ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on barriers that prevent players from listening. It lays out a theoretical framework for how such barriers operate, with interspersed, autobiographical examples of own experiences of them as a World of Warcraft player. The chapter categorizes these barriers as either synchronic or diachronic, where the former exist at specific moments during the game’s lifespan, and the latter emerge when patches and expansions alter the game. It takes a meta-diachronic approach, showing that even the diachronic analysis. The chapter begins from a synchronic standpoint, and describes how the very nature of diachronic barriers to listening to World of Warcraft are in flux. It focuses on the game’s music, the concept could be extended to any parameter of the game experience. The chapter concludes by drawing comparisons to World of Warcraft’s diachronic barriers to those that appear in media beyond the massively multiplayer online role-playing game.
