Loisir et Socit / Society and Leisure

ISSN: 0705-3436 (Print) 1705-0154 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rles20

Calgon, Take Me Away : Identifying qualities of

serious leisure in virtual world involvement inside
The World of Warcraft
Nicholas A. Holt
To cite this article: Nicholas A. Holt (2012) Calgon, Take Me Away : Identifying qualities of
serious leisure in virtual world involvement inside The World of Warcraft, Loisir et Socit /
Society and Leisure, 35:1, 57-77, DOI: 10.1080/07053436.2012.10707835
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07053436.2012.10707835

Published online: 02 Jul 2013.

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Calgon, Take Me Away: Identifying

qualities of serious leisure
in virtual world involvement
inside The World of Warcraft

Downloaded by [University of Leeds] at 03:29 26 January 2016

Nicholas A. Holt
University of Georgia

Introduction
For over 50 years, the bath and body product company Calgon has claimed
that their bubble bath can restore the spirit and, take you on a special, fragrant journey to the place you want to be (Calgon, 2010). Their iconic tagline, Calgon, take me away! echoed through the airwaves into Americas
consumptive consciousness throughout the 1970s and 1980s. As far as leisure
experiences are concerned, a bubble bath certainly qualifies for the optimal
category but, oddly, I dont think it appeared in any of Csikszentmihalyis
(1990) flow studies. For me, early in the twenty-first century, the same slogan
takes on a new and definitively postmodernist meaning. For me, Calgon is
a dwarf; Calgon is a warrior; Calgon is a hero; and Calgon is an alternate
me. Calgon is the me of my virtual life inside the massively multiplayer
role-playing game (MMORPG), The World of Warcraft. And curiously, as
with the famous bubble bath, Calgon the hero restores my spirit and takes me
on a journey to where I want to be, although in an utterly non-fragrant way.
In reality, however, Calgon was not really my characters name during
this study. All the characters names in this paper have been changed to
protect the true identities of the players who controlled them. I use the

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name Calgon here, metaphorically, to represent the value this form of play
held for me and for many of the players I observed during a two-year, cyberethnographic study of this unique online culture.
In an effort to describe the magnitude of the online game The World
of Warcraft (WoW) as a pop-cultural phenomenon, Blizzard Entertainment,
the games producer, announced in 2010 that the game had succeeded in
reaching over 12 million subscribers worldwide. As a point of reference, the
population of WoW surpasses the total population of Greece, which is a little
over 11 million people (Eurostat, 2010). On average, these massive numbers
of players spend approximately 25 hours per week in the game (Yee, 2007).
Although prior to this study I had never participated in a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), I did recall the enjoyment that I experienced
while playing the paper and pencil role-playing game (RPG) Dungeons and
Dragons in the early 1980s with friends in my parents basement. The time
we spent planning and playing is comparable with that of the WoW players.
Keeping that fond nostalgia in mind, I approached this study with excitement
and vigor. Designing a study to explore WoWs nascent culture was a clear
match with my unique background in Classical Mythology, Instructional
Technology, and Leisure Studies.
The study was designed to observe and experience the games inhabitants, customs, and their levels of participant involvement and commitment
from January, 2009 through October, 2010. My research in this online
synthetic space is ongoing, and what is presented here represents the first
instantiation of a concatenated ethnographic exploratory approach into
the leisure qualities of online games. A concatenated approach allows for
longitudinal work to be produced from across a set of related studies, thus
becoming a rigorous and episodic effort, which intends to eventually arrive
at a grounded theory (Stebbins, 2006).
This exploratory ethnographic orientation offered a reasonable entry
point into the nascent subject of virtual worlds for leisure research. This
orientation allows a researcher an appropriate openness to emergent areas
of inquiry as they arise. The goal and the subject of this paper was to use
Stebbins (2007) Serious Leisure Perspective (SLP) as a conceptual and analytical framework in order to describe the context and culture, and perhaps
also to introduce an arguably alien and expansive topic for some readers in
a meaningful, manageable, and accessible format. I endeavor to accomplish
this by providing a brief history of the virtual playground, (or perhaps more
aptly, an online theme park) followed by a description of the studys methods
and finally, by situating WoWs participant involvement into Stebbins six
identifiable qualities of serious leisure. Illuminating the alignments, and

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also the peculiarities, of WoWs virtual world participation through the

lens of the SLP provides a structured approach for description, analysis and
interpretation, of the data collected inside this unique online community.

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WoW Primer
The games producer, Blizzard Entertainment, first released the MMOG,
The World of Warcraft, just prior to 2005. Its release occurred 10 years after
Blizzards stand-alone PC videogame, Orcs vs. Humans (OvH), marking the
official birth of the franchise. Several expansions followed OvH and each
added additional game features and, perhaps most importantly, expanded
upon the original games narrative content. The improvements in game play,
in conjunction with an ever-expanding rich narrative backdrop, provided the
game with a loyal player-base as well as a core mythology that continues to
sustain the online games massive popularity. At the time of this writing,
WoW itself has witnessed the birth of two expansions from the original
MMORPG: (1) The Burning Crusade (2007) and (2) The Wrath of the Litch
King (2008). The newest incarnation, Cataclysm (2010), is expected for
release November 2010 and marks the third expansion to the WoW universe.
As a videogame, The World of Warcraft fits into the genera of massively
multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG). In order to understand
what a MMORPG is, it is helpful to divide the acronym into two parts,
massively multiplayer online (MMO) and role-playing game (RPG). MMO
describes an online destination where many individuals can log into an
application (the game) on a server, remotely. However, 12 million subscribers cannot all log into a single server at the same time or it would crash. In
order to avoid this type of catastrophic failure, and to optimize the players
connection, many servers (called realms in the game) are implemented and
each contains a complete copy of the game world, Azeroth, in WoW.
Upon beginning the game, players first select a Realm to which they will
belong. The Realms are distributed geographically allowing players to select
one close to where they live. This is important because a players proximity
to a server positively impacts the games performance. A helpful metaphor
for understanding the relationship between WoW and the realm to which
one belongs is to consider the YMCA, and then consider a YMCA. The
YMCA is a large organization consisting of many members worldwide and
generally a YMCA is a physical structure where members congregate for
various activities. As a structure, it is relatively similar to any other YMCA
with the primary, and most significant difference, being its members proximity to the structure itself. Realms also may differ by the type of game-play
allowed within the server; currently there are three primary server types:

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Player versus Player (PVP), Player versus Environment (PVE) and Role Play
(RP), which comes in both PVP and PVE versions. These differences are
important to game play but are beyond the scope of this paper.
The other half of the MMORPG acronym is RPG (role-playing game).
In a RPG, a player designs a character from a set of choices such as race (e.g.,
elf, dwarf, human etc.), class (e.g., mage, warrior, hunter, etc.), gender, and
appearance (e.g., hairstyle and hair color, eye color, tattoos and piercings,
etc.). With the selection of race, a WoW player has also made the selection
of a faction, either Alliance or Horde. In the WoW mythology, Alliance is
made up of Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and Gnomes, while Horde consists
of Orcs, Trolls, Tauren, and Undead. These factions are the two competing forces in the game, either directly on PVP realms, or less directly on
PVE realms. The player then assumes the role of their selected character
or avatar (often called a toon, as in cartoon). This character becomes their
active representation inside the game world. A single player may have up to
10 toons on a single realm and up to 50 across multiple realms. A player may
control only one toon at any given time. Much like with cars, an individual
may own many, but can drive only one at a time.
Inside the three-dimensional world of Azeroth, which currently spans
three continents, thousands of players all meet on a particular realm online
where their toons interact with one another performing tasks, both individually and collectively. Tribal social structures emerge from the factions (called
guilds) and become the games primary unit of social interaction. Guilds are
like families or companies; some are socially oriented, referred to here as
leveling guilds, while others are more goal-driven, and referred to as raider
guilds. Membership in a guild occurs through acceptance to an invitation
offered by a guild member with sufficient privileges to invite new members.
The leader of the guild, or guild master (GM), determines how much privilege
and access to resources members receive. The GMs may raise or lower these
access levels and privileges at anytime. Non-guild member interactions also
occur but these non-guild relationships require greater effort to maintain,
such as by adding other players to a friends list.
The mechanics of WoW game-play hold deep ancestral roots with the
original pencil-and-paper RPGs, first introduced into the lexicon of popular culture as Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) in 1974, which itself became
the subject of some limited scholarship (Fine, 1983; Williams, Hendricks,
& Winkler, 2006). As with D&D, the WoW players character has a set of
quantified attributes such as a strength score, intelligence score, dexterity
score, and so forth. The success or failure of a players action is determined
using a probability model, which compares the attribute in question, such

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as dexterity for opening a locked chest for example, to a randomly generated number. These computer driven dice rolls occur so fast that they are
essentially indistinguishable by the player, unless specifically requested.
There is not an endgame or overall winner in RPGs and even death
itself is a temporary state. Players advance through meaningful actions and
new challenges and tasks emerge as the player advances. There are various
goals, usually in the form of quests, but essentially the players primary goal
is to live another life for as long as they desire to do so. Player advancement occurs by gaining experience points and resources, all of which become
quantified into the toons development though a progression of levels. In
WoW, a player begins the game at level one and earns experience points from
completing quests or killing monsters, leading to higher levels.
The early levels (1-15) are easily accomplished and assist in developing
the players orientation to the game through a system of scaffolded learning
(Vygotsky, 1976). The amount of experience necessary to move to the next
level gets progressively higher, requiring greater investments of a players
time and effort in order to advance. When a player reaches the highest
available level in the game (currently 80, and soon to be 85 when Cataclysm
is released), the focus then shifts to improving the players equipment and
a task, which requires a collaborative activity called a Raid. These raid
quests require 10, 25, or 40 players to accomplish. The perpetual introduction of new goals and possible advancements is a driving force in MMOG
involvement. WoW, in many ways, is more of an aesthetic experience than it
is a game (Nardi, 2010), but its game qualities are undeniable, such as leveling and the possibility of having a reversible death.
For this study, a PVE realm was selected at random and although I
played a few Horde characters, my primary avatars were all members of
the Alliance where over the course of the study, I was able to observe the
rise and fall of several guilds and participated in numerous raids.

The Current Study

A review of the leisure studies literature revealed a striking lack of scholarly inquiry into online games. In order to address this gap, an exploratory
approach was adopted with broad guiding questions, developed to describe
this unique online culture of play:
1. What is the experience of Playing WoW on a regular basis?
2. In what ways do guilds, impact participant involvement?

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Other disciplines such as psychology, (Yee, 2005, 2007), sociology

(Taylor 2006; Turkel, 1995), economics (Castronova, 2007), and education
(Gee, 2003) have ongoing research regarding online games. Much of this
research emphasized who the players were in their real lives. For me, however, these studies lacked in providing the broader holistic description of the
play environment, such as player actions, interactions, and player progression
in the activity that occurs inside the virtual world as avatars. For this reason,
this study was intentionally bound to stay within Huizingas (1938/2008)
metaphorical magic circle, meaning that all data were collected from
inside the game space. This approach did create limitations concerning
what could be known about the real physical lives of the participants and
specifically caused the researcher to refrain from directly inquiring about
the personal lives of the players. It also prevented any observations of the
players sitting at their computers. This approach bound the researchers
focus purely to the actions and discourse of human-controlled avatars only
inside the games world.
However, I was curious about who these participants are in real life
and how their physical world realities leaked into their ludisphere, their
collective synthetic play-space. Positioning the observations entirely from
inside the virtual space brought up an additional question concerning players real life disclosures during play possible. The additional rumination
could be expressed as:
3. What do participants reveal about their real lives during play?
This third question will be the sole subject of a forth-coming manuscript.

Methods
An ethnographic approach was deemed the best methodological fit for this
study because, collectively, these three questions could all be addressed
through extensive active participant observation. In order to naturalistically
study the inhabitants, social dynamics, and emergent culture of online game
participation, it is necessary for the researchers involvement and embodiment (or disembodiment) to take place within the environment via an avatar.
In the same vein, Pearce and Artemesia (2009) stated that for their study
of a similar online game, the selection of ethnography was more technical
than philosophical (p. 196).
The methodological decision for an ethnographic approach was also
in keeping with Denzins (2003) description of Performance Ethnography,
which requires considerable, immediacy and involvement on the part of
the researcher (p. 8). The ethnographic field online manifests as a sociotechnical space and conducting research within it requires the researchers

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participation in the online world and in the ongoing performance of the

participants, not only for the experiential aspect of deeper understanding
through immersion, but also pragmatically, because that is where one finds
the participants. This notion, however, of gaining deeper insight through
immersion in lived practice remains historically a core tenant of the ethnographic tradition (Van Maanen, 1988; Wolcott, 1994).
Finally, the flexibility and improvisational nature of ethnography was
well suited to inquiry for an exploratory study of this sort. Improvisation was
essential for conducting research inside a dynamic, technologically mediated
social space because the game is in a constant state of flux as the producers
make frequent software and rule updates. Simultaneously, players are changing the social landscape as they join groups, leave groups, or quit playing
the game all together. The flexibility of an ethnographic approach to these
three initial questions afforded the opportunity to discover and pursue new
directions as various situations, social and technological, emerged during
the course of the study.

My Progression through WoW

Over 20 months in total were spent in the field which I describe as three
phases: orientation phase, social guild phase and the raiding phase. The
first phase, lasting approximately four months, was spent gaining a basic
understanding of the worlds geography, game mechanics, and how to play
my role in the game. This orientation phase concluded with my introduction into the tribal, or social, aspects of the world when I first received an
invitation into a social guild, although at that time I was not fully aware of
the distinctions between social and raiding guilds.
This invitation to a social guild marked my foray into the second phase
(the socio-cultural aspects of WoW), and allowed me to begin the long
process of gaining entry and developing the necessary relationships for the
establishment of key informants (Van Maanen, 1988). During this phase,
several members of the guild mentored me and became my virtual Sherpa, so
to speak, guiding me along my heroic journey. They taught me how to level
my avatar more efficiently through social play, and I eventually reached the
games highest level. Reaching level 80 unlocked a new type of quest called a
raid, which required 10, 25, or 40 players working collaboratively to complete.
The transformation to Raider status artificially marked the third
phase of progression. It provided access into the world of raids and raiders
and allowed me to be introduced to the elite, the upper classman of the
worlds inhabitants, privy to its unique professionalized subculture and able
to interact with some of the games most experienced and knowledgeable

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players. These are the games serious inhabitants, sometimes referred to as

power gamers (Taylor, 2006). Gaining entry into this end-game culture was
extremely time consuming, but necessary for developing a holistic understanding of the game. My active participation at this advanced level was
the key to developing relationships of trust and respect with the studies
key informants, common to rigorous ethnographic work (Hammersley &
Atkinson, 1995). During this phase, human subjects board (IRB) approval
was sought in order to ethically engage in a process of naturalistic interviews
with the Raider community in addition to several more casually oriented
participants.

Data Collection and Analysis

After receiving IRB approval, I revealed my status as a researcher to nine
players who subsequently were invited, and accepted, roles as key informants for the duration of the study. All the key informants were surprisingly
enthusiastic about participating in the study and only one quit prior to its
conclusion. Four types of data were collected for the study. Prior to IRB
approval, two data types were collected: (1) field notes, using a small application called Stickies which is like a virtual Post-It note and (2) screen
captures of the game using a function built into Mac-based computers, which
outputs a graphic file to the desktop. Following IRB approval two additional
data types were collected. Audio capture files (3) were generated during
the raids. This was necessary because the players used a third-party audio
application to quickly give verbal instructions to teammates during complex
activity as typing was too slow and cumbersome and reaction time equated
to both success and survival. Finally all the (4) in-game chat (real time text
messages) was captured using an add-on (software designed to modify
the game) called Elephant. This text-based chat data was time stamped and
later exported into Microsoft Word.
The collection effort resulted in over 300 images, over 1000 pages of
text, including field notes and chat logs, and approximately60 hours of recordings of the raid experiences. The method of analysis and the transformation
of data were based on Wolcotts (1994) qualitative research techniques for
the description, analysis, and interpretation of qualitative data, commonly
referred to as the D-A-I model. To a large extent, the analysis was concurrent with the collection effort. This allowed for the naturalistic interviews
of current events and theme to be discussed as they emerged and then
member-checked with the key informants. Later, the data were transformed
by arranging it by chat type, such as personal chat, guild chat, and raid chat.
Major events and turning points were identified from the field notes and,

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because all the data was time stamped, a detailed time line was constructed,
allowing the images, audio and chat to be easily cross-referenced, synthesized
and sent back to the key informants again for additional member checking.
The timeline of events helped the key informants to recall situations
and discuss their attitudes and feelings in a detailed fashion. Next, a full
narrative account of the ethnographic experience was created and shared
with the key informants in order to give one final opportunity to add their
voices to the authenticity of my account. Additional member checking with
the final narrative account was shared outside the population of study with
other MMORPG players, most of who played WoW, but not on the same
realm as the population of the study. The final narrative account was analyzed through the lens of the SLP and Stebbins(2007) six criteria of Serious
Leisure.

The Framework
The Serious Leisure Perspective (SLP) arranges leisure activity into three
primary forms; causal, serious, and project-based. Stebbins (2007) defined
serious leisure involvement as, the systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer core activity sufficiently substantial, interesting, and
fulfilling in nature for the participant to find a career there acquiring and
expressing a combination of its special skills, knowledge, and experience
(p. xii).
At first glance, utilizing the current SLP map may lead to the framing
of videogames, MMORPGs, and specifically WoW involvement, as play
for the purpose of inquiry into the behaviors and culture of participation
surrounding games. However, play is mapped and classified, correctly or
incorrectly, under casual leisure activities, and defined as, immediately,
intrinsically rewarding, relatively short-lived pleasurable core activity, requiring little or no special training to enjoy it (Stebbins, 1997, p. 18). Most of
these causal leisure descriptors appeared significantly distant from the levels
of participant involvement observed during this study, particularly from
the Raider community. That fact led me to believe that the classification of
MMORPG involvement for some players appeared closer to the classification
of a hobby and thus, fell inside the domain of serious leisure. In order to
confirm (or at least solidify) or reject this consideration for the classification of MMORPG involvement as a hobby, and as opposed to play, I used
the six qualities of serious leisure: (1) perseverance, (2) career, (3) effort,
(4) lasting benefits, (5) a unique ethos and (6) a strong identification of the
activity (Stebbins, 2007, p. 11) to situate MMORPG involvement inside the
SLP framework. The following section details each of these six qualities and
their relationship to MMORPG involvement in effort to demonstrate the

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close alignment to their classification as a serious leisure hobby for deeply

involved participants, as opposed to the casual orientation of play, as framed
in the SLP mapping schema.

Six Qualities of Serious Leisure

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1.

Perseverance

The first characteristic of serious leisure is the occasional need to persevere, which Stebbins (2007) defined as the quality of sticking it through
thick and thin, [and] from conquering adversity (p. 11). Adversity abounds
in The World of Warcraft and perseverance is a requirement for the serious
player. Informants revealed that perseverance is first demonstrated in WoW
participation during the long process (lasting several months) of leveling an
avatar from level one all the way to the maximum available level.
In this phase, the game relies on a traditional two-part heroic narrative motif where the unskilled hero must persevere through a long series
of mini-challenges and then face a major challenge. Conceptualizing these
smaller challenges as a set, this phase serves as a training period required
to provide the hero with the necessary expertise and resilience needed to
push forward and eventually face the games elite bosses, representative of
the heros primary challenge during a particular session. Across the journey
from Noob (a new and unskilled player) to Raider (a professional monster killer), a player must be willing to endure all developmental challenges
during the process of leveling. When there are no more levels to attain, the
hero gains admittance to the endgame raid quests and a new and more challenging form of perseverance begins. Similar to the classical tradition, the
heros quest in WoW is a circular journey of birth, death, rebirth, and return
(Campbell, 1949/2004) and in WoW; the players return is marked by entry
into the community of Raiders.
The quality of perseverance was most observable in raid sessions, when
challenge is at its greatest. For example, a raid group I participated in first
confronted the fearsome skeletal ice dragon, Sindragosa, on the night of July
27, 2010. That night we made six unsuccessful attempts to defeat her, each
resulting in a wipe, a situation where the entire raid group is killed. In the
game, death is a rather common occurrence and a fellow party member (i.e.,
a healer) must resurrect the deceased players, or players must run back, as a
ghost, to the place where the death occurred in order to recover their body.
Following a wipe, the group stops, reassesses their failure, and considers
what to do next. This situation of collaborative learning from initial failure(s)
occurred frequently throughout the raiding phase of the study.

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On August 3, 2010, the group returned to Sindrogosa and defeated her

on the second attempt. This episodic process of failure, followed by individual
and collaborative learning, may help to unlock some of the potential learning
outcomes available through videogame play; the Holy Grail for educational
games research and for serious games research (i.e., games designed with
a purpose beyond entertainment). And for the raid team, perseverance
ended in a triumph over the dragon, made the experience more fulfilling,
and strengthened the social bonds between the members of the raid team.

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2.

Leisure Careers

The second of Stebbins (2007) distinguishing qualities is finding a leisure

career within the activity. This career quality is defined by the turning
points and stages of achievement or involvement (Stebbins, 2007, p. 11).
Recognizable delineations of advancement within some serious leisure
activities may be more clearly marked than within others, such as lack of
a ranking system among amateur fisherman in contrast with the explicit
ranking structure provided by the handicap index of the United States Golf
Association for amateur golfers. Regardless, the sense of career, or progression, could originate internally through self-assessment or externally from
the community of adherents, or both.
This career-like quality becomes increasingly complex when considering online role-playing games. First, one must consider if we are discussing
the player in the real world, or an avatars role inside the synthetic world,
or the projection of consciousness between the two. Gee (2003) described
this issue in videogame research as three separate identities at stake: 1) the
player, 2) the avatar and 3) a projective identity, which bridges the two. Given
that this study was bound inside the game, the analysis here will be limited
to the virtual space and the associated projective identity.
WoW players develop a sense of in-game, career-like advancement
across multiple dimensions, such as with the leveling progression (1 to 80).
For example, whenever players advance in level they hear a ding in their
speakers, signifying their achievement. This alerts the player that they should
seek out their class trainer to teach them new and more advanced abilities,
increasing their repertoire of possible actions. New powers and talents
accompany the progression in level and advancement in a virtual career as
a warrior, mage or healer.
One key informant, Kish, the hunter, said, Its the progression that
keeps me playing. After I level this toon to 80, I want to do all the raid quests
if I can find a solid team of good players. Kish worked hard to level up to 80

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and then started leading raid groups. Eventually, she was promoted to coguild master for her effort, which represents another career-like structure
inside the social aspect of the game, guild ranks.
The notion of a career trajectory is additionally reinforced in the social
milieu within a hierarchal structure of a guild. In a game, guild membership
becomes the conceptual equivalent of a team, club, or family. Guilds are
top-down systems consisting of one leader, a guild master (GM), a number
of officers (generically defined), and a base of rank-and-file players. These
positions are internally maintained and socially determined by the GM and
officers and are not based on any statistical game mechanic. Progression in
a guild is fully at the discretion of the GM or officers. The rankings of guild
members are purely a social structure, but serve as the basis for a players
access to guild resources such as currency and gear. The process of becoming more socially accepted by the guilds leaders and thus, the opportunity
to gain greater access to the guilds resources, reinforces the career concept
in the same fashion as in the workplace by reflecting a path of promotion.
In addition, with guild hierarchy and the leveling system as an indicator of career advancement, avatars also are encouraged to acquire one or
more professions beyond their primary class-related heroic duties, as a mage,
hunter, or other character. These professional choices include for example,
blacksmithing, leatherworking, tailoring, alchemy, etc. These professional
skill proficiencies are represented in numeric values ranging from 1-450
(currently), but they are also defined in descriptive career terms starting with
apprentice and progressing all the way up to grand master. These professional
descriptors offer players a clear sense of professional advancement and mark
the salient waypoints along their virtual careers in a promotion-like system.
A players guild status, in conjunction with professional advancement and
leveling, reinforces the players conception of their career within the virtual
world, and although unusual, aligns to Stebbins notion of a career-like quality in serious leisure involvement.
3.

Significant Personal Effort

The third quality indicative of a serious leisure pursuit is the adherents, significant personal effort using their specially acquired knowledge, training,
experience, or skill, and, indeed at times, all four (Stebbins, 2007, p. 11). In
WoW, evidence of significant personal effort by a player is visually depicted
with the addition of a title to the players name. For example, if Calgon
invested the time and effort to explore the entire world of Azeroth, he would
earn the Explorer title and I could display my name as Calgon the Explorer

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to the other players who encountered me in the world. Titles in the game
signify various types of personal achievements in the game content. A player
decides which of their earned titles they wish to display to the world.
Successfully completing the most difficult raid quests also results in
the granting of titles to the raid team. For example, in the WoW expansion
The Wrath of the Lich King, the final raid quest line leads a group of players through a series of extremely difficult encounters to the final epic battle
against the Lich King. After defeating the Lich King the players receive the
title King Slayer. At the time of writing, this was one of the most coveted
titles in the game and signified that a player had mastered the games the
most difficult content.
I observed, participated, and struggled with one group for four months,
two nights each week from 9:00 pm to midnight, in hopes of earning the
King Slayer title. Our raid leader, and a key informant, Jacob, attempted to
keep us motivated by saying, Were going to be king slayers if its the last
thing we do! in a thick southern accent. However, most nights ended with
a deep sense of frustration, followed by a group assessment of what we did
better than the previous time and where we still needed improvement. After
a month of failures, Jacob told us all to watch a video of the final fight on
YouTube. The video demonstrated where to position our avatars and how to
use our skills based each players unique role. Online research is a common
problem solving technique for acquiring the special knowledge needed for
success in WoW.
In order to be successful in defeating the Lich King, all 10 of us in
the raid group had to perform perfectly in our specific roles. There was no
margin for error, but even after watching the video, we died repeatedly. The
group held the knowledge but lacked the hand-eye skill to execute it. Over
time, and after many failures, the group persevered, the necessary skill was
mastered, and eventually, the significant group effort was rewarded with the
King Slayer title. Titles are permanent and prominently displayed above a
toons head. I wore mine with great pride; I was Ana (my toon at that time),
King Slayer.
4.

Durable Benefits

The forth quality of Serious Leisure involves the lasting outcomes derived
from the activity for the participant. The SLP includes eight categories
of durable benefits: self-actualization, self-enrichment, self-expression,
regeneration or renewal of self, feelings of accomplishment, enhancement
of self-image, social interaction and belongingness, and lasting physical
products of the activity (e.g., a painting, scientific paper, piece of furniture)
(Stebbins, 2007, p. 11). Working through the list in reverse order, I wondered

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about the applicability of a physical product as I considered the physicality

of an avatar. Stebbins example of a scientific paper, if written in the digital
age on a computer, is no more physical than an avatar. Rather, I interpreted
his meaning to be the lasting qualities for the writer. Taken in this way, an
avatar becomes equally as lasting as the digitally written paper.
Perhaps the SLP requires further refinement to include the digital
products afforded by a postmodern and information-based society where
products often hold permanence in rather ethereal formats, and still potentially retain their lasting meanings for the creator. This type of ontological
question is raised by scholars of virtual worlds, suggesting that the concept of
synthetic may be more accurate, as opposed to virtual (Castronova, 2007),
as it connotes a pejorative meaning of less than real.
Stebbins also identified the benefits of social interaction and belongingness as durable. Here too, the durability aspect is unknown given the
limitations of the study and the newness of these play-spaces. A few players
indicated that their guild friends were a significant reason to continue to play
but these players did not participate in the raids and more closely aligned
with the SLPs category of casual leisure. The raiders interviewed in the
study identified more with personal feelings of accomplishment represented
through the acquisition of achievements and obtaining the most powerful
equipment the game offered.
Raiding players most frequently stated that the most satisfying aspect
of playing WoW was in developing their toons. Jacob, for example explained,
I like making new toons and figuring out what makes them tick. I enjoy
leveling solo and then getting into the raids to get the best gear. After Im
geared I try to do all the achievements. Other raiders echoed Jacobs strategy of avatar-actualized enjoyment as well. I conceptualized this as a form
of self-actualization mediated via an avatar, or more simply stated avatar
actualization. During the raiding phase of the game, the social and personal
goals become interwoven because achievements and equipment may only be
gained through collaborative play and the development of these relationships
and acquisitions spans a long period of in-game time. The desire for personal
accomplishment and advancement necessitate reoccurring episodic collaborative engagements and, as a byproduct, online friendships often emerge.
Although this studys lens remained focused inside the game, other
MMORPG research examined players lives outside the game. Castronova
(2007), for example, suggested the possibility of enhancement of self-image
in online worlds, specifically around issues of body image. He claimed that
the anonymity provided by an avatar allows a freedom of expression, as
well as freedom from ridicule, often experienced as a result of obesity or a
physical disability. He asserted that synthetic world participation might, in

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71

fact, be casting a starkly critical eye on the negative superficialities found

in the offline world. His suggestion is that in the game world, an individual
is judged on the merit of his or her own actions and is not judged on their
physical appearance. He also suggested that these online games appear
to be providing a form of reprieve from social alienation. Little is known
about the long-term impact of MMOG participation or how durable any of
its benefits may be. But enhancement of self-image is an exciting area of
inquiry for virtual world research.

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5.

Unique Ethos

The identification of a unique ethos emerging from the activity is the fifth
recognized quality of serious leisure involvement (Stebbins, 2007). He
defined ethos as, the spirit of the community of serious leisure participants, as manifested in shared attitudes, practices, values, beliefs, goals and
so on (Stebbins, 2007, p. 12). The realized attributes of practices and goals
are manifested in the self-determinism and commitment to the continuous
development of toons by the participants in the raiding community.
The continuous development during the raiding phase of the game
broadly depends on the acquisition of better armor and equipment, which
are necessary for success in progressively difficulty content. In addition to
this consumptive aspect of perpetually seeking better equipment, players
also demonstrated a commitment to understanding their role in the most
efficient and effective manner. This process in the WoW culture is referred
to as Theory Crafting, where players posit the best ways to attain more
damage, healing, or similar improvements. Theory crafting, although frequently discussed in guild chat, is more often found outside the game on
WoW related fan sites such as ElitestJerks.com or WoWwiki.com as well as
in instructional videos on YouTube. The community of adherents produces
the content for these sites, and collectivity it represents a substantial body
of work. In fact WoW wiki is the second largest wiki on the Internet after
Wikipedia (McGonigal, 2010).
Players test the knowledge acquired from these meta-game sites with
their avatars and the outcomes frequently get posted back to the meta-game
sites in a process of organically driven peer review. The following is a reply
to a post on Elites Jerks about the best design for an arcane mage:
Kel Sjet: That pure single target DPS build, is pretty wrong unfortunately EDIT: To explain this point a bit better. My quandary is with your
allocation of points to Magic absorption and Magic attunement instead
of Student of the mind. Why? Simple.
Even if it is a minor increase in mana, it is still more of an increase in
mana over Magic attunement and absorption. Increased range, while
nice, is not necessary at all. Arcanists from the BC age made by very well

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with just 30 yards. And as far as the increased magic resistance, while
nice, will not really make much of a difference except for in perhaps 1
fight out of the 20+ in the game right now. One of the key tenants of any
arcane spec is more mana = more damage, since the one of the single
most powerful aspects of the Arcane spec is its ability to convert mana
into damage at will.
To this effect, leaving every other point as it is, place 3/3 SotM, leaving
you with 1 point for flavor. Personally, I place the last talent in Slow
since it is such a classic Arcane ability. Though at that point, it really is
up to you.(<http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t42876-arcane_thread/>).

This type of post demonstrates the commitment of some players to

unlocking the hidden math under the games hood. The range of topics is
expansive and covers issues such as where to go, which quests will offer the
most salient rewards in the form of loot or achievements, and the best ways
to setup the toon in terms of skill sets and the use of talents and spells; in
essence, everything a player needs to know in order to advance their toon
in the most efficient way. This ethos is one of efficiency of action, the return
on investment for time and effort spent.
At the core, it is an ethos of learning both in an experiential sense but
also, in some cases, in a more scholarly sense of publishing and peer review.
Personal development is acquired through various means such as the experience of the worlds designed trials and tribulations from shared experiences
with other players in chat or in Raids, direct instruction from another player,
and also through the use of and discussion about the multitude of available
meta-game sites.
While the unique self-directed ethos of WoW encompasses the distinctive spirit and character of an online community, its voluntary and diffuse
nature closely resembles Unruhs (1979, 1980) conception of the social world.
The development of these instructional resources in WoWs meta-game
demonstrates the emergence of a form of intrinsically motivated scholarship.
This conceptualization of Amateur Scholarship in virtual world participation
again merits additional attention for future studies but also fits with other
intellectual products developed in serious leisure pursuits, such as amateur
astronomy (Stebbins, 1980).
6.

Strong identification

The final quality of serious leisure is that, participants in serious leisure

tend to strongly identify with their chosen pursuit (Stebbins, 2007, p. 12).
This quality is most overt in the attendees of the WoW conventions like
Blizcon (2010). This fan convention is put on by the producer of WoW,
Blizzard Entertainment and held in Los Angeles every summer for WoW
fans from around the world. Blizcon was attended by 8 000 fans in its first

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year, 2005, and reached 27 000 participants in 2010. The two-day convention was streamed live and available for remote experience on Pay-Per-View.
Although the viewership data is unavailable, the fact that it continued from
2009 into 2010 suggests that it was economically viable for the producers
(2010). Inside the convention, WoW players come to see sneak previews of
planned changes and expansions to the virtual world. They participate in
cosplay (costumed) events and live action games designed around the mythos
and culture of the virtual game.
Although this study was bound inside the game and by design avoided
any inquiries into the participants lives beyond what they naturally revealed
in chat while inside the game, time investments of over 40 hours a week
for many of the raiders (around 18 players) in my guild suggest a strong
identification with the activity occurring. Other players demonstrated their
identification level when they logged in and out of the game. For example,
one player commented while logging on, Hey guild! Hows is everybody
tonight? Its so good to be back. I feel like Im finally home. Other comments referenced sadness in leaving the game such as, Gotta go. RL (real
life) keeps interrupting my fun. Lol, or my personal favorite, Nite all,
Im getting some agro from the wife. Agro is game jargon for making the
monsters aggressive. In this case, the players time spent in the game had
apparently irritated his wife and she was aggressively attempting to get
him to logoff. Stebbins (2007) suggested that serious leisure often comes
with costs, such as in relationships with friends or family who do not share
participants passion for the activity. More work on the issue of selfishness
is needed in SLP research.

Conclusions and Discussion

The two primary goals of this paper were to introduce readers to an ethnographic study set in a virtual world and to determine the applicability
of framing online MMOG participation within the SLP. The most salient
challenge was describing the complexity and scope of WoW participation
without becoming overly verbose with the jargon or technical aspects of the
game. The readers prior knowledge of WoW, or possibly other MMORPGs,
will most likely dictate success towards that goal. I attempted to provide a
descriptive and epic portrait of a unique online community and the culture
of play in order to entice leisure researchers to consider the intriguing new
arenas of MMOGs, videogames, and online social networks as viable spaces
for future leisure research.
The intention of the usage of the SLP was not to prove that WoW
participation is or is not a serious leisure activity, although I think that
there is sufficient evidence that some players, specifically the Raiders,

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met Stebbins(2007) criteria. Rather, the intention in using the SLP was
as a conceptual framing tool for the purpose of analysis, interpretation,
and the description of a complex technologically mediated, fantasy-based
community. The SLP was selected because it exclusively related to leisure
participation and a broad range of activities have previous been examined
using the framework, including a study of WoWs predecessor the MMOG,
Everquest (Silverman, 2005).
The six qualities of serious leisure were applicable to the data collected
on WoW involvement. The Raider community met all six criteria and allowed
for classification as hobbyists. However, other possible orientations to the
game, such as play, must also be considered and recognized. Some players in
the study did not demonstrate the intensity or deep interest that was observed
in the raiders. Maarti, the druid, communicated that she had no desire to
be a Raider but she liked exploring the world and chatting with friends. For
her, the game was used primarily as a space for socializing. She and others
like her were simply playing in the casual leisure sense as defined by the SLP.
Similarly, the consistency of a participants orientation is perhaps too
rigidly defined by the SLP. How can the framework account for an individuals life context and circumstance, which may potentially shift ones
level of commitment across multiple episodic involvements from a state of
casual engagement to serious engagement and even back again to casual?
This type of situational orientation should be more clearly addressed by
the SLP. In this regard, the framework seems too rigid to accommodate an
individuals progression in, or loss of, interest in their chosen activity. This
aspect of an individuals trajectory in an activity is important and has been
more adequately addressed by other theories such as leisure specialization
(Bryan, 2000; Scott & Shafer, 2001). Perhaps a unification of the SLP and
leisure specialization would address this issue.
The scope and nature of the game is so dauntingly broad, both technically and socially, that analysis through the SLP provided a useful means
for framing the study into manageable chunks. The SLP also worked well
for framing the activity conceptually for an audience unfamiliar, or with
limited knowledge, of MMOG involvement. It provided a means to describe
the complexity of the games design and player interactions compartmentalized by the six criteria. In this sense, I found the SLP more useful as a
conceptual framework as opposed to Stebbins description of the SLP as a
theoretical framework. In framing the activity through the lens of the SLP
and oriented inside the virtual world, I hope that the reader takes away a
deeper and perhaps new understanding of virtual world involvement from
the perspective of a player and the meaning it potentially holds for them.

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Of the six qualities of serious leisure, the framework provided a lens

to accentuate some peculiarities of WoW involvement and may call for its
expansion or alteration. For example, the second quality, a career in the
activity, showed the need for inclusion or consideration of virtual careers.
Similarly, the fourth quality, durable benefits, requires more clarification as
to the definition of durable. Perhaps the concept of lasting, in lieu of durable,
could account for the virtual products of cyber-leisure.
Personally, Im most drawn to the deep connections between leisure
and learning found in meta-game aspects of the study. This beckons me to
examine intrinsically motivated learning, which I refer to as the amateurscholarship emerging from leisure that is based online. In this modern society
where many people of all ages and education levels are publishing written
works online, and only a few for profit, I wonder if these cyber-citizens are
reading and writing for nothing more than intrinsic reward? New literacy
and forms of leisure are emerging and connected by online activity; they are
multicultural, globalized and under-researched. But before I start postulating
on that topic, Calgon, the hero, is being called on to take me on the special
journey into Azeroth, the place I want to be. Calgon, take me away!

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Nicholas A. Holt
Calgon, Take Me Away: Identifying Qualities of Serious Leisure in Virtual
World Involvement Inside The World of Warcraft

Abstract
Calgon, the bath-wash, claims to restore ones spirit and its iconic tagline,
Calgon, take me away! echoed through the airwaves into Americas
consumptive consciousness throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Today, the same
slogan takes a new and definitively postmodernist meaning in my life. Calgon
is a hero and the me of my virtual life inside the massively multiplayer
role-playing game, The World of Warcraft. This paper discusses the utility and
peculiarities of framing a two-year cyber-ethnographic study of the virtual
worlds in habitants and customs within Stebbins six identified qualities of
Serious Leisure.

Nicholas A. Holt
Calgon, Take Me Away (Calgon, emmne-moi): Identifier les qualits
de loisir srieux dans la participation au monde virtuel dans The World of
Warcraft

Rsum
Calgon, le gel nettoyant, qui prtend restituer lesprit, et son slogan emblmatique: Calgon, emmne-moi! a fait cho travers les ondes dans la
conscience des consommateurs en Amrique tout au long des annes 1970 et
1980. Aujourdhui, le mme slogan prend un sens nouveau et indniablement
postmoderniste dans ma vie. Calgon est un hros, il est le moi de ma vie
virtuelle lintrieur du jeu en ligne massivement multijoueur World of
Warcraft. Cet article porte sur lutilit et les particularits dlaboration
dune tude cyberethnographique de deux ans des habitants et des coutumes
du monde virtuel au sein des six qualits de loisirs srieux identifies par
Stebbins.