Guild Wars Educational Research Project

I have been playing Guild Wars for some time now and cannot wait for Guild Wars 2. I was hoping that it would come out before I started my Action Research project for my Masters Degree program in Education, but since they still haven't set a release date, I am not going to hold my breath.

Therefore, I am using the original Guild Wars for my research and I am looking for participants. Everyone seems to be using World of Warcraft (WoW) these days to show how it can be used in education to motivate students, but I have been playing Guild Wars, as I said for some time and would much rather use it.

I just started a guild with my level 20 Warrior called VirtuGuild to use for this educational project. I wanted to create a virtual guild “club” to bring members together in order to research how social skills like leadership and teamwork can be taught by using Guild Wars. These skills are needed to help people in everyday situations from group projects at school to the workplace.

When looking to address social interaction I can see many potential sub topics. One of these I will be looking into is how improving social interaction skills will help improve a persons chances in the workforce, not only when looking for a job, but once they acquire a job as well. So far in my research I have discovered that MMORPG’s encourage group interaction and involvement. They require large groups of players to cooperate and work together as a team (clan/guild). Isn’t that a skill needed in the workforce?

There are several social skills that are relevant to real-life and the workplace that I could look at for sub topics. (Conflict resolution, communication, relationships, time management, leadership, following the chain of command, and problem solving.)

Communication skills could be taught by using voice communication through a program like Skype or Ventrilo versus just pure text in the chat box. Also in researching I saw that another is modeling behavior. Looking at how different people interact within the game by watching the conversations in the chat box for a period of time and evaluating it.

Some studies I have read show that the virtual friendships that are formed while playing MMORPG’s can develop into real-life friendships and/or relationships. Being an avid gamer myself for the past twelve years I can attest to this as I have made many friends through online gaming that I keep in contact with and/or have met in real-life. This is another area for possible further research.

If you would like to help me out with my research then please visit the invitation online at: http://virtuguild.com/invitation.html.

Thanks,

LeVonda
aka Morrigan Branwyn

I hate to be a downer...ok I love to be a downer...

But while you put a good bit in about what your doing and why.

You have to relise that many people here are paranoid.

Sorry if this sounds jerky but I remember last time a guy wanted people to fill out a survey for his college work and people were asking if it was safe. So you may have difficulty getting people to sign up without a little information about yourself such as where you are getting this masters degree from as well as maybe willingness to email people from the schools email. Sorry if it all sounds jerky but some people here have put 10k plus hours into their accounts and don't want to take any chances esspecially with guild wars' (hmm is that proper formatting for the possesive of guild wars?) rich history of accounts being hacked.


Also, You don't mention if there are any extra requirements besides the over 18 blah blah blah. Will this study about normal behavior or will there be extra activities required forcing interaction and what not.

Lastly, no one will admit to currently playing runescape on your application.


edit: real lastly, Your a wammo sooo really no one will trust you.

You have some valid points End and I can understand where you are coming from. Let me do my best to answer your questions/concerns.

I am currently working on my Master's Degree in Educational Media Design and Technology from Full Sail University online (they mostly teach courses like education, technology, film making, and game design). As part of the requirements of my Masters Degree I have to do an Action Research project that allows me to actively research an area that I see a need in improving. I chose to look at a way to improve social skills that are needed in the real world, like teamwork and leadership and thought what better way to teach these skills than with Guild Wars.

This is purely educational and I am asking for volunteers. You can contact me for more information at my school email account if that makes you feel safer about not having your account hacked. It is [email protected].

There is no mention of me requiring you to be over 18 to participate, but if you are younger than 18 you would have to have parental consent as a safety measure. This is also purely anonymous as far as the research goes, so your name will at no point be used in any of my research without your consent.

No one will be forced to do anything. There will be objectives/goals to participate in to show if the level of teamwork, leadership, etc... are met.

You are incorrect that no one will admit to playing Runescape on my application because people already have admitted to either currently playing it or that they have played it in the past.

Just because I have a Warrior/Monk character does not mean that people will not trust me. I also have an Elementalist/Mesmer. If they base the level of trust because of a character then they are making generalizations or assumptions that would best be kept to themselves. That would defeat the purpose of my research on using Guild Wars to teach social skills. People who make such assumptions based on a character are not the type of people who would be using good social skills to interact with others.

Again I encourage any who may be interested in helping me with my research to either contact me by email at: [email protected] or to visit the invitation online at: http://virtuguild.com/invitation.html. The guild name is VirtuGuild and the invitation is also listed under it in game.

Thanks,

LeVonda
aka Morrigan Branwyn

I think Ends last comment was meant more of as a joke, refferencing to a running gag in Guild Wars from the early days of the game where Warriors with Monk secondary ran around with ineffective builds and using Monk enchantments to make themselves "invincible" (and of course needing to be resed every few minutes because their invincibility wasnt quite as infaliable as they wanted to beleive). These players were shunned with the name Wammo comming from the W/Mo profession tag. Nowadays its just a running gag, becasue many Warriors only use the Monk secondary as to have a hard res for others.

As for your study. I wish you luck with it, but you might find it difficult to get many players to join your Guild as many already are in a Guild /Alliance group that they want to stay with.

This is what I see as the biggest obstacle to doing this research. I might be interested in the research, but I'm not interested in leaving my guild. I'm quite certain that's how a lot of players would feel.

Honestly, I have an active Runescape accounts I tend to make silly jokes on here when I post at times I should be sleeping. Honestly, while the graphics and game play may be what I consider sub-par. They do a good job with frequent updates and consistently release new content. But, Runescape does tend to have some bad stigma with it.



As rushin said it's just a long running gag...although (s)he forgot to mention that their favorite elite was healing hands and that they normally used frenzy at the worst times.


All in all I am quite intruiged by this project. And would participate if I thought people could put up with my apparently akward sense of humor.

Anyways, good luck on your project.

Frenzy is uber pwnage though! Why would anybody NOT use it?

I actually made a sin build with frenzy xD

Got back to back 25's :\ then I got bored

Thanks Rushin for the background on the Wammo joke. I have that character from when I first started playing the game and wasn't aware that doing a certain quest would label me with the Monk second profession. I only use my Warrior skills except for to rez my teammates when possible, so I am not one of those people. I generally only play Warrior because I have always liked being the tank and rushing in to the battle. Luckily I always have my backup teammates with me to help keep me alive while I am on the front line.

Anyhow Roen and End, I can see how leaving a Guild/Alliance would be problematic as I even left mine to go out on this research venture. Perhaps I should have thought that through more. Different Guild members work together all the time in the game, so I don't really see why a person would have to leave their current Guild just to be a part of this research project as long as they were willing to work with another Guild to help with the research. Thanks for pointing that out to me. It is always great to get feedback from other people on the things that may or may not work while preparing for a project of this size.

If no one want leave the guild there is the alliance system to bypass this problem..make an alliance no?easy and fast..

Thanks Mcsnake! I was just thinking about checking into making one or more alliances.