What can WoW and other MMOs teach us about literature and storytelling?

While the world of academia has not infrequently pried back the edges of World of Warcraft to peer through its lens into fields including psychology, sociology and anthropology, and economics, we don't often hear reports from the intersection of WoW and literature. With a lore and canon of their own making, WoW and the Warcraft world don't fit alongside such developments as Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative, a course from Vanderbilt University available via free online educational provider Coursera that leans heavily on the riches of narrative theory, intermediality, and game theory in Lord of the Rings Online.

But there's no denying the omnipresence of WoW's influence -- and yes, that includes within the ivory-tooled tower of literature, as well. "I'm a literature professor," states Dr. Jay Clayton, one of the Coursera class's instructors. "I'm fascinated by what games can teach us about the operations of storytelling." Dr. Clayton says he's hoping to attract WoW players and their own WoW-tinged perspectives to his class this summer in order to help build a more complete picture of what WoW is itself as media, not only as a lens through which we can view other disciplines.

To be sure, World of Warcraft is not the star of Dr. Clayton's Coursera class. In a promotional video for the course, he repeatedly refers to WoW as "Worlds of Warcraft" and admits during our interview with him that his time playing WoW was not his cup of tea: "WoW has just a massively larger demographic than any other game, and this included, on the server I was on, a younger, less mature [player base], a lot more taunting ... than I was used to."
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A story that moves across media

Still, WoW wasn't chosen as the centerpiece of this class because of Dr. Clayton's personal playstyle preferences but because it's based on an original story and lore. In contrast, Lord of the Rings Online draws on its trove of novels, films, and lore that allow students to observe how a familiar story becomes transformed as it moves across different media.

As the course prospectus notes:
Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin ... argue that new visual media achieve their cultural significance precisely by paying homage to, rivaling, and refashioning such earlier media as perspective painting, photography, film, and television. They call this process of refashioning "remediation," and they note that earlier media have also refashioned one another: photography remediated painting, film remediated stage production and photography, and television remediated film, vaudeville, and radio. world of warcraft gold

"Anyone interested in today's culture needs to be conversant with the ways this new medium is altering our understanding of stories," Dr. Clayton exhorts prospective students. "Join me as we set out on an intellectual adventure, the quest to discover the cultural heritage of online games."

Dr. Clayton is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English at Vanderbilt University, where he also directs the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy. His books examine how stories from one area of life affect other kinds of narratives: how poetry changed the novel in Romantic Vision and the Novel; how fiction shaped postmodern culture and theory in The Pleasures of Babel; and how Victorian literature, science, and engineering helped build the networked world we live in today in Charles Dickens in Cyberspace. His current work focuses on two areas, gaming culture and genomics in literature, film, and popular culture.

Intersections of text and circumstance

LotRO's choice not to send players along the famous trilogy's main storyline, leaving them behind to guard the rear and handle other threats, gives Dr. Clayton an opportunity to demonstrate still more literary concepts. "What it did was give you a story of your own, without a predetermined outcome, to immerse yourself in that is that is tangential to and intersects with the story of the main three volumes of the novel," he explains in an interview with WoW Insider. "This allows us to teach concepts, certainly advanced concepts, about intertextuality, about how all text, all literature depends on a whole slew of texts outside of the bounded work."

That's a strength of World of Warcraft, as well, Dr. Clayton notes, with its many allusions to pop culture. "It's a richly allusive game," Dr. Clayton says. "It has a textual surround, just like Lord of the Rings does, except it's the text of our own culture and popular culture -- which is a kind of magical feat when you think that it's completely set in a fantasy world at the same time."

"So you do get this doubleness," he continues, "not the ordinary double awareness of 'I'm in my study or my living room or wherever I'm playing it and I'm in the virtual world.' That doubleness is there with any computer game. But it's a doubleness of 'I'm in this fantasy world and I'm also kind of conscious of the clever allusiveness to all kinds of pop culture phenomena in 2012.'"


An unprecedented constellation of creativity

Other aspects of WoW that Dr. Clayton spends class time discussing are the game's famously striking graphics and art direction, what he calls an enormous interdisciplinary creativity being channeled into games in an unprecedented manner. "You have computer programmers, number theorists, writers and narrative artists, cinematographers, graphics, music..." he says. "These are all the skill sets of contemporary digital existence being fueled to make a really unprecedented new media form. It's not that any single game is unprecedented but that the entire constellation of games is unprecedented."wow power leveling

"Frankly, I think that colleges and academics need to be paying attention and need to be thinking about what this all means now and what it'll mean to the future of our culture," he continues. "When you have this many millions of dollars being pumped into it and many of the finest minds being drawn to this creative sphere, you're going to have unforeseeable cultural ramifications."

"Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative" is an online course available via Coursera, a company that partners with top universities all across the world to offer courses online that anyone to take for free. The course runs for seven weeks beginning in July. Visit Coursera for more details.

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Blizzard will continue to “invest aggressively” in Diablo 3 after 12 million copies sold in 2012

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I have a feeling this is what they call ‘business sense’. Game makes money, make more game. Diablo 3 sold 12 million copies in 2012 - a two mil increase since November - and so Blizzard will continue to “support the franchise and the community”.

“The launch of the game back in May had a tremendous impact on Blizzard and our community,” Blizzard sovereign Mike Morhaime told investors last night. “Diablo 3 broke PC games sales records, and as of the end of the year has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide.buy diablo gold

“While this is a humbling achievement, we’re not satisfied with merely breaking sales records. The development team has worked aggressively to update the game since launch, adding new content, systems, game features and other improvements.”

Morhaime pointed to the upcoming Diablo 3 patch 1.0.7, which introduces graveyard duelling - a favourite lunch break pastime at PCGamesN - to the game.

“Diablo is extremely important to Blizzard and we will continue to invest aggressively to support the franchise and the community,” he finished, before vanishing under a wave of irrelevant questions about Skylanders and smart TVs.

Where would you like to see Blizzard fight fire with cash in Diablo 3? Better drop tweaks? Continued auction house and botting moderation? More extensive PvP? Or a full-blown expansion?
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DOFUS Review

Developed and published by Ankama Games, Dofus is a unique MMORPG with a turn-based battle system and cartoonish environment, but it’s mired with frustrating navigation.

Characters are hand-drawn with an anime style. There are 15 classes to choose from, each with a distinguished look and each with a different play style: Enutrof is a treasure-hunting class that increase drop rates; Osamodas rely on summons that fight along them; Pandawas, the “boozer” class, use spells that can only be active if the player is drunk or sober. Customizing your character, however, is limited to skin, hair and clothes colour. You can have purple or green skin if that’s your style. But you can’t change your main outfit, but you can distinguish yourself with hats, cloaks and shields.

After creating your character, you will enter Incarnam, a floating continent high above the World of Twelve. Rocks float in the air, and the area is enigmatic. The point-of-view is top-down, and the camera is stationary. Clicking on the ground moves your character to that location, and if you need to get to the other side, you need to click the edge of the map which takes you to the next area. This becomes tiresome, especially when your destination is diagonal from you. Just imagine traversing nine screens to get to your destination that is four screens diagonally. acheter des kamas

As you head out to explore Incarnam and the World of Twelve, the environment is lifeless. The leaves on the trees don’t sway, the grass is stationary and the rivers don’t run free. We are surprised and disappointed that the environment is not animated. The music is great and appropriate to the atmosphere. Forest areas are calm with flutes and woodwinds, and the battle music is jittery and engaging with strings and horns. The music, however, becomes repetitive.

The user interface was intimidating since everything is crammed at the bottom of the screen. The chat window is located on the left, the mini-map on the middle, and the spell and item hotbars on the right. Below the hotbar are even more buttons that brings up the character sheet, inventory, quest log, etc.

Combat is turn-based and simple to understand. Players have six action points that are used for spells, and three movement points that are used to move in the battlefield. Points are replenished at the start of every turn unless your enemy uses a spell that decreases your action or movement points.sell diablo III gold

Combat is fun and thought provoking. We played as an Iop, which is the Paladin class in Dofus. It’s possible to spam a specific type of spell, but the same spell won’t be as effective on a different mob. Each spell utilizes a specific element: air, water, fire and earth. Some mobs are weak against fire or resistant to it. You can get this information by hovering your cursor over your enemies.

Combat doesn't feel repetitive as there are a variety of mobs in Dofus and each mob have unique spells and movement points. One annoying yet challenging mob are Tofus, tiny yellow birds that litter the world. They have ten movement points, and they fly away after they attack. As a melee class, trying to pursue a Tofu would work against you so it’s more strategic to move away and bait the Tofu towards you. Evil Sunflowers are the same – but worse as they have ranged attacks. Mobs are usually grouped and rarely alone. Some have two to four varying mobs which can be soloed. There are some that are intended for team play since the mobs are grouped in seven or more. But the more mobs there are, the more experience points you gain. buy or sell GW2 items

In every battle, challenges are given to spice up the game play. There are challenges that require you to use all your action points or movement points in all your turns, kill a specific mob first, or avoid getting damaged. Completing the challenge gives you bonuses on experience points, loot and Kamas, which are the game’s currency.

After the battle, the pace of the game is severely hindered by slow HP recovery. Sitting down speeds up recovery, but it still takes time, finding myself hitting Alt+Tab to browse the web. To keep the momentum going, you would need a stock of potions and food to replenish your health.
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World of Warcraft Tribute Art Book submission deadline Jan. 15

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     Do you love creating Warcraft art? UDON Entertainment is teaming up with Blizzard to create what may be their biggest Tribute collection yet, featuring art paying homage to World of Warcraft. Both Blizzard and UDON have called on artists from around the world to submit their original World of Warcraft-inspired artwork for consideration. However, the deadline for submissions is fast approaching. If you'd like your work to be considered for this incredible collection, you'll need to submit it by January 15.

    This is a worldwide collection, so anyone in any country may submit their art. However, you'll need to be 18+ to submit. Selected artists for the Tribute collection will have their work included and credited in the book, which was announced at NYCC last year, and should make its first appearance at San Diego Comic-Con 2013 as a special, limited-edition hard cover.

    If you're an artist and you'd like to see your Warcraft-inspired work make its way into print, this is an opportunity you don't want to miss. For more information, including rules, guidelines, and submission information, head to the official World of Warcraft Tribute website.  wow gold for sale

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It is reported that "fierce fighting" in February will likely add WVW map

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    Foreign media said the fighting in 2013 will push a new piece of information, Daewoo, South Korea KDB Securities Company, said in an interview, NC soft will again in 2013, large-scale update for Guild Wars 2.

    "We look through the analysis the NC soft coming year and recent financial results, the company's operating profit in the fourth quarter from the Guild Wars 2 currently it has become the most profitable game company, North American and European markets, according to a recent NC soft Corporation Headquarters access concluded that Guild Wars 2, although the first update of the game but the players do not seem to meet NC soft in 2013 will once again massive update for Guild Wars 2.  cheap dofus gold      buy or sell Guild Wars 2 gold

The GT end inventory Guild Wars 2 "won the" Best Online Game "crown

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"Guild Wars 2" won the "Best Online Game of the Year" Award
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