WoW Immersion vs Presence: Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:02] dominating wild discussion lately. And if you ask anyone about how immersive wild used to be, you'll probably get the same kinds of answers. That it felt like stepping through a portal to another world. Just think about the original

[00:14] login screen. But if you ask about the last 10 years, I would reckon the answers would change. That wild doesn't feel as real. That for some reason it feels more like a video game and less like a world that you're sucked into.

[00:27] Now, Crendor and Nixxiom both released videos on this topic recently and with very different takes. So I figured we should throw our hat in the ring. And that's because everyone is blaming the same suspects. Flying, teleports, and

[00:40] But here's what we realized when we dug through decades of research and Almost everyone's been getting this topic wrong for uh over 20 years. anymore? Is actually the wrong question entirely.

[00:56] Wild's true secret sauce was something else. And one paper from 2005 is a big else. And one paper from 2005 is a big part of why we forgot it. In 2005, a paper hit the games industry with one goal. To define immersion in a

[01:12] way games could use going forward. They succeeded by the way, with almost 1200 other papers citing it since. Now their model had three components. Sensory, challenge based, and imaginative. Which all seem self-explanatory, right?

[01:26] Azeroth's beautiful landscapes hit you with a sense of scale. The ambience made it feel vibrant and real. Exploring dense caves full of mobs with an incredibly responsive combat system just invited you to lock in. And then, the

[01:40] feeling of the big empty world full of mystery and history. It wormed its way into your mind. So there you go. Wild was immersive by So there you go. Wild was immersive by all three categories, right? Job done.

[01:52] Not quite. Because this model of immersion rewrote history and it changed how the industry and all of us talk about immersion forever. And as a result, we left something behind. And for Blizzard, well, it was maybe the

[02:05] Warcraft. You see, we found something far stronger than immersion. Stronger may not be the ideal word, rather it is foundational to immersion being possible in a game like World of Warcraft. You see, you can

[02:20] get lost in a half-decent movie or video game, but you always come back out at the end, right? You leave the cinema. But the thing about WoW is it really seemed to take it one step further. Immersion just doesn't describe how

[02:33] classic hit the world harder than any game before, to the point where people would be playing WoW like 20 hours a day, often leading to medical incidents and viral news stories. And the way it felt is whenever you left Azeroth, you

[02:47] almost always wanted to leap right back into it or think about when you could. about your character, think about the people you're playing with. And people are core. We all shared a feeling that Azeroth is a real place. This sense that

[03:01] things that went on in it mattered, that things would persist, that consequences would matter, and that you're going to Azeroth rather than just playing a video game. And that one step further than immersion

[03:15] has a name. It's actually a feeling, and it is one called presence. And presence is what we've forgotten. But first, a quick Linuxy tangent for

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[05:02] bellular at boot.dev to get 25% off your entire first year on an annual plan. Presence or telepresence predates World of Warcraft and it predates just about anyone watching this video. It's actually said to come from a 1940 sci-fi

[05:15] story called Waldo, which is about a severely disabled man who invented remote-controlled robot hands to do what his own hands couldn't. It's obvious to us now, but remote control was a genuinely groundbreaking bit of tech

[05:29] back then. Waldo, with this technology, was able to Waldo, with this technology, was able to exist somewhere that his body couldn't. Now, that's the core of telepresence and it's an idea that struck with readers of

[05:42] that story. Readers like Marvin Minsky, the man who established MIT's AI Lab and course, I mean that in the computer science sense, so very much back before

[05:54] people just thought AI, "Oh, chat GPT." Now, Marvin's part of this video because of his pioneering essay on telepresence, which cemented the idea in futurist thought of workers using robots in dangerous environments, technology

[06:09] letting you exist somewhere that your body couldn't. Now, the first application of this was a little bit less inspired, but it was quite funny. It was a company called Teleport, founded in 1993, that sold video

[06:23] conferencing as teleportation, where executives could be somewhere beautiful and technology would beam them beam them away from their boring boardrooms. question that really matters for this video. How could technology make you

[06:39] feel presence? Like you were truly somewhere else. Well, in 1997, two researchers set out to figure out what this feeling was. And here's what they found. Presence has six components, and this is where things get weird and

[06:54] interesting. And that's because immersion, as we know it, was only one part of the whole thing. Another one was realism, and it came in two flavors, where presence comes from something being realistic to the real world, but

[07:07] also from something called perceptual realism, which basically is the thing being realistic to itself. Now, you kind of could have guessed those things already, and it's really the other four that set WoW apart. You know the way we

[07:19] would just jump at each other in WoW, or maybe throw a buff on a random player running past us. Yeah, well, that is actually what the research calls intimacy, and along with immediacy, it is a key part of, quote, presence as

[07:34] social richness. Of course, to our social human brains, that richness makes us feel there and present. If you throw a heal to help a player as you run past, they might whisper back and say thanks. That's presence. Specifically, it's when

[07:49] the interaction feels, quote, sociable, warm, sensitive, personal, or intimate. Now, the next two parts can be bundled together. There is presence as a social there's the reverse of that, which basically is parasocial behavior aimed

[08:05] at something in the game or at the game itself. That can be as simple as you literally thanking your pet for saving your life because your pet got a crit. Or maybe cursing the game for refusing to drop your item.

[08:19] Essentially, the more social engagement with the game, parasocial included, the stronger the sense of presence. But then the final part is maybe the most important because it's what ties all of this together. And it is presence

[08:32] all of this together. And it is presence as teleportation. In other words, what takes you from your computer chair to Azeroth itself? Well, these researchers determined that being transported actually has three components. There is

[08:46] usually laser focus on today. And certainly all the conversation about flying mounts, quest markers, and too much revealed lore kind of falls into components also covers is pretty much all the immersive stuff we've talked

[09:00] about so far and the social stuff. Basic idea that the more you impact the world, the more you embody your character. It's all presence as transportation. But let's get to the second. The second is called it is here. And it's quite funny.

[09:13] It is, as an example, early film audiences fleeing from an oncoming train because they hadn't really seen a film before and the idea of a train hurtling towards them felt really weird. That's a fun little one, and hey, if you pop on a

[09:28] VR headset and something is so realistic it actually spooks you out, maybe you're feeling some of that. But for us, what really matters is the third component, and that component is we are together.

[09:42] these researchers found that the presence of other people in a virtual environment was a major component of feeling transported to that environment. share that virtual world with other people, well, because you know those

[09:58] people are real, then the more real that place feels. And of course, they, the researchers, were only talking about 1995's version of Zoom calls. Imagine So, what we've learned here is the presence

[10:14] goes beyond just immersion. It goes beyond the game having challenge and having sound effects and visuals that just feel really authentic to itself. No, presence is what gives us that sense of Azeroth as a real place. It's the

[10:30] feeling that you were going there, not just playing a game. And when we think about World of Warcraft as a cultural phenomenon, well, WoW was as big as it was because it felt like more than a game. Above anything

[10:43] mattered. And I think everyone intuitively knows that. Do you know who's one of those people? Holly Longdale gets it, though she hasn't seen the research and stuff we

[10:55] talked about today, and she may not actually know that she gets it, but it's And let me explain how we know that. In a WoW Discord Q&A back in March, Holly talked about World of Warcraft's role as what's called a third place. Now, what

[11:09] does she mean by third place? Well, the first place is your home, where you spend time with your family, where you do a lot of your life. The second place is work or school. Essentially, the place you're obligated to be. The third

[11:21] place you're obligated to be. The third place then is a public place you choose to be. And when this term was popularized in 1989, it referred to things like, say, churches, bars, and cafes. The short

[11:34] explanation is that a third place is somewhere that is fun, convenient, open, and most importantly, social. So, if you hung out at the mall as a teenager, the mall was your third place. If you played World of Warcraft, Azeroth was your

[11:46] Warcraft in the earlier days, it wasn't Azeroth that was your third space, it was your server, because back then servers mattered. You would run into the same people in general chats and in

[11:59] For a lot of us then, your guild would also become your found family who may as well have been people who literally live in Azeroth, because that's where you'd poignant, real example of that, look at the story of Eblin. By all accounts, he

[12:14] lived a rich life with his guild that, because of the challenges he faced in real life, basically otherwise impossible for him. But look what WoW was able to give him. Now, of course, it wasn't only WoW. Sometimes guildies

[12:27] would be on forums or maybe MSN Messenger or AIM, but it was still on your PC that you logged into WoW with. Now, don't worry. I'm not going to go on a misty-eyed rant about the past here. But this stuff is a large part of what

[12:42] made Azeroth real. And a 2006 paper actually delved into online games as third places and came to the conclusion that they absolutely, definitely are, which I think does seem obvious to all of us by now. So, World of Warcraft

[12:57] established presence, and so it became your third place, where you lived out part of your life. A part that, as opposed to the first and second space, was one that you very much actively chose, because it was your discretionary

[13:12] free time. Now, that sense of place, socially, is what made all that social presence, and as we covered earlier in the video, transportation, stick. And in ways that it just doesn't today.

[13:26] All those immersive details we've talked about over the years do matter, but nothing matters more than WoW feeling like a real place that we go to. But sadly, since at least Cataclysm, Blizzard have known that they're making

[13:39] Now, I think Holly intuitively understands that, and Holly does want WoW to be a third place again. She's literally talked about it. So, the literally talked about it. So, the question is then, is that even possible?

[13:52] that popped off. It raises the argument that always comes up when anyone gets too nostalgic. Do we all just miss that time in our lives when we played WoW, really Azeroth was the main thing we cared about? And honestly, it's not much

[14:06] of an argument because to most of us, it is obviously true, and obviously a major part of the discussion. You probably have these days less time and more responsibility. And even science backs that up. They measure your ability to

[14:20] get immersed with a trait that they call absorption. And that trait, absorption, has been shown to decrease just a little bit with age. That's only a small part of it though. There is of course an elephant

[14:33] hiding in your pocket. I know, it may come as a shock, it's called your phone. attention economy these days. If you play WoW without a second monitor or a podcast playing, you're definitely in the minority. And I think to some of us,

[14:47] playing WoW with just the in-game sounds may feel like being sonically naked. I alt-tab all the time or don't pick up your phone during a long flight, I'd struggle to believe you. Now, this is of course not a new problem, but it is

[15:01] worse than it's ever been. Back in the classic days, you probably had one monitor. Your PC probably struggled to alt-tab out of WoW, never mind run a picture-in-picture video or podcast. Your phone, if you had one, wasn't a

[15:15] algorithmically driven feeds and gambling apps and to scroll Maybe you had a podcast or some music on, but generally you were more focused, immersed, present. Your attention constantly being pulled away kills that

[15:32] immersion and by doing so, it kills the sense of presence because if you're checking your phone, you're not in Azeroth. You can't fully enjoy wow or anything if you're not present in the experience. That's something society

[15:45] largely has to grapple with. Crucially, it's something that wow has to fight for. If wow is slows down, there's ways that could be a better game, but the more attention grabbing things around you will eat wow's lunch. And that is a

[15:59] part of why hardcore classic is actually so beloved because the stakes being so high force you to focus. It's also why modern wow feels like an endless deluge of bite-sized content. It's because kind of has to be

[16:15] bite-sized content in order to survive in the modern environment. At least, that seems to be Blizzard's Now, all that technological and cultural change means that modern wow can never risk trying to be a full world. Now, on the

[16:30] bright side, it can continue being a damn good game. But Holly, I don't think the third place plan can really work as good as I think we all wish it could. And there is one giant thing blocking

[16:44] the path to that. Azeroth can never be a third place because the internet is no longer really a place. Your phone is in your pocket at all times. You probably have a laptop. You have a legion of alts, none of whom

[16:57] are your virtual self, not in the way that back in the day you'd have a character in a big online game and it would be your avatar. No, no. Back in the '90s, people were collectively obsessed with the internet as a

[17:10] different world. The novel Snow Crash gave the metaverse its name and uh its shape all the way back in 1992. Then hackers in 1995 visualized the internet as a radical 3D space. And as MMOs started to show up, they got

[17:24] the same treatment. Second Life's name kind of speaks for itself. And take a look at this. The anime .hack sign was about mystery and relationships in a fictional MMO that was literally called The World. You see, back then, you had

[17:37] ritual of dial-up connection, and then transport yourself. And the way we talked about it back then was of you going online. Of course, these days, you've actually got to make effort to be offline, because online is kind of the

[17:53] default. Really, with phones, the internet and reality have merged. And if you take a look into the research around embodied intelligence and a bunch of things like that and tool use, oh boy, the way that we all do literally just

[18:06] walk around with our phones just always attached to our hands, it's a little bit spooky. And it's spooky for wow. You see, social media has bridged the entire world, such that we can all exist together in one lovely big blend of

[18:20] offline and online. Now, you might still live an online-heavy life and have online friends, but they don't feel like they live in a different world. They just feel like people far away. You talk to them on Discord or battle.net with

[18:33] the little box that lives in your pocket. And what we see is that modern culture doesn't see game worlds or even the internet as a unique and distinct place in the same way that we used to see it 20 or 30 years ago.

[18:48] Now, you could argue that small Discord servers are in some way one of the last true digital third spaces left. And here's a fascinating thing that backs that up. The actual research on what a third space is reports this. Where

[19:00] researchers have noticed that adding competitive sports-like elements, instead of say free play, actually breaks what a third space is. major social media platforms, what do you see? Well, technically they're

[19:14] social hangouts, but the objectives of you as a poster are kind of different. I mean, on Twitter, what do people want? They want big numbers. That's why Discord does stand out as one of the last bastions of the third space

[19:28] because it is your own Discord server and community. Now, with all that established, let's get back to WoW. WoW's position as being game-first, social hangout second kind of disqualifies it. And it's the same with

[19:41] basically every other MMO on the market these days. It's almost as if game and place are on a spectrum, and every decision made toward game can end up moving you away from place, away from the presence that made WoW feel so

[19:55] bit weird and academic, but just think about it this way. Think about the verbs that we tend to use. You don't meet your friends in World of Warcraft. You play WoW with them while you hang out in Discord.

[20:09] Discord is a place. The other thing is just a game you're playing. Now, obviously, Ventrilo and TeamSpeak existed long before, but they were always secondary. Guild chat was always first. Now though, Discord has taken

[20:22] over as the primary social hangout. Everyone is on Discord before they're on WoW together. And the way Blizzard are introducing Discord to World of Warcraft guild chat proves that Blizzard knows that. It's a brilliant move,

[20:36] but it's also a white flag. Discord won. Blizzard has had to give up and acquiesce. They know Discord is where people hang out by default, so now WoW is just going to plug itself into that because WoW cannot replace Discord

[20:50] anymore. Basically, Discord won, and now WoW is growing dependent on Discord to function socially. Even if, say, housing is massively successful and people hang out in and around their houses, well, the reagents for that third place magic

[21:06] just do not exist in the same way that they used to, not back in the day. And for all the reasons and the research that we've went through today, at the very least, not on the scale that Holly seems to want.

[21:19] So, it seems then that while WoW can be immersive when you turn all your extra music and podcasts off and you just enjoy the landscapes and the verse and the art and the sound, well, for presence,

[21:34] is there any hope? WoW can never be a proper third place, not with how the internet works today. And I mean that in general. If you want WoW to be able to function as a third space, I would say get into role-playing

[21:47] and find an RP server that takes that seriously. But, for the rest of us, no, WoW is not going to become a third place in the way that it used to. But, the silver lining is that the presence that modern WoW has abandoned is still

[22:00] possible. And how we know that is WoW Classic. You see, a study published in 2022 surveyed players on what they felt from Classic's relaunch. Nostalgia, of course, was there, but more importantly, the social presence and what's called

[22:15] sense of place were massive for these people. And they found a promising trend linked. That when players felt more social presence, they felt a stronger sense of place within Azeroth. Now, for a second, this is going to get

[22:30] really weird. You see, for those actively playing Classic, what ended up happening is that sense of place actually weakened. Now, the researcher suggests that this is down to revisiting the game with way more of a gameplay

[22:42] focus. And that does track whenever you watch, say, other content creators trying out WoW for the first time. For one example, G Bay 99 has been documenting his dive into Warcraft with a fresh eye, and he's thoroughly

[22:55] enjoying it in many of the ways that people did back in 2004. If then there was a new classic, divorced from nostalgia and less gameplay focused in the way that we see gameplay today, which I would argue is

[23:09] then it might stand a chance of emulating that original launch. Now, not here, but classic plus. You see, if modern WoW is locked into being a season-based,

[23:24] gameplay-focused game, big capital G, all caps, underlined, that's super then classic plus can be something different. Classic plus can be a world.

[23:36] And Blizzard did not pick the Camelot code name by accident. It is, of course, King Arthur's mythological castle, often considered an eternal utopia, and not in the milk and honey way, but in the fighting for

[23:49] chivalry until the bitter end way. That's an exciting idea, and maybe it's make a game for these super attached end-game classic lovers, but I hope it's more than that. I hope they are going to make a real world instead. I think it'll

[24:06] leverage the heights of the original classic, also known as World of but that's just because we live in a different world now, and I don't think all the reasons I've laid out in this video. But I think it can be good, and I

[24:21] think it can have a sense of presence that is vastly beyond what we've had in modern WoW lately. But that doesn't mean that modern WoW cannot learn from all this research into presence. And should Blizzard need an

[24:34] opportunity and an excuse to do that, well, The Last Titan is the end of the big saga, so what better time to make some change. All that Blizzard has to do is read a dozen or so scientific papers from 30

[24:47] years ago and integrate them into their game design. People have been talking about immersion. That's good. I'd love to see it. But as we've learned today,

[25:00] immersion is not even the half of it because presence because presence exists on a foundational layer. And if you focus only on immersion in that narrow sense, but not presence,

[25:13] you'll get something that's cool, but you won't get that secret sauce that WoW exploded onto the world with in 2004. So, there you have it. The road

[25:25] map to fixing up this problem, to getting more presence, is to quite simply look into the science behind presence. Look into the ways in which older versions of WoW were able to get that presence, work them into the modern

[25:38] and just continue pushing and pushing and pushing all to make Azeroth feel like it is another world that really exists that you can access via your computer screen, and not just a game that you can play as a seasonal gaming

[25:53] gigapumper who's just trying to push rating because while that is a cool thing you can do in WoW, WoW at its best has always been far more than just that narrow end-game progression focus.

[26:07] narrow end-game progression focus. That's what it has to be again.