A sincere interview invitation—do me a favor and you can get 500 WoW gold!

I am an MSc International Marketing student at King’s College London.

As a player of World of Warcraft myself, I wanted to carry out a dissertation study that examines how people can be freed from the constraints of the market logic in a videogame environment and how much freedom they can get when engaging with this game. Personally, I like this game because it offers me a good way of escaping the reality and it brings me so much fun. But in addition to the gameplay, I am also very interested in the fan communities where people share so many innovative ideas and creative fan arts about WoW. This creative and active fan culture in WoW makes fan communities increasingly powerful and uncontrollable, so that’s the reason why I would like to look into a topic about consumer emancipation. Hence, my research is dedicated to find out whether there is any creative activity that can emancipate players from the gaming logic of leveling up and getting the highest achievement. I am constantly looking for activities in the game or fan creations that do not follow the normal route, but aim to achieve their own ends. These could be experiencing the game in an unexpected way, creating fan arts that reflect critical thinking, or manipulating the game to achieve some unusual purposes, etc.

However, since I have only played this game since Cataclysm, I don’t have enough knowledge about this game’s historical development and the interesting ways of game engagement. That is why I am asking for your help.

Anyone who plays World of Warcraft who is over 18 years of age and has at least one level 85 character is welcome to take part in a 40-minute online interview. As a reward, we would like to offer 500 WoW gold for each interview. Don’t worry, all the gold is earned through my gameplay under the assistance of my friend Tao. Much of it is got through my profession—herbalism and alchemy.  If you would like to participate, you can get the gold either through joining my party and trading face-to-face, or through the mail system in the game. The interview could be face-to-face through Skype or online chat through MSN or other chat software. 

All research findings reported will be on an anonymous basis and will thus not be associated with you unless you wish to be identified. Responses collected will form the basis of our research project and might be put into the final written report, so there might be a need for disclosure of the information covered in the interview to a third party.

If you are interested in my research or want to do me this little favor, please contact my email: qiaoshen.wu@kcl.ac.uk and tell me the way you would like to be interviewed, so we can make an appointment for this! Just to let you know, if you want to participate, you will also have to fill a consent form which is pretty simple. All of these could be done through the internet!

Thank you for your help ^_^! Cheers!