With 10,000,000 subscribers, World of Warcraft is the dominant Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG), and it may be the most significant virtual world, as well.

The article from Science:

"The Scientific Potential of Virtual Worlds"

Blizzard Entertainment's official WoW site::

World of Warcraft Community

Selected BBC stories about World of Warcraft:

"The high cost of playing Warcraft"

"Fantasy fuels games with finances"

"Virtual game is a 'disease model'"

"Gamers explain Warcraft's appeal"

"Warcraft sets gaming standards"

"A walk in the World of Warcraft"

WoW information sources useful for science:

The Armory group and character database

WoWWiki online encyclopedia

Atlas of virtual territory maps

Zooming maps with data overlays

Wowhead leading database of in-WoW things

Thottbot popular database

Allakhazam database

WoWinsider WoW-related blogs

The Instance weekly WoW podcast

Warcraft Realms character census data

Lua programming language used in add-ons (mods)

Cosmos collection of add-on programs

Auctioneer auction price add-on

Project Azeroth WoW simulated languages project

Organizers' websites:

Bill - William Sims Bainbridge

John - John Bohannon