Practicum 7-Carly

I elected to do something a bit different with how I look at World of Warcraft this morning. About 95 percent of my experience to this point has been with actual, in-game play. Before my presentation and when I was first starting out, I looked at a few independent websites and forums dedicated to explaining and discussing the game. I decided to look at these sites a little bit closer today, especially since I will be using them in my discussion of my experience for the final practicum paper. The first site that I visited for forums was sponsored by World of Warcraft and required a Battle.net ID and password to access. While I understand why the game would require a log-in to visit the site, I thought that it might be beneficial for the administrators of the game to allow even brief access to non-subscribers who may want to check out forums and discussions to get a better feel for what the game is about if they happen to be considering whether or not they want to participate and play World of Warcraft.

There are, however, many sites unaffiliated with WoW that likely provide similar introductions. Neoseeker.com has well over 200 pages filled with discussion topics dedicated to the game. One of the most surprising topics on the board was one discussing whether or not players would call out sick from work or school on the day of a new release for the game.

The numerous discussion boards and independent fan sites dedicated to talking about and exploring World of Warcraft create a strong sense of community among players of the game and help to strengthen WoW's place as the most popular MMORPG on the market.