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One way to understand role-playing is by asking role-players to describe what counts as good role-playing and what the etiquette of role-playing is. Responses to this question were surprisingly similar, with a key set of attributes articulated over and over again by many players. These guidelines fall roughly into three aspects of role-playing: 1) character interaction, 2) textual communication, and 3) story-telling.
The primary set of guidelines that players articulated revolved around how a player’s character should behave and interact with others.
Character Interaction
Stay in Character
The most common guideline given was that good role-players “stay in character”. There are two layers of meaning in this phrase. The superficial one is that role-players should avoid making out-of-character comments (OOC).
But the underlying assumption is that good role-players can stay in character because they have a character personality that has sufficiently depth and can deal with a wide range of scenarios.
Good role-players stay in character when on-stage. Newbies generally have limited ability to respond; their conversation armamentarium is small. [Second Life, F, 57]
In this second reading, a player breaks character because of a limited behavioral repertoire. A good role-player is not only consistent, but draws from a coherent character story or psychology to react to a wide range of scenarios.
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Accommodate Others
As we’ve noted elsewhere, many players try so hard to be extraordinary that it becomes banal because everyone has a woefully tragic past. In other words, many role-players want to be in the spotlight. But in anything that resembles a story, there can only be so many lead characters. The “drama queen” is a recognized part of the role-playing community.
The drama queen is usually really easy to spot, as he's probably the one obsessed with winning the e-peen waving contest over who has the most tragic past, or who has the greatest greater destiny, or is just generally not happy with ever being a supporting player, even in someone else's plot. [WoW, M, 24]
Thus, what marks good role-players is their willingness to accommodate others, whether this means playing a support role or being responsive to the quirks of other characters. In sum, it is the ability to share the spotlight.
A good roleplayer is responsive to characters around him/her and doesn't feel the need to constantly be in the spotlight; a good roleplayer improves the RP of those around him/her just through the quality of the interaction. [EQ2, F, 37]
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Develop Character Over Time
As we’ve seen, static and inflexible characters are frowned upon largely because they suggest a lack of imagination or a resistance to interact with other players.
On the other hand, good role-playing allows for character development. In other words, these characters are open to interacting with other characters and changing because of significant interactions.
Good roleplayer: is able to adapt to a situation and to make the character evolve throughout the time, gives the character the opportunity to learn and change his/her mind (with reasons to do so). [SWG, F, 29]
A corollary of this is that good role-players develop relationships to make these character developments visible to others and to create the potential for these developments. After all, no one knows you have changed (or can provide a context for you to change) unless they have known you for a while.
Good role playing involves the creation of a whole character, the ability to allow others to influence that character through relationships and interaction, and the character's growth and development. [EQ, F, 53]
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Textual Communication
The second set of guidelines described by players revolved around expectations of writing skills and the conscious effort to bracket off out-of-character comments.
Writing and Spelling
The primary pet-peeves of role-players are poor spelling, grammar or incessant abbreviations. Specifically, leet-speak is very much frowned upon.
An attempt at good spelling is always appreciated, when you're trying to roleplay. No one is perfect, but lots of 'lol kthx u help me?' isn't going to go over very well. Doing that on an RP server will get you some pretty snippy responses, I've seen. [WoW, F, 23]
Mark OOC Comments
Secondly, consistent with the importance of staying in character, the deliberate separation of out-of-character (OOC) commentary is also seen as necessary. In an environment where all communication is textual, this means developing strategies to explicitly mark OOC comments. This is commonly done via bracketing.
The only etiquette things i can think of is declaring out of character comments, it tends to break up the flow if people talk out of character and are not declaring it. [WoW, M, 24]
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Story-Telling
We’ve looked at guidelines that players described related to character interaction and communication. We’ll now turn to what players noted were unacceptable ways of story-telling in the context of an ongoing plot or role-playing event.
Don’t “God-Mode”
Above all, role-playing is a shared consensual experience among players. Thus it’s important that actions are not forced on other players. Breaking this rule was referred to either as “god-moding” or “power-emoting” by respondents.
Well, there's a big one. Don't godmode. Do NOT act like an action that you roleplay succeeds immediately. Roleplaying is all about mutual consent. If you are going to do something that could totally alter the other character, ASK. Don't even try to do it at all and allow for failure. Ask the player in private. [CoH, F, 18]
Don’t “Meta-Game”
And finally, echoing the early guideline to stay in character, players noted that it was important that players are consistent with what their characters know and do not know about the world. This was referred to by respondents as “meta-gaming”.
Most roleplaying newbies and 'outsiders' don't understand the concept of 'meta-gaming'. Meta-gaming is applying knowledge or influence from an out-of-character context to an in-character situation. For example, talking about the inner layout of a high-level dungeon as a low-level character who could not possibly have first-hand knowledge of such a thing. [WoW, M, 29]
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What is Role-Playing?
One internal conflict I’ve side-stepped so far is what actually counts as role-playing. Many respondents commented that perspectives of what counted as role-playing vary from player to player and is a constant source of tension. Given this underlying tension, it is actually interesting that a coherent set of guidelines could be extracted from role-players. Indeed, the most common source of tension did not involve the guidelines themselves, but rather, from how strictly and how often they were to be followed.
There are wide differences in degree of tolerance for adherence to roleplay, and significant disagreements can be sparked over these disagreements. I find that roleplaying guilds in particular suffer from this, and rarely enjoy the longevity of a more accepting and varied guild, though a common thread and recognition of other's characters in their roles and some perhaps 'lighter' roleplay certainly adds to the fun of a good guild. [EQ, M, 51]
In other words, for some role-players, having strict guidelines and enforcement diminishes the spontaneous fun of role-playing. The rules begin to constrain, rather then enable, creativity.
I've been in very strict RP guilds where any conversation that took place that was not in the 'approved' vernacular of the Guild had to be noted as being 'OC' (Out of Character) before the conversation took place. Failure to abide by that rule could result in the offender being kicked from the guild. Most guilds aren't that strict because it does, at some point, make it more difficult to have a good gaming experience (diversion from real life) when you're constantly having to look over your virtual shoulder for the RP Police. [WoW, M, 43]
And finally, I’ll leave you with one interesting “is it role-play?” dilemma that several players articulated.
See Also:
- Introduction to the Role-Playing Series
- The Demographics of Role-Playing
- Faces of Role-Playing
Character Creation
When role-players are asked to describe some of their most memorable characters, three types of characters seemed to emerge. These character types are also largely corroborated by the role-players themselves in a latter question asking them to describe the range in and any common tropes or fads they observe among role-played characters. Roughly, these three types are the Tragic, the Zany, and the Interaction-Scripted.
They killed my parents, my sister, my dog, and my entire village
One pervasive theme among created characters was having a tragic past (the “Tragic”). Descriptions of slain parents, loved ones, and pillaged towns during early childhood were common in the background stories of many characters.
From the time she was seventeen or so, everyone she became close to inevitably was killed. [Neverwinter Nights, F, 23]
Her family's farm was destroyed when she was four, and her family killed, but a valiant hero on a horse managed to rescue her, and bring her to Northshire Abbey, where she was raised to be a priest. [WoW, F, 18]
To a certain degree, this mechanism might serve to avoid the possibility of having to deal with a certain category of people. As one player put it succinctly:
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This “parental exclusion” mechanism could be thought of as a move of symbolic liberation, but more often than not, this background plot serves to explain a psychological burden or flaw (typically emotional insecurity or general distrust) that the character currently bears. What’s interesting is that both elements tend to sever relationships (both past and future).
Having basically lost everything she ever loved on that day, she sunk into a deep depression, eventually turning to alchoholism and morally dubious mercenary work in a sort of 'passive aggressive' attempt to get herself killed. [WoW, M, 24]
Herjolf is a human mercenary. His mother was a whore, his father a mercenary. As he was 12 years old, his mother died of disease and his father took care of him, taking him with him to the army he was currently employed. Herjolf learned fighting as a craft. He took part in many battles, that earned him quite a score of scars. To forget the horrible things he saw in battle he has begun drinking. [DAoC, F, 36]
When players are asked about common tropes or character types they see, the Tragic is indeed the most well-described type, however, it is also the type that is thought to be most banal due to its prevalence.
Unfortunately, there are only so many lead female and head hero roles to go around, and comically, there are only so many parents, siblings, lovers and pets that can be murdered to give some future heroic figure a motivation to become great. [AO, F, 40]
We will return to this theme later on when we talk about drama queens among role-players in the etiquette article, but for now we’ll move on to the next character type.
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I may be bald and short, and I may have stubby ears, but I’m an Elf dammitAnother class of character types are deliberately humor-driven (the “Zany”). These characters typically do not have elaborate background stories as much as they have incredibly quirky characteristics or beliefs (typically comically delusional). And even when background stories are invoked, they are almost never tragic or emotionally scarring, but serve to better explain the character quirk.
My most memorable concept was a gnome necromancer in EQ1 who became a necro in order to raise his wife from the dead. He had her soul stored inside a clockwork gnome, which he commonly talked to and followed around the city. [EQ2, M, 24]
Dexter grew up a very poor boy. His father, an abusive alcoholic retired clown with a story of his own, would often throw books at Dexter because, no matter how little Dexter ate, he seemed to always gain weight. The unfortunate fact was, though, that Dexter was suffering from a rare form of Elephantitis, caused by the very books thrown at him. [CoH, M, 27]
This character type is recognized by other players and is sometimes seen as the polar opposite of the dramatic types with tragic pasts, both of which can become stagnant when role-played poorly.
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Who I am is the accumulation of all the decisions that I have made
The final category of characters that emerged were those of players who deliberately created characters with unremarkable personalities and allowed the ensuing role-playing to guide their character development (the “Interaction-Scripted”). Beyond some basic set of personality quirks (seldom overly traumatic or heroic), these players allowed their interactions with others to shape who their characters became. In a sense, this category isn’t a “character type” as much as a method of character development. Whereas some players prefer to script their characters up-front, these players leave those characteristics loosely scripted and open to change.
While the initial character background was formed around the class and gender of the character, as always it was interaction with other role players that really solidified the characters personality. In AO the class of Fixer is a 'rougue'ish one who slips around and uses stealth and speed. Miyuki eventually got a reputation of being a little bit of an 'ice queen', aloof and suspicious. I have worked that reputation into her interaction with her 'family' (alt characters). [AO, M, 40]
Indeed, some of these players emphasized that their character might have turned out very differently had they experienced a different set of experiences in the game world.
These three character categories suggest two underlying axes. First, there’s a spectrum of character personas that might be roughly described as Tragic to Comic. And secondly, there’s a spectrum of character development that might be labeled as Prescribed to Open-Ended.
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Tropes
Drama Queens
It was also interesting to ask players about any tropes or fads in role-played characters they’ve seen. As I’ve mentioned before, the Tragic is the most type that is most commonly referred to as overdone and banal. Other players commented that too many players strive for high-strung drama.
I had kept the background pretty 'lo-fi', because it used to annoy me (still does) that everybody had some high strung story involving nobility, treason, blood, sweat and tears for their characters. I wanted mine to be somewhat normal, without a past full of wealth, power and drama. [WoW, M, 33]
AO has its neverending cycle of Clan Heros persecuted by the unremitting corporate evil of OmniTek (which is apparently guilty of killing more people and pets than the black plague, ww2 and smoking all rolled together). [AO, F, 40]
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Ultra Heroes/Villains
Another character type that is seen as overdone are personas who are described as heroic and valiant to the point of being flawless, or those that are purely evil and without any redeeming qualities or nuances. The ultra hero/villain is frustrating for other players because they are implicitly inflexible character types that typically do not change or develop over time. In other words, they are seen as easy-to-play one-dimensional personas.
The only difference to me is that some people's characters are very inflexible. Too many people attempt to roleplay the ultimate hero or villain, but refuse to test that theory in combat (generally PvP), so too many egos will exist. [WoW, M, 19]
As another player points out, these ultra-villains typically do not even do a good job of being evil in the first place.
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Blessed with Elune’s Grace
One theme we’ve seen in the previous examples is that role-players look down upon character personas or qualities that are absolutes or flawless. It then comes as no surprise that another area this is often seen is in descriptions of physical attractiveness.
Every female character is devastatingly beautiful and probably has purple eyes. [EQ2, F, 37]
I think the main source of frustration with these tropes is that they render the extraordinary as conventional. It gets tiring to live in a world where everyone’s family was slaughtered, where everyone is tragically beautiful, and everyone you meet is either an ultra-hero or an ultra-villain. Thus, ironically, it is the ordinary (i.e., lepers or bakers with interesting personalities) that oftentimes sticks out as the extraordinary in role-playing. After all, being a princess is special only when everyone else is not a princess.
See Also:
- Introduction to the Role-Playing Series
- The Demographics of Role-Playing
- The Protocols of Role-Playing
In the multiple-choice section, respondents were given a loose, working definition of role-playing. Respondents were told that role-playing referred to “creating a novel persona for your character that fits in the context of the game world and interacting with others through that persona”. Individual questions then explored in detail how elaborate their role-playing experiences have been. I began by asking respondents whether they had ever role-played in an MMORPG. Overall 60% of players (N = 2467) replied that they had role-played at one point or another. Female players were not significantly more likely to have role-played than male players, nor was there a significant difference with regard to age (except for the slightly lower responses in the 12-17 age range).
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Background CheckI then walked through a variety of possible role-playing activities to gauge how involved players were in this space. I started by asking respondents whether they had ever created a detailed background story or history for any of their characters. Overall, about 44% of the respondents indicated that this is something they’ve done. Female players are slightly more likely to have created background stories for their characters.
Another point of interest is whether these background stories involved another player’s character. This would be one way to gauge whether players tend to create these stories alone or deliberately weave other player’s into their own character’s stories. Overall, about 28% of players have background stories for their own characters that involve another player’s character. Female players were about 50% more likely to have directly involved another player’s character in their own character’s background story than male players.
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I then wanted to get a better sense of how regularly players role-played. After all, it could be the case that many players have created background stories for their characters, but very few actually role-play regularly. Overall, about 20% of players indicated that they role-played at least once a week in an MMORPG. We see a negligible gender difference in the response to this question, but a very mild age trend emerges. The likelihood of regular role-playing increases slightly with age (r = .08).
About 28% of players indicated that they belong to role-playing oriented guilds. There were no significant gender differences, but again we see the dampened response rate in the 12-17 age group that we’ve observed throughout this data set.
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Finally, I was interested to get a sense of how large these role-playing activities were. Overall, about 24% of players have role-played a scene/event with a group of at least 10 players (including themselves). Female players were slightly more likely to have done so than male players.
Overall, it would appear that the majority of players have at point or another tried to role-play (around 60%), but regular role-players consist of a smaller cohort (around 20%). There is a consistent age difference where players in the 12-17 age group are less likely to have role-played, but almost no age difference exists beyond that. Female and male players appear to enjoy role-playing just as much and role-play just as often, but female players are more likely to involve other players into their role-playing (both in their character’s stories and the number of people they role-play with at the same time). This gender difference might largely to due to the differing social access points into these games.
See Also:
- Introduction to the Role-Playing Series
- Faces of Role-Playing
- The Protocols of Role-Playing
I had always assumed that the “RP” in MMORPG was ironic. After all, most MMORPGs have had to deliberately set aside designated role-playing servers, and these have always been in the minority. This suggested that role-playing wasn’t something most players wanted to do in an MMORPG. At the same time, it was clear that a role-playing subculture existed that operated with its own rules and etiquette. In the most recent survey phase, I decided to explore this player subculture.
I knew from the start that defining what “role-playing” is would be difficult, and yet without a working definition, it would be even harder to figure out what the results meant. So I approached this in two ways. I used an open-ended survey to explore the role-playing space, and in the multiple-choice portion, I presented a loose, working definition of role-playing. Respondents were told that role-playing referred to “creating a novel persona for your character that fits in the context of the game world and interacting with others through that persona”. As we’ll see, even among self-described role-players, what counts as role-playing can be contentious subject, but overall, a coherent set of guidelines and etiquette do emerge from the open-ended responses.
For some, role-playing is a spontaneous act between two or more players who play out a short scenario on the spot. These players typically do not have background stories and have a low likelihood of interacting again in a role-playing context.
A murder-mystery that spontaneously occurred, the main catalyst for it, was that some player, had been killed in front of the cantina, then decided to go AFK, leaving his corpse there. only two people started it, but a lot of other players really stepped up well during questioning, it ended with about 8 players staying there, until the issue resolved itself. (Not an 'RP Server, Bria in SWG. SWG doesn't designate servers) [SWG, M, 32]
On the other side of the spectrum are elaborate, sustained interactions between a network of players, each of whom has a background story, some personality quirks, and a set of psychological motivations. The stories amongst these players typically develop over time in a combination of planned and spontaneous scenarios.
I was at a Guild Wedding for our Guild leader. It was a roleplaying Guild and we had many members. We also had a 'rival' Guild and a whole situation was played out including the kidnapping of the bride and her resue. It was memorable for the great roleplaying efforts of everyone. The Guild leader had invited many players who were not apart of the Guild nor roleplayers so they could see how we operated. It was an enjoyable night for all. [CoH, F, 35]
And of course, there are players at different points on that spectrum. Because I was interested in the specific player subculture amongst the group of players who self-identify as role-players, I emphasize the guidelines and etiquette of the more elaborated role-playing rather than that of the spontaneous role-playing. The data from the surveys is presented in 3 articles:
1) The Demographics of Role-Playing: Quantitative data on how many MMO players role-play, how often they role-play, and whether there are gender or age differences.
2) Faces of Role-Playing: Qualitative data on the personas that role-players create.
3) The Protocols of Role-Playing: Qualitative data on the guidelines and etiquette of role-playing and player’s responses on what constitutes good role-playing.
Note: It is also worth noting that role-playing also technically does include sexual role-playing such as in the case of Furry Sex or the sub/dom culture in worlds like Second Life. I think these forms of role-playing are equally interesting and valid, but they are not reported here because, with the exception of one respondent (among 215 respondents in the open-ended responses), no one described participating in role-playing in a sexual context. This may be because role-playing in a fantasy MMO has a particular meaning, and role-playing in a sexual context becomes bracketed off instead as “cybering”.
When players are asked to describe memorable positive experiences from their MMORPG game-play, many bring up altruistic events that occurred unexpectedly. These experiences of altruism typically fall into two categories. The first revolves around getting twinked by a stranger - getting powerful equipment from a higher level character.
I was a baby ranger, just becoming active in my guild. The then-Knight General (the guild has a very peculiar hierarchal pseudo-medieval set-up) and his RL wife (ranger/druid in game) ordered me to meet him at the North Freeport bank (we're talking 4 years ago here!)... I was unsure what he wanted... but when I got there he handed me a pair of Ivy Etched Leggings (then not only the ranger quest armor but a very valuable item, especially to a level 20ish ranger!). His wife said, 'Sting would never hand these to just anyone; he thinks you're very special.' Needless to say I was very touched! And they've never been turned in for a gem reward either! From that beginning grew a friendship that spilled over into real life. The druid is now my best girlfriend; her husband also my friend (and though a self-declared hermit always seems to look forward to my visits). I spend weekends with them as often as I can, given the 500 mile drive between us. I've learned to quilt from my friend, helped them with projects, and in general cherish the fact that a pair of virtual trousers has given me this wonderful real-life relationship. [EQ, F, 60]
From my 4 or 5 years MMOG experience Id say that simply helping others is the most memorable thing you can do. Sometimes I would blush IRL at the amount of thanks people would give me. As a higher level player you could totally make someone day just by helping them level for a little bit, or giving them a item that was no use to you. [WoW, M, 30]
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It might not seem particularly major but I once lost my corpse in very difficult circumstances. Basically it was impossible for me to recover it without skills which I did not possess. This would have lost me quite a few months of developing my character. I told a 'friend' who I have never met but only spoken to in-game and she not only dropped what she was doing and came to help but also got her son-in-law to log in and come help as well. Between them they got my corpse. What got me was these people only know me through a game, will never meet me but were more than willing to help at some cost to themselves, even if only of time. [EQ, M, 53]
When I was very new to EverQuest, I had to make a trip from a newbie town (Surefall Glade) on one side of Antonica to a different newbie zone (Freeport) on the opposite end of the continent. This involved a very long and dangerous run which I had to do by myself at level 4. After a few false starts (getting mauled by a rabid bear right outside the newbie zone, and zoning into a werewolf that killed me before the zone even loaded), I finally got a good start, and made it through the first two zones (West Karana and North Karana), albeit with some difficulty and very slowly. In the next zone (East Karana), I was unlucky and had a named Cyclops spawn practically on top of me - I survived the first hit, and was prepared for a long walk back, when it suddenly keeled over and died. I scrolled back through the spam to see someone had nuked it to death. Turns out, it was a level 50-something Druid named Shider. He buffed me up, gave me SoW, and was actually nice enough to escort me all the way back to Freeport, which took a good half hour of his time. I thanked him profusely, and went on my way. I thought that was just about the coolest thing anyone's ever done for me in an MMO. I was a complete stranger and he took time out of his day to give me a hand. Quite strangely, about a month later, I was hunting near Surefall Glade with a different character, and ran into a higher-level character camping the Glowing Black Stone (a very rare drop that came from a rare spawn just outside Surefall Glade). We started talking, and I helped him out with buffs and heals in between fights. He was there for a few days (on and off, not end-to-end), and we ran into each other frequently. Eventually, he invited me into his guild, and lo and behold, the first person to welcome me to the guild was Shider (!!!). Turns out, Shider was a woman in real life. I still talk to her once in a while, and her boyfriend and I (who also played EQ at the time) have become really good friends over the years - thankfully they only live about a 4 hour drive from here, so we get together (IRL) every so often. [EQ, M, 23]
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But beyond the “dangerous world” effect, there is something else that drives altruism in MMORPGs. In the real world, modern technology and society has made it easy to deal with most everyday inconveniences (i.e, illness, travel, long-distance communication). The only ones that are hard to deal with are typically of epic proportions. It is often hard for us to help when a real crisis occurs (i.e, car accident, fire, etc.). Most MMORPGs on the other hand are designed to contain many everyday inconveniences. You need a travel ability to travel long distances. You need someone to rez you. More importantly, MMORPGs empower users to help each other. You can heal someone who is about to die. You can craft a component another player needs. You can root a mob long enough for the player to escape. Thus, MMORPGs empower players to help each other in a way that is often difficult in real life.
The following player articulates another very important difference between altruism in the virtual world and the real world.
In other words, MMORPGs remove much of the ambiguity and danger of altruism. At the same time, the game design empowers users to help each other in meaningful ways. A kind of social engineering occurs in MMORPG by restructuring the rules and expectations of how and when people can help each other. Of course, game designs don’t always encourage altruism. For example, some games make players as independent of others as possible. But what is clear is that we could think of altruism as something that can be engineered by the game design.
Even the most independent MMORPG player has to deal with the human element in these games. While fairly uncommon, every player has at one point or other been annoyed or angered by the selfish or malevolent actions of another player. The following are narratives from players who were asked to describe some of the most negative experiences they’ve had in the context of an MMORPG. These stories highlight the social nature of these games as well as how emotionally invested players become with their characters.
Some very common stories center about camp-stealing or KS’ing.
I remember long time ago, I was still considered a 'newbie' then, I came across a camp and as far as I could see no one was camping it, I /ooc a few times to make sure and after a few minutes I then /ooc for group members, it must have been about 5 minutes till I got a full group together, when up came running two peeps claiming that this was their camp and I should get lost. After a lot of verbal abuse and my guild coming to back me up ... I found I was actually crying (RL) I couldn’t believe that I let them affect me in that way... that it was just a game. I then realized that day, that it isn't 'JUST' a game and I never let anyone talk to me that way again!!! [EQ, F, 29]
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We had a group of 5 in one of the Gnoll dungeons. A caster (I believe it was a wizard) asked if he could join us. Since we were full & he was a good 10 levels higher then us we politely declined. He then complained for a bit & went invisible. We forgot about him & proceeded to start fighting. We ended up having a large number of adds & most of us we very close to dying so we were running for the zone line. I was a couple steps from the zone when the wizard decided to cast an area effect spell & kill almost all of us. It was a extremely rude & childish thing to do just because we wouldn't let him group with us. Then there are the times when you're about to kill something much higher then you when someone comes along & kills it in the middle of the fight. That's always frustrates me, all that work for nothing. [EQ, F, 27]
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I was an officer in a guild and we were small, we had just started raiding. We had a raiding task force that was designated to run the raids. These were officers that had agreed to run them. I was not one of these officers, I hated to lead raids. Well, one day I was helping one of these officers scout a location, thinking it was innocent and all I was doing was porting. The raid was the next day and when raid time rolled around, the officer was nowhere to be found. The guild leader told everyone that I was leading the raid and to send me all the tells and questions. This came out of nowhere and I was infuriated. I told him that I would not be leading, and he told me that I HAD to. I came to find out that this was arranged between the officer and the leader and that the other officer told the leader that I agreed to run the raid. What made it worse is that the leader was present for the raid and was sending me very angry tells asking why I hadn't been faster, why we weren't mobile, why was I being such a pain in the ass? I wanted to quit the game right then and there. I do not like being forced to do anything, and the loyalty I felt to the other 30 or so guild members there was a sticking point to do something I really had no idea or want to do. It was very stressful and even worse when we wiped out because I took a wrong turn in the dungeon. I felt responsible and I had to deal with the crappy morale that ensued. [EQ, F, 25]
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To be overwritten, pushed aside, and belittled was unbearable. The rest of my original group also disbanded and followed me, preferring to hunt with me elsewhere and ignore his Out Of Character berating our leaving them, but to this day I still doubt whether I really can, really do, contribute my group. I always have to try harder, do more, because so very little of what I do is really visible... unless you're standing in a crowd of mezzed mobs waiting their patient turns to die, what a chanter does is simply grease the skids, and that's so hard to see ... and so rarely appreciated. I had never doubted my usefulness, until then. And even now, knowing I can be overwritten and cast aside as negligible, leaves me uneasy. Knowing how cruel others can be in casting people aside as useless, negligible ... and how badly that hurts, though you can't see the tears ... has left me unwilling to tolerate people in my groups speaking badly to or about others. My groups all operate on the Thumper Principle - 'if you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all.' =) i keep hoping the concept is contagious. :-\ [EQ, f, 36]
My first and most beloved character is a paladin. Being who I am, I prefer to solo - a hard thing to do sometimes. Loving the game, I purchased a second computer and account to two box. I moved the cleric I had to second account and once she was high enough, the 'twins' soared to the high 40's easily. My guild is a small family guild of soloers. Some 10 or so characters were reaching the 50 mark at roughly the same time. The cleric was always in demand, sigh. I should have seen the problems coming. When cleric was 40 and pally 46 (estimate of level - can't remember exact details), our guild started having mini raids. These were 8 to 12 players strong, PoP had just been released and we needed practice grouping, working on tactics, using raid window, loot for armor upgrades, etc. My paladin showed up for a 45+ raid (cleric too low). She was the only tank option. We had a 55 shammy and 2 druids over 52 for healers.
I explained my tank strategy and the drawbacks of a paladin (takes longer to get aggro). I made a hotkey to call for assist. The shaman was pulling with slow so I asked the druids to root the mob near me to help me get aggro (and save shaman from needing more healing). Despite multiple pleas for them to wait, all would immediately jump the mob. Naturally, we could not keep the heals up and my paladin could not get aggro. Casters simply attract attention when they cast before the tank has time to hurt the mob. I had talked on guild forum about how hard it was for my paladin to get in groups. No one wanted a not good enough tank or inadequate healer (both were excuses given me by groups looking for members).
About 10 minutes into the raid, one of my guild mates said 'we need a real tank.' I held my breath. Not one of my mates backed me up. The guild leader (one of the druids) took maybe a minute to offer his 42 warrior. (this was a 45+ only raid, guildies who weren't high enough were turned down) 2 others said sure. I stated, one last time, that I could get and hold aggro if they would let me call for assist before attacking the mobs. Yet again, I was ignored. The tank was logged on and when he arrived, I told all goodnight and jogged back to a safe zone. I was crying too hard to play. My own guild didn't want me.
Now that time has passed, I realize that I was in a real life low spot but the betrayal still stings. See, despite their assurance that I play my paladin well ... when I show up with pally, they say 'but we really need a cleric.' It got worse the higher the cleric got. I finally moved my paladin to the higher fee server and have found welcome there. Now my problem is - I like the people in both guilds (old one cleric is still in and new one pally has joined). I feel some loyalty to the old guild but also a lot of who knows what to call this mass of negative feeling. Do I dare move cleric to Stormhammer? I enjoy playing her but now that the pally is welcomed, even requested - I'm gritting my teeth when I log onto my old server. If I move the cleric will the new guild prefer her more? (yes, clerics are in great demand on at least 4 servers, sigh, lol) [EQ, F, 41]
Our cultural distinction between “work” and “play” traps us in what may be false dichotomies. We are so caught up in thinking that games are for fun that even when some of us toil away for hours in an MMORPG, even when we become extremely frustrated or angry with something in the game, we sometimes forget that “play” can become “work”. As the following quotes taken from the “Why We Quit” collection of player narratives show, playing an MMORPG can become like having a second job.
I stopped playing because I just didn't want to commit to the crazy raid times (6+ hours in the evening?) and because I'd kind of stalled out on my interest in my main character. [EQ, f, 27]
Clearly not all virtual achievements are meaningful. Getting a character to level 40 or 50 is really only a matter of time investment and patience, as is the same for camping a rare drop in EverQuest. When an achievement revolves around pure time spent and involves no complex skill, it is hard to justify as a real achievement. But MMORPGs introduce a set of achievements that are based on the social nature of the world. Narratives in “The Rise and Fall of Guilds” highlight the complex management and leadership skills needed to sustain a large guild. From dealing with clique formation, preventing polarization in a guild argument, keeping the guild motivated or deflecting strong personalities, a good leader must understand and deal with these issues as they occur. As the narratives show, these are no trivial tasks.
We might also consider raid leaders who coordinate and then pull off a large scale raid successfully. Managing multiple groups with different tasks composed of disparate personalities while under unpredictable and stressful circumstances is a gargantuan challenge, especially when the only means of communication is a thin typed-chat channel. There are also the leadership challenges of sustaining group morale, having and holding firm to a vision, and dealing with discouraging players. And all this occurs in real-time, not some turn-based tactical game. The question is whether there are certain virtual achievements that we should take seriously. Could we imagine a time when putting “guild leader of a 120-member guild” on your college resume is taken seriously?
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We live in a culture that celebrates skilled performers in other “games” – activities that are based on arbitrary rules and typically used as entertainment. Take chess or tennis for example. Certainly an MMORPG has all the elements of chess or tennis – an arbitrary rule set, the need for strategic understanding at multiple depth levels, and a combination of training time as well as inherent talent. We recognize great chess-players and tennis-players, but for some the idea of recognizing a great guild or raid leader outside of an MMORPG feels awkward. But why should it? If it’s only about the financial opportunities, is it so far-fetched to imagine future MMORPGs where players pay or compensate a good guild or raid leader to be part of a successful group – a virtual membership that parallels what real-world memberships do? But in fact, the financial opportunities are an effect of recognizing the achievement itself. If being a great guild leader involves the same types of symbolic challenges that a great chess or tennis player would face, then is that not something that deserves recognition?
We also have good evidence that the management and leadership skills we have mentioned can be learned in the virtual world and then be used in the real world. Data to support this can be found in the “Learning Leadership Skills” article. Afterall, leadership is about leading other people, and the context or medium isn’t the primary issue. An individual who understands how to motivate, lead and manage individuals in a stressful, real-time context can probably do this in different scenarios.
We are now in a situation where we might be forced to compare virtual achievements with real-life achievements. If leading a large guild deserves recognition of some sort, then how does that compare with being an Eagle Scout in the real world or being elected school president? In a sense, the question may not be whether virtual achievements should be recognized now as much as whether this will be an inevitable phenomenon as virtual worlds become more complex and more people are involved with them. As people take virtual worlds and their own virtual identities more seriously, is it inevitable that our virtual achievements will be recognized? Could we imagine a future where we can accept both virtual and real-world achievements (or in fact realize that virtual achievements are real-world achievements)?
If we believe that virtual achievements are legitimate achievements, then we are left with a particularly disturbing question. If life is about finding happiness on an individual level and we accept that different people derive pleasure and satisfaction from different things - then what is our role with regards to individuals who are obsessed with these games but who are clearly making real achievements in the game? In fact, there is an X percentage of the population who can achieve more in the virtual world than in the real world because of their social, physical or psychological circumstances. If existential happiness and satisfaction is based on achievements, then this is to say there is some part of the population who can derive more happiness from the virtual world than from the real world. What then is our role in moderating obsessive game-play? Is it in our right to take away this source of happiness from an individual? Many of us believe that real-world achievements are more meaningful and gratifying than virtual achievements, but is this always true?
As these games become more realistic and more engaging, and it becomes more obvious that virtual achievements are on par and can be compared with real-world achievements, we are forced to answer tough questions that we never thought a “game” would force us to answer.
How are romances that begin online similar to and different from romances that begin in real-life? Narratives from players who began a romantic relationship online talk about their experiences. Below, several players offer their stories of how they met their real life romantic partners online and how the relationship progressed.
When I first started playing EQ, it was to have some fun once a week with some coworkers. When they quit playing, I'd already made some 'friends' that I enjoyed grouping with, so I kept playing. At the time, I was single and had no intention of ever changing that. One of the people I met in game was going through a divorce. I've been moral support for guys going through their divorces before, and wound up doing it again (I seem to be a sympathetic person and easy to talk to). Through our many conversations (online, through IM, email, and phone), I reconsidered my hardline stance against remarriage. In the meantime, I had gotten married online to someone (see question below for the explanation) that I never considered a potential RL love interest. He was much younger than I was, and lived on the other side of the country. However, he had asked me out to visit, and as he was acting jealous of my friendship with the person getting the divorce, I decided to go ahead and meet him, so that he would understand how silly it was for him to care about who I might get involved with IRL. Well, it didn't turn out that way. He moved here about 2 months after we met, proposed a few months later, we found out shortly thereafter that I had gotten pregnant (around the time he proposed!), and now we're married with an 11-month-old baby, and so far, still very happy. [EQ, F, 39]
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We were in the same guild and about the same level and began hunting together regularly becoming friends in the process. Gradually we began talking about RL things and getting to know each other better and began talking outside the game using instant messengers. Getting to know him in game over a period of a couple years made transitioning to talking in RL so much easier, and we always had a lot to talk about. When I left that game for another and he stayed, we continued talking in RL and eventually added phone calls to the instant messengers. We live on opposite coasts so meeting took some planning but we did finally meet about 3 years or so after we met in game and had a great weekend becoming friends in person as well as online. We plan to meet again in a couple months for the second time. Meeting in person added a whole separate level to the friendship, it was a nervous time though, because we both worried that we would not click the way we had online. Meeting online first helps in several ways but creates its own problems as well. You may have much more to talk about with shared experiences from the game and such, but pictures and phone calls cannot substitute for seeing each others eyes and watching them smile when they see you. Meeting online was very different from say meeting someone at work or the mall. We were already friends, had much in common and had spent hours and hours talking about everything under the sun. We knew the person behind the pixels and liked them, Meeting face to face just opened another level to the relationship. It was very hard however to not have expectations for the first meeting, but I believe that is true for any 'first' such as a first date no matter how you meet. I suppose the biggest difference between this online beginning and other relationships is that we took our time, becoming good friends first and talking about everything. Learning to like and trust each other in game/online before actually meeting, in my mind, made everything much easier when we did finally meet face to face. This relationship has lasted almost 4 years now, who knows where it will end... that’s half the fun of life. Maybe 25 years from now I will be saying ' yes honey I really did meet your Grandpa fighting giants!' [DAOC, F, 43]
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I am engaged to marry a man that I met in EQ. We have spent sufficient time together RL to know this is the right decision for us, even though we have lived our lives on opposite sides of the planet (US and Australia). Having each been married before, and being older (I'm 41, he's 32) we believe that this relationship will succeed, although the absence of the 'traditional path to marriage' has created unique challenges and stresses for us. We are both fortunate to have a great deal of relevant education (both have degrees in psychology) and a great deal of personal insight to sustain us -- this would be infinitely harder without either. I definitely came to know my fiancé more as a person, and he me, in EQ than we would likely have in RL (assuming that we'd even stumbled on each other despite living 10,000 miles apart). Indeed, RL biases would have likely caused both of us to ignore the other had we just encountered each other -- this is sadly the way the world works with people of different ages, races and religions. The virtual world, in which all the stereotypes and prejudices were minimized because you have no idea how the other person looks or sounds for a long time, allowed those ingrained visual and auditory prejudices to take a back seat to real-time information processing about the other, our values, beliefs and feelings. I think that this mandatory filtering of conscious and unconscious 'attraction habits' or 'attraction stereotypes' played a great role in our romantic relationship beginning at all, even though now it thrives only because we purposefully apply the same levels of disclosure, candor and intimacy when we are together that we first became comfortable with while faceless and nameless in EQ. Unlike many 'traditional couples' the only way to make a relationship survive without face-to-face, day-to-day interaction is *constant* communication and, assuming that neither party to the relationship is engaged in deception, that constant communication actually gives you a leg-up on many couples who marry in haste and repent in leisure. If a virtual couple with a RL relationship don't talk, and share, and deepen your intimacy through words there is nothing else to fall back on, unlike many RL based couples who are ill-suited but hide their problems through sex, drugs, avoidance, large crowds and other tools to avoid genuine intimacy -- especially the downside of it -- that romance tends to encourage. By the time he and I finally met face to face, 3 years ago now, we each felt like we'd known each other all our lives. Still didn't stop us from being giddy though =) [EQ, F, 41]
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Our characters started flirting and taking an overt interest in one another, and pretty soon people viewed us as something equivalent to a dating couple. After two months or so, he asked if I'd be interested in talking on the phone. We did, and really enjoyed it, so we started talking on a regular basis and exchanged pictures by email. After another month or so, D's character proposed to mine, and they had an in game wedding.
Another month or so after that, he came into town on business and we met in person. We met at a neutral place (restaurant) and my Mom came along, because otherwise she would have been home tearing her hair out with worry. But he was exactly who he'd claimed to be, just a normal guy. It was a little awkward at first, knowing this person's personality so well but being a complete stranger to them physically.
For the first day it kind of felt like a first date, with nervous giggles every time our hands brushed together, that sort of thing. But by the second day most of the weirdness had worn off and it mostly felt like we'd been dating for at least a few weeks. A couple months later he had another trip into town on business and stayed for another weekend. There was no weirdness that time; it was as if we'd been together since our characters started 'dating'.
He had a couple of layovers in town for 1-2 hours at a time after that, so I just went and met him at the airport to sit and talk. (This was long before 9/11 so I could meet him at the gate.) A few months later I flew 2000 miles to spend a week with him at his place. At that point I was considering moving out there, as he had much more tying him to where he was than I did and I thought I would enjoy that part of the country. It'd be an adventure even if things didn't work out.
But before it got that far, things started going downhill anyway. It was a long, drawn-out, confusing sort of break-up, but I honestly think he just lost interest and didn't know how to tell me. It took a long time to get over that, because of the messy ending. He stopped playing by the end, which was really just as well. My character stopped wearing the wedding ring eventually, but she still has it in the bank, almost three years later.
After that there was a string of some pretty foolish romantic relationships. I swapped pictures with a number of folks, some of whom were truly just friends both between us and between our characters. There was one guildmate that I had known almost from the beginning but didn't get close to until after things ended with D, we'll call him J. J had had a longstanding crush on the friend who got me into EQ, even though she was in a committed relationship and had no romantic interest in him. He and I started spending more time together, and soon he was obsessing over me as much as he had obsessed over my friend.
I was not really interested in another relationship, still recovering from D, but I enjoyed his company and was flattered by the attention, although I never lied to him about how I felt. Still selfish, I know. J and I had low level alts that we sometimes played together, and behaved as if they were married although we'd never had an in game wedding for them. (Yes yes I know I know.) After several months of this J took an interest in one of several new members to the guild. Knowing full well how foolish I was being, I still got jealous and resentful and went to some effort to keep J's attention.
His new object of affection was eating up his attentions, though, and pulling all the right strings, so it wasn't very successful. I made myself back off a bit, but we still talked a lot. J had always teasingly pestered me about coming to visit him, but a couple months after he took an interest in the other guildmate I realized I had a good chunk of vacation time stored up again and thought it might be fun to go visit. (Yes I know!)
He lives in a major metropolis that I've always wanted to see, and I knew that even as 'just friends' we'd still have a great time. So I went, and really we did have a great time. Some things happened that shouldn't have, but nothing worth agonizing over. I knew in the back of my mind that this was never going to lead to anything long-term, so I can't say I was very surprised when I came back home and he returned to showering affection on my guildmate. It hurt, but given the fun we had while I was there and all the sights I got to see and the things I learned about men (ugh), I don't regret it.
The string of foolish, short relationships continued, but none with anyone I actually met in person. Some of them wanted to, including one from overseas who talked about flying here, but at least I had enough sense not to let that happen. Then this past fall another serious relationship appeared rather suddenly. We'll call him Y. I had known Y almost from the beginning of my EQ days, and considered him one of my closest friends in game. He had been in beta testing with the friends who got me started in EQ, and was even closer to them.
He was married when we met though, and had played with his wife for the first couple years. They had separated maybe eight months prior to the start of our relationship, in a very messy and painful breakup. His wife had all but stopped playing, at least on any characters that I and my friends knew, but I had no particular ill will towards her. I had met Y already, at the RL graduation of the friends who got me playing, when he and his then-wife came.
It was the first time they had met any of us, but a great time was had by all. So anyway, having once already met Y and having spent tons and tons of time together in game, having supported each other through our various heartbreaks (he helped me cope with the difficulties of D and J, and I spent a lot of time helping him deal with the departure of his wife), when he suddenly started talking about how I should visit. This idea sounded great immediately because Y lives in what is by far the most appealing part of the country to me. I was a little hesitant though, as I'd always had something of a crush on Y, although I think I'd done a good job of keeping it nothing more than that, given that the man was married and then going through the trauma of a failed marriage. I never even let myself consider anything serious with him to that point, but was afraid that being there with him, all lonely and vulnerable, might present some problems.
So I was sort of pushing the idea around on my plate without actually taking a bite until he rather suddenly confessed that he had begun thinking of me as more than a friend. That was a shock and a half. After literally years of having a hopeless crush, knowing deep down it could never ever happen, suddenly it was happening. Foolish optimist that I am, I ignored the voice whispering 'rebound' and went for it. Having known each other for so long, we immediately launched into a serious relationship. We made the plans for my trip out there.
My Mom bought me a new set of luggage as an early birthday present to take on my trip. (She's come a long way since D!) I rambled on endlessly about him at work, plastered his picture on the desktop of all the various computers I use, and idly surfed through job openings in his area. The only thing that worried me is it all seemed too good to be true, too absolutely perfect, things that good simply don't happen to me. I told him so, told him all about my misgivings and worries and everything, but he was the picture of confidence, reassuring me endlessly of his affection and happy anticipation. We talked as if marriage were a foregone conclusion and everything up until that point just a pleasant formality.
We talked several times a day (very much long distance) but didn't spend as much time together as we'd have liked, due to his irregular work schedule. But we did sling plenty of sappy emails back and forth. Then...*sigh*...a couple weeks before the trip, he started acting just a little distant. He talked about being busy with work, and did hold a very responsible position at his job, so I didn't think much of it. But sure enough, literally a few days before the trip, I dragged out of him that he no longer felt so much in love any more.
He'd been planning on letting me come and hoping that'd rekindle things (selfish son-of-unwed-parents) but thankfully I had the sense to be doubtful, and my Mom and my friends had the sense to talk me the rest of the way out of it. That one hurt, hurt worse than D or J combined ever had. Y had been a friend for so long, I trusted him implicitly. We had been through so much together over the years, I just couldn't conceive of him hurting me that much. I now know never to trust *any* man that much, online or otherwise, at least not without a very real ring on my ring finger.
I spent the weekend on the couch, alternately sleeping and crying, and then took a couple days off work to continue sleeping and crying. Of course life goes on, his picture was stripped off all my desktops an all reminders removed from sight. It was a week before I could unpack my bags though (they were ready to go a week before my flight).
For a while after that trauma I wanted nothing to do with men, of course. It was a few months before it dawned on me that one of the friends I'd been spending a lot of time with seemed to be a little more attentive and interested than usual in a friend. We'll call him R. I had met R about a year earlier, shortly after he started playing. We were in different guilds but our guilds do a lot of things together, so we ran into each other a lot and found it natural enough to start hanging out on our own, inviting each other to come when our groups needed more people or when we were soloing and wanted some company. He'd been a very good friend to me through all the stuff with Y, willing either to listen quietly or distract me, as needed.
We spent every possible spare moment together, and I started having feelings for him. After a couple months of worrying about ruining our friendship and making a fool of myself, I decided I couldn't possibly look a bigger fool than I did after Y, and R's a sweet and strong enough person to handle any temporary discomfort if he wasn't feeling as I suspected, so I told him how I felt. Turns out I (and the friends I'd had watching for signs of interest in him) were right, he did feel the same.
He'd never been in a serious relationship before, online or otherwise, so we started out taking it slow and so far it seems to have gone well. We talk on the phone maybe once a week or so, email a couple times a week, and have our own private chat channel in game at all times, so we are in constant touch whenever we're both online. It's almost like having him sitting there next to me...almost. He's scheduled to visit here in four weeks, and assuming that goes well will be applying to grad school at the big university in town. :)
I was worried about what would happen if he came here and we promptly broke up, but badgered him with what if's until satisfied that he feels here is as good as anywhere for grad school and wouldn't feel compelled to immediately move back if things go sour. He has a strong network of friends and is close to his family, so I think he'd be okay. I'm still nervous, but he's worth the risk.
I went into all that detail in an attempt to illustrate the fact that none of these relationships differs much from RL relationships, except for the geographical distance and resulting dependence on technology for staying in touch and eventual need for relocation by one party or the other. Those are the only hardships I see at all.
The jerky behavior I endured (and selfish, foolish behavior I committed) has nothing to do with having met online and everything to do with human nature. I haven't been in any long term RL relationships for comparison, but I've been in plenty of short ones and seen friends go through all sorts of long and short ones. I see no difference between those and mine that started online, except for the hardships imposed by distance.
And the benefits go a long way towards outweighing the hardships. Relationships online pretty much all start with friendships, because that's all you have to go on for attraction. Everyone's a hottie, and a fake computer animation at that, so there really isn't any chasing of people based purely on appearance. It’s very easy to spot the ones who are only after the 'rich and powerful', maybe because of the intensely social nature of game time. The game is all about interaction, so there's never an issue of where to go or what to do, or for that matter of personal safety while spending time together.
People sometimes say 'aren't you worried that he could turn out to be a murderer or something?' to which I reply 'so this guy I've talked to for hundreds, maybe even thousands, of hours over the course of a year, and about whom I have developed no criminal suspicions whatsoever, is still more dangerous in your eyes than in some random guy who sat down next to me in a bar ten minutes ago? I don't think so.'
Of course people can deceive others over long periods of time, but that's nothing new to online relationships. Heck my cousin married a guy that we all thought was great, they dated a long time and her family loved him. But on the flight to their honeymoon he started drinking and was a drunken abuser ever since. No one even dreamt him capable of such a thing. They're long since separated and have been fighting very nasty custody battles.
That kind of stuff happens just as much in RL, it just doesn't grab attention the way it does when people happened to meet online initially. I'm firmly convinced that if it weren't for the geographic problems and the resulting heartache, meeting online would be by far the best way to go. [EQ, F, 25]
About 10% of male players and 33% of female players have married online. About 1% of male players and 10% of female players have married online more than once.
Most MMORPG players feel that getting married online is silly. Male players were more likely than female players to feel that getting married online is silly.
Part of why so many people think MMORPG weddings are silly is that they feel it is meant as a counterpart or parallel of a real world wedding, as if the digital wedding is trying to accomplish what a real world wedding does – a commitment between a man and a woman that leads to the beginning of a family. In this sense, of course the digital wedding is silly, but that’s not what the virtual wedding is supposed to do. A virtual wedding isn’t an attempt to hi-jack a real life ritual as much as it is a ritual that has evolved and taken on its own significance in a virtual world. In the same way that words and dialect take on their own cultural meaning and bestow cultural identity on its speakers, a virtual wedding is a cultural phenomenon that establishes a kind of digital identity for these virtual communities.
In fact, as the following stories demonstrate, a virtual wedding is a combination of social entertainment, extensive role-playing and sometimes political intrigue. Instead of thinking of a virtual wedding as the corrupt bastard child of a real world contractual agreement, the virtual wedding should be considered as an elaborate form of collaborative digital story-telling – a ritual of its own right that fulfills a completely different purpose.
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I married my boyfriend online in 1999 and we were married in reality in 2001. The wedding was held in a special chapel in the game and a 'Seer' preformed the ceremony, with much pomp and circumstance. We received specially engraved wedding rings which are blessed and cannot be lost should our characters die. A guild we often interact with and role play with arrived. Our guild is the 'good guys' guild and theirs the 'bad guys' guild. They roleplayed a small disruption, but nothing to spoil the day, and we had a really great time. Then I was kidnapped away during the feast and my beloved had to follow clues and he and the wedding guests set out in search parties to find me. After a little searching they found more clues which eventually led him to me. He had to fight his way past some of the 'bad guys' guild to rescue me and take me away to our honeymoon. It was great fun and I will always cherish it. [DAOC/UO, F, 40]
My first wedding was very special. I married Zexis Tal 'Daris. A GM friend of mine took us around to various places that we considered for our wedding. On a specific date, our friends and guild members met us by being summoned and a gm friend who was a cleric 'married' us. Afterwards, we had wedding cake and lots of ale etc. We had no unruly nor unexpected guests. It was a very nice experience. My second wedding was several years later after my first virtual husband had left the game. It was very romantic. He asked me to marry him at sunset on the Oasis beach. His name is Tobie Baine. The location was special, in that we were married on the Oasis beach where he had asked me to marry him. Our guildmaster married us and it was delightful. There were no special vows really, but I kept going linkdead =) No unruly guests, but interestingly, my previous online husband showed up unexpectedly and seemed to have a bit of a difficult time with this wedding. It didn't bother me and he behaved himself. Tobie and I have remained friends now since our characters were both in our early teens. They are now both 65, but he no longer raids with the group we used to raid with. He is currently in college and can't keep the raid schedule and do well in school. We have kept touch by email even when one of us has taken a break. We still have a good friendship. I also remain in contact with my first husband by email and by instant messaging. Oh! Interesting story =) With my second husband, Tobie, we were raiding together the day after the wedding and I got charmed and killed him. He said that he joked that it didn't bode well for the marriage when the bride kills the groom the day after the wedding =) [EQ, F, 51]
Some months after we became involved IRL we married our characters in the game. It was a full guild wedding. We actually had special outfits we'd acquired (pity the male high elf cleric got to wear white while the female woodelf druid had to settle for bejeweled brown leathers-- Velious Models). I was at his place in Toronto and we had major problems with keeping two machines connected-- I kept LDing every couple of minutes. We wound up on the phone with the guildleader (who's a computer person) trying to coordinate everything. Wedding was done in increments until I LDd again. We had picked the location for ease of access, safety for guests, and beauty: the shoreline south of the port in ButcherBlock Mts. Would have preferred the dock in Lake Rathe on the RM side but it's too hard to get to. We wrote our vows in advance, and our 'best man' had a speech prepared as well. Most of our friends attended, the ceremony was performed by the guild's ArchBishop Ldara and leader, Prince Zackary. Some people gave up raids with their guilds to attend. Pictures posted on guild website (along w/ several other weddings of guildmembers who are RL couples) at http://sofeq.sofguild.com/scenes/scenes15.htm The rainbow of spell effects coordinated by our friend Katrinz afterwards is one of my favorite memories. [EQ, F, 59]
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Highlights of the wedding? It was a cute ceremony, I guess. I got a ring that one of my alts still wears. I got married to my old guild leader, the location was the docks at Freeport. We all went and 'got a hotel room' in Freeport and started boozing it up. The funniest part: a friend of mine who didn't want me to get 'married' to this guy, sends my RL boyfriend (we weren’t dating at the time though) a tell sayin 'i hope it friggin rains' and it started raining. [EQ, F, 22]
Yes I have been married 3 times, the first 2 times just a roleplay arrangement. The first wedding my husband got drunk and fell in some water and drowned. The second was supposed to be in my favorite place in lesser fay fairy ring, sadly before i arrived the whole wedding party was wiped out by the corrupted horse so the venue had to be changed. But the most meaningful was the third time because I had truly fell in love and now am married to this many in many different lives. [EQ, F, 38]
And finally, sometimes weddings fulfill political purposes:
The management and organization of a guild is usually more work than most guild leaders initially realize. The personality conflicts, cliques, backstabbing, deliberations and other tensions that arise in the everyday management of a guild oftentimes feel out of place in what is supposed to be a form of entertainment. The following narratives highlight the experiences of MMORPG players who have watched guilds fracture or dissipate, and the lessons these individuals learned. These stories show that guild management in MMORPGs is a much more elaborate and complex task than most realize.
One common dilemma that causes most guilds to fracture is the tension between power and casual players – the former wanting to carry out more difficult raids while the latter being perfectly happy the way things are. Eventually, this unresolved tension causes the guild to either split or fall apart altogether.
Our guild has been attempting to challenge the Sony/Verant stereotype by being a family-oriented guild that nonetheless succeeds in the high-end game. Unfortunately, we have suffered for years from the rollercoaster which occurs when a push to emphasize family values bumps heads with the need to make decisions to further military/strategic goals. We go through periods of build-up and success, then someone gets what I affectionately call 'uber disease' and loses sight of the fact that we are in our guild as opposed to another is because we don't choose to raid 24-7-365 or make the acquisition of 'Phat L3wt' our raison d'etre. During these times, people leave in a huff (although its amazing how many people *lie* about their reasons for leaving rather than just say they are leaving because they are unhappy we aren't moving fast enough for their taste. You sooner or later -- usually sooner -- find out the truth when you see them raiding the server's uber the next day and members soon thereafter (even though they told you they were just 'taking a break from the game' but needed for some reason to untag while they did it LOL). Usually their social clique follows, and there is a period of contraction with a loss of guild capability. Followed by, of course, reflection and rebuilding with a core of old die-hards and new members. We half-jokingly refer to ourselves as a training guild at this point. Some of us are accepting that this will be ongoing and may be something that we cannot ever permanently change, because people change in their approach to EQ as they level. But we're still thinking about how we can change this phenomena, rather than do what 99% of non-powergamer folks do -- abandon raiding/high end gaming or abandon the friendship/value system that brought them together in the first place. Some of us 'old-timers' are getting weary of the cycle and the emotional toll that it takes on those who choose to remain loyal to a guild over a long period of time. [EQ, F, 41]
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Yes. I was once in a large guild that had a smaller clique within it. This clique was made up of the guild leader and his close friends, all high-level characters who tended to be the ones who ran guild events. So when on raids, these people tended to be the ones who made decisions about who got what items that dropped. 90% of the time, it was someone in the clique who got the item. This ended up destroying the guild. There were MANY officers who weren't in the clique, but who were aware of what was going on. The guild ended up completely falling apart, and no longer exists today. [EQ, F, 33]
There was a few times in this guild that there was huge debates that left a negative impact on the guild. The one that sticks in my mind the most was shortly after I joined the guild, our GL was a college student that when EQ first started he played all the time. As time in school went by he realized that he needed to cut back on his play time. Some of the people in the guild felt that our GL should relinquish his title since he wasn't going to be in game 24/7 (so to speak). Our Gl was a very good Gl and handled all problems in a timely matter and made sure that everyone in the guild was happy. When he got wind of this dispute about his availability to the game he promptly posted a thread to our guild message boards about the situation. He asked all guild members to post a reply about their truthful feelings on the matter. The guild was pretty much split down the middle in regards to him remaining the GL or stepping down. Some of the people from the stepping down side were so offended that people were against them in this issue that it caused a lot of heated debates in game and out. Finally when things seemed to have calmed down about the situation we held a guild meeting for people to vote on the issue. Well as it turned out the people in support of our GL was stronger then what we believed and it was voted that he would stay in his position. This infuriated the other people so much that when all was said and done they all left the guild because of it. [EQ, F, 35]
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A guild I was once in (for about a year), split due to internal debate on the direction of the guild as a whole. Some people played a lot and put in a huge amount of effort to advance the guild as a whole, and then there were the more casual players who didnt do as much towards this. In order to advance the guild as a whole, and provide more equipment and more engaging experiences for everyone, it is generally considered that Merit Loot, ie giving certain items to the people who can use them to the greatest effect (actually merit just means giving it to a person you choose, but it's usually to the best use, or most deserving due to time put in person), is the best way to help advance your guild if equipment is scarce. Giving the Big Really Protective Breastplate to your number one Warrior who attends every fight, and is always the one getting beating up and keeping to monster from eating everyone else, is a good idea. the alternative to this, Random loot, is where everyone who attends gets to roll a dice (Everquest has a facility for this) and whoever rolls highest wins the item. In this scenario, the Big Really Protective Breastplate could maybe go to a Rogue for example (who if they are doing their job right shouldnt be getting hit anyway), or say a Warrior who might play once a week. In this example, this nice piece of equipment, which could have enabled your main Warrior to do his job even better, meaning your guild succeeds more at raids and gets even MORE loot, has now been given to someone where it will not benefit the guild in any way.
Most high end guilds go in for Merit loot over Random loot, as it is the only way to move the guild forward. Anyway. The casual people in my guild were all for Random loot, as it meant they might get something, improving themselves in the short term, while stopping the guild improving in the long term, where it might have provided loot for all. the people who played every day and were actually making things happen and being the living heart and soul of the guild, were more for merit, in order to equip the people in the line of fire, in order to enable the guild to do bigger and better things, and quite frankly to reward all the hard work and effort of the people who consistently did their best for the good of the guild (the officers and guild leader were on the Merit loot side of things). The casual players accused the dedicated players of being greedy, officers not doing enough work to improve the guild (when in fact they were working their arses off), casual players were not pulling their weight when online, and only attending raids where they knew something would drop that they personally wanted. The leadership then offered to put up a poll of how things should advance. Everyone was given the opportunity to give ideas for inclusion in the poll for a week beforehand, so that everyone's input could be gotten. The poll was held, and the large majority was in favour of Merit loot.
Naturally, the very same hour, one of the people who had voted for the continuance of Random loot (know this from knowing the person, the results were anonymously displayed of course) cried that the poll was obviously rigged and the choices were unfair, even though they had had a whole week to include their own ideas (which, surprisingly, they had not). They further accused the officers and guild leadership of being charlatans, with no interest in helping anyone but themselves. Unsurprisingly, after many months of abuse, our guild leader called their bluff and said that they could run the guild any way they wanted, because he was leaving. Probably about 75% of the guild left with him, from which he forged a new guild, which is currently going strong, and of which I am a part. Merit loot is currently in use. The old guild is falling apart very badly indeed, which i am very happy to laugh gleefully about, as the cretins got what was coming to them. Incidentally, a good portion of the people left behind were the ones who enjoyed shitstirring (if this term is not used outside of England, it means to cause trouble by making snide comments, encouraging arguements, and trying to set people against each other). This was another part of why the guild split, due to constant bickering and backbiting between some members, generally started off by these individuals. [EQ, F, 22]
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I left a guild once because the guild leadership did not seem to understand that real life was more important than playing the game (my husband got sworn at because we had plans on New Year's Day -- plans we told them about in advance when they first mentioned wanting to raid that day -- because we wouldn't change those plans to attend the raid!). I left guilds twice because the guild leadership seemed to think what they wanted for themselves was more important than the rest of the guild -- one guild leader had a tendency to cyber all the female members of the guild (and some that weren't members), all while pretending to have a 'meaningful relationship' with them and trying to hide the fact he was cybering more than just that one person. Another guild recruiter (a guild I never joined) did pretty much the same thing to recruits -- you were 'guaranteed' an in (top guild on the server) if he decided he 'liked' you.
Another problem was a guild where the leadership decided their opinions were the only ones that mattered. They would do things on the spur of the moment (guildremove or take away board access) without explanation, leaving people who were 'friends' of that person to try to find out what was going on. They would 'justify' it by saying they did what they thought was necessary for the guild... The very first guild I was in, the guild leader was EQ-married to what I later found out was an emotionally unstable woman. She would have these fits where she would decide somebody in the guild was 'against her', and would make the guildleader get rid of them. I saw it happen to a couple of other people, so I was talking to some of the other guildies about it, trying to decide whether it would be a good idea to move on, guild-wise. She found out about it, so I became her next target. I removed myself, a lot of the guild followed because one of the original members got pissed about what happened and she took him (level 20 or so at the time?) to the Dreadlands (a level 40+zone) and left him there. Two of our friends stayed, one was an officer and one of the founders of the guild. They broke a rule the guild leader and his girlfriend made up and grouped with me anyway, and the guildleader and his girlfriend and the only other remaining officer showed up, guildremoved the other founding officer and the other person. That pretty much ended the guild. That founding officer quit the game because of it. [EQ, F, 39]
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In-guild politics has never really been an issue for me directly, as I tend to avoid officership (and thusly, headaches and responsibility) like the plague. However, I have experienced guild politics first hand. My old UO guild at one point in time had the oppurtunity to merge with a group of other guilds in order to form a united coalition against our enemies. I was among the supporters of the change, however our leadership saw it as a loss of their own personal power, whether or not it was for the greater good, and so they declined. Apparently leadership and many other factions also refused to give up power as well, so the coalition never formed. And of course, we continued to lose battles regularly without each others' support. [UO, M, 21]
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The tag is still around, but the guild is a pathetic skeleton of what it once was, and the blame should be squarely placed on the officer's shoulders. The officers Ali (me) (raid point/loot officer) Fulltime working professional with a boyfriend that played EQ, but far less seriously than I did. I had a background in LARP story telling and administration so I had a first hand working knowledge of how fragile and time intensive a group like a guild is to keep healthy. From my experiences there, I felt it was incredibly important to provide a set of rules ahead of time so that when there were the inevitable conflicts, decisions didn't appear retaliatory, but would be impartial based on a set of public policies. I was the only one of the bunch that had any willingness to do the administrative aspects of things, so it ALL got dumped in my lap. I was easily spending 10+ hours a week on maintaining the raid point system and the website and raids for me were a nightmare, trying to maintain attendance with people arriving late and leaving early, run loot auctions and track raid point expenditures and be lead cleric at the same time.
Brian (guildleader) Bri worked in tech support, stable job, but underemployed. He had some other interests outside of the game and while he logged some serious time on line, he at least had other things in his life. Bri became guildleader when we formed mostly from his on line charisma. I don't think he ever grasped the fact that creating and maintaining a thriving guild was WORK. He just thought that he could decree things and that was that. We were a council when it came to other people doing the work but a dictatorship when it came to any personal agenda he had. He wanted everyone to be happy, which meant he was great at not committing himself to anything one way or the other and living in his own personal reality where everything was rosy and he was well loved. He could be intensely loyal and also TOTALLY irrational when he felt someone had offered slight. He made slight overtures towards something off line and romantic when my relationship was on the rocks and when I turned him down, albeit kindly and amicably, our "relationship" as friends and fellow officers began slowly deteriorating.
Martin (first recruiting officer) Martin, like me, was a working professional. He traveled for his job, also had a son he had custody of and an online girlfriend in the guild so his time to commit to being an officer was limited. He was the only other one in the guild that really saw the guild as a community that needed to be nurtured and maintained not just a tactical force. But for whatever reason, Martin preferred to stick his head in the sand, disappear for long periods or be on line anon and avoiding everyone rather than speak up regarding his concerns. Martin's lack of response on officer issues even early on was perhaps the first crack in the guild. Rather than getting unanimous agreement, to get anything done, we had to go for a majority vote of officers voting since Martin and Dom would be so non-responsive.
Dom (Main Tank) I never totally understood Dom. He played an ogre warrior and because he was generally quiet, I think a lot of us underestimated the person behind the keyboard. He was very "hippie" in his perspective: Everyone should be "happy" and free to do whatever makes them happy. We didn't need rules as it would all just somehow magically work itself out. He was loyal and responsible.. when I paid for a year of web hosting, he was one of two of the officers to actually come up with his share of it. He and Bri had a long history together in EQ and it was pretty much a given that whatever opinion Bri had on an issue, that Dom would have the same one.
Chris (raid officer) Chris was a late 20 something college student with an ex-wife he hated deeply and a kid he saw sometimes on weekends. Chris was a poster boy for MMORPG addiction. Other than class, he had no life outside of the game. And, I suspect, he was trying to bolster his self-esteem through the game. Chris was the one that wanted the guild to move into the top tier of "uber-guilds" and take on all the hotly contested boss mobs. To him, the guild was successful if we were able to raid whenever he wanted and not wipe out taking on boss mobs. He simply didn't grasp "community" in the slightest. He saw classes and tactics, not people behind the keyboard. Chris was also positively desperate for a girlfriend, be it on line or in real life. I suspect that a good bit of the reason that our interactions turned us into bitter enemies is that I never realized that he was pursuing me in game and that he took my character's ultimate in-game relationship with his real life roommate as a slap in the face.
John (raid officer) John had a lot of good qualities but he was also myopically self centered. He wanted to have his cake and eat it too, and seemed honestly bewildered when his actions had repercussions. Despite being nearly 30, he still had no clue what he wanted to be when he grew up. He'd gotten a degree, ended up managing a discount store, then decided that he was going to move cross country and go back to school for computer science, despite having no real like for the subject. Then he wondered why the girlfriend he left behind wanted to leave him. John was Chris's roommate and my character's on line husband. John understood that the community aspect of the guild couldn't be completely neglected, but living with Chris (and also having not much of a real life outside of the game) he, like Chris, needed to feel powerful and important IN the game. And that meant pushing our guild to "bigger and better things".
The first crucial mistake we the officers made is that we never sat down and agreed on a direction and focus for the guild. And the longer that the guild was allowed to be each officer's personal vision rather than a consensus of all the officers, the further and further the opposing camps became. Martin and I wanted an intimate family atmosphere guild whose raid capabilities did not come at the expense of the community. We wanted very selective recruiting based on the personality and personal character of the person BEHIND the screen. Chris wanted an uber guild filled with enough people that we could raid any time of the day or night. So long as it was a competently played class that he felt the guild needed, the person behind the screen was totally irrelevant. Bri and John wanted the best of both worlds. They had visions of our guild challenging the 2 ruling uber guilds on the server.. but they also claimed they wanted to maintain the tight knit atmosphere. And Dom.. well, he wanted whatever Bri wanted at that particular moment.
Many of the people that joined the guild early on liked the fact that we raided a couple of times a week, but we weren't obsessive about it like a lot of the big name guilds. They joined us because of the tight knit atmosphere. The fact that we were honing our raid skills was a nice bonus, but definitely of secondary importance. Then Chris began working very hard on pushing the guild to bigger and better things. It made some sense initially: the officers were all 60 and working on AA points (this was pre-PoP) and seeking a bigger challenge. Bri would pretty much tag anyone that expressed an interest in the guild, so he was tagging low 50s toons while Chris was trying to ramp up for Level 60 encounters. This frustrated Chris so he started indiscriminately recruiting based solely on level & class and added people that were definitely not a good fit towards the tight knit atmosphere.
The second crucial mistake we made was our inability to act decisively. Because we were a council, we technically needed a majority to come to a decision. And as things deteriorated, officers either acted without consulting any of the other officers or ignored the issue on the board entirely, effectively consigning the issue into limbo. Chris would make rash threats on the server board, I would go ballistic privately to the officers (but felt that it was important that the officers maintain the appearance of unity publicly) and Brian would avoid taking a stand either way, just in case someone might not like him afterwards. So issues lingered on and guild members got disgruntled that the officers weren't responsive to them. As summer came things got worse. Chris was playing EQ pretty much 24/7 since school was out and he was wanting to raid more and more. My job was getting more intense so I wanted to raid less and less, since coming home from a stressful day at work and dealing with a stressful night of raiding in EQ, especially since there was much pressure for me to not log at 11PM EST because many times that effectively ended the raid (me being lead cleric).
We began losing people in the guild.. some because they didn't like the influx of new people Chris was bringing in and the new focus on high end raiding, some because we weren't doing the things Chris promised them the guild would be doing as fast as he promised them. Chris accused me of trying to sabotage his vision of being an uberguild, I accused him of making statements publicly that reflected badly on the guild as a whole (and destroying a reputation for honorable play that I'd spent 60 levels creating) without consulting the other officers and trying to sacrifice the sense of community on the altar of uber loot. Martin hid his head in the sand and stopped showing up to raids or reading the officer's board at all. Bri adroitly avoided taking a stand and managed to convince himself that everything was just fine, Dom was spending less & less time on line because of his marriage and John didn't want to keep putting effort into the guild when he was getting bored with what we could do with the people that we had.
The final issue was a player Chris recruited (against my vehement objections) that caused enough interpersonal strife in the guild that even the officers that didn't want to take a stand on anything finally spoke up and agreed that what this player brought to the guild wasn't worth the constant headaches he caused. Chris left in a fit of pique, John left a month later claiming burn out and boredom. John ended up in the top guild on the server, I think Chris quit playing all together. But at that point, the guild was too fractured to be re-buildable. Bri was getting bored with the game as a whole and definitely with leadership, but he still wanted to maintain the status of "guildleader". Dom was pretty much MIA, Martin was actively refusing to do anything guild related (yet he wasn't stepping down from being an officer or removing the guild tag) And I was just burnt out completely.
More and more people began leaving for what they saw as greener pastures. I gave it another 3 months trying to get the guild back onto a healthy track, but after a while, it seemed apparent that while people were fast to complain there just WAS no way to make people happy. And the effort seemed less and less worth it. So after a lot of emotional wrestling with myself, I finally removed the tag. I started recruiting with an uberguild where I could just be 1 cleric in a CHO and leave the running of the guild to other people, but I was so burnt out on the game, that I stopped playing completely a few weeks after that. [EQ, F, 35]