Warhammer Online

So I made the switch from World of Warcraft (which I felt compelled to joylessly write about and "play") to Warhammer Online, and I immediately embrace the change. Sure, my reasoning from a scholarly perspective wasn't entirely sincere, but I strongly suspect that I'm not alone in the Ivory Tower for taking the real taste-based reasons for enjoying a piece and pulling them like taffey until they sound like legitimate scholarly arguments. Is the reasoning specious? Perhaps. On the other hand, I think serious scholarly discussion flows much more freely from a product one enjoys (hence why we teach ENC1145 as "Writing About Whatever").

Plus, for all the influence of WoW, I find Warhammer easier to talk about from my perspective as a person trained in discussing literature because - lucky me! - the game fiction overlaps with other kinds of fiction: tabletop games, comic books, and novels. And not in the "cash in on the phenomenon" kind of way that WoW books and epiphenomena appear. Warhammer had books and such before becoming an online RPG. As such it allows one to discuss intertextuality between the novels and the game fictions, how audiences read and respond to each, and to draw conclusions about the power of games vs. print as cultural productions.

The drawback of discussing an MMO is, however, the incredible timesink that it represents. I haven't joined a raiding guild or anything, but even just splashing around in the virtual world to get my sea legs back I've spent an embarassingly long time this past weekend. It's not as time-devouring as in high school when my little brother and I played EverQuest in shifts so that our necromancer was online for like 56 hours (grinding Sister Island in the Ocean of Tears for experience and money), but I acquired only 2 levels (from 33 to 35) and 5 renown ranks (from 28 to 33) in Warhammer in the last week* and it'll only slow down from here on out because my bonus experience for returning to the game will have run out.

This practicle question of reading MMOs raises a criticism question for me that sort of overlaps an issue I've been discussing with my students who are playing through Diablo II for their papers. How important is it to be good within the game to "read" it? I told my students that I really only valued the plot of Diablo II for their own work and so they could cheat all the way through if they wanted so long as they gossipped with all the characters. The reality though is that a reading for someone who has no gaming skill is going to be very different from that of a power gamer. My reading of Warhammer from the early 30's and goofing off in battlegrounds is going to be very different from the lvl 40/80 guy with full raid gear who dominates the server rankings. The question is somewhat difficult to resolve inasmuch as both readings are legitimate but it's the 40/80 power gamer that guides the metanarrative about the game: that is, the community experience of the game is usually read through the prism of how those at the top are experiencing it.

Of course, perhaps this dynamic in itself is something that's begging for critique. Why does a gaming community see a game through the lense of the most powerful player?

*To put it in perspective, there are 40 possible levels and 80 possible renown ranks