Narrative and Conceptual Expertise in Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games

This article aims at investigating the differences among three groups having distinct levels of experience in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG), when solving a character design task in the videogame World of Warcraft (WoW), and when planning how to use the character during gameplay. These groups consisted of inexperienced players, general experts in MMORPGs and specialized WoW domain experts. The evaluation showed that MMORPG experience developed character design abilities that could be applied to other videogames (e.g., general expertise skills). Such skills were related to the ability to identify deep features related to particular types of characters (e.g., Rogue). The results also showed that there are domain expertise specific abilities, which only experts in WoW have. Such abilities were related to building game descriptions that could be considered narrative in the cognitive sense of the term, because they include time, intention and interaction, and also to identifying WoW-specific variables.