� Figure 5: World of Warcraft: The War Within character creation screen,
gameplay mechanic skill constraints, and realizes mastery of the chosen WoW’ s game systems. It is likely that through WoW’ s success at implementing varied mastery experiences, players who dedicate time to playing and completing preferred tasks feel more competent in those skills and build self-efficacy specific to WoW.
As the picture comes together for how WoW attracts different player types and activates persistence through mastery experiences, the connections to player retention and commitment also come into focus. The GUR results further suggest that someone who has high self-efficacy in a certain context is likely to have also already completed related mastery tasks in that context. And for WoW, the proof is in the pudding. Over the course of 20 years, Blizzard has released ten expansion packs to keep experienced players engaged with new content, explicitly leveraging their past mastery experiences [ 17 ].
latest expansion for $ 50 to $ 90, depending on the edition, and subscribe to the game or buy game time to unlock all content available in the game [ 20 ]. The in-game shop for modern WoW includes seven character services: Level 70 Character Boost, Character Transfer, Faction Change, Race Change, Name Change, and the option to buy a WoW Token, which can be exchanged for in-game currency [ 21 ]. Players get access to Classic WoW servers upon subscribing to the game, meaning players who subscribe to play one edition of the game, will have access to the other as part of their subscription [ 22 ]. The Classic WoW in-game store includes the same character services as modern WoW, with the Character Boost being to level 80, to get the players caught up on the highest level of content [ 22 ]. As of 2024, the modern WoW store offers nine cosmetic gear options, four toys, 17 pets, 26 mounts,
Into that bargain, Blizzard released WoW Classic servers in 2019 that even allowed players to experience the way the game was before the addition of the expansion packs [ 15 ]. Blizzard has continued to support these servers through WoW’ s third expansion pack, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, before opening up even more pre-expansion servers again in 2024 [ 18; 19 ]. Currently, players only need to buy the
� Figure 6: A gamer’ s self-efficacy is the state of their individual belief in their ability to succeed in a specific game context. It continuously influences resilience, expectations, task choice, effort, and persistence.