Playing Across the Strait: Chinese WoW Diasporas on Taiwanese Servers

Xu Honglan

This project studies open-source World of Warcraft bots not just through interviews, but by critical code studies on their actual code and GitHub repositories. It shows how “power gamers” frame botting as non-malicious optimization to escape tedious grind, design their scripts to prioritize safety over raw efficiency, and use platforms like GitHub to collaboratively refine and normalize these cheating practices.