Teaching Economics in World of Warcraft

Abstract

This chapter is a go-to guide for education professionals (primarily in the undergraduate and graduate college-level degree programs) for understanding and designing Economics classes in World of Warcraft. The premier MMORPG of the Western world, World of Warcraft boasts a number of features that makes it an ideal sandbox for economic education. It was deliberately designed to represent a large number of important real-world institutions like trade, production, cooperation, thus it can become a platform for learning about them. Moreover, since students encounter these institutions in a vibrant virtual world setting, they not only get to verify the learned materials but can practice their applications in their day-to-day dealings with other World of Warcraft denizens. This will lead to more student engagement, better learning outcomes, a more thorough understanding of both the principles of the theory and their applications, and greatly improved knowledge retention.