Observations

Link to video here: media type="youtube" key="DGVB--b8pXA" height="344" width="425" These are the several recordings which I have taken where I think would let us talk about our thesis and can serve as examples. The first scene shows the day/night cycle, the second shows the public transport through riding a bird, third is subway, and the last few scene compares the speed of mounts, all the mounts are the same speed even though their size, height, length are different. Also for flying mounts the speed of walking and flying is the same, we can say that the movement time of the mounts is distorted since we would expect the mount to move faster when flying.

Link to WoW Screenshots [|here]

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Experience from playing the game:


 * It is hard to break off time in the game when you are concentrating, especially when there isn't anyone to interfere with you and the game from the real world.
 * Almost under a hypnosis, too into trying to proceed with the game and complete different quests. You wait until you are eligible to complete a quest (yellow exclamation over the character’s head)
 * Keep anticipating what will happen next. When you first start your character is in a “starting zone” which there are more computer-made characters. You continue to play to see if you can interact with actual players’ characters.
 * Once you have a quest you are eager to complete it. Such as travel to a different location and speak to a different quest giver.
 * The day-night cycle does not affect game play
 * Loss of aura of day-night cycle, visually represented
 * The fact that it does not go completely dark during the “night” and the user is still is able to continue playing. In the real world you cannot function. (the idea of the picture of Mona Lisa, if you were given the photo most would pass it off as a replication and not be consumed by its authenticity)
 * in certain settings the night is only represented in the sky. When looking at the ground it's still green, etc- same colours as day time.When I played in different settings, I found it hard to tell that it was exactly night time unless I zoomed up at the sky
 * Also even if its night, and since its based on fantasy, the night colours aren't really realistic. The sky is sometimes pink/purple, or foggy where you can barley even recognize what the sky actually looks like. Also, even if its foggy, it's still fairly easy to get around.
 * being a third person playing the game you are not physically affected by the day-night cycle. The user is only visually stimulated, and not necessarily aware of the difference of day turning into night, and night turning into day. Therefore, the user is not affected physically by the concept of "real time" in WoW
 * WoW tries to put the use of "real world" attributes, such as time and seasons, in a fantasy world....it clashes.
 * no matter if it is day or night - shadows are always present and visible
 * even though there are lamp posts, etc - they don't exactly help or make a difference in making things easier to see. - artificial?
 * It's really interesting how the actual time on the screen is visible but VERY, VERY small!

World of Warcraft has a unique day/night system, it is not accelerated at all. One day in the game is exactly one day in the real world. Hover your mouse over the little sun/moon icon in the upper right corner, and the time shown is the same as in the PDT time zone. Frankly, I didn't like that feature. While you can still see at night (with the help of the gamma slider in the video options) the world at night just isn't as pretty, and some things are harder to find and identify, due to lack of colors. If I played on a European server, where the time would probably be set to correspond to my time zone, I would be constantly in the dark, as during the week I only play during the evenings and into the nights. This is one reason why I will probably prefer to play on the US servers, PDT is 9 hours before my time zone, and so my usual evening play sessions are in the middle of the day there. http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2004/09/world-of-warcraft-journal.html

VIRTUAL WORLDS, REAL SCIENCE Brian Vastag. Science News. Washington: Oct 27, 2007. Vol. 172, Iss. 17; pg. 264, 2 pgs

http://www.wowwiki.com/Global_cooldown#Global_cooldown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf8U5r3Gs1w

The World of Warcraft is subject to a few natural phenomenas. -Certain days, an eclipse will throw the world into darkness. -And WoW's full moon is so bright that it shines like a new sun.

In other words, while most of the time, the cycle day/night reproduces real life's day/night. There will be some times where you log into the world at noon, and realise it's nighttime... you look up and see an eclipse.

Such eclipses and full moons could easily be triggered by GMs I guess.... but then... those who really want to whine, will whine about not being able to see eclipses or fullmoons due to their restricted game timeframe.

Other then making certain night/day contents available at during the day/night. Special things could happen during these fullmoons and eclipses. Certains special quests.. or certain special mobs could only appear during these times.

A shaman quest could be "Sacrifice a human virgin when the moon is full." Then you wait for a full moon, and go kill a few players in the PvP zones! (there's bound to be a virgin among them :lol: ) http://wow.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=184678&page=7

The Problem: With any clock cycle that is a divisor of 24, if you play at same time every day, you will always see the same time ingame. This is especially disadvantageous for players that can only log on during certain times of day, such as 8 to 11 pm. Such a player would never be able to experience all times of the gaming world without changing their lifestyle. It also limits the dynamic content that can be added to the game dependent on time, since most players would never be able to participate in a quests like an attack in the early hours of dawn.

The Proposal: A slightly different, 22-hour day in the world of Azeroth. This could be implemented on just some of the servers, so the players who prefer a 24-hour system can play on the servers they enjoy.

Advantages:

- Would allow the time of day to cycle throughout the course of a month, due to the slight offset. This would allow everyone to experience all times of day, whatever time they log on.

- The day cycle would still be almost as long as real-time, allowing a realistic, gradual transition from day to night.

- Would allow for the inclusion of much more time-dependent content, such as monsters vulnerable only at night, or raids on enemy encampments at dawn. http://wow.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=184678&page=7