World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. Set in the Warcraft fantasy universe, World of Warcraft takes place within the world of Azeroth, approximately four years after the events of the previous game in the series, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. Wikipedia
Research exclusive to this game
Bessière, Katherine, A. Fleming Seay, and Sara Kiesler. “The ideal elf: Identity exploration in World of Warcraft.” Cyberpsychology & behavior 10, no. 4 (2007): 530-535.
Chen, Mark G. “Communication, coordination, and camaraderie in World of Warcraft.” Games and Culture 4, no. 1 (2009): 47-73.
Ducheneaut, Nicolas, Nick Yee, Eric Nickell, and Robert J. Moore. “Building an MMO with mass appeal: A look at gameplay in World of Warcraft.” Games and Culture 1, no. 4 (2006): 281-317.
Hitchens, Michael, and Adam Ruch. “Form over function: the use of Lovecraftian elements in World of Warcraft.” In Proceedings of The 9th Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment: Matters of Life and Death, pp. 1-8. 2013.
Robinson, Jessica A., and Nicholas D. Bowman. “Returning to Azeroth: Nostalgia, sense of place, and social presence in World of Warcraft Classic.” Games and Culture 17, no. 3 (2022): 421-444.
Sengun, Sercan, Jennifer Price, Lyndsie Schlink & Kristin Walker. “Azeroth has a workplace gender inequality problem: gendered professions bias in virtual worlds.” Games and Narrative: Theory and Practice (2022): 105-118.
Strimling, Pontus, and Seth Frey. “Emergent cultural differences in online communities’ norms of fairness.” Games and Culture 15, no. 4 (2020): 394-410.
Walther, Bo K., and Lasse Juel Larsen. “The Orc—Playing the “Wholly Other”: Investigations of Kant’s Sublime and The Technological Sublime in Blizzard Entertainment’s Massive Multiplayer Online Game World of Warcraft.” Games and Culture 18, no. 7 (2023): 868-888.
Research that includes this game in its sample
Crenshaw, Nicole, and Bonnie Nardi. “NPCs as Social Mediators in Massively Multiplayer Online Games.” In Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 89-91. 2015.
Rosario, Robert AM, and George R. Widmeyer. “An exploratory review of design principles in constructivist gaming learning environments.” Journal of Information Systems Education 20, no. 3 (2009): 289.