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Inside an Online Role Playing Game
By: Joe P. Attanasio 2011
In a
‘NUT SHELL’
You may ask yourself,
what is a ‘Online Role Playing Game’, and why are over 19 million people
playing them worldwide as of 2011? ‘World of Warcraft’ by Blizzard
Entertainment is the largest with over 12 million players alone. Most of the
game specific information in this article pertains to World of Warcraft.
Officially these games are called MMORPG’s or Massively Multiplayer Online
Role-Playing Games. This is a virtual game world where a great many players
interact with each other. These games are called RPG’s for short (role playing
games). Many of the RPG’s have a ‘medieval’ style theme, using magic, swords,
etc to slay monsters. These games typically contain castles, keeps, horses,
dragons, blacksmiths and leatherworkers etc.
People generally play this type of game for
fun and adventure, immersing themselves in a fantasy world to meet others and
challenge themselves. There is no particular goal in the game, although many people play to
become rich, powerful, popular, maxing themselves to the highest level, like
level 85. Some people simply play to occupy their free time with something new
and fun and have no final goal in sight. They have no desire to reach their
maximum possible level of 85. They may have 5 or 6 chars of a low level like
level 9 or level 10 happily playing in their spare time.
Why
do people play?
People play RPG’s for a variety of
reasons. Some play because friends or acquaintances that play have encouraged
them to play also. Some play to escape reality and lose themselves in a fantasy
world. Some play out of boredom or curiosity. Some play to meet people and
socialize. Some play for the adventure and the challenge.
Others play to share time and
experiences with a husband, wife or to play with their children. Some play to
get an advantage with a business contact, meeting them in a social environment.
Some play to get powerful and feel important and have
bragging rights. Some only play to level up and get a character well geared,
then sell that account for real money to people that want an instant powerful
character. Selling chars like this is against the terms of service agreement in
the game and is therefore illegal, but it still happens. People who are
disabled and have to stay at home may play for recreation they can do at their
own pace. Also, people with disabilities can play characters with no
disabilities, helping them get the sense of feeling ‘whole’ again. Stay-at-home
parents can find the game a relaxing place.
People play to be a part of
something larger than themselves. Some just want to be cruel or mean to other
people and get their aggression out. People play to have an instant attentive
audience of thousands of people reading and commenting on whatever they type.
Others play because they are lonely, the game world is full of people at all
times of the day or night whom they can keep company with. I once knew a man who
was divorced and had limited visits with his son; he arranged for his son to
get the game so he could share more time with him by seeing him online and
doing things with him in the game.
What is needed to play? A mid-range modern computer with
a high speed internet connection is the minimum requirement. You must purchase
the latest version of the RPG software and install it on the computer. You must
purchase play time, which can be done in different ways. You can buy a monthly
game time card from many stores that sell software and enter the code into the
game account screen. You can give your credit or debit card account information
to the game manufacturer and have a certain amount deducted each month.
Companies like Blizzard safeguard your credit card information and are
reliable. Monthly amounts vary from game to game but are generally in the $14
to $15 range.
Once you have the game on your computer and have
purchased time to play. you ‘log into’ the game and create a character (char)
to use. When you exit the game, your
character will be saved in the place and state at time of exit and will resume
in the same place and state when you ‘log in’ again.
Some games require you to select a faction (an
allegiance), like Yankee or Confederate, Earthling or Martian, Cat or Bird
etc. With ‘World of Warcraft’ the two
factions are called ‘Horde’ and ‘Alliance’. You have to pick one or the other
and this cannot be changed after starting your char unless you are willing to
pay an aditional fee. These two factions
are essentially at war with each other; you cannot talk to or party (group)
with members of the opposite faction.
Each faction has their own cities and are not allowed in each others
cities. If a Horde char enters an Alliance city, the guards will attack and
kill him.
Character creation consists of choosing a faction
(Horde/Alliance), a sex (male/female), a race (human, orc, troll, night elf,
dwarf, etc) and a class (priest, warrior, hunter, rogue, mage, etc) then
physically defining the char with the looks you prefer (skin color, hair, face,
beard, ears, etc) and selecting a unique name for your character. In World of
Warcraft you can choose from 6 races for each faction and 10 classes. You may
end up with something like this: A Horde faction, male, blonde haired, troll
mage (clean shaven with small tusks), named Rondell. Or a pink haired, female,
Alliance, dwarf hunter named Foxglove.
Each race is only available to one faction. In World of
Warcraft, you can only make a troll (race) char if you select the Horde faction
and can only make a human (race) char if you select the Alliance faction.
Because you are in a 3-D environment, this makes it a lot easier to distinguish
what faction a person is in by his physical appearance in the game.
Some players choose to create a character of the opposite
sex as themselves at some point while playing, after all, it is a ‘role
playing’ game. Your char creation usually takes some time and thought. You will
most likely have this char a long time and want to be comfortable with your
creation. Most games allow you to create 1 to 20 chars if you choose, and you
can delete the ones you don’t want at any time. Some games allow you to change
your char for a fee, and this can be an option instead of deleting a more
developed char you’re not happy with.
First time online
Ok, it is time to start. You have now made your char, so
what happens next?
Your char appears in a very very large 3-D virtual world.
You see Non-Player Characters (NPC’s) - these are not other players; they can
be friendly or hostile, and you can talk to them or attack them depending on
their status. You also see other players (like yourself) moving around doing
things, and you can talk to them or attack them depending on their status.
First time players are often confused as to who is a real person and who is a
computer generated person (NPC). This confusion does not last long as both
types of chars (real players and npc’s), act differently. NPC’s typically stand
still or move in predetermined patterns. If you talk to NPC’s you realize their
speech is scripted or predetermined.
Most games start off new chars in a ‘starting area’ that
has no hostile players and gives a new player a chance to get used to how
things work. In World of Warcraft if a player dies in the game, he loses
nothing but the time it takes to return to his corpse in ghost form from the
nearest grave yard and resurrect himself, a very handy feature.
All new players start out at a low level of skill and
endurance and with very minimal clothing or armor and weapons, usually as a
level 1 player. As you gain experience points your level raises and your skills
and amount of health increase. This makes you more powerful and able to
withstand more damage before losing all your health and dying. Typically you
gain levels faster when you are in the lower levels and much slower as you
approach the higher levels. There is always a ‘high end’ level cap, like level 80 or 85 etc. You gain experience points in
many ways; discovering new areas, questing, killing, crafting, gathering. You
must train a profession to be able to gather or craft items.
Discovery:
You are free to walk, run or ride anywhere in the massive lands, and by moving
to a new area you are frequently given experience points. Certain areas may be
restricted to you in some way until you achieve a certain level or accomplish a
goal allowing entrance. Other areas will have monsters (mobs) so much higher
than you that you cannot survive going there until you reach a certain level.
Questing:
The NPC’s in the game will frequently offer quests for you to accomplish. In
return, you receive gold and equipment and experience. These quests can be as
simple as requesting that you talk to someone or gather certain items from
around the area or kill so many of something or someone specific. An example of
a quest would be: “Take this meat to Jones the butcher. He is in his shop just
south of here, and he will reward you.” When you accept the quest the meat will
appear in your pack.
Killing:
The act of killing a monster or enemy (mobs) consists of equipping a weapon or
casting a spell and attacking the mob until it is dead and you are still alive
(yes – they hit back).
Crafting:
You can sometime gain experience and skill by crafting an item with your
profession. These include such professions as: Leatherworking, Tailoring,
Blacksmithing, Jewel crafting, Engineering, Inscription and Cooking. For
example, a Blacksmith can craft a plate helmet using Titanium bars made by a
miner that smelted the bars from Titanium ore he collected.
Gathering:
The gathering professions are usually Herbalism (gathering flowers and plants),
Mining (gathering ore), and Skinning (taking leather from animals that are
dead). World of Warcraft also has an Archeology profession where you dig around
the world for artifacts that tell the story of the in game inhabitants. Fishing
is available also.
Most games include such amenities as the following:
towns and cities, vendors to buy from and sell to, banks to store your items,
packs to carry your items, an auction house to sell your items to other
players, and public transportation to move between places.
A large number of diverse mounts will be available
in all games. These can vary from horses to flying dragons. These travel at
much greater speeds than walking and allow you to get around the world a lot
faster.
Who is
playing these games?
There are no true world
study/surveys revealing the age and gender of RPG players. Having personally
played RPG’s for so many years I have a good idea of who is playing. I know of
four-year-olds that are allowed to play under mom and dad’s supervision and I
know of sixty-five-year-olds that play regularly. The largest percentage of
players seems to be in the 15 to 35-year-old bracket.
An ever increasing number of
females are playing for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that
the game manufacturers are changing the game to make it more inviting to them.
You can make and wear clothes that are fashionable not just practical. You can
visit the barber shop in town and change your hair style and looks. The in game
‘story lines’ include weddings and romance. You can earn and purchase ‘vanity
pets’ like cute little bears or penguins to follow you around. All the players
can dance, each race has a popular dance associated with it. The recent
estimates put the average player’s age at 28 years old and the male/female
ratio at 5 males per 1 female. It is not uncommon for a player to know three or
more other players from real life outside the game.
Communication
The game is played on realms or
servers. These are separate but complete copies of the game world. Each realm
or server is isolated from the rest. People on each realm can only interact
with other players on their realm. Each realm will consist of several thousand
players. These players will be further divided socially by faction. You can
only speak to and group with members of your own faction. In World of Warcraft
the two factions are called Alliance and Horde. If an Alliance char talks
publicly near a Horde player, the Horde player only sees gibberish or mixed up
meaningless letters. An Alliance char cannot whisper a Horde char. However, a
small amount of preset physical emotes is allowed between factions. An example
of an emote would be typing /hug to another player and the words on the screen
say Player ‘A’ hugs player ‘B’.
If a Horde player emotes to an Alliance player that
he is sorry, everyone in the area will
see (Player ‘A’ tells player ‘B’ he is sorry). There is a limited number of
emotes and they can only convey a few basic ideas.
However, between players in the same faction there
are many ways to socialize and communicate. You can say something publicly, and
all people of your faction in the same area can read it. You can yell
something, and all people can see it in a much larger area. You can whisper
another player, and only you and the other player can see what you said. You
can say something publicly in the regional chat, and every player from your
faction in the entire region can see what you said. If you are in a city and
say something in the ‘Trade chat’ then every player in every city can see what
you said at the same time. Since people tend to congregate in the cities, this
would be a large percentage of the players online at that time. This is a huge
audience, just waiting to hear what you said and comment on it. I am sure you
must realize the power this gives every player with the ability to be heard and
read by so many people each time they say something.
There is also ‘in game mail’ and you can mail a
letter to anyone in your faction. This in game mail also allows you to send
certain items to other people in the mail, like a package might be sent.
When people group together to accomplish a goal,
they form a ‘party.’ While in the party, these people share a ‘party chat
channel’ and only party members can see that chat. Party chat can be seen
anywhere in the game world.
In addition to the previous ‘chat channels’ there is
a ‘chat channel’ reserved only for guild members to talk amongst themselves. A
guild is like a fraternity or sorority or club or gang of people that have
joined together to enjoy the game with each other and help each other out. I
will talk about the guild a little later but suffice to say for now, their chat
is only for their members to see, no matter where the members are in the game
world.
Live talking between two or more players is also
allowed using a microphone and speakers, very much like a telephone with party
chat if you will. This can be very helpful for people with disabilities and
poor typists. There are also ‘third party’ programs (not provided by the game
manufacturer), that allow people to talk with a group. These programs are often
used during dungeon raids to make it easier to communicate lengthy ideas, or
when you are so busy that typing is awkward.
Making
Friends
RPG’s encourage in game
friendships. In the starting area, many people ask other players a question
like, Where is something? How do you do something? Who do you talk to? This encourages players to help others and be
helpful and share knowledge of where people and places are and how some items
are used.
In World of Warcraft, you have
the ability to add anyone in your faction to your ‘Friends List’, which alerts
you anytime that player enters or leaves the game and makes it easy to whisper
them and say hello. You can have 50 people on your friends list in each realm
that you play on. On the other side of the coin, you have an ‘Ignore List’ that
you can add people to and they no longer have the ability to whisper you. When
someone on your ignore list tries to whisper you, they are told that they are
being ignored by you.
Crafters advertise their wares in
the city trade chat channel. This reaches a lot of people. They have the
ability to list a recipe for something they can make. People can gather the
items required and ask that crafter to make it for them. It is customary to tip
a crafter when using your items and his skill to create an item. Players
frequently add a good crafter to their friends list so they can ask to buy
items from them at any time.
Of course if you know anyone on
your realm in real life you will probably want to add them to your friends list
as well. During game play there are many instances where a group of people need
to be ‘partied together’ or grouped to accomplish a goal. The most common group
is 5 people. When people enjoy grouping with someone for a quest or goal, they
often add them to their friends list.
When you join a guild you will
instantly have many potential friends as guilds are primarily a social
organization. Even for the shy players, seeing what their fellow ‘guild mates’
(other guild members in your own guild) are talking about all the time in guild
chat makes them more familiar to you and helps you to learn about each of them.
As you might expect, some real
world friendships are actually started by people meeting in the game, before they
meet in real life.
Guilds
Guilds start out at level 1 and
can mature to level 25. A guild grows by its members deeds. The higher level
the guild the more in game ‘Perks’ or advantages its members receive. A guild
has its own bank the members can be given access to deposit and withdraw items
and this is a great way to share. One of the in game perks is ‘10% faster
riding’ for all members.
A guild can be started by anyone
who can get 10 other players to sign his ‘guild charter’. They are not required
to stay in your guild if they sign the charter. They must not already be in a
guild to qualify to sign a charter. Frequently, players forming a new guild
will offer to pay people to sign their charter reminding them that they can
leave immediately after if they want.
When
a guild is formed the guild master (CEO, President, Monarch, Dictator) must
name the guild. A guild master has total control of all aspects of the guild.
Anyone can leave a guild at any time, but they cannot join a guild unless
invited. Players can be expelled from a guild by the guild master at any time.
The guild master may promote any other guild member
to guild master if they choose to. The guild master determines ranks within the
guild and can promote or demote members as he sees fit. Each rank can have
certain advantages determined by the guild master.
Guilds,
like players, start off at level 1, and can grow to be level 25. The guild
grows by its members’ deeds in the game. A large active guild will grow
quickly, but a small guild may take many months to move from level 1 to level
2. As a guild ‘levels up’ certain ‘in game’ perks (advantages) become available
to all its members.
Guilds can openly recruit players, and players can
read guild advertisements and apply to the ones that interest them.
Guilds
can have up to 500 members. As you can see, guilds are an important social
structure in the game. Guilds with many well geared and knowledgeable players
can help a fellow guild member advance and get geared as well. Guilds with a
few friendly people can be a comfortable and enjoyable ‘home’ in the game. Most
players join a guild.
Guilds are the premiere ‘social structure’ of the
game. Choosing a guild that suits your maturity, play style, goals, size,
serenity (or drama), friendliness and whether they are demanding or let
everyone do things to their own liking, can be difficult. Creating and managing
your own guild can be demanding but can also be rewarding. Keeping most of your
members happy is a full time commitment. Trying to coordinate guild events with
members’ play schedules is particularly challenging. Not everyone is suited to
running a guild, in spite of what they think. It is akin to managing a large
social and business organization with friends and family. It is estimated that
12% of all players will at one time or another be a guild master, with many
giving it up as a thankless job that requires a lot of time and work.
PvP
PvP is an acronym for “Player
Versus Player”. When and where pvp is enabled players of one faction can attack
and kill players from the opposite faction; no player is safe from attack and
can be attacked at any time. This can create animosity for the opposing
faction. There are entire realms or servers that are ‘PvP realms’ and there are
only a few safe refuges from attack in the entire world. Realms where PvP are
limited to only a few small areas are called PVE (Player vs Environment)
realms. It is this PvP scenario that fuels ‘faction hate’. To further instigate
friction, players can use emotes. Emotes are like ‘body language’ which can
convey a message between players. Emotes can be as simple as smile or hug or
apology.
Here
is an example: An Alliance char on a PvP realm is busy doing a quest and is
almost done and a Horde char attacks him from behind and kills him, the Horde
char can emote (he spits on your corpse) then he emotes (he laughs at you).
This in turn might infuriate you. When your ghost returns to your corpse and
you elect to resurrect (become alive again) you do so at half health. The Horde
char can ‘camp’ your corpse (stay in the area waiting for you to return) and
upon seeing you alive at half health, uses his advantage to kill you again and
laugh again.
Human
nature can take over and the animosity escalates. Emotion is very much a part
of RPG’s.
Economy
Characters have many ways to get
rich in the game. They earn gold from finishing quests as a quest reward. They
can sell items they looted (removed) from monsters or mobs they killed. Some
mobs have gold as loot also. The items you acquire can be sold to vendors or
other players.
World
of Warcraft has an Auction House for each faction that works a lot like e-bay.
Items can have a bid or buy out price. Players can search the auction house to
buy or sell items by name or browse a category like ‘shields’. The Auction
house takes a small cut of the sold items as a fee.
Crafters
can create items for sale from the raw materials they loot or buy, and sell
those items. Each realms auction house prices will vary greatly as to the
specific economy on that realm. Prices will also fluctuate widely by supply and
demand as in real life. The Auction House is so popular that people have the
ability to buy and sell using their smart phone from anywhere in the world at
anytime of the day.
Crafters can create items using their own materials
and sell them. Crafters also can create items for other people using the other
persons materials and often receive monetary tips for their services.
Game gold is sometimes sold for real money by ‘gold
farmers’ that work for organized companies taking advantage of players
need/greed for more wealth. These gold farmers use cheats and scripted
move/attack/loot moves in the game to amass a large amount of game gold, then
their company advertises it on web sites and in game for sale. The way it works
is that you send money order or credit card and buy $10,000 of game gold for
$47.00 of real money and they get your characters name and realm and deliver
the gold to you in the game within 30 min of payment clearing in real life.
This is a highly organized and lucrative business and is generally discouraged
by the game manufacturer. People buying this gold online are sometimes victims
of schemes to steal their account information. These people can use a stolen
account to conduct further illicit transactions. When a lot of players on a
certain realm buy large amounts of gold from these ‘gold farmers’, the economy
of the realm suffers. This often causes the prices on desirable items to be out
of reach for the average player, thus gold buying is further encouraged on
these realms.
Addiction
Are RPG games addictive? Most
everyone that plays know the answer is a resounding “yes!” Truth is that many
video games are addictive but RPG games are especially so for many reasons.
Everyone starts out at a low
level, weak, and poor, and wearing tattered old broken gear if any at all. They
have very little skill at doing anything and have only one way to go ….. UP. As
you discover more of the world and start to get money and gear and skill, you
have a intense feeling of accomplishment. You are making something of yourself,
advancing under adverse conditions. This is very satisfying and you want more.
You go to bed tired but proud of your accomplishments.
Also, the game world is a huge
richly designed 3-D world, but because areas are level restrictive (a level 1
char cannot move in a level 40 area without constantly dying), the game world
unfolds slowly for you. This means there are always unexplored areas that you
have never seen just waiting to be discovered. Once you have advanced
substantially in the game, you don’t want to quit and give up all that you have
earned, all you have, all you know. You don’t want to abandon all your new
friends you made playing the game. You are hooked. If you consider $14 a month
spent for all the fun times and accomplishments, it seems like a bargain.
A note to students, whether
living at home or on your own, this game can consume a lot of time that maybe
should be spent on school work and studies. Students particularly must limit
their play time to not adversely effect their school work. In fact, all players
must realize the need to balance their ‘play time’ with their duties and
responsibilities in real life. It is far too easy to get absorbed into playing
more than you want or should. Parents have the ability to restrict play times
and amount of time allowed to play at each time from the account management
screen, this is password protected so children cannot override it.
Unfortunately, very few parents ever take advantage of this ability.
Emotions
Emotions run very strongly in RPG
games. Happy, sad, angry, frustrated, proud, embarrassed and so on is common. This is a game of egos. This is very much a
part of the game that attracts people. The game is complex, and it is easy to
look or feel foolish when you are not on top of it. Certain aspects of the game
require manual dexterity. We are not all created equal in this field. When you
are in a party of 5 people and you are required to jump from one cliff to
another to continue through a huge cave, and the other 4 people have no trouble
doing it, but you continue to fall, holding up the progression of the group, it
is embarrassing and frustrating.
When a player of the opposite
faction kills you easily and they are 3 levels lower but better at fighting
than you, this is embarrassing and frustrates you and makes you sad and angry
all at once. When you get swamped by 4 mobs your level and you know you are
going to die, but by quick thinking and expert playing, you best them all, you
feel very proud of yourself (a real ego booster).
When grouping with people you
just met and they comment at how good you play your char or how smart you are,
you feel pride. When grouping with people you just met and they comment how bad
you play and how much you ‘suck’ at doing anything right, you feel sad, mad,
and get upset at them and maybe yourself.
When your ‘friends’ seem to form
a ‘clique’ (hang out together but exclude you) you can feel hurt and left out.
Remember a dungeon raid party consists of no more then 5 people in most cases,
and being told, “sorry we are full this time, catch you next time,” gets very
old fast when repeated too often.
Fortunately, with so many people playing, it is easy to
lose ‘fair weather friends’ for new ones.
As I mentioned before ‘Trade
Chat’ is broadcast live in every city like the only radio station in the world.
Whenever you type in the trade channel, your name followed by what you say is
seen on every other persons screen that happens to be in any city, this is
often a few thousand people. They can comment publicly in the same channel
about what you said or anything at all. It is not uncommon to see more then 10
posts every minute in the trade channel. There is also software available to
bring the live trade chat channel to your cell phone, so you can monitor it
wherever you go. You could turn off the trade chat channel entirely but because
of its legitimate use, most people don’t. The trade channel was created to ask
others for crafting services and to take advantage of advertised services and
goods.
There is a ‘Language Filter’ that
can be turned on in World of Warcraft. This is a feeble attempt to shield
people reading chat from ‘bad words’ that many people find offensive or vulgar.
Only a few vulgar words, if spelled correctly, will get caught by this filter
and show ‘+@#*’ in place of the ‘F’ word. It is practically useless given that
the trade channel is frequently ridden with foul and vulgar ideas, which can
not be filtered anyways. Most seasoned players tend to ignore the foul language
and filter it out as they read. Many articles have been written about the ‘Trade
chat channel’, I will go into some further detail.
The term ‘Trolling’ is used in
the trade channel. When someone ‘trolls’ they make an outrageous or insulting
statement so as to provoke comments from other players. In other words, like
trolling for fish on a boat, they are trolling for comments in trade chat. Some
players recognize trolling attempts and refrain from comment, but alas, a lot
of comments usually follow thereby encouraging the troll. Frequently the troll
will say something about a current event or make a racist statement to provoke
a response.
Players also use trade chat to test their idea of humor,
trying to get a favorable audience response.
Sometimes players use trade chat
to make untrue claims about other players in public, and try to ruin another
players reputation in the game. Or they ridicule another player publicly,
trying to embarrass them. It is not unheard of to hear someone call another
person gay, or talk about the things they have done with the other person’s
mother. The whole ’mother’ thing seems to be way out of control these days. For
example, “I will be right with you as soon as I get off your mother.” It seems
popular with the teens, but one never knows the age or sex of the person typing
in chat.
It is documented that some players will create a char ONLY
to use in trade chat to be rude and outrageous. That way they never blemish
their own good name while being a jerk. They rarely tell their friends or
fellow guild members that it is their char.
Some of the more outrageous trade
chat jerks become realm ‘folk heroes’ of sort. Other players have seen them so
often in trade talking that their name stands out and they become ‘infamous’. I
can think of one popular troll that was being talked about 2 years after he
apparently quit playing or changed realms.
Trade chat always follows big
news sports and disaster and political stories and discussions. People were
discussing ‘Sarah Palins foreign policy expertise based on her seeing Russia
from her house’ for weeks. If something BIG happens in the world and you are in
a World of Warcraft city, you will hear about it before most of the country.
I suppose someday politicians may
use trolls to spread bad rumors about their competition and praise about
themselves, taking advantage of such a huge audience. During the last
presidential elections, the trade channel was filled with political talk.
The trade channel is also used to
sell extremely hot (desirable) and expensive gear in the game since it reaches
such a large audience and the gear itself can be linked into the chat so
everyone can see it.
Playing in
other languages
On the United
States servers of World of Warcraft, you can only play in English or Spanish.
To play on the European servers you need a European account. Many language packs
are available on the European servers. You can play in Italian, German, French,
Russian etc. All the in game text will be in that language, a good way to keep
your language skills up and meet people from different cultures. Many European
players choose to play in English if they can speak it.
Landscape
The 3-D
landscapes in World of Warcraft are very rich in texture and detail. There are
over 60 regions in the game. Each region has a unique theme. There are desert
regions, plains, forested hills, frozen wastes, jungles, river delta areas,
swamps, mountains, etc. There are over 90 towns, villages, camps and cities in
the game. You can swim under water and in fact there is an entire region that
is under the ocean with very colorful reefs and sea life abounding. There is
shadow detail in the game and as day passes into evening, the shadows do indeed
get longer. As dragons fly overhead their shadows follow across the ground very
realistically. There is weather in the game that comes and goes, this includes
rain, dust storms, fog, and snow.
Life learning
from RPG game playing
There are in fact many areas of learning and growing that
can come from playing RPG’s.
Role playing games can use a lot of math. There are many
character statistics to manage. Character stats include: Strength, Agility,
Stamina, Intelligence, Spirit, Dodge, Hit, Parry, Speed, etc. Managing your
‘stats’ to provide you the maximum benefit you desire can be complicated.
Fortunately companies like Blizzard Entertainment have made this task a lot
easier lately by doing a lot of the math for you.
Some games have weight limits to what you can carry, and
others have space limits. Your bank has only a certain amount of spots to put
things. Maintaining a large inventory teaches organizational skills.
Buying and selling from the
auction house teaches economics. You must decide how to dispose of unwanted
items in a way to maximize your financial gain. Being ‘broke’ in the game is no
fun at all.
Learning to work the dungeons and quests in parties of
5,10 and 25 person groups teaches teamwork and respect and manners. If you are
rude or lazy in a group, you won’t be invited back. Also, working in groups can
teach you the proper way to both give and receive good constructive criticism.
Some people may get their feelings hurt even when being politely told how to
improve their play, but good criticism can go a long way toward helping you
address your strengths and weaknesses.
Crafting items requires a list of
materials and the proper skills to make what you need, this requires planning
and organization.
Time management is taught throughout the game experience.
Running out of time part way through a dungeon run and leaving your team short
one person looks bad on your record.
Learning to laugh at one’s self over a blunder can he
healthy, after all it is a game, no reason to be too serious. Learning to
ignore a rude comment about your play, especially when it is out of order
(totally uncalled for), helps you learn to cope with that sort of behavior.
With the MMORG’s being so vast in nature, there is a lot
of information to be read and understood. Skipping over what you don’t
understand will often come back to haunt you.
Running a guild or leading a dungeon group teaches
leadership and responsibility.
Losing the rolls for loot from bosses helps teach you to
deal with disappointment. Often everyone in the group uses a random roll
feature in the game (1-100), and high man wins the loot.
RPG’s can help teach you about
sharing. Often if you share or let the other guy have something you won, it
will come back to you many times over, plus that good feeling it gives you to
be charitable.
These games teach patience as it is required in many
aspects of the game. You must ‘set-up’ attacking a group of mobs; if you just
rush in, a lot of times everyone in the party will die. Strategy is very
important as the ‘mechanics’ of most ‘boss’ fights are quite complicated.
Failing many times before being able to defeat most boss
mobs teaches both patience and the fact that determination will often be
rewarded with success.
Planning is
required through the entire gaming process as the game is very much ‘goal
oriented’.
In closing…..
I hope this article gives readers a good overview of
online RPG games. In fact these games are much more involved then I am
presenting in this article. For further information, you may visit the game maker’s
websites, where they not only have much information but also usually have
online forums where players ask questions and other players respond. I
personally have enjoyed playing these types of games for over 25 years. In the
spirit of the online game world, I would like to say, “Well met and good karma
to you all. Hope to see you around!”
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