Abstract
This study aims to uncover the gamers' cognitive process during the gameplay and explore the differences between groups in the gamers' playing behavior according to their expertise: experts, intermediate players, and novices. To this end, the empirical experiment was conducted in 'World of Warcraft' game which is a good representative of MMO(Massively Multi-player Online) game currently. Verbal protocol and action protocol collected from the empirical experiment were analyzed according to the gamers' expertise. As a result of this study, we found that the different behavior patterns result from standardizing pattern of their actions for experts and forming the learning curves and the specific patterns of action for intermediate game players and novices. While three functional-actions as a collection action concentrates on the early stage of the game for experts, the novices' behavior pattern dispersedly appeared in all seven functional-action, such as search, combat, three type collections, avoid, and communication in the whole gameplay. This study represents the consistency and the difference derived from the comparison analysis between groups according to the expertise. This study is concluded with key implications to support game design guidelines according to experts, intermediate players, and novices. Consequently, the result of this study provides the basic to the development of MMO content for game novices.