Everquest 101

Another essay from the State of Play conference, MMORPGS in the College Classroom by Aaron Delwiche, has me thinking through some of the problems I might encounter trying to use MMOPRGS in the classroom. Delwiche's class spent a whole quarter on Everquest. The steep learning curve of the game, Everquest burnout, and even the trouble with presenting Everquest as a convincing homework assignment (not that all of my students seemed convinced that reading a book is a reasonable homework assignment) are explored in this essay.

I'm thinking that team-written group papers exploring the social aspects of several different games over a shorter period of time (say two or three weeks) might be more doable in one of my courses than a full-blown ethnographic study.