Christian Hoffstadt , Michael Nagenborg World Of Warcraft ...
Christian Hoffstadt1, Michael Nagenborg2
World of Warcraft: Creating a safe and secure place for an entertaining war
MMORPGs as "World of Warcraft" can be understood as interactive representation of
war. Within the frame provided by the program the players experience martial
conflicts and thus a “virtual war” (e.g. MacCallum-Stewart 2007). The game world
however requires a technical and as far as possible invisible infrastructure which has
itself to be protected against attacks: Among this infrastructure are counted e.g. the
servers on which the data of the player characters and the game’s world are saved,
as well as the user accounts, which have to be protected, among other things,
against "identity theft" (e.g. Bardzell et al. 2007). Besides the war on the virtual
surface of the program we will therefore describe the invisible war about the
infrastructure, whose outbreak is always feared by the developers and operators of
online-worlds and at least requires adequate precautions.
Furthermore we would like to pick out „virtual game worlds“ as a central theme as
places of complete observation. Since action in these worlds is always associated
with the production of data, complete observation is at least possible and given in
reality by the so-called „game master“.3 Observation of different communication
channels (inclusive user forums)4 as well serves for channeling the sojourn in the
virtual battlefield properly, without the player feeling apparently limited in his freedom.
Finally we would like to compare the fictional theater of war of "World of Warcraft"
with the vision of "Network-Centric Warfare", since already many a time it was
affirmed that the analysis of MMORPGs could be useful for the real trade of war (cf.
e.g. Sarasin 2004, p. 24). However, we will point out what an unrealistic theater of
war "World of Warcraft" is.
Bibliography
Bardzell, Jeffrey et al.: Virtual Worlds and Fraud: Approaching Cybersecurity in
Massively Multiplayer Online Games (2007) <
http://www.digra.org/dl/db/07311.42219.pdf >
MacCallum-Stewart, Esther: From Catch the Flag to Shock and Awe: how World of
Warcraft Negotiates Battle (2007) < http://www.digra.org/dl/db/07311.43451.pdf >
Sarasin, Philipp: "Anthrax" – Bioterror als Phantasma. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp
2004.
1 Lothar-von-Kübel-Str. 6, D-76547 Sinzheim, christian.hoffstadt@web.de
2 Interfakultäres Zentrum für Ethik in den Wissenschaften, Arbeitsbereich Ethik und Kultur, Wilhelmstr.
19, D-72073 Tübingen, philosophie@michaelnagenborg.de
3 Cf. < http://www.wow-europe.com/en/support/gm-article.html >
4 Cf. < http://www.wow-europe.com/en/policy/ >
