Ding! World of Warcraft Well Played, Well Researched Crystle Martin, Sarah Chu, Dee Johnson, Amanda Ochsner, Caro Williams, & Constance Steinkuehler University of Wisconsin‐Madison World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online (MMO) role‐playing game that takes place in the fantasy realm of Azeroth and boasts over ten million players. WoW was vast in scope when originally released, and has since added on more territories and character customization choices. Originally consisting of two continents, Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, two expansion packs added the realm of Outland and the continent of Northrend to the map, and, have also expanded the content of the game with the addition of new races, lands, quests, etc., and raising the level cap (highest attainable level). When designing a character, the player is offered a variety of choices, such as selecting a character’s faction (Horde or Alliance), race (10 playable races which include Night Elf, Troll, and Undead), and class (9 different classes which include Made, Paladin, and Druid). The player is able to further specialize their character by selecting two professions, as well as spending points to develop talent builds. In addition, during gameplay, decisions must be made about what armor to wear, what weapons to wield, and in what order to cast spells. The choices are vast and are able to be molded to fit a variety of playing styles, especially considering the social interactions that raids and guilds support, the wide variety of gear choices that are made and re‐made regularly, the complex role‐play opportunities, and the various patterns that different players develop (and swear by). As such, WoW offers a tremendous number of avenues for the player’s enjoyment and just as many avenues of study for researchers interested in informal learning, especially in online collaborative spaces. We all play WoW but our backgrounds vary beyond that, ranging from a professor who researches informal learning and MMOs, four graduate students with a variety of research interests (including math, visual studies, and literacy), and a high school senior who is an avid gamer. As players and researchers of WoW, we could ramble endlessly about the game but we have instead decided to talk about nine of our most loved things. In this chapter, we delve into how WoW has redefined gaming, narrative and raid centric playing styles, as well as the multi‐level social interactions in WoW, as an exploration of what we love about playing the game. Then, we explore character aesthetics and player‐produced visual models, the use of math and information literacy, and finally a player’s experience with time in WoW, for our more research‐oriented pursuits. Though we cannot go into much depth for each section in this short chapter, we do cover a breadth of topics to offer the reader an overview of the wide variety of perspectives from which to think about WoW as players and as researchers. WoW <3 from the Player Perspective