We Fly Spitfires – MMORPG Blog

My post about the philosophy of friendship yesterday received lots of fantastic comments and responses (thanks all!) and whilst replying to Caliburn Susanto’s first comment, I started to pontificate about the consequences which exist within a virtual world. Caliburn put forth the argument that there is essentially no reason to distrust an online avatar just because they happen to be an online persona (I’m para-phrasing so please correct me if I’m wrong). Whilst I agree that online personas are potentially no less valid than our true selves, I disagree that they are equally as trustworthy, the problem being that we do not suffer any consequences when we operate within virtual worlds. I won’t reiterate the entire comment thread as you can just check it out yourself – Caliburn certainly writes with elegance and passion and his replies are worth reading.

The crux of my point of view is that there are no deterrents to prevent misbehaviour in a virtual world like there are in the real world, thus the certainty of interacting with someone online can never be as great as in the real world. If someone cheated you in game, there is almost nothing that can be done to punish the cheater and certainly nothing strong enough to severely affect them. However, in the real world there are laws to protect society and punish criminals so, although it doesn’t stop crime altogether, we at least have the threat of deterrent to protect us and guard our actions.

Caliburn countered my argument by saying that he doesn’t believe having pseudo-anonymity results in an increase in an honest person’s temptation to be dishonest. Personally, I don’t think anonymity has anything to do with it, I think it’s purely the freedom from consequence which invokes a more anarchist and selfishness nature. Call me a cynic, but I think it absolutely decreases the likelihood of someone being honest. Like Caliburn, I can’t draw upon any statistics to prove my points but I can draw upon my own personal experiences.

The fact is, I’ve encountered plenty of dishonest folk in online worlds who, I’m sure, would never dream of scamming someone in real life just for sole the fear of the consequences. Somehow they deem it more acceptable to be dishonest within a fictional world than in the real one.

I had a good friend in real life who I used to play Everquest with many years ago. He was perfectly nice, perfectly honest, yet the minute he went online, his moral compass shattered and would not hesitate at ripping someone off should the occasion present itself. He’s only one person, I know, but if his actions can be altered by changing his environment and removing the restriction of consequences then I’m sure other people can to.

I’m not saying everyone online can’t be trusted. What I’m saying is that I believe the lack of consequences in virtual worlds make it harder to trust people and provides them with more of a temptation to be dishonest.

What’s the solution? Conqueuences and deterrents. I’m sure if every MMORPG player had to hook up their genitals to a device that delivered electric shocks as a form of online punishment, we’d see a lot less misbehaviour and people would be a heck of a lot more honest.

Or kinky.

I was leaving the office today and I got stuck into a conversation with a couple of colleagues about MMORPGs and virtual worlds and the like. We were mainly chatting about the blend between online and offline worlds and where reality starts and ends when one of them chipped in with a really interesting point – how can you say that online friendships aren’t “real” as they’re just a relationship that occurs within a different medium.

Interesting stuff. The example he gave was that interacting with someone face-to-face is just a single type of interaction and just as valid as communicating with someone over the phone, via online chat or through a computer game or virtual world. It’s all quite philosophical really but it’s the type of thing that I find absolute fascinating about online realities. It’s all changing the way we interact, socialise and work and I think it’s very exciting.

Second Life is a perfect example of how people essentially live through a virtual world – they can use it as a full time job, full time socialising and full time entertainment. Is this any less of a valid way to live your life? It would be pretty cliché to call these people geeks and encourage them to get a first life instead but, if you looked at it from a different perspective, one could argue that living a virtual life and having virtual friends is no less valid than having them in ‘real’ world as what we see and feel is just an illusion anyway (uh oh, I feel a Matrix moment coming on).

Personally, I believe that nothing can ultimately replace real life interaction as it’s just too easy to project a persona through a computer and not truly represent yourself. I don’t mean lying about who you are or what you look like, it’s more about the way you talk and interact. If you’re typing with someone, for instance, it’s very hard to convey emotion and, if you’re chatting to them over a mic, it’s impossible to see their body language. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m totally into having online friends and I’ve got loads that I consider to be close ones. What I mean though is that I’m not going to declare my undying love for someone I’ve never met in person.

Still, writing this, it does make me wonder a lot about the philosophy of friendship. I’ve got some good friends I met playing Everquest 2, who I grouped with every night and chatted to almost every day for years. Just because I haven’t met them in real life does that make that relationship any less valid or tangible? Does it make it any less meaningful than a friendship I have with a person in ‘real life’?

My head hurts.

The Champions Online State of the Game report on the 25th June saw the announcement that you’ll be able to update your Twitter account with messages using a /tweet command. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Twitter as much as the next guy (maybe even more so) but is this really necessary? Are we just going to be bombarded with constant tweets like “ding, level 5″ from now on?

This certainly seems like a very shrewd move from Cryptic. Not only to get they get to ride the social networking bandwagon but they’re essentially getting themselves some free marketing by letting players broadcast information about the game for them. I can imagine that thousands of Twitterers (or Twittizens… yeah I just made that up – go me!) tweeting about a new piece of equipment they just looted every 5 minutes will attract some attention.

I guess I would be less cynical if the integration actually allowed you to see your full home timeline and everyone else’s tweets. As it stands it will just be liking sticking cotton wool in your ears and shouting at people (OK, OK, I know that’s pretty much exactly all that Twitter is but please bear with me here guys – I’m trying to work up a rant). To me, Twitter is all about communicating and interacting with others – getting people’s feedback and thoughts is the entire point of it. Well, it’s still early days, maybe we’ll see this progress some more until it really is a full and complete integration.

So what do you think? Great idea or a cheap marketing ploy?

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I was just about to write a different article today when I noticed a strange pingback on one of my older articles (I’ve now deleted it). It looked like a self-referential link from another one of my posts but I didn’t remember making it. Anyway, I followed the link and found a site called MMOFire.com and, low and behold, it was full of other blogger’s posts.

Let’s not be mistaken about it. This isn’t a normal blog linking to a few other blogs, it’s a blog completely comprised of other people’s articles, taken without their knowledge or permission. It’s a new site, only registered on the 21st of June and all contact details (either on the domain look-up or on the blog itself) are unavailable.

I was pretty pissed off to say the least. I have absolutely no problem with people re-distributing my posts so long as they acknowledge me and asked first. This site did neither of those and to anyone who stumbled upon it it would appear as if they had been written by that blog as there is nothing to indicate it’s being pulled from a feed.

It then occurred to me that this must be a common enough thing and there must be some way of doing something about it. Fortunately I found a post by World of Matticus that had been poached by the site and saw that he had added a “security” signature to his RSS feed (clever devil!). A few minutes later and I found a nice simple Wordpress plugin called RSS Footer that lets me do the same. I checked some other blogs I follow and seems like it’s not an uncommon practice as obviously they’ve encountered this before.

Chances are that if you run a MMORPG blog, your articles are being poached by this site. It seems to have an absolute ton of stuff from everywhere on it. I’d highly recommend adding a security footer to your feeds and if anyone has a better solution than else, please let me know.

Although some disagree, for me one of the strongest sides of a MMORPG is the socialising aspect and the people we meet and friends we make. It’s quite amazing really, when you think about it, playing with folk from all over the world and all being united towards a common goal and sharing a common experience. I’ve also been very fortunate to make, what I would consider, good friends through these games and ones I still keep in contact with even when I don’t play the same game as them.

I made quite a few friends in my time playing Everquest but they were very transient. As soon as they or I stopped playing, we completely lost touch. Looking back at them, I wonder how deep those friendships really were. I guess they were pretty superficial considering I can’t even remember anyone’s name. Still, it’s odd thinking about just how much time we spent together. Logging in and grouping with someone for four hours or so every day for weeks wasn’t an uncommon experience and when you add it up, that’s a lot of time. Oddly enough, even though we rarely shared our real names, we often talked about our personal lives. I guess it’s the anonymity part of the Internet that people like – kinda like having a someone to tell your inner secrets and worries too without worrying about any consequences.

Although I’ve played several MMORPGs since Everquest, Everquest 2 was probably the next big leap for me in terms of making online friends. One reason was because of the time I spent in my guilds there, secondly because of the advent of voice chat, and thirdly because of social networking sites like Facebook.

The first ‘major’ guild I was in was on the Splitpaw European server. It was called The Mutineers (because we mutinied from our previous guild) and I was a co-founder. I had a blast grouping with my guildmates but there were two in particular (a married couple) who I grouped with most frequently and still keep in semi-regular contact with. In fact, I just received an email from them today and am about to send them my wedding photos. Although we’ve never met, I think it’s fantastic that we can share our lives with each other (awww).

The next major guild I was in, New Dawn, was on the Nagafen PvP US server and I met so many fantastic people there. It was also great to be able to part of a European guild on a US server and really get a full mix of individuals. Texans, Italians, Austrians, Scots… we had them all and it certainly made Ventrillo an interesting experience. I still keep in touch with quite a few guildies via Facebook which is great as I don’t play EQ2 very much at all these days.

Of course, all of this pales in comparison to my email-pen-pal I made 12 years ago and keep in touch with to this day. Still never met him. Maybe one day. Although I imagine we’ll finally meet in real life and discover we can’t stand each other

If you want to be my friend (who doesn’t?) then you can find me on Facebook.

Catchy title. I wanted to get the attention of those who were unable to view the Another Perfect World documentary I posted about yesterday because they didn’t live in the UK. Good news! I finally found it on YouTube. Enjoy!

Edit: I’ve updated this movie with a 30min preview from YouTube. Unfortunately the full programme has been removed but you can find the official website here.

More 4 (a TV channel in the UK) aired a documentary last night about MMORPGs and virtual worlds entitled Another Perfect World. I had no idea it was on but fortunately a friend of mine sent me a text message just after it started and I got to see most of it. Usually these sorts of documentaries can either be very patronising and dull or full of tales of woe about how World of Warcraft ruined someones life. Surprisingly though the documentary was very interesting and informative.

It focused more on the virtual world side of MMORPGs rather than the pure game side and I think it was all the better for it. As enjoyable as the ‘gaming’ element of MMOs is, the truly groundbreaking stuff is occurring in the social and technological sides of it and the documentary mainly explored the way these virtual worlds are affecting and influencing the real world.

It was all fascinating stuff and I saw some interesting opinions and learnt some new facts about games like Second Life, Lineage and Eve. The documentary focused on them the most as they seemed to have the greatest impact into the real world mainly due to the societies they try to create. A lot of the documentary was exploring the rights and freedoms of users in games and where the blend between reality starts and stops. There was also a really great interview with Raph Koster, leader designer on Ultima Online, creative director on Star Wars: Galaxies and currently the founder and president of Metaplace.

Something that was really interesting to me was the stuff about South Korea. I always knew they were big into gaming but never to the extent that the documentary reveals. Apparently they have three television channels (?! maybe I heard that wrong) devoted to gaming shows and they having video game schools for training teenagers to become professional gamers. Starcraft still seems to be hugely popular there (I bet Blizzard are just drooling over releasing SC2 there) and they’re also dedicated to Lineage 1 & 2. Apparently they even have their own cyber police called the Cyber Terror Response Center (they cover all sorts of online issues – like viruses and hacking – not just online games as the documentary infers).

You can watch Another Perfect World online using 4OD but I’m not sure if it’s restricted to the UK only. Hopefully not. I’d highly recommend checking it out. Be careful though – it will really make you want to play Eve Online I’m downloading it now…