World of Warcraft can contribute to learning life lessons in choice making, limits, uses of power, and community life. MMORPGs are an environment that when used appropriately can be effective in building character and self-esteem.
"MMOG allow us to be an object of our own fantasy and participate in a world with very loose rules that allow us expose us to experiences when we want to experience them” (Batchelder, 2005). You craft an avatar, name it, decide what skills it will have and quest through a series of challenges in order to level. By using this safe environment, choice making skills can be learned without harm. You have many choices in what your character will be and do. You choose whether you are Alliance or Horde and what race and class you will be. Will your character damage or heal, use spells or melee, fight with the environment or with other people or do some of both. In all these ways you earn experience allowing you to move forward to explore new lands. In playing you kill mobs and have to learn the necessary limits in order to survive.
You also learn trade skills to have money to buy the necessary items that make your character more effective and playing more fun. You need to have money to repair your gear when you die and to buy mounts to make travel faster. This teaches the value of working for money and spending it wisely. You will encounter others who ask for money and you can pity them for not having learned to earn it.
You will meet friends and have the choice to decide whether you want to hang with them or move on elsewhere. You can join a guild or create one and see the benefits and perils of community life. There are many quests and all instances and raids you are unable to do alone. This teaches, that like in real life, we need to learn to get along and that working together makes success possible. You will find that not working together causes real peril for your group. Your place in the group and how you play your character and pay attention to the surroundings is very important.
According to Nick Yee who surveyed 30,000 MMORPG gamers, gaming is not exclusively for teenagers. The data also included college students; early adult professionals; middle-aged homemakers; as well as retirees. What is remarkable is that these seemingly disparate demographic groups are often collaborating and working together to achieve the same goals. “This finding is particularly striking given that these disparate demographic groups seldom collaborate in any real life situation” (Yee, 2006, p. 9).