World of Warcraft

Source: Flickr

While working on an assignement for our current module on collaborative virtual worlds, I think I started to understand what bugs me in both MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and sandbox games like Second Life. There are (as for now) two points:

A Feeling of Agency

Nothing is more frustrating in World of Warcraft than successfully finishing a quest by bringing the needed herbs to an NPC, being thanked by him and reassured that his sick daughter will now get well, and as soon as you turn your back, you hear him complain to the next player that his daughter is sick and is in dire need of certain herbs ...

What is missing here is the feeling of agency – the feeling that your actions as a player have an effect on the world and change it, for the better or the worse. After all, any of these games give you the feeling that you are a hero and part of something big, and not just another name- and faceless warrior in a confusing war (even though that picture would often be more accurate).

To be fair, it has to be said that World of Warcraft has its moments there – like when the players had to gather ressources in order to open up a portal. But those moments are few.

An Agent Beyond Your Control

Second Life has quite another problem. Yes, you can change the world – a bit, by building something on a tiny speck of land, but then again, why should you? Nothing is forcing you, there is no actual need, there is nothing out of your control.

Jeffrey Kaplan about the Quest Design in World of Warcraft:

With a scant 40 minutes to address the gathered masses, former World of Warcraft director Jeffery Kaplan had a lot to cover in his "The Cruise Director of Azeroth" lecture.

The presentation saw an extremely candid Kaplan, now working on Blizzard's next-gen MMO, recognize and address the nine major problems with World of Warcraft.

His major point: Don't write too much text. No one's going to read it anyway.

Oh, bummer.

I had to. He is sooo handsome.

In a study done on player interactions within World of Warcraft, a graphics-based online multiplayer game, the results found that “solable” classes, in other words classes that required the least social interactions, were the most popular classes of characters chosen, and the overall research concluded that players within the World of Warcraft community preferred to play the game “‘alone together’ — surrounded by others, but not necessarily actively interacting with them” (Ducheneaut et al. 2006, p. 415).¹

This style of play is pretty much my own – I find it interesting to have other players around myself, as they act in surprising and independent ways compared to NPCs, but I won't interact with them much.

The fact that other people play the same way as I do as well as the fact that more and more PCs and consoles are always online makes me wonder whether that could be harnessed for new ways of interaction. Other players could be around in the game world, their avatars probably transformed in some way, to add an element of chance and randomness into the game. A horror game comes to mind, in which the positions and (re-)actions of other players are presented as ghosts for a single player.