For the past 9 months, I have ben rather active in playing MapleStory as part of my research. I have invested time and money into building up my virtual MapleStory character to become both powerful (Level 48) and rather nice looking. Now my attention has turned to the latest craze and talk in town...... WORLD OF WARCRAFT!I have heard so much about it, but has always been reluctant to jump onboard it because of my already huge effort investment in MapleStory... But still I decide to take and leap and bulldoze my way in.
What caused me to make this jump across to WoW?
1. For the sake of research. I want to find out what's the big hoohaa going on about this new game which has close to 9 million subscribers.
2. Because two of my good friends (Jhee and Pascosenior) also entered the game and I felt drawn to try it out too. I don't want to be left out.
3. I feel that WoW is a "more matured" game comparatively with MapleStory. Now I am slashing monsters rather than just snails and mushrooms. I have "grown up"!
What are the implications about this for youths whom go into WoW?
1. Social factor - Many of their classmates may jumped into WoW and they do not want to feel left out. Imagine everyone talking about it in class and they can't connect with their classmates!
2. Sense of achievement - Every kids want to grow up. Digital immigrants (You and me) feel grown up when we have transited to doing greater things i.e. promotion, new education levels. For digital natives (the kids), they feel grown up when they have jumped from a seeminly childish game to something more matured. BEWARE!! Matured games tend to come with more violent or mature themes in-game too i.e. violence, blood, gore, sexual content.
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