a research paper on WoW?

Very odd but anytime someone shows up here "working on a thesis" I can't help but remember that 'Between Beasts' game or animation or whatever and after being called out for supposedly using WoW assets, he turned around and called it all a social experiment. I can't even remember if it was even on this site.

[Biomega]

I swear, if I had a nickel every time someone was doing a "thesis" or research paper on WoW, I could retire. This always sounds so scammy. Who the hell writes a research paper on WoW?

Tons of students do things like this. I've supervised what, at least half a dozen theses having to deal with something like this - not just WoW specifically, but various kinds of games. I've been teaching video game culture classes for several years. It's a thriving field of research in all manner of disciplines. How could it not be? Video games are an economic juggernaut and a cultural mainstay. Of course there'll be research on them, all kinds of research. No one would bat an eye if a student did, say, research on films or music; meanwhile the video game industry is bigger than film and music combined.

In fact, I tend to encourage students to research what they're already interested in. Especially at the BA/MA level, the point isn't really to produce some kind of valuable original research work - it's to demonstrate that you know how research is done. For that, picking a topic like video games might be particularly beneficial, because it helps cement the idea that anything can be treated with academic seriousness if it's done properly. It doesn't matter what you're researching, as long as you're researching it well. That's kind of the point of academic research: to get to the bottom of things in a structured, epistemologically sound way.

Absolutely nothing wrong with researching video games. If anything, video game studies is underrepresented in many fields, considering its social impact and spread. People hardly read books anymore, but they all play games. How could that not warrant research?

[robyhetfield]

I swear, if I had a nickel every time someone was doing a "thesis" or research paper on WoW, I could retire. This always sounds so scammy. Who the hell writes a research paper on WoW?

First of all, thank you for the support. The responses are coming in, and many of them are truly beautiful. Thank you.

As for the reason behind my choice—to write my thesis on Warcraft—it’s quite simple.

My field of study is Communication Sciences. Communication is often not considered a “science” in the same way Medicine is, for example. After three years of studying it, I can say that this is partly true: it is certainly a discipline of a different nature. But if you think about it, everything we experience every day involves some form of communication, and that, at least in my view, is what makes it so interesting.

Living in this era, our ways of communicating have evolved, and society itself has evolved with them. The internet has completely reshaped established paradigms, and Warcraft is just one example of how deeply those paradigms have been overturned. Just think about it: without going too far back, if in the 1990s someone had told you that you would one day embody a 3D character in a fantasy world and share that world with people from other countries, playing together as if you were in the same room—would you have believed it?

More than 20 years have now passed since the beginning of that online world we all know today, and people now feel nostalgia for those places—virtual, non-existent, yet somehow profoundly real.

So, given that in order to graduate I had to choose a topic aligned with my field of study, that research is an essential part of any thesis, and that I was a Warcraft player at 15 (I’m 36 now), I’d say the reason why I chose this topic is pretty clear!

[Kilpi]

Why is it always mmo-champion.

Is what? People asking for genuine help on something on a public forum? How dare they!

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I swear, if I had a nickel every time someone was doing a "thesis" or research paper on WoW, I could retire. This always sounds so scammy. Who the hell writes a research paper on WoW?

Why the duck you care? If you feel like it isn't worth your time, just ignore it.

What are they scamming you for? For your time?

[Alanar]

Why the duck you care? If you feel like it isn't worth your time, just ignore it.
?

Same can be applied to you here tho. Just ignore it and move on.

[Ereb]

Same can be applied to you here tho. Just ignore it and move on.

Says the guy who only came in here to post this dribble? I dare say @Kilpi's post combating the accusation of OP being 'scammy' is much more worthy of posting about vs your little "nuh uh you!" post you just made... just my 2c lmao

[Alanar]

Says the guy who only came in here to post this dribble? I dare say @Kilpi's post combating the accusation of OP being 'scammy' is much more worthy of posting about vs your little "nuh uh you!" post you just made... just my 2c lmao

Again, same can be applied to your response as well.

[baskev]

I feel like we have a unique little community over here that has maintained some semblance of unity through discord over the years for the love/or hate of World of Warcraft.

^yup.

and applause for the moderators (who i sometimes have vexxed) for keeping it like this

[Zodiark]

^yup.

and applause for the moderators (who i sometimes have vexxed) for keeping it like this

Yeah absolutely. It's sometimes a thankless job I'm sure. However, when you consider all the chaos that is rampant in other forums online they have done a pretty good job at keeping discussions in line.

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btw I'm making a community in WoW that we can all join together on to share / communicate and stay in touch within WoW itself. Might be something useful for you if you wanted to actively communicate with fellow members. I'm just starting to get this going and created an actual thread about this topic, with the idea of possibly forming a proper guild, if / when enough interest is there.

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...MO-Champ-Guild

[baskev]

Yeah absolutely. It's sometimes a thankless job I'm sure. However, when you consider all the chaos that is rampant in other forums online they have done a pretty good job at keeping discussions in line.

indeed . if you look at other forums i feel like i am in a " insert political or theological group" hate or love forum.

[eztraj]

MMOs and WoW used to be high trust societies like 1950s America where no one left their doors locked and there weren't any problems. I remember openly sharing account info with my guildmates in dark age of camelot so we could play each other's characters. The thought of doing something like that now is laughable. Make of that what you will.