It’s Just a Glorified co-op

Indelible — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 15:47:22 GMT

Since World of Warcraft brought the MMO genre to the forefront of gaming, many gamers have thrown insults and general bad feeling in the face of MMOG developers and players alike. Such comments as, “It’s just a glorified co-op,” and, “It’s just a single player game with loads of strangers running around,” have been voiced and frankly, I can’t see why people would make those observations and generalisations due to the massive amount of games out there and the massive variation.

One main criticism is that they aren’t truly persistent worlds. The players have no effect on how the story on an MMO unravels and that these games could easily be adapted to a single player environment. On one site, a comment from a poster called Mogs concerned me…

The sad thing about most MMORPGs is that they're just glorified co-op SP games (like NWN), but with lots of strangers running around. No one can really affect the world, however. There's so much untapped potential.

Say NO to MMO!

While his comment holds true to many MMOGs there are games out there that are directly affected by player alliances and interaction. One such element that holds true to all MMOGs is the in game economy and while this may not be the first thing to come to your mind it is a truly player-defined aspect of the game. As newer and better items are discovered that can be bought and sold, older items that were previously the best drop in price. At the start of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, one stack of Netherweave Cloth would set you back 7-10g on my server where as now, you can get hold of a stack for 3-4g if you buy at the right time.

That aside, you obviously haven’t thought through your comment. Eve Online is a grand example of where player actions DO directly affect that outcome of the gaming story. As player corporations and alliance secure areas of space and grow, political climates change and fluctuate depending on who sits at the top (not to mention the massive economical impacts such actions can have). You couldn’t reciprocate this type of impact in an SP environment, not even a co-op environment. It simply isn’t a logistic possibility. The only environment in which this would work is an MMOG.

Another criticism is aimed at the player interaction. Some gamers are concerned that the social impact MMOGs have isn’t subsidised by the quality of game play. Comments like, “MMOGs cause anti-social behaviour,” and, “MMOGs allow for morally ambiguous activities,” are not an uncommon thing to see from MMO-haters but what they fail to realise is that this is a common and incorrect assumption based on minorities.

Did you know statistics show that couples that meet through internet based activities are 40% more likely to have a long and meaningful relationship than couples that meet in a real world situation? This is based on the fact that they build an emotional attachment to each other prior to exploring any sexual relationship. Whilst sex is an important part to any relationship, it is not the most integral part when laying the building blocks. Granted, that is just one aspect to social interaction but there are other points I can make.

Previous to the Internet, there were very few forms of communication on a global scale. It was too expensive to ring foreign countries and letters took days to arrive. Thanks to the Internet, you can speak to someone half the world away instantly and this has allowed multi-national communication to take place on an unprecedented scale. Thanks to the Internet, Freedom of Information and speech have evolved to such a point where they no longer can be subdued and doctored (for the most part). In fact, recent studies show that people who actively play MMOGs have a tendency to have larger friendship groups and better social interaction skills than their non-MMO’ing peers. While there are those few people who find MMOGs to be massively addictive and potentially life ruining, this is an example of an inability to control ones actions and can’t be used as an example of how MMOGs destroy people.

Yes... The Internet and MMOs are truly evil.

You may have heard of the Chinese man who died after a 3 day gaming binge in a Cyber Café due to fatigue. You can die from fatigue in numerous ways and whilst MMO-haters and politicians would jump on this like it is some sort of get-MMOs-banned-for-free card, it isn’t and no court of law will take it as an example of this. You can die from driving your car too much… does that mean we should ban driving? You can die from drinking too much alcohol… does that mean we should ban alcohol? I’m sure that a lot of you would be angered if alcohol were removed from society even though the physical and psychological implications of alcohol addiction and even binge drinking are far more apparent than the minority of gamers who are addicted to or binge on MMOs.

As for the morally ambiguous behaviour, it is true that the anonymity provided by avatars and characters in these environments allow you to partake in behaviour and actions that you may not consider normal and right in a real world situation. Such problems as ERP guilds have caused quite a stir. Some of you may have heard of the guild, which under took role-play involving bestiality, incest, paedophilia and other illegal and morally unacceptable behaviour but this is just one guild out of the millions. Also, we cannot use morality to define what is wrong and right as morals differ from person to person; place to place. For example, I believe that the act of cheating on your partner is incorrect and absolutely outrageous but people I know believe that sexual relations with people other than your active partner are ok as long as no emotional bond is formed. That is just one example of how morals are subjective and can’t be used to define what is wrong and right. Blizzard for example, forcibly disbanded a homosexual-friendly guild. Whilst I find nothing wrong with a guild specifically for homosexuals, Blizzard and the employees who took this action obviously thought that it would have a bad effect in some way.

Other problems include such things as the anonymity that avatars and characters provide you but what you have to remember is that you are only anonymous to those around you and not to the company moderating your behaviour. If you do something illegal and Blizzard (for example) thinks that it is a criminal offence, they will report you to the relevant authorities. If you do something they find to be in breach of T’s and C’s, they will ban or suspend you account. It is as simple as that.

MMOGs like any gaming environment present problems. Single player games have been accused of duming down the population and also promoting violent and anti-social behaviour and I would argue that anti-social behaviour is promoted by SPs far more than it is promoted by MMOGs.

MMOGs will never be as bad as they are made out to be and if other genres and market areas are to go by, they will never suffer the restraints that some gamers and politicians would like to place on them. All I would ask is that these people play them and study what they are talking about before making random and nonsensical comments about stuff they obviously no and have thought very little about.

It's Been A While

Indelible — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:00:37 GMT

I've not been blogging much recently due to real life commitments and issues that have taken priority but I feel now is a brilliant time to step away from all of this and return to what I like to consider my pass-time here on Curse. I am going to look at a behavioural complex that effects a large proportion of players who play any MMOG and this is the complex that has led to many, "hiding behind their avatar."

I have met many players from many walks of life in World of Warcraft and the game has one of the single most diverse population of people of any game I have played. Not only do we see a large representation for the different gender groups but also a large representation for different social groups. Jocks, chavs, goths, grebos etc etc. All are represented within World of Warcraft and this has led to a phenomenon that, in my honest opinion, can only serve to better the world at large.

In this day and age, we are surrounded by diversity. Religious diversity, to name but one, has led to war on a global level and we can see evidence of this by the growing tensions in the middle east between the Christian led American Government and the Muslin led Iranian Government over the presence of Israel in the area. This difference is something that is testing political stability world wide. Another example is the differences between communist countries, such as Cuba, and capitalist countries, once again like America.

In a gaming environment however, these differences seem to be very much left in the real world and guilds of people from many different religions, creeds and view points come together for a common goal - the game. So why do people feel that it is fine to leave these difference outside of gaming but perfectly ok to renew them in a real life situation?

In Britain we have a social group called chavs. Originally, much like any minority group, chavism was a trend of clothing that spread amongst teenagers and young adults on a national level but eventually, the mindset associated with this trend came to light. This mindset led to individuals becoming very hostile towards each other and chavisms is now associated with knifes, guns, petty crime, theft and robbery and a host of other malicious activity and due to the fact that the majority of chavs are older teenagers, my age group is treated with contempt due to their actions.

I have met a few people in World of Warcraft I could and willingly do label chavs. The difference between these chavs and those on the streets of the place I live are that they leave the social divides behind when they log on to WoW. I spend a lot of my time actually talking to these people and enjoying talking to them even though if it were an irl situation I would go out of my way to avoid them simply by the way they act and dress. They seem to act differently to those I meet irl and this leads to me actually liking the person they are on the internet. This is a good example of someone hiding behind their avatar but not all examples are this peachy.

Forums are a haven for trolls. That is to say people can and do at in a way that would be deemed socially unacceptable in real life. They do this because they suffer little to no repercussions for their actions if they do step out of line and feel that the line they draw irl can be moved much further away from morality in this situation. People make personal attacks on other not because they are retaliating to them but because they can. This is a bad example of why hiding behind your avatar can be detrimental to the community of people you play with.

Needless to say, avatars provide people a way of being someone different (and 99% of the time the idealistic version of themselves) without any repercussions. Some people are overly vicious and others are overly nice. In the end, not everyone is who you expect them to be and if you make that step to meeting them in irl, you could get a nasty surprise upon seeing them and talking to them or you could get a pleasant one.

The Daily Quest : society

It’s Just a Glorified co-op

It's Been A While