I am going to play World of Warcraft

I started by asking my friends for game recommendations...
So many came in: get a Wii. Brain Age. Who Wants to Be A Millionaire. The Sims games, Guitar Hero. Grand Theft Auto. But the most convincing response came from my friend A.M.:

"This was the company I worked at for the last 2 years. I believe the entire entertainment space will be dominated by the idea of community building. Musicians without blogs, weekly podcasts etc, will be left in the dust. This game will give you a chance to see how a bizarre community functions. World of Warcraft is a fantasy role playing game. Sort of Dungeons and Dragons but without rolling dice. The computer does the percentages in real time so it plays like an action/adventure game. although I wouldn't say its fast moving but you can play with people from all over the country/world."

Added to this were things I had heard about the game: it was being used as a model for business, for team building, for leadership, for simulating economics, social networks, etc. As I investigated further, I became interested because World of Warcraft seemed to have its own subculture, and I am always interested in participating in and deconstructing the issues around culture. Not related to gaming, but central to this passion and to youth cultures in general: Subculture: The Meaning of Style.

As I read Calleja (2007), I became interested in how World of Warcraft (WoW) may intersect with the phases of involvement. I am also interested in the broader question Calleja raises, applicable to WoW, of how the game goals may intersect with broader cognitive and social goals. And how much of this, as Blumenfeld, et. al. (2006) and others bring up, is transferred from the digital environment to "real world" learning tasks?