MMORPG: How a Computer Game Becomes Deadly Serious by Emile van Veen Read Free Book Online Page B

adequate player. I’m going to help you, but you have a lot of work to do!”
    As promised, he called her when the installation was complete and he’d established an account. That part was easy. He just followed the steps, which ended by giving in his credit card details.
    “Great, now you’re ready to enter the world of Azeroth!”
    “Sorry, but explain that to me. I thought it was called World of Warcraft?”
    She laughed over the phone. “Yes indeed, but the imaginary world is called Azeroth, like our planet is called Earth.”
    “I see. And what do I do now?”
    “Now you’re going to create a character. First you have to select the right realm. You have to select Sylvanas.”
    Robert was browsing through a list of different realms. “What does a realm mean? And why do I have to choose that one?”
    “You don’t really think that twelve million people are at the same place at the same time, do you?”
    He didn’t answer, not understanding what she meant.
    “No virtual world can be big enough to accommodate that many people. Besides, no server in the world would have the capacity to facilitate that. Therefore, WoW is divided into a number of different servers. Each server has several hundred thousand people on it.”
    “Hmmm,” Robert grumbled. He wasn’t sure he understood.
    Rebecca was a patient teacher. “You can compare it to a tennis club. Everybody is a member of the same club and plays exactly the same game, by the same rules. It’s just that they don’t all play on the same court at the same time. It’s the same in WoW. Every server, which is called a realm, is a different court. Every tennis court is exactly the same.”
    Robert laughed and complimented her on the way she explained it to him. “This is WoW for Dummies, but it works for me. So why do I have to select the Sylvanas realm?”
    “Do you remember how we looked up Drimm on the Internet? On the Armory? One of the things I learned is that Drimm and his guild are on the Sylvanas server. So if we’re going to investigate them, we have to be on their server. It’s no use to watch court number seven while our subjects are playing on court number twelve.”
    He nodded, unaware that she couldn’t see him over the phone. The next screen asked him to create a character. “What do I do now?”
    “I think it’s best to create a character who’s exactly similar to Drimm. That means you’re going to create a Tauren hunter.”
    After some searching, Robert saw what he had to do. “Yak, he’s ugly!” he laughed. Then he noticed that he could alter the appearance, and started fiddling with the skin color and hairstyle. It didn’t improve the looks of his character much. The Tauren race resembled huge bulls that had somehow learned to walk upright on their hind legs, and had grown fingers on their front hooves.
    “Yes, the Horde side doesn’t give you the prettiest characters. You’ll get used to it. Now, are you ready?”
    He saw that he still had to choose a name for his Tauren hunter. He thought briefly and decided. Then he hit ‘Enter World’ and was rewarded by an introduction movie. It showed friendly plains of grasslands with smooth hills. He was floating in the air over the prairie. Robert leaned back in his chair, amazed by how friendly the virtual world looked.
    A voice was telling him about the race of the Tauren, but Robert wasn’t really taking in what it was saying. Now he was floating through a city of tents, perched high in the altitude of some huge cliffs that rose steeply from the rolling plains. Next he was accelerating over more grasslands, seeing many kinds of animals below. Then he was descending toward a small village, circling some figures who were standing together at the centre of the village. Only when the movie finished did he realize that he was one of those figures.
    He was standing right in front of another Tauren. Above its head stood the name ‘Grull Hawkwind’. Also above its head was a large