Jake Kauer

Professor Turgeon

UWRT 1104-028

17 September 2017

Group Reflection

My experiences during our Group Gameplay Session on World of Warcraft was similar

to my solo session and also different in several ways. Unfortunately, due to technical issues as

well as the existence of different instances within the game, we were not able to play together

necessarily, but we were still able to learn about Discourse Communities in the process.

Our technical issues came initially from two members of the group not being familiar

with the online VOIP application Discord. It was one of their first experiences with online

software for that application and we were eventually able to get all four of us in a single chat

room to start our World of Warcraft discourse. The biggest issue wasnt out of game, but in

game. Apparently, there can be different instances within the game. Despite us all being on the

server Dalaran as well as being in the exact same location within the game, we were unable to

see each other as there must be microservers within the Dalaran server. With a game breaking

issue such as that, we thought we surely couldnt learn about this kind of Discourse but we ended

up learning more than we probably could have in game.

Before discovering our biggest technical issue, the lack of ability to see each other, we

did have some significant experiences that taught us about Discourse Communities. For example,

Tommy was the only person who knew how to navigate around the map and use the map tools.

This led to us discovering an important characteristic of this Discourse, that one who is new to it

can learn from those with more experience. We were eventually able to all get our bearings and
proceed from our individual and unique locations on the world and head to Dolanaar, a small

village just southwest of the initial spawn point. Once there, still ignorant of the fact that we

cant see each other, we had to come together to navigate to a common location within Dolanaar

to meet up. This taught me another significant lesson about this type of discourse, that you dont

have to learn the game from someone experienced necessarily, but you can from each other,

learning the game together. After discovering our efforts were futile and that we cant actually

see each other nor play together, we ended our group gameplay session for the evening.

Looking back on the group play, I noticed some similarities and differences from the solo

play. Despite the technical issues and such, both gameplay sessions required a learning curve. In

solo play, the learning curve was more centered towards learning how the game works, getting

used to the keyboard and mouse controls, learning lexis such as Quest, Race, Class, and various

AI names and locations, as well as whats the best attack/defense methods. In group play, the

learning curve was more centered around finding each other, which involved coming together to

learn to use the map and navigate, and figuring out why we couldnt see each other. Just finding

out that we couldnt see each other was still a considerable process. We had to find a specific

person in Dolanaar, and then discover that we were all literally within feet of each other, yet in

different instances of the game server. Group play was overall more frustrating than solo play, as

it involved a lot more coordination and communication than solo play. This led to tasks such as

navigation and getting in game taking longer. Solo play was more casual than Group play as well

as it didnt require structure like group play did and was more of go with the flow.

Overall, Group Play was a positive experience. It highlighted some of the key

fundamentals of the particular discourse World of Warcraft as well as the overall themes of

Discourse Communities as a whole.