Why look at a raiding guild in World of Warcraft? The challenges that exist in end-game raiding encounters are challenging. Few guilds can take on the level of dedication needed to be rated among the best in the world. Learning a new raid encounter is akin to conducting experiments. A team is formed and a plan is created, but it takes time to master a raid encounter and down the boss. Players spend several hours each night, often for weeks at a time, experimenting with the encounter before they can down the boss for the first time.

Each player has developed the skills needed to play the game and their roles. However, each in-game encounter is vastly different from other in-game encounters. The job of each player during a new encounter often requires nuances of playing that were not needed in previously mastered boss battles. It is not enough for players to know their role, but players must also know how their role performs within the context of a specific encounter. Therefore, team adaptation when tackling a new raid boss, is a continuous process of trial-and-error that takes the form of plan execution as experimentation. It is common for raiding guilds to perform hundreds of experiments (i.e. pulls) before downing a boss for the first time.

Raid encounters have numerous technical variables that combine to determine success or failure for the team. Tanks must acquire and maintain aggro. Healers must cast healing spells to keep everyone alive. DPS players must damage the boss. However, positioning, timing, events, and boss abilities change how players play through the encounter. Each player in the raid is not an independent actor. The raid group must perform in concert to down the boss. If players are out of sync, then the raid can wipe.

I chose an exploratory case study for precisely two reasons that align with Yin’s (2014) definition for case study research. The first is to understand the contextual conditions of experimental team adaptation. The second is because of the large number of variables at play during team adaptation.