Playing Another Game; Twinking in World of Warcraft

This paper investigates one the more controversial player practices in MMORPG’s, twinking, not in terms of value judgment but as a play from negotiating, working against and even transforming a MMORPG’s intended structure and design. Making use of participatory ethnographic observations of one of World of Warcraft’s particular forms of twinking, this devious behavior is discussed as being luxury play, dominance play, transformative play and standardized play, each form having its own influence on the way these virtual worlds are experienced by the player community and, notably, twinkers themselves.