World of Warcraft is typically played “alone together:†Players solo game content while chatting with friends in voice or text. However, from the beginning MMOs (massively multiplayer online games) have been built around the assumption that playing together, particularly playing with strangers, is inherently good. Game designers have evolved rules, penalties and incentives to push players together, whether they want to group or not. The ‘pick up group’ or PUG, is a product of social engineering, with its designers attempting to teach vital social, civic and political skills in the game space. This examines designers’ motives for countering demands for solo play, the player experience of encouraged sociability, and trends in the engineering of social play. http://video.foxnews.com/v/4511179/video-game-class-offered-at-arizona-state-university http://www.statepress.com/2011/01/17/professors-hold-class-in-%E2%80%9Cworld-of-warcraft%E2%80%9D/