Games, Part 2

Now, how would I describe a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game to someone who has no idea what it involves, or even why you would bother with such a thing? Maybe by first breaking down the name.

The Massively Multiplayer bit is closely linked to the Online part. The Online part is easy – you need an Internet connection, preferably a fast one, to play. The Massively Multiplayer aspect is where, when you play one of these games, you can share the experience with lots and lots of other people who can be anywhere in the world (the games I am familiar with are US-based, so there are many, many American players, but there are also many Australians, Canadians, Germans, Chinese, etc. There are many hugely popular MMORPGs in Asia, like Lineage, but I’ve never played any of these).

You buy an account and create a character which is housed on a server. Each server (and there can be many of these!) is usually named after a place or individual or god from the fictional world the game is set in (EverQuest has the world of Norrath, Dark Age of Camelot has Albion, World of Warcraft has Azeroth). There can be hundreds or even thousands of people on one server alone. Each person pays for the privilege – apart from buying the game to install on your computer, there is a monthly subscription cost – so these games are big business these days.

The Role Playing part is a bit harder to explain. Roleplay.org defines it as “Acting, as a character that you either create or pick from a spectrum of pre-created characters. In some settings you determine vital characteristics of your character, in others, it is predetermined. You set your mind into this character, and play it out by improvising the characters’ moves.” In the game world, you get to choose from certain number of ‘races’ such as humans, elves, dwarves, barbarians, orcs, and so on.

Once you have decided on whether you want to be an elf or a dwarf, you choose what ‘class’ you want to be – a warrior (or fighter), wizard, healer, and so on. In many cases your choice of class is affected by the race you choose – for example a gnome may be a far weaker warrior than a dwarf, or an ogre will not be able to be a wizard (too stupid – or s/he just doesn’t have the correct attributes for the use of magic).

Speaking of choosing what race and class you want to be, you of course also choose the gender of your character at this point. Amusingly, many of the female characters you see running around in the game world are actually played by guys. Nick Yee has done a study of the motivations of people ‘gender-bending’, with a recent study showing that in World of Warcraft, “about 1 out of every 2 female characters is played by a man”. Most of the time when I create a character I tend to make females (Nick Yee found that “Of the 160 female players: 5 would be playing a male character, 155 would be playing a female character”). The one male character I made was a Halfling druid I named Mugwort, in EverQuest. I also tend to like the short races – my first ever character was a Dwarven paladin named Aasta LaVista (that’s Aasta in the picture, with M’s Big Brawny Barbarian named Loch behind her), and I also had a Halfling cleric named Beebalm (M made a Halfling too, named Budwood, and Beebalm and Budwood used to run around together – very cute). I lost interest in Star Wars Galaxies when I found that ewoks were not going to be available as a playable race. (Yes, I’m shallow, shall we move on? 🙂 )

But back to classes. Your choice of class defines the role you will play if you team up with other players – players join forces with the aim of exploring dungeons or zones and defeating the creatures they encounter. For example, if you are a warrior or any of the other fighter classes, you will be responsible for making sure that you physically attack (‘tank’*; verb) a monster or other such aggressive (‘aggro’) creature (‘mob’). If you are a priest or cleric your main role is to heal the warrior (‘tank’; noun) or any other members of your group who are getting injured by mobs. If you are a wizard, you ‘nuke’ (cast spells that cause great amounts of damage). This is a bit simplistic, and I haven’t even mentioned the roles of other classes like druids, shamans, rangers, hunters, enchanters, bards and so on, but you get the picture. (There is somewhat more to roleplaying that I haven’t mentioned here, but this post is getting a little long so I’ll leave it for another time.)

The point of all of this is to gain experience (‘xp’) and ‘loot’ (nice items that you find the monster carrying after you have defeated it). As you play and gain xp you gain levels (‘ding’ – this is EverQuest speak, referring to the sound the game makes when you gain a level), which in turn improves your ‘stats’ (your attributes of strength, wisdom, etc) which make you more powerful. You also learn new spells or skills as you ding, and new areas of the world become accessible to you. (There is usually little or no restriction on where you can go but a level 1 character will not survive in an area or zone with level 60 mobs.)

The loot or items that you find or obtain can be highly desirable. All these items enhance your stats or provide ‘AC’ (armour class – basically allows you to absorb hits) in some way, but some are more enhancing than others. This has caused whole economies to develop in-game as players sell or trade their items. There was one famous study showing that the EverQuest economy was bigger than that of Namibia! Many of these games now have dedicated areas where players can go to sell their items to other players – for game money of course. (You can even buy game money on eBay, for ‘real’ money!) I will note here that I have never ever been rich in-game. I always had just enough money to feed and clothe myself and buy the occasional new 1337 (‘elite’) sword, but that was it. Sounds a bit like ‘RL’ – Real Life!

*All these words I’ve been using are part of the language that’s developed in-game. I’ve actually been collecting these gamespeak words – but that’s another post altogether!

Categories: games, MMORPGs