Chat Logging Add-ons for WoW Interviews.

I conducted my first interview on World of Warcraft last night and ran into my first major problem: there is no way to import or copy text from the game into a program like word, and the default chat log only stores 160 lines of text. If you're doing an interview in a hub city, those lines will get eaten up fast by trade and general spam, maybe even before you have a chance to write down your interviewee's responses. It's also an inconvenience for them to have to wait.

So today I went online to see if there were any Add-ons that could solve my problem. To those who don't know, Add-on's are small programs that will change the game's defualt user interface (UI) which is the menu that displays your character's inventory, health, abilities, chat bars: basically all the stuff that lets you control your actions in the game. Blizzard knows about them and allows for them in the TOS, so you won't get in any trouble, and they will save you and your interview subject a lot of headaches.

I found these two chat-logging add-on's right off the bat with a basic google search. If you have no idea how to install them, there are tons of threads that will tell you exactly what to do, like this one here. If you don't want to use Add-on's, you can also tap the print screen key in game to take a screen shot, though you will still have to deal with the tedium of re-typing both sides of the conversation and scrolling the chat bar just right to capture question and response.

Project Group: Social Status in WoW

Hey, our group doesn't really have a name yet, but we are going to be examining social status in World of Warcraft. It's a broad aspect, but each member of our team will be examining a specific in game factor that influences what people think and know about your character online.

Claire will research Guilds (in-game player-made organizations).
Bryan is looking at levels and loot (items and gold).
Rebecca is working with Player vs. Player interactions.
Hank wants to examine roleplaying.

Right now, we're planning to use participant observation (playing the game) and interviewing (chatting with people in game) as our primary methods for collecting datum. Give me a message if you have any questions or suggestions for us!

Research Paper topic: Social networking sites and Teens

I was sitting around this past weekend thinking about how I should really choose a solid topic soon for the research project for this class. Last Thursday, when we had the opportunity to meet and talk with our classmates, I found a few people that had similar ideas and I was getting good responses. I thought I would share the idea with the rest of the class since I only had the chance to share mine with a few people.

I'm going to be honest - I'm not into gaming at all, but I do use social networking sites, like Facebook. They are really great tools to keep in touch with friends and family and to share things like pictures. But something that has always blown my mind is the pre-teens / teens using sites like Myspace acting like they are "hot stuff." I always think, "Oh gosh...WHY?!" (If you have seen the kind of things they write, the information they share and the pictures they post, you will be shocked - I promise. ) I thought it might be interesting to do research on this. The big question would be: Why do teens (and kids, ranging anywhere from 10-18) use sites like Myspace?? What are their objectives?

I did a bit of online research and found a few articles that could potentially work as sources for this topic.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11064451/
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/05/myspace.teens/


I'm not really set with this, but I think it would be interesting to do something along this line. (Social networking sites and teens) If any of you are interested, let me know and we can definitely discuss!


-Miko