Game Loops in World of Warcraft, 1 of 2
How does World of Warcraft really work from an Octalysis Gamification design perspective?
In this previous series, Yu-kai discussed how to create meaningful game experiences by adding Boosters which upgraded plain Activity Loops to the more powerful and engaging Game Loops.
For years, Yu-kai didn’t want to touch World of Warcraft because of his obsessive personality.
If he had started WoW when it first came out, he might not have created the Octalysis Gamification framework at all!
(Because WoW can suck a lot of hours from your life.)
But eventually, in 2018 and 2019 Yu-kai went on to analyze how World of Warcraft achieves these seductive Game Loops inside its system and players’ minds.
About the Creator of the Octalysis Framework
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
Related Reading
- Game Loops in World of Warcraft, Part 2 of 2
- How to Build Game Loops, Part 1 of 4
- The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design
- Why Is World of Warcraft So Addictive?
- Endgame Loot Design: World of Warcraft vs Diablo III
- Books by Yu-kai Chou