Raids are a carefully choreographed dance of destruction.
Raids are large-scale adventures where groups of 10 to 40 players work together to defeat huge monsters, overcome deadly traps, and solve ingenious puzzles, sometimes all at once, as a team. In raids, players typically play either a protective, damaging, or healing class and all involved must perform nearly perfectly to be successful. When new raids are released, the best players of the world often spend every waking moment attempting to overcome their challenges. Accusations of spying and other intrigue between top guilds is commonplace even among groups that are competing only for pride.
Research Connection: Social Cohesion Required
Chen, Mark G. “Communication, coordination, and camaraderie in World of Warcraft.” Games and Culture 4.1 (2009): 47-73.
It is difficult to overstate the level of collaboration that raiders demonstrate. A single raid can often include ten or more major encounters, each with its own set of intricate challenges. A typical encounter might require dozens of hours to learn the first time, and that is assuming everyone is playing well and not making counterproductive errors (Chen 2009). Each failure can be costly, requiring each member to pay currency to repair their equipment to bring it back to pristine condition. Those failures can get expensive, and tempers can flare on teams without high levels of trust.
Research Connection: Shared References and the World of Warcraft Community
Bryant, Heather White. “Social Interactions of Adult World of Warcraft Players: A Grounded Theory Study.” PhD diss., Capella University, 2020.
While levels of coordination and collaboration between members of a Raid team is high and a source of positive social affect, raiding contributes to the larger culture of World of Warcraft through shared references as well (Bryant 2020). Adults enjoy sharing remarkable content, and raiding content is implicitly remarkable. In some cases, shared references from raid-related content can reach beyond hard-core players and touch pop culture as well as in the cases of "Moar Dots" and "Leeroy Jenkins."
Moar Dots!
Leeroy Jenkins
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