Skip to main content



The Graphs of World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft has been the highest subscribed MMORPG game since its release in 2001 and has managed to remain the highest grossing video game to date.  The reason it does so is because of the seamless social aspect that it offers, which throughout the years has evolved into something even more. Recently, Blizzard Entertainment has created something called cross realm connections. Traditionally, there were different realms a player could choose from in which they would make characters and create a “home”. However, people have been leaving certain realms to join others with higher populations for a better in game experience via more socialization, guilds, group-oriented events and other advantages that go along with high population realms. To fix this, Blizzard decided to connect low population realms with each other allowing for players on these realms to enjoy the benefits of high population realms, without having to change their realms, names, or abandon the sense of identity they have with their character and realm combination.

This idea can easily be related to what we have been discussing in class when it comes to graphs and their connectivity. Before the cross realms were installed, each realm acted as a separate components, some with more nodes (players) than others.  By linking the lower population realms together, a bridge was connected between the components and created one larger one that was equal in node size to that of a high population server.

In addition to this, Blizzard has also created something to allow us to label the edges (connection between players) as either weak or strong ties. A friendship that involves what Blizzard likes to call RealID. In this players can now go beyond adding a fellow players character to their friend lists and can instead see whenever the other player is logged on, even if it is not the character in which they met. The RealID also allows for players to see eachothers real names and even connect in real life via social networks such as Facebook.
In this concept, the edges between the nodes can be labeled to have a weak tie (Normal friendship where only the characters name in which the two players met is seen) or a strong tie (RealID where any character the other player is logged onto is seen, in addition to real names).

Sources:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/10551009

http://us.battle.net/en/realid/

Comments

Leave a Reply

Blogging Calendar

September 2014
M T W T F S S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930  

Archives