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View Full Version : Studying WoWcology, where psychology and WoW meet


TalonBot
05-21-2009, 04:21 PM
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.wow.com/media/2009/05/smallgroupdevelopment.jpgI've been meaning to write about this WoWcology blog (http://otmguild.com/blog/) for a few days now, but there's just so much there -- reader Skeuk is guilded up with a PhD in Psychology, who's writing not only about the guild's day to day battles (http://otmguild.com/blog/?p=123), but also about how the deeper tenets of psychology (http://otmguild.com/blog/?p=141) can be seen in our Azerothian gameplay. This post about group dynamics (http://otmguild.com/blog/?p=155) is extremely interesting -- if you've ever suffered through some bad PuGs in your time, you can see the different stages of group development (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forming-storming-norming-performing), and you can probably even figure out where your PuG fizzled out in the "storming" stage or made it all the way through to the "performing" part of the cycle. Fascinating stuff, for sure.

Unfortunately, posts aren't coming too often, and it seems like Dr. Amalea -- who for some reason refers to himself in the third person at times -- understandably has other things to do besides keeping a blog about World of Warcraft and psychology. But maybe if we send them a little traffic, we can convince him to keep it up regularly, as what's there now makes for some really interesting reading. It's really interesting that a lot of the stuff we're dealing with the game now -- forming PuGs (http://www.wow.com/2008/02/22/breakfast-topic-heroic-pugs-from-hell/), guild drama (http://wow.com/category/guildwatch), even loot distribution (http://www.wow.com/2007/10/03/the-ultimate-loot-distribution-system/), has all been studied by psychologists for years and years before World of Warcraft ever existed.Filed under: Analysis / Opinion (http://www.wow.com/category/analysis-opinion/), Fan stuff (http://www.wow.com/category/fan-stuff/), Odds and ends (http://www.wow.com/category/odds-and-ends/), Instances (http://www.wow.com/category/instances/), Raiding (http://www.wow.com/category/raiding/)

Studying WoWcology, where psychology and WoW meet (http://www.wow.com/2009/05/21/studying-wowcology-where-psychology-and-wow-meet/) originally appeared on WoW.com (http://www.wow.com) on Thu, 21 May 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds (http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/).

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