WoWWiki, the Warcraft Wiki is an online encyclopedia of the Warcraft fictional universe. It covers all of the Warcraft games, including the MMORPG World of Warcraft. It is both a specialized wiki built around the Warcraft universe and a collaborative space for player to develop and publish strategies for Warcraft games. It has been called the "best known MMO wiki"[1], "the second largest English-language wiki in the world behind Wikipedia,"[2] and the "mother of all WoW informational sources.[3] WoWWiki currently runs on MediaWiki and is a member of the Wikia network.

History and description:

WoWWiki.com was launched on November 24th 2004 as a source of information pertaining to World of Warcraft and the interface modification suite Cosmos.[4] Since the launch, the wiki has expanded to cover the entirety of the Warcraft universe, including the RTS games, novels, the RPG reference books, manga[5], and other written sources, along with the WoW expansion packs, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm.

On May 2nd 2007, it was announced that WoWWiki would be moving to Wikia[6] As of September 2009, WoWWiki was Wikia's largest wiki.[7] That title is now held by LyricWiki which recently moved to Wikia.[citation needed] WoWWiki currently runs on MediaWiki.[8] Players can access WoWWiki and play World of Warcraft at the same time, as a widget enables the wiki to be rendered over part of the game display as a transparent overlay.

Research:

In March of 2008, SXSW held a panel on "How Gamers are Adopting the Wiki Way" which heavily featured WoWWiki and focused on the wiki as a collborative strategy space for players.[2][10] In a 2009 article, Lee Sherlock argues that WoWWiki constitutes a collaborative writing genre, distinct from forums and walkthroughs (e.g. GameFAQs).[11] Rik Hunter treats WoWWiki as a fan "affinity space" (term due to Gee (2003)[12]), what is effectively an informal learning community. Both Sherlock and Rik Hunter argue that WoWWiki is a primary example of a broader trend in digital media where consumers and users become producers of information.[13][5] Faltin Karlsen sees WoWWiki's size and complexity as evidence for the scale of emergent complexity in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft.[14]