From Disbelief to Genuine Interest

At the initial conception of this project, we as a group discussed the possible reactions in-game players might demonstrate when we introduced our translation service. Among the most common expected responses were questions motivated by curiosity or simply silence from lack of interest.

We were pleasantly surprised when we encountered much more varied responses from the players.  One player we met on the Alliance faction prior to our successful implementation WoWScribe programme badgered us about whether our service was in fact real. We had no idea what would have led the player to have doubts about our sincerity. The player logged off before we could ask for the reason for the disbelief.

Another player remarked outright on what s/he considered an inadequate translation service, despite having no experience using our service in the first place:
7/30 18:21:10.527  Faelinä whispers: Ah man I thought we had finally found a way to break the language barrier =/

Almost all the players in the first session who wanted to make use of the translation service expressed a desire to ‘test’ the service by relaying a message of greeting to another player on the other faction they already knew. (It can be imagined that the delivery of the message could later be  confirmed by the first player because of other channels of communication available between those two players.) In many ways, this mirrored behaviour expected from those utilizing a communication device such as a telephone for the very first time.  It can be understood that the approaches made towards our translation service reflected the technological characteristic of the method of communication involved in the service. While not a startling discovery in itself, the first session proved our service could begin to attract the attention  precisely for what it was intended to function as.

- Timothy

Tools of the Trade

In order to record our conversations with various players, we had two options at the beginning. We could write down the conversations or take screen-shots. Both presented problems. The first option required one of the members to take down by dictation or otherwise the conversations which at times proceeded quite quickly. The second option would take up much hard drive space, with the added difficulty of being unable to edit the contained text easily.

The problem resolved itself soon enough when our group member Max found an add-on application to the WoW executable. The programme, WoWScribe, allowed players to record all conversations held in-game. Unfortunately, we encountered some initial technical problems which forced us to lose all records of our initial session. Despite the loss of our data from that session, we have managed to master usage of the programme and every session since then has been documented.

- Timothy

We are Keepers of the Kode

wow, things are going better than i expected.  I really thought that it would be weeks until people took our WoW interfaction communication service seriously.  Instead, when we put in our advert for the service, the orders came rolling in.  However, i recall our first “customer” ended up being a naysayer, he even dropped a few expletives, but we showed him wrong.  Quite a few people were interested in our service.  Most wanted to invite others into a duel.  The only real difficulty we ran into is when the player on the receiving end of the message was not online.  However for the most part, when our services were needed, we were successful.

Today we had a extra fulfilling conversation between two players.  It was the longest exchange we ever had.  They must have fought something together because they complimented each other’s spell powers.  They then proceeded to invite each other for further future quests.

I also think our service is catching on.  The players who used our services the other day returned.  They also said that they would tell their friends.  We, the group, are debating if we should allow other users into the experiment and see if it would catch on as a new in-game phenomenon.  Many other players commented on how our idea was novel and seems like a good thing.

In the future we might vary our results a bit.  We could try some deliberate sabotage and see what will happen.

-Tom

The first day!

Today, with all the kinks worked out, we finally sat down for our first advertising session.  I was on AllyHerald while Tom controlled HordeHerald.  We advertised our agency in chat by saying:

Speak to Horde members for the first time!  Interested?  Whatever you want to say, PM the Horde character’s name to “AllyHerald” and if we’re around we’ll hook you up!

I had expected us to have to wait up to a week before anyone was in a situation to use our service because I assumed that at first it would take some time for players to internalize our service, and then more time for any of the players who had seen our ads to get in a situation where they would contact us while we were online.  So I was amazed when we immediately got numerous requests!

Because our service was such a new idea, most of the uses were testing us out and commenting on the idea.  My favorite communication of the day was when the alliance character Ezetta had us tell a Horde character “Wave at me and /guffaw.” (since emotes are the only way horde and alliance can communicate)  After we delivered the message, Ezetta told us that he didn’t know the Horde character who had been standing right next to him, but that he was testing us. And we passed the test!  The Horde character did wave at him!

-Max