From World of Warcraft to the boardroom

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Models and WoW

The pseudo-science of economics and its mathematical models of markets and economies could learn a lot from WoW. Due to the impossibility of mirroring reality, economists make all sorts of handy assumptions about blocks of consumers, market forces etc and spend most of their time expaining things in hindsight.

WoW has around 6 million subscribers and at least 10,000 people per server (could be wrong here but that's my impression). It also has a functioning economy with goods production, person to person trading and auction houses. Here's a unique opportunity to actually alter the levers of an economy and see how it reacts. Nor do we have to lump people into groups, every transaction can be monitored and if necessary people can be questioned about individual transactions. Sure the economy is moderately simple, but it does give an opportunity to test basic economic ideas with real people.

Marketers might be interested in how word of mouth functions within such as virtual world and psychologists and sociologists would have a field day.

Remember WoW is so successful because it's accessible to a wide range of players (not just your overweight nerds rolling dice in someone's lounge room) and it provides a virtual world. Of course in this world you progress according to the work you put in and your intelligence and skills (unlike the real world) so no wonder it's popular.

As to getting ahead with your WoW rank in the real world. Much the same applies in Switzerland but in this case it refers to your military rank (a few years in military training are compulsory), so who knows - the skills of organisation, teamwork and leadership are definitely a requirement for WoW and they may be useful in the real world. As another aside, WoW gold trades at about US$10-15 for 100 gold in the real world and there are also sales of inworld items and paying people to play the game for you.

Popular persistent world MMORPGs offer a wealth of information for researchers in all fields.

Posted by: TonyMcS   Posted on: 03/15/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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