Virtual Worlds

The World vs. the Game

MMORPGs are more than just games; I would argue that they are social spaces in which user interaction becomes largely independent of the game as such. Since I was introduced to the genre, I have had the (sometimes questionable) pleasure of spending a significant amount of time in three such game worlds: Ragnarök Online (RO), EverQuest II (EQ2) and World of Warcraft (WoW). As far as gameplay goes, all three games are of relatively poor quality, almost exclusively relying on the player performing various repetitive tasks ("grinding") until the end of time. As you can probably tell, I do not particularly enjoy these games, yet I have spent three years in RO and approximately one year each in the other two game worlds.

What makes these games special is incidentally the same thing that draws people to Second Life: the sense of a world outside reality, where you can choose (to a certain extent) how others perceive you. Most of my time in RO, EQ2 and WoW was spent sitting in towns (Payon, Qeynos and Ironforge, respectively, but I digress) and chatting with friends and guildmates, rather than fighting monsters and... fighting more monsters. To me, and others with me, the actual game is never more than a distraction and a way to kill time when everyone else is offline or busy.

To summarize, the experience of MMORPGs and similar applications can be divided into two parts, one of which is the World, i.e. the notion of leaving reality and entering a virtual space. The other part is the Game, which is essentially the "work" you perform inside the virtual world, be it to kill monsters or to heal other player characters. One might argue that the design and construction of objects functions as a kind of Game in Second Life, although that particular application is not considered a game in the traditional sense.


The Massive Multiplayer Delusion

Games such as World of Warcraft proudly market themselves as Massive(ly) Multiplayer Online RPGs. While it is true that they have a large number of users, the actual gameplay generally takes place on a significantly smaller scale. Using WoW as an example, a normal player group can consist of up to five characters. A so-called "raid" consists of multiple groups, allowing for a total maximum of 40 characters, but such raid groups are rarely formed except in Player versus Player (PvP) settings and a small number of endgame dungeons. While in a group, you are generally best off ignoring (or killing, in PvP) any other players you come across. Thus, one might say that the game's World consists of thousands of players, while its Game (the game's Game... Wow, that sounds dumb) only consists of five.

In fact, even groups of five are rare in standard WoW gameplay. RO and EQ2 handle parties slightly differently, but full groups are uncommon in those games as well. The reason for this is that experience points (a character's means of becoming more powerful) and treasure are divided equally within the party. In other words, smaller parties equal greater profit for each individual player. Therefore, player groups in MMORPGs are generally as small as they can possibly be while still successfully completing whatever task they strive to accomplish. More often than not, soloing (i.e. playing alone) is considered the quickest and easiest path to wealth and power. MMORPGs may be massive multiplayer environments, but do they encourage teamwork? Hardly.


My Avatar and I

I am one of those people who spend several hours trying to make their avatars look exactly right. For the record, I am not satisfied with the looks of my Second Life character (image at the bottom of the page), even though her hat is pretty nice. I usually consider my avatar a medium for artistic expression, rather than a direct representation of myself. In some virtual worlds, such as World of Warcraft and Ragnarök Online, the avatar customization options are somewhat limited. This bores me and often causes me to delete and remake my characters because I am not satisfied with them, much to the frustration of whatever guild I am in at the time.

I think I had something else to say, but I'm suddenly way too tired and can't remember what it was, so this will have to do for now. Hopefully I'm allowed to say such things since this is a... blog...

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