Raiding Research Online

I have been travelling most of August, so it’s nice to sit down and really get back into the blog. First I want to say a quick thanks to Stars, the top-ranked Chinese guild (world #6), for our recent discussions about their experiences raiding. I’ll be putting up some comments from that discussion in the very near future!

Let’s look at our last poll. Thanks so much for voting, everyone! Even though it’s not what I’d call a comprehensive sample of WoW raiders, it’s still very interesting. Here are the results:

Have you ever led a raid?

Yes, I regularly lead them for my guild. (14 votes, 30%)

Yes, I have done it occasionally–usually off night runs or as a back-up. (12 votes, 26%)

I have led a PUG or a guild run once in a while but it’s rare. (11 votes, 23%)

No, but I often have assistant/helping duties during a raid. This includes helping plan strategies. (6 votes, 13%)

No, I’m just happy to do my job and get instructions. (4 votes, 8%)

My first observation here is that the majority of respondents (approx. 79%) have some sort of raid leading experience, whether it is an ongoing, intermittent, or infrequent role. An additional ~13% have some sort of task to assist the raid leader, either as helping plan the raid or to performing a role during the raid (calling out instructions, loot master, schedule arranger, etc) . This indicates to me that the majority of people who raid probably  have done some kind of raid leading at some point.

Does this mean that leading is integral to the raiding experience? I don’t know conclusively, but the results of this poll seem to suggest that involvement in leading is almost as prevalent as raiding itself. I know we rely on teamwork a lot, and most would describe raiding as a team-based experience, but perhaps it’s also one that relies heavily on leadership skills as well.

I will say, anecdotally at least, many people view raid leading as a mixed bag. It’s seen as a privilege and necessary to raiding, but quite a few raid leaders I have interviewed mention getting ‘burned out’ doing it. This experience of burn out often coincides with experiences of failure and inconsistent participation. Something is going wrong with the raid–low attendance, too many mistakes, conflict in the guild. Trying to lead a team in real time situations can be challenging enough; leading a team in a virtual situation may become harder, I suppose, when you have to contend with additional variables like repeated failure, distorted space, variable time, unreliable technology and inconsistent skill.

So what of failure and leading raids? I have long felt that failure is an inevitable feature of the raiding experience. And perhaps leading amidst failure is the inevitable lot of a raid leader. Most raiding guilds I have spoken with (and accounts I have perused) speak of the need for raiding teams to not let failure deter them–that each failure should teach them something and spur them toward success.  A poll I put up some months ago now asked how many times people recalled spending on boss attempts. 61% responded that they could recall spending more than 50 attempts on a single boss fight (when learning it).  Now, how do you lead through that? Obviously we  have found a way to make it work because we keep going, we keep trying, we keep failing, and we keep succeeding. And we keep leading.

Before I get to my notes on chatting with Paragon, I wanted to respond to a comment from Chea asking me why I’m speaking to elite raiding guilds.

As I’ve written before, one of the main goals of my PhD research is to complete a detailed mapping of the raiding culture. I started my research last year doing all sorts of things, including working closely with a social raiding guild (for 9 months), doing interviews with a variety of raiders (mostly social, casual, or hard core on my own server), collecting data on PUGs and gamewide chatter about raiding, reading forums and articles, and downloading and taking screenshots and videos of raiding activity and interfaces. This has provided me with a lot of helpful information (my PhD supervisors say I have too much data—I say I can never get enough, but it is a lot!) about our culture.

One area I had not started working on yet was speaking with what we’d consider our “elite” raiders–the hardest of the hard core–the world’s top raiding guilds. Whether we like it or not, these are the guys who get there first and we (as a culture) watch them closely—and they watch each other. As you saw below, I spoke with Adept 2 weeks ago. And a few days after that I spoke with Paragon. Other interviews are also taking place. I am speaking with these guilds for one primary reason: to give us a more complete picture of what our raiding subculture is. Most subcultures have their layers of involvement, talent, and notoriety. And as we are a progress- and outcomes-oriented culture, it’s no surprise that we pay attention to those among us who get to the first accomplishments first. We check wowprogress regularly, we compare videos, we visit their sites. So my research did not feel complete without including the perspective and experience of players who successfully navigate the raiding content first.

I had a great time talking with members from Paragon. And their “fame” as the first guild worldwide (and widely considered–for now according to wowprogress–to be the World #1 and EU #1) to get the LK-25 heroic kill is not the reason that I found them so engaging. Of course on a personal level, as a raider I’m interested in talking to other raiders who exceed my skill (I’m just never going to be that good of a raider!), but as a researcher their perspective was compelling and their attitude refreshing and insightful. A few salient highlights (and these are just snippets so far… basic impressions) from our 4 hour interview (yes, 4 hours!) were:

• They are a linguistically cohesive group. It’s common knowledge that they require competency in the Finnish language to be in the guild. (Incidentally that does not mean they require people to be Finnish culturally, just proficient in the language.) Now this is not because none of them speak English. (I did my entire interview with 4 of them in English, although I did learn a few words, including “kiitos” [guys, I hope that really does mean 'thank you' ]) They have just placed importance on the kind of language they use. The members I spoke with suggested that it was an “important resource” as it helped build guild cohesion by ensuring the raiders who might be reluctant to use English could speak freely. They also mentioned how it helped them socially, making it easier for the guild to do “stuff together out-of-game”.
• They are socially connected. I just have to mention something that I found extraordinary about this group. I know quite a few raiding guilds that meet socially outside of the game or at least have pockets of strong social connection (pre-existing relationships, like friends or family members, for example) within the guild. But this guild seems to take their social interaction to a new level. During my interview, they made mention of a recent event where 17 out of their 33 members got together for a relaxing weekend. Now, I know that this is probably partly possible due to them all being located in the same country, but even so, I think it points to a strong connection and desire to spend time together beyond the confines of the game.
• They are focused when they need to be. I suppose one assumption many might make about the elite raiding guilds is that they spend endless hours and days in the game. As Paragon members were explaining to me, it’s often true that they will spend more time in game during “new content” times or when there is significant progress to be made, but otherwise, the schedule is pretty light. So the time commitment appears based around the game’s content. Obviously being able to spend 3 days in a row working on new content requires raiders with pretty flexible schedules and my impression from Paragon was that they are mostly students or have flexible work arrangements.

Overall this guild doesn’t seem particularly fazed by “becoming famous”—if anything I just noticed that classic Nordic politeness and understated surprise (with some jokes woven in there, of course) about all the attention. To paraphrase Xaar, while they were extremely satisfied to have achieved these important world firsts (as it told them they could “do it”), the only big difference in their raiding and attitude since getting these world firsts was noticing there were more interview requests and that they seemed to get noticed more. More than anything it seemed like a group of people (granted, I only spoke to 4, so I realise that’s not a complete picture) who, much like Adept, enjoyed the game, each other, and the thrill of the hunt. I even mentioned during the interview that the word “precision” kept coming to my mind as they discussed their very intellectual approach to raiding and strategic planning.

One last thing… about gender: my experience with the more social/casual/regular hardcore (I need a better word for this!) guilds are that we tend to have an 80/20 male-female ratio. So far my observation with the elite guilds is about 90-95% are male. Paragon is a mostly male guild (they noted 2 women currently in the guild) but they had an interesting philosophy about women in the guild. It was clear that any girl who could raid at their level would be welcome and in fact, during the interview one of the raiders said this about Xenophics (one of the two women in the guild who participated in the interview):

Ande: about xeno being a girl playing with boys, i dont think anybody notices/cares during “serious gaming” that she is one

Xaar: exactly

Ande: during playing were just equal players sharing the same goal

So even though it may be rarer that a woman is raiding at these levels, women with equal skill seem to be more than welcome to join in. There is a suggested “problem” with those female gamers, however, who seem interested in connecting with elite raiders for status or items which has managed to propagate a perception of “girl gamers” as difficult to deal with. This leads to a whole new area of questions that could be interesting to explore some day. For me, the first image that came to mind was a rock band groupie. I guess it’s just something you get used to seeing in a subculture–the people on the fringes who want some affiliation with a subculture but who lack the skill to actually successfully perform in it and so use other forms of social capital to insert themselves into it.

I have a lot more to report about the interview, but I wanted list these few highlights. I look forward to doing some more work with Paragon, too! Thanks, guys, for being so gracious and open to my research questions.

Hi everyone!
Hello from warm and beautiful Wyoming in the USA.

So I’ve put a new poll up–all about raid leading. I’m curious to see how many of us (yes, the many thousands of you that vote on my site) actually take on raid leading duties.

I’m also in the middle of writing up some notes from my chat with Paragon last week and my latest reflections on another aspect of our subculture: clothing and kit. I simply LOVE that topic because I feel it’s an amusing and fascinating element of our culture. It’s hard to write properly while away, however, so it may be a few days before those posts find their way online.

Now I realise this is a blatantly northern hemisphere topic, particularly for this time of year. But then again, those in the southern hemisphere can just readjust this notion to when summer takes place down south and see if it’s still true.

Anyway! Having said that, I’d like to comment a bit about the poll as I’m going to put a new one up. My very inadequate sampling here indicates that the majority of you (56%) are still around but are impacted by the away time that can often typify summer. You’ve got holidays, you’ve got cabin fever, you’ve got a serious case of disinterest in the game. Whatever the reason, you find yourself wavering.

I’m not particularly surprised by that finding.

What did surprise me is the fact that 32% of you indicated that summertime has no impact on your raiding activity levels. Perhaps you don’t raid much anyway so the summertime does not impact your activity levels, or perhaps you just don’t see the point of or have the opportunity to go on holidays. Or perhaps your raiding levels are consistent with what raiding content you are working on right now and summertime just doesn’t play into it.

I was surprised by this as I had expected a higher number to have voted for the “yes” option (yes meaning you find summertime to significantly impact your raiding), but only 11% of you did. I had expected the “yes” and “no” answers to be flipped.

And of course, it goes without saying that a person who is completely disinterested in raiding right now is unlikely to look at a site like this (about raiding) or vote in a poll. If they want to do other things during the summer, that often means that they’d be disinterested in being at their computers full stop. This fact could be another reason why the “yes” vote was quite low.

But, having written that, what this poll is telling me is that the majority of you (88%) sustain some level of raiding activity during the summer.

I suppose my next question would logically be “What kind of raiding activity do you do during the summer?” Some may indicate that they still raid but, if they have completed the raiding content (like our world top guilds), they may be doing less raids or alt-related raids. Some may find that they end up raiding still but have to pug a few players, as their regular cadre of raiders is a bit inconsistent (due to having time off all over the place). An interesting question, I suppose.

All I know is this feels very much like it has before new expansions come out. Blizzard always seems to let us drag out those long months before the late-year release of the new expansion. Doesn’t it feel like pre-WotLK in 2008? All over again? Maybe we’re the Groundhog Day of MMOs.

Anyway, I’m going to put a new poll up!

Thanks for participating and please feel free to comment below. Are you surprised by the results? Or is it what you expected?

I had a rare opportunity to chat with members of the US Adept Guild–the Oceanic #1, US #2 and World #10–over the weekend. What a delight! These guys are not only talented and very competent raiders but they provided a very insightful reflection on the state of raiding and its future outlook.

While I have almost 2 hours of interview data to go over still (let’s hope I can do this with my laptop perched on my lap while I sit outside enjoying the summer!), one thing struck me while I spoke to Adept: the challenges they face during raids are generally the same as experienced by average raiding guilds. What makes them truly different is the way they solve these challenges. They seemed to share an almost like mind in their attitude toward raiding. I don’t mean to suggest all raiding guilds need to nurture a hive mind to function, but I think that shared vision and goal  paired with a commitment to consistency has really worked for this particular guild.

And this guild has done this in spite of the main nemesis we all complain about: GAME LAG. Evidently due to something called Packet Loss and other fancy IT tech terms (like the fact that their computers have to communicate with US servers all the way from Australia/New Zealand, for the most part) that Adept guildleader Westa was confusing/mesmerising me with, Adept has had to factor major lag problems into their raiding strategy. Talk about being agile–and they are still the World #10 and US #2! Makes me think twice before I whinge again about lag during a raid–or are we just making excuses for our poor performance?

I’ll try to share more as I go through my notes, but I just had to quickly share this wonderful opportunity that I had. I’m going to be speaking to a few more top guilds and will share tidbits from those interviews as well.

Let’s look at language, as it’s used and exists in the raiding culture.

Language. Many subculture researchers (studying things like biker culture or the goth movement) often point out that subcultures have their own language–their own ‘lingo’. I’d say that we have one. We’ve partly created it for ease and efficiency (our love of acronyms [WoW, MMO, FTW, BRB, AFK....] for one!)  and we’ve partly created it from other influences (people using English as a second language, for example, or FPS videogamers bringing their lingo with them into an MMO).

The lingo of raiders permeates the game environment. This is primarily due to the nature of our in-game communication and game mechanics. I don’t think I’ve had a day in my life as a WoW player where, even before I became a raider in late 2006, raiding-influenced lingo wasn’t cropping up around me. This most often cropped up on the general chat and (before the in-game group search mechanics exist) the LFM channel. There, our first piece of lingo, LFM: “Looking for more.” For the unfamiliar, as WoW (like most MMOs) is often group-activity based, it’s often the case that MMO gamers will group up to perform certain tasks or activities. It’s often that pre-set social groups like guilds will do group activities together, but other times, people are trying to PUG–pick up group. Yes, I’ve turned an acronym, which is a noun, into a verb. This happens a lot in games like WoW. We live in acronyms. Here are some good examples:

[This excerpt is picked up directly from the passive collecting program that I use, called Elephant. I have X'ed out the players' names.]

5/9 10:23:17.138  [2. Trade] Zxxxx: war dps lfg ICC10 / heroes 2773

5/9 10:23:28.372  [2. Trade] Exxxx: WTS Primordial Saronite 2k

5/9 10:23:56.985  [2. Trade] Fxxxx: any Jcers

5/9 10:24:00.525  [2. Trade] Dxxxx: LFM 2 healers and ranged dps icc fresh run

These are trade comments and took place over a 43 second period. To the initiated this means nothing because it is intuitively understood. To the uninitiated it means nothing because it’s a jumble of abbreviations and acronyms and game words (like “primordial saronite”), combining to leave the reader wondering if they’ve left a game and opened up the pages of an obscure technical manual. And we don’t just have lingo in this culture. We have lingo within lingo. But let’s deconstruct them a bit.

DPS: damage per second. This is so familiar to the WoW raider culture that we use it to describe damage dealers in the game. A mage is not a “wizard-like caster of spells” anymore but is now a “ranged dps”. And DPS is not just a noun. It’s a verb. “I’m DPSing.” “You need more DPS.”

WTS: want to sell. This one has a mirror acronym: WTB (want to buy). I often find it humorous that we rarely see any actual selling and buying call outs on the trade channel. People just use it for universal announcements because it’s our only universal channel. Logical, really.

JCers: jewelcrafters. A profession in the game.

I think what we see here in the examples above is a tendency, in the raider culture lingo/language, toward the efficient. We don’t want to waste time typing out “want to sell” every time we want to sell something. Our orientation is toward making the most of our time to move us more efficiently toward the more important reasons for being in the game: raiding. Language and therefore communication are often a means to an end.

Not to say that that’s the only reason we use this kind of abbreviated language; it’s also influenced by mobile texting (GTG, U, etc) and–on the EU servers at least–restricted language abilities.

While the language and its use has many functions in the raiding culture, I would say that there is enough distinctiveness that we can see it comprising an important role. A few commonly used terms and expressions are also distinctive and unique to the raiding culture (even unique to WoW, I’d dare say):

• Grind. Ahh the grind. We have a concept of this is in English already (the daily grind, etc), but in WoW lingo terms it gets a broader meaning. We use it to refer to something we have to do repeatedly in order to get something. Maybe for reputation points, for gear, for money. Generally we do this unwillingly but we do it with purpose. The Grind is an important aspect in the life of a raider–particularly at key junctures in game development (like when we have a patch or new release).

• Achievements. This is an interesting one. We–the raider culture–did not make this word, but it permeates us. The very word seems to suggest our identity and sense of meaning in the game. And even though quite a few achievements have nothing to do with raiding itself, many raiders (particularly those looking to form PUG raids) will demand certain raid-related “achievements” in order to let strangers join them in groups. We can be identified by this word and its placement in the culture. Often having a low achievement score–or the lack of particular achievements–can dictate how someone views us. This word is also an example of how the raiding culture changes. Before the introduction of achievements around the release of WotLK (yes, another acronym! ) we had no overt way of judging someone. How we formed groups and the language we used for it was somewhat different. So, again, we have adopted a more efficient way (thanks to the game designers at least!) of assessing each other and defining value in each other–achievements.

And then we have gamer-speak that’s been integrated into raider-speak: n00b, l33t, boss, etc.

So, this is an extremely brief and very limited discussion (much more to come on this one as I go back through my year’s worth of collected notes) that suggests that language and its unique features definitely play a role in the raiding culture.

What other words/phrases/acronyms stand out for you in the raiding culture?

Thanks to Alex the poor, neglected forums are  back up and running. I think I’ll start up some new discussions, just to breathe life back into them.

I’ve put up a new poll…

I have noticed that summertime can be the death of many raiding guilds–or at least put them into a deep sleep. Do you suffer from summeritis (apologies to our southern hemisphere friends–mayhaps you encounter the same thing in December-February?)?

I’ve been so busy lately that my poor site has been neglected. A sad thing considering all the work that Alex and I put into setting it up in the first place….

I believe we’re encountering a problem with the forums right now too, which I’m endeavouring to sort out. But things will pick up again shortly! I’m going to begin posting a series of reflections–drawn largely from my preliminary research findings–on aspects of our raiding subculture over the next few weeks. Basically, this is my feeble attempt to delineate what the distinguishing features are that make us our own sort of gaming culture–what I like to call the raiding subculture. I’ve been looking at a few key areas:

1. Aims and objectives. This–you might say–is what our subculture is all about. I realise that’s a pretty obvious one, but it’s still important to delineate it. What is our subculture trying to do? What is the objective of being a raider? Believe it or not, this question may have a few different answers. What focus do we place on achieving our culture’s objectives?

2. Values and norms. Again, an important one because it often dictates how we behave and relate in our social grouping. What do we value the most in our subculture? What do we believe is the most important value or norm of our subculture? What will we tolerate; what do we expect; what will we reject?

3. Language. Many subculture researchers (studying things like biker culture or the goth movement) often point out that subcultures have their own language–their own ‘lingo’. I’d say that we have one. We’ve partly created it for ease and efficiency (our love of acronyms [WoW, MMO, FTW, BRB, AFK....] for one!)  and we’ve partly created it from other influences (people using English as a second language, for example, or FPS videogamers bringing their lingo with them into an MMO).

4. Clothing and kit. Here I’m not talking about the player behind the computer. I’m talking about our in-game accumulation and attachment to what we’re wearing. How well we’re ‘geared’ is a crucial aspect of being part of this culture. In fact, I’d say it’s got an almost unique place in this culture–unlike a person who dresses a certain way to identify him or herself with a culture (heavy metal fan wearing t-shirts from his favourite bands, for example), we use clothing and kit as a way to improve performance. The closest thing I can find is an elite competitive swimmer wearing streamlined swimming suits and caps to improve their performance.

5. Attitudes. This is probably a closely linked one with #2 above, but I think the general attitude and perception of a raider is important to consider in this subculture. What do we think about what we do? Why do we do it? What do we think of other raiders?

6. Group structure and organisation. Since raiding is so heavily dependent on group structure and dynamics, I think this deserves its own category. How do we like to organise ourselves? What influences those decisions? What group structure and organisation is the most successful? What values do we place in leadership? And what about group values?

I’ll take time to focus on each of these and hopefully, you will join in the discussion as well!

I hope you’re having a beautiful summer.

Ladan

So, in the time since I last properly posted, much more information on the coming WoW upgrade, titled “Cataclysm”, due out later this year, has been shared. Already much buzz has been created around the planned changes and new abilities/spells/features that will come with Cataclysm. This wealth of advance knowledge that Blizzard’s designers make a point of sharing with its gamers provides a lot of room for planning, anticipation, and debate.

But I am wondering if we fall into a kind of “holding pattern” in anticipation of new content. Does the promise of new content stunt our enjoyment of what we currently have or does it spur us on to “complete” that content so we’re ready for the next stage.

I am also wondering about how we feel now that some guilds have managed to down the Lich King on heroic 25 mode.  Has that had any impact on your own raiding? If you, and your guildmates, have completed that “last challenge” how does it make you feel? Do you feel “done”? Or are you anxious for something else now?

Share your thoughts and let’s see how the poll turns out.

Ladan