Posts with tag library

For so many World of Warcraft players, the game is all about connections. It was connections (a glowing recommendation from gaming industry insider, WoW player, and previous interviewee Liz Danforth) that led us to contact Australian librarian Ellen Forsyth for an interview (not coincidentally connecting even more dots, WoW-playing educators and innovators Peggy Sheehy and Lucas Gillispie, in the process). And it's connections that Forsyth draws for a living in her work as a professional librarian who both studies and advocates for gaming in the public libraries -- that's right, gaming for the people!

"Libraries, games, reading, content creation, stories and a few other things as well" -- that's how Forsyth's Twitter profile characterizes her interests, a fairly delectable concoction for the typical WoW Insider reader. We played the WoW card to tempt Forsyth into chatting with us about the regular academic symposia she moderates in Azeroth (the Ironforge library, to be exact), the growing influence of games as a public library resource, and the sweeping imaginative and technological vistas opening up as more and more readers discover the parallel worlds of gaming -- and of course, World of Warcraft.

While the level 90 heroic versions aren't available on the beta servers yet, MMO-Champion and Wowhead both took a look into the lower level version of Scarlet Monastery to see all the revamps. The current four wings of Scarlet Monastery have been slimmed down into two wings, the Scarlet Cathedral and the Scarlet Halls, removing most of the unnecessary trash while keeping what made the monastery a great set of dungeons to begin with.

Scarlet Cathedral now starts with the graveyard. Interrogator Vishas is no longer there; it's just Bloodmage Thalnos, now outside the mausoleum. Before Thalnos among the mobs are Scarlet Flamethrowers, who drop explosive cannisters that players can use to damage other mobs.

Apparently the great WoW Ladies LJ community is full of librarians (who knew?), and they've pointed to this interesting article about a panel that includes a short presentation about World of Warcraft, and how libraries can benefit from providing resources about the game. Their numbers are a little off, in terms of players and how much they pay per month, but their reasoning is right on-- there are lots of reading resources online about the game (*ahem*, that's us!), and sites like WoWWiki and even GameFAQs (fine, laugh if you want) can be perfect for getting people who don't usually do much writing to try putting their thoughts into words on a page.

I'm usually iffy on using games for education, because usually the people trying to do it don't have the first clue about what games really are. But something like this-- asking a beginning writer to use their game knowledge to make a guide or analyze gameplay-- seems much more well-founded and beneficial. And if all these librarians are part of the nine million people who play WoW, then this definitely seems like a great idea-- use common ground to help teach reading and learning skills.

Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean WoW Insider should be bookmarked on every library computer (although, now that it's been mentioned...). But it's cool to see librarians using their knowledge of Azeroth to help teach real-world skills.