The Grey Area
Back in college, my writing instructor told us all that good fiction happened because of complex characters. His line that I remember well was "Even mass murderers have mothers." This has always been my way to understand why I liked some fiction and disliked other areas. Purely "good" and purely "bad" are plainly boring and unrealistic. The NYT suggests this is why people buy George R. R. Martin's books and I agree.
So does this help explain at all why some people pick certain MMO races and classes that are coded as good, evil or in that grey area? I have a hypothesis:
People enjoy playing "evil" when it is purely evil because it's obviously unrealistic. So it's clearly not being evil because no one would mistake the in-game actions for out-of game attitudes. Despite the Third Reich (the creative's ultimate plot device), the real world has much less true good and evil than we'd all like to think. Thus, people don't have a hard time being "the terrorists" when playing Counterstrike or Nazis in some FPS title because those classes are labeled "bad" and there's little room for reading them differently. In fact, it's probably comforting to think of the world as having bad guys and playing enforces this.
But what happens when you have sides that are in that more uncomfortable grey area? Who wants to be the misunderstood, not-truly evil but maybe a bit bad monster? Who picks that vs. some white-skinned human priest who can choose "holy" talents? I wonder if some of the population imbalances in MMOs might be explained by the discomfort with the grey area choice.
WoW offers an example. Trolls look pretty evil and that opening cinematic doesn't make them seem like good party guests. Yet Taurens are plainly liberal environmentalists (good cows), orcs nature lovers (mostly good if lacking dental hygiene) and the undead are painted as misunderstood, yet occasionally bad-to-the bone (grey area). So overall the Horde, unlike the Imperials or the Nazis, offers that good/bad blur that might actually be uncomfortable for some people.
Does this pattern appear in other games?
Anyway, it's a hypothesis. Fire away.
Posted by Dmitri Williams on December 13, 2005 | Permalink
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Comments
Dmitri > "Who wants to be the misunderstood, not-truly evil but maybe a bit bad monster?"
Me! That's far more interesting than the simple good-vs.-evil choices. I may be in the minority on this, but to me it's a far richer experience to "become" an ambiguous, perhaps conflicted character than it is to become one who's dead set on a single point of view.
I think single-player games are beginning to reflect this more and more, in recent years (which I bring up only because it will perhaps bleed into MMOs, if it hasn't already). There now are a number of PC and console games in which the playable character is a bit ambiguous, conflicted or hasn't yet fully realized his/her destiny and spends the whole game trying to scratch that elusive itch at the back of his mind. Comic books underwent a similar transformation in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with ambiguous, conflicted characters becoming far more popular than they had been before, until they're now more or less the norm.
Posted Dec 13, 2005 2:48:04 PM | link
While all my main WoW characters are Alliance, I have played Horde a bit. I find that I am unable to play Trolls comfortably, but I absolutely adore my Tauren female. Part of this is the visual -- despite being bipedal cows, Tauren females actually manage to look feminine, especially in the eyes and the torso; conversely, the best looking Troll female you can make looks like the evil step-sister of a Night Elf. But another large part of it is the overall story and attitude of the race. Trolls feel aggressive and mean-spirited to me. Tauren feel kind-hearted, soft-spoken, and misunderstood. They aren't on the side of the Horde because they agree with the ideology of the Trolls, but because it was the Orcs who came to their rescue in a time of need. War makes for strange bedfellows.
Personally, I find the background story of the Tauren much more intriguing than that of the Humans or the Night Elves, and expect that I would find the background of the Orcs and the Undead equally interesting, could I bring myself to play those races. The reason I don't play Undead or Orc characters isn't because they look evil but really aren't, and therefore inhabit an uncomfortable moral no-mans-land, it's because they look evil. I greatly enjoyed the moral ambiguities in Knights of the Old Republic, but in that game, I was able to choose a character whose look I liked, while exploring the two different sides of the Force.
Posted Dec 13, 2005 3:29:52 PM | link
Not sure I agree with you about the analysis regarding Horde races. The Orcs certainly are not known for any love of the environment. The most convincing generalization I've seen is that each of them represent a traditionally oppressed people (tauren, troll, orc, undead -> indian, blacks, jews, communists). But on the general point you probably have a good issue.
This theory will be challenged when a "pretty but clearly evil" race is finally available, the Blood Elves. Blizzard theorizing the thirteen year olds will now play Horde instead of jsst Humans or Night elves. And it's worth noting that Dwarves and Gnomes are still as rare as any Horde race.
Posted Dec 13, 2005 3:31:29 PM | link
Quoth Dmitri: "...and the undead are painted as misunderstood, yet occasionally bad-to-the bone..."
While the Forsaken (the faction of the Undead that includes player characters) have the under-dog type plot of having broken free from the Scourge (mindless undead), I'd hardly call them "painted as misunderstood". Where early Tauren quests include things like "stop these Dwarves and goblins from strip-mining our land" and early Night Elf quests involve putting down diseased animals, low level undead try to harvest deadly poisons in the hopes of creating a new plague capable of slaying the living and causing them to rise again to bolster the ranks of the Forsaken. They may be doing it for a "good" cause (i.e. they fear that the Scourge will try to re-enslave them, while the living will try to eradicate them), but their methods are hardly noble.
According to current Warcraft Realms numbers, the Forsaken are the third most populous race despite this dark plot. Perhaps players of the Undead are motivated more by the race-specific abilities (notably a fear resistance ability much coveted in PVP). Perhaps some of them choose to ignore the storyline in favor of grinding or completing quests for other races. But of all the races currently in WoW, the Undead are by far the most grey, and yet they're also the most popular of all Horde. Then again, perhaps this plays back to Dmitri's original hypothesis - i.e. the Undead are evil enough to attract folks who want to be the "bad guy", while the rest of the Horde is sufficiently morally grey to turn them off.
It's been reported that Asian WoW players show the opposite preference of US players, resulting in more Horde than Alliance. If there is something deeper than appearence influencing one's racial choices in a MMORPG, one wonders what that divide says about cultural differences in the real world.
Posted Dec 13, 2005 4:16:52 PM | link
Who wants to be the misunderstood, not-truly evil but maybe a bit bad monster?
Roleplayers.
--matt
Posted Dec 13, 2005 4:28:19 PM | link
It's an interesting question which seems to tap into how morality plays into video games more generally. Even though I think KOTOR was better than its sequel, the sequel was much more interesting (for a while at least) because of a more nuanced and sophisticated take on light side/dark side choices. Jedi were sanctimonious and the Sith complex. It devolved into fairly standard Judeo-Christian/RPG morality by the end of it all, but hinted at the possible complexity of a gaming narrative.
Addressing the question of the post more directly, I wonder how this applies to the kind of behavior you see in Eve. The choices and the discussion here is primarily cosmetic (explicitly so with regard to Samantha's comments). People choose various breeds because they are more comfortable with their externally perceived, aesthetic morality. Eve, however, with its generally classless system does present some choices with regard to race which aligns more along broader and more complex moral choices (capitalism/communalism, militarism/democracy, etc). Everyone seems to live in some sort of grey zone. Even while I was (for a short while) part of an explicity anti-pirate corp, it always felt that in our wars and in our personal dealings you were sort of out to screw other people over.
So, basically I feel like Eve as an entire vw exists in this grey zone. Everyone is out for themselves in a morally ambiguous world, generally lacking in external authority and moral guideposts. The kind of emergent behavior that incites such bloggery about Eve arises precisely because of a general lack of these kinds of simplified and codified narrative guideposts for players to feel comfortable or not. (of course linking up behavior to alignment/race is tenuous at best anyhow)
Also, one final note, I play a doctor in Anarchy Online most of the time so I can be a healer character without having to deal with all that sanctimonious "holy" aura crap...
--DongWon
Posted Dec 13, 2005 4:38:24 PM | link
Yes, a tolkienesque typology of good/evil is considerably less interesting than Shakespeare, let alone our daily experience which rarely parses into these discrete categories. Yet- it may be more true in a fundamental sense. Thus when when seek fantasy worlds, a prime requirement is that they not replicate the moral complexities of daily experience, but rather divinate for us, placing the good and the bad in loci that we can readily identify and attack/defend as is our wont. It is a tension between the clarity of the reward versus the complexity of the puzzle. The modern world gives us complexity in abundance. We want moral clarity, guidance, mentoring.
Posted Dec 13, 2005 5:00:12 PM | link
In my experience with roleplaying, most people are incapable of creating and playing deep characters without a lot of roleplaying experience, and aren't comfortable trying.
I'm not sure your argument about trolls actually links so directly into why people like G.R.R.Martin, and characters like Tyrion or Jaime. Personally, I think casual players like the Horde because they -can- enter a comfort zone of simplistic evil characters. A lot of people love great art, but I think they'd be a little worried if they felt they had to paint it.
Posted Dec 13, 2005 5:05:40 PM | link
Wasn't there supposed to be a playable "Hutt" faction in Star Wars Galaxies' early design? That third faction (alongside the Rebels and Imperials) would have been tailor-made for ambiguous, complex characterization. (Which was somewhat reflected in the "Privateer" pilot profession of Jump to Lightspeed.)
Was the Hutt faction derailed because it was too difficult to implement compared to the more simplistic remaining factions? Or for reasons unrelated to this topic?
Posted Dec 13, 2005 5:21:37 PM | link
Not everyone who chooses the "evil" or even "grey" sides does so because they want to play it the way the developers (the backstory, the flavour stories, everything of that sort) set it up, though - I see a lot of people whose first instinct when they see an archetype is to play against it.
Boy, are they surprised when they get there and find out that they're not the Only Nice Drow after all.
That indicates to me that the Horde side gives greater overall freedom of character development - you've already been given permission by the game to be eeeeeeeeevil if you want to be, but you can play against that. It's a bit harder to work in the opposite direction (assuming you are not naturally evil, of course).
Posted Dec 13, 2005 6:32:20 PM | link
The whole good/evil paradigm seems fairly shallow to me in MMOGs. In KOTOR, as has been mentioned, you can feel the righteous or malefic nature of your character like heat waves coming off of the screen. OTOH in WoW I don't see much moral difference between my Forsaken warlock and my human paladin -- there are a few spell and quest differences, but they're pretty light. Both characters spend their time whacking things more defenseless than they are and looting dead bodies, which seems to put them on a similar moral footing (okay, so the warlock can feast on the bodies too when necessary, but that rarely comes up, and has no additional eeeeviiilll effects).
Being able to play and interact with characters with their own moral compass could be fun. It would certainly make questions of transgressive or self-righteous play more meaningful. It would be interesting to have the in-game RP support to find myself rolling my eyes at a particularly sanctimonious character of mine, or wincing at the actions of a particularly evil character (notwithstanding that, as in KOTOR, I was still the one choosing their actions).
Posted Dec 13, 2005 7:01:43 PM | link
Maybe related CFP: Video Games and the Alien/Other. Lee Sheldon is giving the keynote.
Posted Dec 13, 2005 7:13:41 PM | link
As Mark Wallace suggested, there's kind of an ebb and flow to whether our artists produce works of "pure good and evil" or moral ambiguity.
At least in the West, the past century saw our preferences swing back and forth between these two approaches numerous times. In the teens and '20s, Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote about clearly good and bad guys (Tarzan, John Carter of Mars). But the Great Depression and World War II generated film noir. The '50s and early '60s gave us humans vs. space monsters and Westerns with Black Hats and White Hats. Then the late '60s and '70s took us into a much grayer world -- Dirty Harry, for example.
Then, once again exhausted by ambiguity, we wanted heroes, and in the late '70s and '80s we got them back again (Star Wars, various action heroes). Then the cycle swung back once more during the '90s as artists reacted against this clear-cut description of good and evil with assertions of ambiguity (Pulp Fiction, Primary Colors).
It's possible that the success of the Harry Potter media empire signals that we're once again tired of living in a world of nothing but shadows, and are ready again for clear distinctions between good and evil. I'm not sure if the commercial results of MMOGs will give us useful data points on this subject -- there are a lot more factors involved in a MMOG's success or failure than just how they handle good and evil -- but they're worth watching on the chance that they do demonstrate some pattern within the ebb and flow of the larger cycle.
--Bart
Posted Dec 13, 2005 8:20:41 PM | link
The closest to a blur between good and evil in different factions and characters in MMOs I have seen is Shadowbane. It’s no secret that they were inspired by many sources like Elric of Melnibone, A song of Ice and Fire, Wheel of Time, even the Arthurian legends when they created their backdrop for their game which made one of the most compelling MMO out there. But how players divide themselves in the game was at least early on, with the usually more traditional fantasy roles. The reason being that not all players take the time to read lore, they just want to play the game so they play with the same fantasy setting that they are used too.
For roleplayers though, these worlds are ideals to be able to play really deep personalities. The hardcore gamer or general griefer will only go for the one with the best stats while others pick what they find the most esthetically or traditionally pleasing. People have already mentioned some of these factors with why some players in WoW pick different races.
The point I’m trying to get at is that creating worlds of grey are a lot harder to pull off successfully if you want all your players to participate in this not good/not evil mentality. Until you reward players for creating character who have a depth to them and are true to this personality, then the grey gets lost to the easier good or evil concept in most players. On the flip side while generic characters are easy to play and fast to get into, they are not as compelling as well thought out characters so it’s easier for these players to jump from game to game looking at mechanics.
End result, creating and encouraging grey worlds actually gives you better chances to retain long term customers so long as your game isn’t too buggy of course. If not, players will just jump to the next big thing with more interesting mechanics.
That’s my two cents on the subject.
Posted Dec 13, 2005 10:59:56 PM | link
Hmm. The "evil" races in World of Warcraft never really seemed evil to me, so I never felt uncomfortable playing them. (Even Forsaken, with their plague quests, never really felt menacing to play.)
Now, playing Star Wars: KoTOR as dark side actually made me feel uncomfortable. I didn't like being that mean to people, so I stopped playing as dark side. :P
Posted Dec 14, 2005 3:41:37 AM | link
If you've played through all the Warcraft games you will have noticed how humans gradually progress from "pure good" in Warcraft 1 and 2, to a bunch of corrupt, egotistical and often evil neutral characters. The same is true of orcs, who start off as "pure evil" in Warcraft 1 and 2 and in Warcraft 3 are painted as unwitting tools of the Burning Legion and in fact an honourable and noble race, also very neutral.
Posted Dec 14, 2005 5:13:08 AM | link
Evil is just a label in virtual worlds as we see them today. It might better be described as "naughty". It bears no comparison with real evil.
Richard
Posted Dec 14, 2005 8:57:52 AM | link
"Who wants to be the misunderstood, not-truly evil but maybe a bit bad monster? Who picks that vs. some white-skinned human priest who can choose "holy" talents?"
Half the gaming population.
Walk around the “good” areas of Everquest 2 sometime. It seems like there are as many dark elves running around those areas than high elves! ( Which means those are “betrayed” dark elves who have gone over to the side of good. ) There's a lot of roleplaying short hand out there that people like to use. There's the Really Evil Guy, the Really Good Guy, the Mischievous Rogue Type, the Big Dumb Guy, the Misunderstood Anti Hero, etc.
I'm not saying this is bad or good, just saying that it is. It is Very Hard to pull off complex or deep in any MMOG, even if you are really good at it. Let's take an example: Jamie Lannister from George R. R. Martin books. Jamie is compelling because we spend (going by my editions of the books) more than 1200 pages hearing about how Jamie is the kingslayer, how he's got no honor, how he's SCUM. The first direct action we ever see him take is when he has sex with his sister, then pushes an eight year old boy out of a window! Then, in the third book, we get his point of view and see him start to slowly change and grow. How do you do this in an MMOG? Put it in your bio? Find a small group that you play with constantly, do really evil stuff to all the other players for 25 levels, and then engineer your own turn towards good when someone cuts off your hand?
Very unlikely. I only know one person who has ever pulled off anything close to that in a roleplaying setting, and it took years of playing mostly outside of a “kill monsters” environment. When you get around to actually playing the game, most everyone just falls back to quirks of speech while killing stuff for a quest.
Additionally, I think you're trying to make most people's character choice deeper than it actually is. As far as I can tell, and this is for any MMOG you can name, players seem to pick their avatar for the following reasons:
1)This is the same character I have played since I first started playing D&D in High School. In game fiction? Psssh! This is My Character. (This may have some relevance to your original points, in relating to why they created that character in the first place, however.)
2)This is my favorite character in pop culture. (May apply to appearance or simply the name.)
3)Who has the cutest butt / who looks the most badass / who gets the coolest looking armor?
4)(And a distant 4th at that) What would be the coolest type of character to play in this world? And / or a reaction to that: Everyone and their brother seems to play a Dark Elf Shadowknight, so I'm going to play a Dark Elf Paladin or a Halfling Shadowknight to be unique.
Note that the first three are meta reasons, and the fourth is possibly a meta reason too. A lot of roleplayers (the “holy grail” people who are supposed to be the ones that care about in game fiction) go for the shorthands of 1 or 2, either adapting them for the fiction of this new world somehow or simply falling back on the “inter dimensional portal” explanation. (Something I've used a time or two myself.)
I think the main reason that a class might become under utilized is because it doesn't seem Cool Enough or Looks Ugly or doesn't jive with any previous My Character roles.
Posted Dec 14, 2005 9:39:05 AM | link
I think most mainstream lacks the depth of emotion to really even allow for consideration of morality.
Good or bad may come into play, but good and evil don't really registered all that much.
Your actions don't have true lasting effects, so like soldiers in war: everyone kills so you have to. You don't feel the effect of killing until you had time to relect on the effects of your actions.
The rest is just sentiment.
My 2 cents
Posted Dec 14, 2005 10:02:37 AM | link
The use of the term good/evil in MMORPG has always seems wrong to me, for the simple reason that there is no real choice(Eve,UO and Asheron's Call PvP server being the only real exceptions and even then is it mostly in the minds of the other players not the NPCs). Can you really consider someone to be good or evil with no choice?
You generally have to choice what side you are on and from there on it is up a different of descriptions and naming. A "good" quest may have you kill off 10 "evil" mobs, and the "evil" char has to kill off 10 "good" mobs. Thoses quest cannot be good or evil if you have no choice on your characters actions.
Will this change, probably not, it would just lead to inbalance.
Posted Dec 14, 2005 10:28:35 AM | link
William: "Thoses quest cannot be good or evil if you have no choice on your characters actions."
Very interesting. Some people say God is not good or virtuous. Be definition, everything God does is good, so there is no room for a good/evil or virtue/vice aspect. If theres no room for moral ambiguity, there is no evil or good.
Posted Dec 14, 2005 10:46:36 AM | link
No offense but this is the sort of navel gazing conversation I used to have with myself about morality when I was 14 years old. I'm thinking some of the people here stopped developing intellectually, and morally somewhere in their teenage years.
I'm grown up now. There is good, there is evil, and I'm not one of the semi-retarded members of the great unwashed peasantry pseudo-intellectual liberal elitists would paint me as being for recognizing this simple FACT.
Most games portray the gamer as being the good guy, because it is the obvious moral choice, and the choice most people would make. Do some people prefer to be "Bad" or "Neutral"? Sure - but they are exceptions to the rule. Exceptions that PROVE the rule.
And how "Neutral" is neutral really?
I'm sure the 7 million Jews slaughtered by the Nazi's wouldn't have much nice to say about the Swiss.
Posted Dec 14, 2005 10:56:19 AM | link
More eggnog for you, venmax!
Personally, I'm enjoying the navel gazing here, especially if it helps contribute to understanding the conscious or unconscious moral choices that guide users in interactive environments. I find that increasingly relevant, and suspect that it will matter more and more as time goes on. I do wonder if Devs consider these kinds of choice factors.
What started me out pondering it was simply the issue of faction balance, which is a design issue. Yet that design issue is going to be impacted by real-world values since real people will choose those factions based on *some* criteria. The thread here offers several criteria and they aren't mutually exclusive. Now I wonder which are prominent and how they might explain faction imbalances in games where there is no built-in mechanic to re-balance (unless you count WoW's battleground shortages as a supply/demand mechanic).
Posted Dec 14, 2005 11:24:57 AM | link
This good/evil thing resonates with me all the time. It's part of the persistent agonizing I do over my character choices. I wish it didn't happen, because I'd have a level 60 by now.
Posted Dec 14, 2005 12:13:31 PM | link
I think morality of any sort (good v. evil, or save the day/princess/world) is mostly useful in as much as narrativity is useful in the process of playing games generally -- as a logical model for understanding and thereby completing game goals. There are a few layers going on here: 1. the basic quest structure that generally has a success/failure toggle (in the purest ludological state); 2. the overlaying fictionalized logic structure that helps explain what the goals are, suggest clues as to how to complete them, and establishes the criteria and reward for completion; 3. the overall goal of the player and his/her desires to meet the game critera vs. their own criteria for success.
So, to review a simple subquest from Neverwinter Nights (that has some multiplayer, so I can use it here at TN, right?), you have to protect a citizen from rioters and deliver him/her to the guard gate. I don't remember the exact details, so names might have been changed to protect the innocent (or hide my faulty memory). Three levels involved here:
1. (Ludological)
A. Main quest: Deliver x to y.
B. Dependent quest: Protect x from y.
2. (Narrativity/Fictional/Quest/whatever the non-controversial way of saying "narrative" today)
"Help this female citizen [i.e., traditional "save the princess"] by delivering her through the burning town filled with crazed hoodlums. Do not stray far from her side! If you succeed, Guard Gate Dmitri may have a reward for you!"
We now have a fictional overlay that both presents the logic of the puzzle, but also inherently brings in some component of morality that the ludological does not present. Failure in "Dependent Quest B. - protect from the crazed hoodlums" automatically results in failure of "Main Quest A. (the dead don't care if they are delivered or not). Failure in B. can result from poor play (inability to successfully fight off bad guys). Failure in A. is, arguably, a failure of character conscience - either in direct refusal ("Find your own way out lady! It's everyone for themselves in here. And gimme your purse!"), or negligence (quitting the quest by letting her die).
3. Because of the player's individual desires for certain kinds of recognition, rewards, or fun, s/he might choose any number of options for the quest resolution based on either the fictional premises or end-game possibilities - often (but not always) either a role-play or macrogaming situation. Reward is 3 gold and respect from the city guard? Save the citizen. I can rob her myself for 10 gold? Rob her.
What's important to my point is that there's a level of morality in the space between 1. Ludological and 2.Fictional - the In-Game-Morality - as well as a level of morality between 2. Fictional and 3. Player, where the player balances the tension between the ludogical and fictional forces at play in any quest system. Perhaps we might consider the morality of the fictional as roleplay, and the morality of the ludological (maximize results) as macrogaming (playing to the larger set of game goals to maximize potential win - most gold, best armor, whatever).
Simple case in point, still using NWN (but applicable to any number of games): how many times have you walked into a stranger's house, smashed a box in their living room, and taken their money? And then have the household thank you for stopping by, and by the way, here's a quest that you might want to pursue. From a designer's perspective, this situation presents a common tension between ludological strategies and use of story. Spread out wealth to invite exploration, and in return sacrifice consistency in narrativity. From a player's perspective, this scenario highlights the fact that more often than not the macrogaming potential is too great to ignore the inconsistency with roleplay, even for paladins.
It's also why I hate box smashing, as a general rule.
William Dieterich said:
"The use of the term good/evil in MMORPG has always seems wrong to me, for the simple reason that there is no real choice(Eve,UO and Asheron's Call PvP server being the only real exceptions and even then is it mostly in the minds of the other players not the NPCs). Can you really consider someone to be good or evil with no choice?"
Expanding on this, I continue to see this as a tension between roleplay and macrogaming. One of Asheron's Call's year-long story arcs involved a series of quests in which you had to decide the motives of an NPC named Nuhmudira. The Gelidite Library quest ended with you choosing whether or not to save or condemn Nuhmudira (she had sacrificed, literally, a close confidant - either to save the world or gain power, depending on your interpretation). Essentially, the quest was a voting box, but your choice also meant that you had access to one of two follow-up quests. Condemn her, and you can continue on to the "Callous Heart" quest (reward: amulet for bonus to health score). Save her, and you can continue on to the "Nuhmudira's Boon" quest (reward: multi-spell amulet). The quests could only be completed *once* per character (unlike most), and if I recall correctly the items were bound to the character. So, in many cases, the decision was based on the longevity of your character (which reward was most beneficial to your character in the long run) rather than on the morality of the situation. The morality of the game world (the space between 1 and 2, in the example above) was often overridden by the tension between player desire for roleplay and player desire for overall game success (the space between 2 and 3, above). Sometimes, this is a happy marriage (you both believe in Nuhmundira's guilt, and you happen to want the Callous Heart quest reward). But having player greed override a character's usual diagetic behavior does present intriguing moral questions in both levels described above (between 1 and 2, and between 2 and 3).
To swing full circle - an established morality helps players understand game goals (as the larger design of game fiction does), but the broader morality is perhaps representative of the tension between game as ludological enterprise and its use of fiction as narrative development. When it comes to a game like WoW, I would argue that many choose their characters and associations based more on macrogaming than on roleplay, understanding, of course, that many people do join roleplay servers and/or roleplay on regular servers (I would not argue, in any case, that roleplay and macrogaming are mutually exlusive behaviors).
And, I've rambled on enough... but you can see specific quest details from the Asheron's Call example here:
http://www.thejackcat.com/AC/Hobbies/Quests/Library.htm
Posted Dec 14, 2005 1:01:39 PM | link
Some of us play Horde because we think the Alliance is full of carebears and small children, who we don't want to play with, but do want to gank.
Posted Dec 14, 2005 5:19:34 PM | link
Horde Guy: Do you honestly believe that? It kind of amazes me that the PvP would be so immersive that it would cause people to objectify the opposite side to that extent.
Posted Dec 14, 2005 9:30:19 PM | link
Horde Guy does raise a minor point that I have seen espoused by many. I've known quite a few players to choose the horde simply to get away from what they perceive to be a faction with an overlarge population of prepubescent boys.
Posted Dec 14, 2005 10:50:51 PM | link
KOTOR's moral choices "made us feel bad" because they were actually part of the gameplay. They affected, for example, if your character got more money or more experience for his questing, wether or not minor characters would die, and the plot of the side quests. In WoW, as in Splinter Cell, Halo, DAOC or what have you, there *are* no moral choices. Choosing a start location, a look and maybe an extra spell or two (that is, choosing your "race") is not a moral choice. It's a gameplay choice. It's like using maces instead of longswords in combat.
In KOTOR, one of the big moral choices comcerned a blue alien guy (a Duros to the fans) who helps to hide some inconvenient corpses you "create" at one point. Later on, you find him on death row because he helped you hide the corpses. He begs you to free him by completing a small puzzle. If you fail at the puzzle (which is hard to do except intentionally) the alien screams in agony and collapses into a heap. No law-enforcement arrives, you don't get any more or less experience as a result of this murder. There is no real in-game consequence. *Thats* how you put moral choices into a game. Non-roleplayers don't have to worry about the quest (as there is very little reward) while Roleplayers can struggle with the implications of playing God all they want. The crime is unambigiously evil, and saving the alien is unambigiously good. The choice is also entirely in the player's hands. In the next room of the prison you find the alien in, there is a guard who attacks you, and you go into combat mode and kill him and get 200 experience. *Thats* called jumping a hurdle. It has nothing to do with morality.
Undead look cool, Humans look familiar, Night Elves look sexy, Gnomes and Trolls look goofy, Orcs look evil, Tauren look like furries and Dwarves look unoriginal.
There's nothing else to it.
Posted Dec 15, 2005 4:09:32 PM | link
Attentiveness to the backstory of WoW would suggest that the Horde is not evil in the Tolkienesque sense. Well, except for the Undead, who have quite a few quests in which they do quite unambiguously evil things; in the quest text, it's made very clear that they're plotting to betray their orc, troll and tauren allies as the soonest opportunity. But on the Alliance side, the backstory of humans is deeply morally ambivalent: they're anything but the good guys.
But that doesn't matter that much, except perhaps on the role-playing servers. What matters is how these things signify, and who enjoys playing "evil". This isn't just a MMOG question: it used (and still does) crop up in pen-and-paper games all the time.
It also crops up in acting as a profession: most niche character actors find they get greater economic and reputational rewards for playing antagonists; genuinely "grey" characters are saved for the grand "actors" in films and television, and for a certain form of drama that permits moral ambiguity. It would be interesting to think about what a MMOG that consciously played in that same register would look like, but I think we don't have anything remotely like the necessary technical *and* design precedents to imagine that possibility as yet.
Posted Dec 15, 2005 5:59:56 PM | link
Good? Evil? Give one side a +5 advantage of foozle wacking in a game like WoW and 90% will go to that side...
Posted Dec 16, 2005 12:13:11 AM | link
I think the real question is whether anything in MMOG's, or video games in general, actually approaches real writing.
Posted Dec 18, 2005 8:51:28 AM | link
I think the WoW specific arguments are a little iffy. There are simply too many factors from additional skills, environmental polish, player base, etc.
If i were to reroll on a completely new server, I'd go with the race that has the shortest wait for battlegrounds.
When I first played Lineage 2, I rolled up a Dark Elf female because if i were to stare at the back end of a character for the next 3 months, it might as well be a hot chick, right? Well, i regretted that choice after about the first week. Not only did about 1/4 of the server population do the same, but i believe that another player's character becomes your in-game personality for a lot of other people.
When i played WoW, my first selection was Dwarf/Troll, because i just got a kick out of the personalities that came across in their animations and emotes. Troll jokes are also the funniest.
After i played wow for a while, that broke down and it became select the race with the most benefitial skills. But it never really felt like i was choosing the good or the bad.
I don't think that they Horde was played less because they were monsters, but just that the Alliance had more "characters" and better female models. Between gnomes and nightelves, you had the Ninja/Strippers and the lighthearted littlepeople. I think these types of characters are more appealing especially in the first 10 mins of firing up the game and not wanting to spend 3 hours building a character.
As for horde female characters, i believe the artists never thought about Horde having females in all the previous Warcraft lore, so they were kinda rushed. As a result, I really don't see how Trolls and Orcs come about genetically.
Posted Dec 18, 2005 5:26:54 PM | link
I think most of you are being far too analytical with regards to race selection in WOW. I honestly think that for a large percentage of the population it doesn't get much beyond very simple criteria: Night Elves look sexy so there are lots of them. Orcs look tough so there are lots of them. Some people like the Tauren's for their pseudo-Native American culture (really kinda a mashup of stereotypes of that culture drawn from Hollywood I think), and some people like the Undead because they are "bad". I recall reading a lot of (evidently) female gamers on the WOW boards at release saying they went Alliance and Night Elf because they were sexy, and the Horde was "too ugly to play". Thats about as far as many people go I think.
In DAOC, I played primarily in the Realm of Midgard. Why? well I looked at Hibernia and being a massive Celtic History fan at the time, took one look at the huge mushrooms and flashing crystals and realized the realm had been designed by people who got their entire knowledge of Celtic History from the Lucky Charms cereal box. It was gaggingly inept artwork and design and turned me off entirely. I checked out Albion and it was entirely too Arthurian for my tastes, but being a Viking Raider? Thats cool, so I went Midgard. Now, once I was there I did start analyzing the various races and classes and did a bit of min/maxing on my character selection but the initial Realm choice was made purely on the "feel" of the realms. I have never lost the preference for Midgard, despite eventually playing in the other two realms. Midgard just clicked for me.
Now I am sure many people do play purely from the game mechanics perspective, many are powergamers and really couldn't care what their "toon" looks like as long as it gives them at least a 1% advantage they can exploit to get to max level faster than everyone else etc. But I think the majority of people make their selection on race/realm/class entirely for much more basic and simplistic reasons.
Posted Dec 23, 2005 12:38:36 AM | link
"The earliest known trolls belonged to the Zandalar tribe, from which all other trolls are descended. On the whole, the Zandalari valued knowledge above all else, but a significant portion of the tribe hungered for conquest instead. These disaffected trolls eventually departed to form tribes of their own. As time went on, what remained of the Zandalar tribe came to be regarded as an overarching priest caste for all trolls. The Zandalari preserved troll history, and they worked to further the goals of troll society as a whole."
I'd just like to say I don't think trolls are really that mean, since warcraft III darkspear trolls seem really cool and nice, as long as you arn't attacking there allies. Many troll tribes are mean, but dark spear are cool "watchua doin mon". Since new content has come out trolls have been given a bigger roll, since zul gurub came out I think trolls are kind of the coolest. Its the good trolls vs. the evil trolls (or at least trolls corrupted by hakaar, mabye they are corrupted just like orcs were). All the races have developed story now, at WOW encyclapedia even gnomes have a culture!
As far as forsaken I don't think most people who play them really feel that evil, just like the gothicness which isn't necisarrely evil, I could be wrong though thats just me, thats how I felt. I think the forsaken are justified in spreading the plague to the scarlet crusade, they are after all trying to wipe out the forsaken, nasty things must be done sometimes in self defence. As far as lore I would like to see the forsaken make peace with the alliance though :) except for the fact there would be no more pvp so lets have them continue there pointless war for our pleasure. Thats just my feeling of the horde side when I play them.
Oh and the way I've always seen it tauren, troll (darkspear), and orcs are equally nature loving. Tauren talk about the earth more but they are all close to it, Thrall worships the spirits of nature and there are alot of troll quests revolving around keeping chaos from the world, troll shaman npcs. In my world thats what horde are.
Alliance leadership is corrupt but most of them are good, and there are pallidins in lore that are just as noble as Thrall and horde shamans. Just because pallies look good dosn't make them evil lol. Horde and Alliance are both ethicly equal, the war is just pointless slaughter for our enjoyment. Alliance isn't bad, I just don't think they are as interesting as the horde :) Thats why I play horde more.
Posted Dec 16, 2006 2:43:04 PM | link
P.S.
Forsaken are evil for wanting to kill all alliance. Alliance wants to kill all forsaken, even if the forsaken offered to make peace, and the forsaken wouldn't stop killing alliance even if alliance offered peace. The horde is allying with the forsaken and turnning a blind eye to biological experiments (come on they have to know something about it) mabye the whole world is evil. Its a cartoonish world of mass genocide, am I right?
Posted Dec 16, 2006 2:58:26 PM | link
