Unlike other academic studies on the social aspects of online games and virtual worlds, Bainbridge’s book does not analyze the direct impact of the virtual world on the players, does not judge whether players are less engaged in the real world because of the game, and does not try to quantify the interactions among players using graph theory. Instead, he studies the people and the civilizations of the virtual world as if they are real. Bainbridge follows participant observation, a method commonly used by social scientists studying human societies--for example, Margaret Mead’s Samoan study in the 1920s [1] and, more recently, Kate Fox’s identification of typical English behavior [2]. Similarly, Bainbridge created characters in the world’s most-subscribed multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), World of Warcraft (WoW), and did 2,300 hours of role-playing, in order to explore the virtual world through those characters and observe social relations among players.

Each chapter starts with a first-person narrative by one of Bainbridge’s WoW characters. Each character describes some of the experiences and impressions he or she has collected during his or her quests. Each character is a very distinct being, so the personal narratives provide valuable hints on player differentiation and gender issues, as well as the historical and cultural background of the game’s multiple races and classes. (Race denotes the character’s physical traits--for example, human, elf, or orc--and class is somehow related to the character’s way of life--for example, priest, warlock, or hunter.)

Each narrative is followed by Bainbridge’s analysis of a particular aspect of the virtual world, which form the core of the book. The first chapter analyzes the game itself and presents the author’s participant observation approach to its sociological issues. The remaining chapters address aspects of heritage, religion, learning, cooperation, economy, and identity. For each of them, the author recalls the experiences of his characters, detailing their interactions with the virtual environment and other players in a story-like manner. He then refers to a vast amount of literature, to draw parallels between what he has found online and what other authors have identified in real-world societies. The chapter on religion is particularly rich and thought provoking, possibly because it is one of Bainbridge’s areas of expertise, but also because it doesn’t have an obvious association to gaming.

Despite being very comprehensive when referencing literature--each chapter cites dozens of sources--the text usually follows the characters’ story lines and is therefore very fluid and linear, making it appropriate for a cover-to-cover read. Yet, theme-specific chapters are fairly self-contained and can be read individually if the reader is familiar with the basics of WoW. The thematic index is particularly useful when searching for anecdotes of a specific character or themes that are addressed over multiple chapters.

The book closes with a brief discussion of the mutual influence between real and virtual worlds. This is followed by a rather sentimental account of the fate Bainbridge decided for some of his WoW characters, which, in itself, is evidence that they were real enough to influence his world in some way.