Withe the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping across the face of the Earth with epic speed, schools everywhere are shutting their physical doors and opening their virtual ones. Teachers and students are confronting the challenges of rapidly transitioning from face-to-face instruction to digitally-mediated instruction in some cases with mere hours of preparation time separating these two wildly different modalities. There are many challenges facing teachers who find themselves working in distance learning contexts, one of the most difficult of which is replicating the feel and experience of an actual face-to-face classroom. There is a tool, however, that can go a long way towards mitigating that challenge - the environment of the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMO). There are hundreds of these kinds of games, but as in so many things, the most popular and enduring of MMOs, World of Warcraft, perhaps offers the best opportunity for both teachers and learners to maximize success and take best advantage of the game world to replicate the face-to-face experience.

All MMOs feature a game environment that a player interacts with by means of an avatar, an animated projection of the player as a character in the game’s world. In the game world, the avatar can take actions, solve quests and do many other things the game’s mechanics provide affordances for. For our purposes, what World of Warcraft is particularly good at is offering vast spaces for avatars (both student and teacher versions) to come together in digital space to share questions, discuss, interact and learn. Because World of Warcraft has been live since 2004 and continuously updated, it features a playable environment that is vast by any measure. This is helpful, because teachers and students who wanted to collaborate in World of Warcraft have a huge number of potential locations to select that would allow them to get on with their work with a minimum of interference from other players.

Now, obviously, what a classroom meetup in World of Warcraft is going to offer is going to resemble a chat room or online discussion board. Many teachers have access to these tools already and they are great at what they do. There is something distancing and remote, however, about using these tools as designed. Interacting with them by means of an avatar a player/learner has created, by contrast, offers a humanizing (or Tauren-izing, gnome-izing, etc.) factor that research on game-based learning suggests can stimulate engagement and sustain it, all the while being, essentially, an online discussion board.

Moreover, World of Warcraft has been free to play up to level 20 for years now, and players could easily create characters and meet in any of these locations, all reachable by characters under level 20 with the most rudimentary of skills. You can have your students select to all play any of the playable races in the game (although I do not provide suggestions below for Night Elves, for story reasons that don’t matter here).

So, what follows is an “educator’s atlas” to Azeroth - if you want to visit this extraordinary game world with your students, we judge these places to be among the very best for maximizing the benefits of the world and minimizing potential challenges. And a million thanks to my partner John Mundy for searching out his favorite Horde-faction areas!

ALLIANCE AREAS (those accessible by level 1 characters from the different Alliance races)

Humans

The first two areas here are in the Human start area around Northshire Abbey. Here is the Main Hall of the Abbey itself - nice and big for a good-sized classroom. Be advised that Humans are a popular race and there could be many other players here.

Right across the street from the Abbey and near the main wall is an open area with a shopping stall.

Dwarves and Gnomes

The Dwarves and Gnomes start in Coldwind Valley, which is overrun with creatures. Coldwind Valley, because it is the level 1 area for both Dwarves and Gnomes, can also get crowded. The first location is near the exit of the zone, near Coldwind Pass. Visit Hands Springsprocket!

Inside the small town of Anvilmar, there is a nice open space for a small class near the Shaman Trainer, Teo Hammerstorm.

Draenei

The Draenei start area is likely to be the least crowded Alliance start area, and there are good places away from the main Crash Site to work. Here are two:

Due north of the Crash Site - you can see it in the background

HORDE AREAS (those accessible to level 1 characters from the different Horde races)

Orc/Troll

The Orcs and Trolls are among the most popular of Horde races so, like with Humans, their areas are likely to be crowded.

For Trolls, the shoreline of Senjin Village is an excellent choice:

New Orcs will find the Valley of Trials a good place to congregate:

Tauren

Tauren are a very popular race as well, but their places are great to look at and there are a lot of places for a group to gather, among them Fargraze Mesa.

Bloodhoof Village by Lake Stonebull is also a good choice.

FORSAKEN

For a certain group of students, generating characters who are the Forsaken Undead might be a particular treat. Their territory is ghoulish, but replete with choices to gather. The Ruins of Lordaeron have dozens of good places to choose.

Inside the Forsaken capital, the Undercity, there are some good places as well. Here’s the Mage Quarter.

BLOOD ELVES

The Blood Elf start area, Eversong Woods, is among the most beautiful zones in the entire game and where I would bring a team of level 1 characters…just so they could see it. Two places for these characters:

Inside Silvermoon City - the Court of the Sun

PANDARENS - The WANDERING ISLE

Last of all are the Pandarens, who are neither Alliance nor Horde until they complete the start area. This is a great place to go as it is also beautiful and easy to navigate. Two areas around the central Temple:

And just outside its gates:

An additional suggestion: if you’re going to do this, join a New Player server: Aegwyn, Azgalor, Azshara, Bonechewer, Daggerspine, Destromath, Gurubashi, Hakkar and Thunderlord, as of this writing.

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The World of "World of Warcraft:" An Atlas for Educators

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