This is a something I wrote for my own blog (yay marketing) about my experiences with MMORPGs. It may be relevant to those of you interested in how online games evolve gradually over time, or the difference between hardcore and casual gamers but it mostly pertains to a personal interest: how storytelling works in online worlds; how the developers tell a narrative that shapes the world, how players use the world to tell their own stories. For most I suspect it will be TLDR. You've been forewarned.
My first experiences in online gaming were with Sony’s EverQuest just after it had launched Ruins of Kunark, the game’s first expansion pack. I was exhilarated by the rich potential the product represented, but repeatedly heartbroken as I attempted wring it from the world. Despite the title’s implied promise, it was incredibly difficult to find quests. I knew they existed through snippets from the general chat, and high level characters who ran around wearing their rewards, but they always seemed to lay somewhere just beyond the edge of my periphery. Whenever I found a quest giver, the chain was either broken, restricted to a different class/race/deity, or simply not worth the effort. The mechanics of the game were also obnoxiously punitive. I spent the vast majority of my early playtime corpse running; an activity every ounce as unpleasant as it sounds. There was a period where, if you could not retrieve your body within a certain time limit, the game would delete your body and everything you were carrying on it, leading to many tearful nights where I struggled to retrieve my mangled cyber body from some wretched pit. Since you had no armor or items, subsequent deaths were almost inevitable, and each one produced another decoy which would frustrate your search for the original. Amusing in hindsight. In practice? Not so much.
As with most things massive, multiplayer and online, the social component was at the core of my experience. I enjoyed wandering around the tunnel in Eastern Commons where high level characters would gather to barter, and I found a limited sense of belonging in conversation with other introverted kids. Naturally, that all went to hell when Sony launched Shadows of Luclin, the game’s infamous third expansion. The organic barter economy was abandoned in favor of a game run bazaar system which did not work at launch and a graphics ‘upgrade’ that replaced the game’s endearingly blocky avatars with some of the most hideous character models the world will ever witness. The increased hardware requirements caused a lot of players to leave, exacerbating the exodus to other MMO’s of the time; a trend the update was designed to forestall. Perhaps this is the best analogy for Shadows of Luclin's impossible lameness.
Yet nearly a decade later, EverQuest is still soldiering on, having launched its fifteenth expansion pack last November. One thing which has certainly helped the game’s longevity is that Sony learned its lesson with Shadows of Luclin and has not substantially changed the game's hardware requirements since. But one has to wonder who is still playing EQ, to say nothing of why. It is tempting to conclude that after years of abuse and torment, the dark forces at SOE have broken something inside their customers, convincing them that being beaten is a privilege, and that the willingness to withstand such treatment is a desirable trait called “Hardcoredness.” I exaggerate, especially considering how much crueler Ultima Online was, and the game has made some genuine improvements over the years. I tenuously continued to play EQ until the fifth expansion, Legacy of Ykesha, when Sony convinced me to quit in earnest by making Frogloks into a godly playable race. Not only did this break the balance of the game, it dealt a fatal blow to the tone of the game's narrative, according to my fifteen year old sensibilities. For those of you who play WoW, an approximate equivalent would be if Blizzard suddenly decided to make Murlocs into a playable hero-race in the next expansion. Actually, knowing their sense of humor, it’s a prospect which seems frighteningly plausible.
When I started playing World of Warcraft in 2004, I felt like a third world refugee, delighted and mystified by conveniences others took for granted: Quests clearly displayed by bright gold exclamation points hanging over character heads and on an ever present GPS-like minimap, chairs your character could actually sit in, and most importantly of all, dying was not a tremendous ordeal. It was even kind of cool, with the grayed out color pallet and your ghost character’s ability to run on water. The starting zones were very welcoming, abundant with easy tutorial-like quests that yield the necessary equipment for players to progress. Rather than making the game rewarding by building a system so unforgiving that any degree of success feels like an achievement, Blizzard presents players with a steady stream of new items and spells, while making the process as convenient as possible, even to the point of being nonsensical at times (the same size of armor and weapons fit every race of character), yet for some reason, people find this idealized, convenient world more appealing than the alternative. It's almost like they play video games to escape reality's inconveniences.
Yet these are mere trimmings. The greatest appeal of WoW’s gameplay is that each class presents players with a unique, but versatile combat system while remaining relatively balanced in power. Even though EQ’s character creation system gave players more classes to choose from, controlling them felt identical. Worst of all, some race and class combinations will end up being fundamentally weaker than others, considerably stifling one's creativity. In WoW, a character’s race is mostly cosmetic, and any available class/race combination is viable. Also, while each class has distinct gameplay mechanics and a specific role to fulfill in parties, they can be adapted to fit whatever play style you prefer (solo play, PVP, or dungeon raiding). I don’t mean to say WoW is perfectly balanced, but Blizzard constantly tweaks the classes to keep them on even footing.
Yet while the classes are relatively even in power to one another, level-based elitism endures. Since the game's system is based on numerical levels of power, clear stratification and discrimination are inevitable. Even if you’re just in the game for the story, you won’t be able to debate your way into a cool dungeon if you can’t fight its mobs yet. That part of the universe is closed to you until you can pay your dues in the currency of experience, and graduate to a new grade in ass kicking.
Blizzard has done its best to allow average customers to get the most out of a subscription, which I believe is a noble endeavor. Whenever such changes are made however, the elite players will start in with the “When I was your level I had to fight both ways through a dungeon, debuffed and I learned to like it!” speeches. It’s reasonable to want your hard work to amount to something, but it always strikes me as strange when people gauge the value of their leisure activities in terms of quantifiable work. Then again, where the game’s first expansion, The Burning Crusade, was concerned, they had a right to grouse. Epic gear people spent months obtaining in the original game was rendered obsolete by basic equipment found in the expansion. The fairly even correlation between effort and rewards people had come to expect from the game was broken. Most people didn’t complain too bitterly, since they were getting superior gear, and I was surprised by how little bitching actually occurred.
The other shift that occurred during the BC launch was that Blizzard suddenly realized just how marketable their universe was. The resulting ‘growth’ subjected their lore to the same sort of weary dissolution which plagues other serialized bodies of fiction: stories rife with nearly nonsensical alliances and ret-conned deaths. While EQ had to weave its fantasy world from whole cloth, the original trilogy of Warcraft strategy games provided Blizzard with recognizable characters, locations, and a fairly compelling story to build on; yet that considerable advantage had become a liability as fans were left to argue what canonical Warcraft should resemble. One could make a strong argument that this is the inevitable fate of a fiction opened up to its loving public: “the tragedy of the creative commons” so to speak.
I like to think that there is genuine narrative potential for MMOs however, and Wrath of the Lich King has done a lot to keep my optimism alive. The earliest teaser had a strong narrative vibe, which only grew stronger in CGI movie, but I was skeptical until I heard about the pre-launch event. Capital cities, thought of as safe havens, were over-run with throngs of undead that would infect players and force them to turn against other players, even on non-pvp servers. It was a ballsy move met with a harsh outcry and more than a couple canceled subscriptions, but it also showed that Blizzard is serious about telling a story in their world. I must confess I don’t know how bad the zombiefest was, since I was taking a break from the game. Such rest periods are vital, lest you be drawn too deeply into the virtual world and lost to the real one. The quest chain which introduces the much talked about Death Knight “hero class,” is also decidedly story driven. Arthas also frequently pops up throughout Northrend, establishing him as a more imminent threat than Illidan (the previous villain) was in The Burning Crusade.
In addition to the buffed storytelling, the increase in item power feels much more natural than it was in the crusade and Blizzard has continued to promote accessibility by giving all dungeons and raids a five-player mode, so you can tackle the really awesome dungeons without finding twenty other people who are free, well-equipped and competent. If you’ve tried WoW, and it didn't tickle you, Lich King won’t change your mind. But if you’ve never played, and you can budget your time responsibly, now would be a good time to try.
Leave a comment, email, or hey, add me to your Facebook if you're interested!
Hope to hear from you,
~Ej Cruz
I’m not big on gaming at all, and never have been, (except like Mario Kart and Tetris – which is totally from YEARS ago!) so the topics discussed in class are really new and interesting for me. I do feel out of the loop sometimes, but the discussions definitely do help clarify a lot and I do get a better understanding of online gaming. I may not be big on games, but of course like everyone else in the world today, I’m always on Facebook and Myspace. (I hate to admit it, but it is so true!) It’ really interesting how it is not only used for “social networking” purposes, but these sites have expanded into things like sharing news and starting discussions about things that are going on in the world. I personally think it is a great way to get information out there. To tie this into our class discussion from last week, our modern technology has greatly evolved and it isn’t like the telegraph anymore - which would take days to deliver - but with our high speed internet today, we can deliver and share information instantly.
So, I was online reading the news and found this article on social networking sites and how it has been an effective way to share breaking news.
For example, there was a guy who took a picture of the recent emergency plane landing in the Hudson River on his iPhone and uploaded it onto his Twitter account. He was on a ferry and got took the picture to share with his “friends” because he thought it was newsworthy. He got so many views of it after it was loaded on the site, that it even caused the server of TwitPic to crash!
I’m personally not that big on TV so I never really watch the news. I am so dependent on the internet, so having the news online and the news being shared on sites like Facebook is actually really helpful for me, and I’m thinking it is the same way for many other people as well. I think sooner or later, it is not just going to be just TV news, newspaper, radio, magazines and online news, but these sites are going to be sources that people rely on for the news.
Source: 4chan - /b/Hi everyone. My name’s Hank and I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of my life playing online games, so I decided to put my experience to good purpose and write up a list of common gaming terms. This list is by no means definitive or comprehensive; I just tried to keep things brief, humorous and easy to understand. If you can’t understand or don’t agree with a definition, let me know and I’ll do my best to clarify. Feel free to add your own definitions in comments.
General Computer and Online Gaming Jargon:
Bots: Bots are essentially programs that fulfill human functions to varying degrees. They can act as automated game masters, artificial opponents. Also see NPC under RPG Slang.
Character: A player’s avatar in the game world.
FPS: In discussions of graphics and animation, FPS refers to Frames Per Second, or the overall smoothness of the games animation. With regards to video game genres, FPS stands for First Person Shooter; the sort of game where you run around with a gun.
GM: Short for Game Masters; the people who monitor the game and respond to player complaints.
Game Engine: A game engine is less like an engine and more like a chasis that provides developers with code for things like graphics and physics.
GPU: Graphics Processing Unit. The chipset that lets you run impressive graphics.
Haxor: A cute way of calling somebody a hacker. Somebody who cheats by hacking the game engine, abusing a bug, or using illegal bots.
Instance: A copy of a zone reserved for a specific group of players, allowing multiple groups to explore the same area without interfering with each other. Most dungeons in MMORPG’s are instanced, and frequently referred to as instances.
Launch: The release of a game or a patch.
MMO: A Massive Multiplayer Online game. Implies a game environment with a large, explorable world and customizable characters. Most (but not all) MMO’s are RPGs.
Noob: A pejorative but not terribly offensive name for inexperienced players.
Patch: A software download that fixes bugs and adjusts the game as necessary.
PVE: Player vs. Enemy combat; players fighting against computer controlled enemies as opposed to other players.
PVP: Player vs. Player combat. Some games restrict PVP to specific servers or zones, while in others PVP is the whole idea.
RPG: A role-playing game, where the player assumes the role a fictional character in a fictional universe. While early role playing games were designed to facilitate actual role-play; speaking like the character and acting out story lines; such theatrics are optional and largely ignored in most MMOs.
RTS: Refers to games in the Real Time Strategy genre, where you build an army and manage resources.
Server: The computers that host the game world. If it crashes, all the characters are disconnected.
Zone: A distinct region or environment in an online game.
RPG Slang: Cyber phrases and colloquialisms specific to role playing games.
AFK: Away from Keyboard.
ASL?: Asking one’s age, sex and location, or “How to look like a creep in just 3 letters.”
Agro: When used as a verb, agro refers to a monster attacking a player. When used as a noun it refers to the monster’s hostile attention. Agro is quantified by Threat.
Armor: Though occasionally used in reference to equipment (see Gear), people usually speak of armor in reference to the protective value assigned to an item.
Balance: Gamese for fair. Balance refers to a equal balance of power between players of the same level.
Build: See Spec.
Buff: An upgrade. Usually it refers to temporary beneficial effects for a character, though positively adjusting a character’s stats through patching are also referred to as buffing.
Boss: A powerful enemy typically encountered in a dungeon or instance.
Botting: Illegally using bots for activities like gold farming.
CC: Crowd control; characters and abilities that stun or incapacitate enemies to make hostile groups easier to manage.
Gold Farmer: A person who harvests money or game items for real world profit.
Class: What your character does in the game’s universe. Classes vary according to genre; fantasy games come in flavors like knight and wizard, while sci-fi games feature hackers, starship captains and the like. Generally, a character’s class is the primary factor in determining a player’s abilities and group role (Healer, Tank, DPS, CC…). Not all MMORPGs have classes.
Chuck Norris: The fall-back topic of conversation in most zones.
Debuff: A temporary effect which harms, weakens, or disables a character.
Ding!: Gamese for “I just leveled up!”
DPS: Short for damage per second, also refers to characters in a damage dealing role.
Dungeon: An especially challenging game environment designed for group play. Dungeons are generally instanced, and more structured than typical zones. The enemies are harder, but they drop better loot.
Gear: A character’s equipment.
Geared: Being well or sufficiently equipped for a given task (usually a dungeon).
GG: Good game.
Grats: Short for congratulations; the polite response to Ding!.
Grinding: Doing a boring task repetitively in an effort to get stronger quickly.
Hax: Short for ‘hacks,’ and used to express dismay or disbelief at another character’s abilities. It is not necessarily an accusation of hacking (see Haxor), but rather suggests that a player (or class of character, or even a specific ability) is too powerful and has broken the balance of the game. Usually leads to cries for nerfing.
Level: How strong your character is. When used as a verb (“I’m gonna go level”), it means I will fight monsters or do quests in an effort to get stronger. Also see grinding and power-leveling.
LFG: Looking for group.
Loot: The money and items dropped by a defeated mob or player.
Macro: A player designed custom command to quickly perform spells or attacks.
Mob: A common computer controlled enemy. The monsters players fight to get stronger.
Nerf: A permanent negative adjustment to a class, item, or ability to balance the game system. The name likens the act to padding something with nerf-foam to make it safer.
Ninja-looter: Somebody who unfairly claims an item from a defeated monster. A serious accusation if it is made in earnest, though it is often used lightly because it sounds funny.
NPC: Non-player character. Every character in a game which is not controlled by a player (quest givers, vendors, town guards, townspeople, etc) is an NPC. Monsters are also technically NPCs but players generally refer to them as mobs.
Nuker: Refers to a damage dealing character, specifically a character that uses abilities with high damage and broad areas of effect.
OOC: Out of character chat. Used to discuss technical aspects of the game in situations where people take traditional role play seriously.
Power Leveling: Having a high level character assist a lower level character with grinding so it can level up faster.
PVP Server: A server where PVP combat is always fair game.
Quest-Giver: An NPC that issues missions to players in exchange for rewards.
QQ: An unsympathetic response to another player’s complaints, similar to calling somebody a crybaby. In fact, double Qs are intended to resemble crying eyes.
Race: Your character’s race in the game. May affect your starting stats, abilities, class or role.
Re-roll: Starting a character over from scratch. A reference to old D&D systems, where character stats were determined by dice rolls.
Role: The function your character fulfills in groups.
RP Server: A game server designed for people who enjoy traditional role playing. Again, even on RP server’s most players don’t put in the effort.
Solo: Playing alone. When used as a verb, as in “I soloed X!” it means the character beat whatever X is without assistance from other players.
Stats: The numerical values given for your character’s strength, agility, intelligence and so forth, determining your effectiveness and power. Stats gradually increase as your character levels up, and are further increased by the gear you are equipped with.
Spec: The role a character has been specialized and customized to fulfill.
Tank: The character responsible for keeping other characters alive by drawing the mobs attention and receiving their attacks. Tanks have lots of health and armor but generally deal a mediocre amount of damage.
Threat: How much a mob wants to kill your character. If multiple characters are attacking the same monster, it fights back against the character with the highest threat.
WTB: “I want to buy…”
WTS: “I want to sell…”
Whew. Hope this helps somebody!
In regards to what we talked about today in class-texting as a intimate or non-intimate form of communication, texting money transfers, drop calls, and texting competitions, I went online and did some digging-but not on Digg. haha.
In summary, the embedded video shows a person talking to the anthromorphs of four social networking platforms: MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, and Second Life. MySpace is personified as a person desperate for attention. Facebook as a sophisticate. Friendster as a runt. And Second Life as an escapist charmer. This video creates the premise that a person can only commit to only one social network, since most of one's friends are members on that due to the "network effect" and most of one's time will be spent checking up on the network with the most friends. So interaction in other networks is extremely minimal. Build from this premise, a person can only be "friends" with one social network. Somewhere to emote, share ideas, and expand the social web.
Since the social networks are personified, the creators could attach several symbols to the icons to situate them with the growing publicity that molds their perceived characteristics. First, the attention-seeking and pursuit stems from the recognition that these social networks need an audience. If they can successfully build an audience, then they can finally turn a profit from selling lucrative advertising space. Second, Friendster is portrayed as an unpopular runt because its US membership had sharply fallen since its inital popularity resulting from its novelty. MySpace with its open registration had diverted interest away from Friendster since it was still in beta testing and more people were becoming more impatient to get an invitation.
The tennis sweater wrapped around Facebook's shoulders brings up issue of social class. A controversial research paper written by sociologist danah boyd, suggested that the preference between MySpace and Facebook tended to indicate which class the person belonged. The findings asserted that college-bound high school students tended to use Facebook, whereas those who tended to work right out of school would find their friends on MySpace.
The end sequence shows the person in the "actual" world and declaring that it is "lame". This could imply that the "actual" would could be a social network with its own set of rules for interaction. And moreover, the internet generation would perfer to interact in the "virtual" world at the speed of broadband.
--Brian
Submitted by C Costigan on Tue, 01/20/2009 - 16:23.
The online gambling industry has won a Kentucky Court of Appeals decision. That court has ruled that the commonwealth cannot seize over 140 domain names of Internet gambling firms.
The decision was handed down Tuesday afternoon.
Joe Brennan Jr., founder of The Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Association, was ecstatic by the ruling.
“This is a huge day for our industry!” he declared.
It is also a huge day for iMEGA, which filed the appeal on behalf of the industry. They were in the process of issuing an official statement following the decision which was handed down shortly before 3 pm EST.
Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear has announced he wanted to shut down 141 illegal Internet gambling sites in the state in an effort to stop unregulated online gaming.
Beshear filed a civil suit against the 141 domain names and was asking a circuit court to force the sites to block access to Kentucky users or give up control of their domain names.
"Unlicensed, unregulated, illegal Internet gambling poses a tremendous threat to the citizens of the Commonwealth because of its ease, availability and anonymity," Governor Steve Beshear said.
"The owners and operators of these illegal sites prey on Kentucky citizens, including our youth, and deprive the Commonwealth of millions of dollars in revenue. It's an underworld wrought with scams and schemes."
A circuit court in Franklin, Kentucky ruled that the commonwealth could seize the domain names. He later granted iMEGA's Motion to Stay after the appeal was filed.
The decision comes on the same day that President Barack Obama officially entered into the White House. The online gambling sector, reeled by the past administration, is hoping for change on a federal level.
The ruling essentially prevents other states from taking similar actions.
I find this interesting because I never thought that a state could ban their residences from entering a website. This gives new implications and possibilities from blocking other sites and limiting access by geographic location. I am sure this could entise other states to try and introduce laws similar to this. The governers argument is that these are illegal sites that do not pay taxes to kentucky's common wealth funds and therefore have tax evaisoin and should be band from being accessable to all people in that states borders. Any comments on how this rulling will be used in other states to further try and control people?.... for me utah and pornographic websites (illegal ones) comes to mind.....
