Community and Study of Player Interaction
See also: Social interaction via MMORPGs and emergent gameplayIn addition to playing the game itself and conversing on discussion forums provided by Blizzard, World of Warcraft players often participate in the virtual community in creative ways, including fan artwork and comic strip style storytelling.
Blizzard garnered criticism for its decision in January 2006 to ban guilds from advertising sexual orientation preferences. The incident occurred after several players were cited for "harassment" after advocating a group that was a gay-straight alliance. Blizzard later reversed the decision to issue warnings to players promoting LGBT-friendly guilds.
On October 7, 2010 World of Warcraft reached a subscriber base of over 12 million players. Since May 2011, the number of players playing had decreased by 10% from 11.4 million to 10.3 million. Blizzard's CEO Mike Morhaime said that the reason was probably due to a drop-off in the Eastern markets. In 2012, senior producer John Lagrave told Eurogamer that the drop in subscriptions may've also been attributed to the recent release of BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic.
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Famous quotes containing the words community, study, player and/or interaction:
“It never was in the power of any man or any community to call the arts into being. They come to serve his actual wants, never to please his fancy.”
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“UG [universal grammar] may be regarded as a characterization of the genetically determined language faculty. One may think of this faculty as a ‘language acquisition device,’ an innate component of the human mind that yields a particular language through interaction with present experience, a device that converts experience into a system of knowledge attained: knowledge of one or another language.”
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