The Shrine

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009 ... or_be.html

I find the professor's conclusions a bit clueless. He was essentially a griefer. He saw himself as someone who was persecuted by the community for following the rules. But in something as complex as a MMORPG, the rules laid down by the developers are less important than the gentleman's agreements established by the community.

In short, people had fun doing it their way. They didn't have fun doing it his way. If what he was doing had no impact on others, people probably wouldn't care. But he was spoiling the experience for everyone he interacted with.

I think one of the relevant concepts is that just because he's an academic and plans to write some sort of fancy condensation of his experiences in an academic frame of mind, it doesn't make him any less of a douchebag.

This kind of reminds me of what David Sirlin wrote about how anything you do to get an upper hand is a good thing because only winning matters. Of course by that logic unless you're the best player in the world in the particular game you're at then obviously you just suck. It's sort of like say you go to WoW and shoot people on the roof at Gadgetzan (prior to snipers being added in) and you die if you stay there, and you die if you try to fight back because the guards killed you, but hey it's within the game's rules. Nobody says it's illegal to jump on top of a roof and hit people just because the guards cannot path there.

Now I'd say it is also part of the game's problem if they can't stop people from abusing the game. It sounds like the way he was killing the characters just involve teleport them against some super guards that instant kill them. For example in EQ in PvP you could just charm somebody and send them to attack a super guard and they'd obviously die horribly while you just run away. I think players try to come up with rules outside of the game because a lot of the time the game is messed up. In a game of HOMM3 there would be rules for no Gremlin Rush because otherwise this forces every one to play as Tower and what's the point to have 8 factions when you can only play as one faction because of the Gremlin Rush?

I guess to this professor and Sirlin they'd always pick Tower in HOMM3 and Gremlin Rush someone because that's within the rules. And they might feel good about themselves until they run into another guy that was better with Tower and say did a typical Blind Infinite Loop that will kill an arbitrary large number of units on your side without you having any chance to fight back. And I suppose if these guys happen to be the best HOMM3 player in the world then nobody will want to play against them because it's just not very fun to lose without ever getting control of your unit. I remember playing HOMM3 and I always feel bad to do stuff that will just kill the other guy without him having any chance to do anything about it, even if he had a superior force. I mean yeah you play to win, but is it really fair that you know some loophole and the other guy did not, or better yet maybe the other guy didn't have Blind researched or Expert Fire Magic unlocked due to luck while you do?

I think we all like a game that is fair, balanced, and at the very least doesn't let you get into a situation where you lose without even a chance of fighting back. There are very few games that come even close to do this because balancing is very tough, so players try to help this by enforcing certain artificial rules. Even something like a 'no rush' in Starcraft does address the issue of Starcraft favoring attacker way too much unless you're some kind of super pro so here a 'no rush' rule at least gives both side to develop an army. Now you don't have to agree with this philsophy, but then you should just tell the other guy that you will do whatever you want. It seems to me the guy listed here would be the guy say 'okay no rush' and then do a 4 pool zergling rush for a quick win and wonder why people hate him.

On another note, I think a lot of MMORPG turns out to be excellent social experiements even if not intended. You can find out a lot of interesting things by looking at a virtual economy for example, and it actually offers insight to the question 'what is the worth of something that can be obtained infinitely?' Whether it's plat, gold, MP3, or sword of uberness clearly you can have an arbitrarily large number of these things, but they still have a value.

EverQuest is also a good social experment for those stories you read about here a bunch of people go to a desert island/planet/whatever and then started breaking into 10 factions and killing each other. I don't know if it's something to be proud of, but high end EQ reminds me of Lord of the Flies.

David Sirlin clearly approves of this

http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2009/7/7/dr- ... o-win.html

I don't know why people think just because they manage to write something that akins to "I pwn" in a more eloquant way that this somehow makes them smarter.

Looking at the people who posted on the original thread, it seems like the professor's importance was widely self-exaggerated.

Im surprised that the professor is surprised about the study results... He made mention that the community made it feel like high school all over again for his character, but wouldnt it be obvious that an online world, such as CoH, would mimic our real world? Why did he think an online universe would be some sort of utopia where humans shed their human nature?

If you are going to be an annoying person in real life or in a fantasy game, you will be given the same scorn in both. Duh.