Cheating

since WoW is an online game with millions of real human players playing at the same time there are not really any cheats similar to the traditional ones that include a series of buttons. i have found that every once in a while i will hear about a company over general chat that is selling gold, gear and other services. i wonder if it is cheating to use this service to change, modify or enhance your gameplay? at first i thought that it was cheating. but then i realized that the focus of this game is not educational its aimed at entertainment. maybe its not a cheat if the game aspect you are skipping or changing is not educational. at the same time though, all the classic game cheats that we grew up with do not help us skip educational aspects of gameplay and yet they are still considered cheats. but is it different to buy currency than to do a cheat that makes you invincible? i think it is not cheating if you are making gameplay more enjoyable when the point of the game is entertainment rather than education.

ive recently become a bit bored with the guild that i was in. i found that people were not very friendly and didnt interact much. so i decided it was time for a change of scenery. i joined a new guild that was a little smaller but showed much more potential as a guild.

another thing that happened recently was that i discovered that the game has aspects that are only accessible at the highest level, level 80. some of these aspects include arenas and heroic dungeons. arenas are similar to battlegrounds, which i discussed a couple weeks ago. you can be on a team of 2, 3 or 5 and you have one battle to the death with another group of the same number. you receive reward points that can be used to purchase gear and other items. heroic dungeons is a setting that level 80 characters can use when entering dungeons that will make the dungeon much harder but at the same time the setting upgrades all the loot that drops in the dungeon.

these aspects reinforce the idea that motivation was a key focus for Blizzard when they designed WoW. the very long game play eventually turns into repetitive fighting and they do a great job of periodically introducing new areas and aspects of game play thus reigniting the gamers love of the game.

its more than just vicious fighting.......

in the beginning of this course when i started playing WoW the combat aspect of the game definitely had the greatest motivational effect on me. i thrived on dealing heart-stopping killing blows and searching for my next victim. i cannot deny that i saw the educational and developmental characteristics of the game as i played but all i wanted to focus on was the thrill of the next kill.

my eyes have been opened to the many options and routes i can take to the same thrill and honor and sense of accomplishment. one of the options was brought up in class during our conference call. i explored the auction house and discovered a whole other world within WoW. i found that a player could learn economic basics through the auction house. by understanding supply and demand players must decide on an appropriate price for items that they wish to sell. in an enormous world, the auction house allows players to communicate with thousands of players over a trading network, essentially shrinking a huge realm to a much more manageable size. after exploring and putting the auction house to use i have made a profit of over 100 gold coins which is about 10 times more gold than i had before i utilized this trading tool.

one of the things that i have noticed is that i am constantly using what i have learned earlier in the game to benefit and improve my gameplay at my present level. there are many different types of monsters that i fight including beasts, humanoids, undead, demons and many more. many of my moves have restrictions like that they only can be used on a certain type of monster. this reapplication of previously learned information is a fairly good demonstration of Gee's Transfer Principle, which states that learners are given ample opportunity to practice by transferring what they learned earlier to latter scenarios.