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There are a total of 950 stories that you can search through. The Mosaic study drew from this set of stories for anecdotal information.
These stories were solicited using a fairly open-ended question: "Tell me about a memorable experience you've had in the game. This experience might be good or bad, moving or infuriating, or it made you realize something important. It might have to do with someone you met in the game, or a particular interaction with an individual, or an unforgettable experience in a group, or even someone you play the game with in real-life."
Use the search feature to search for a specific word or phrase in all the entries. Try to search for specific, but uncommon, words to avoid getting too many results. For example, words like "romantic", "honor", or "guilt" will return far more interesting results than words like "player", "cleric" or "level". Only up to 30 results will be shown.
Player narratives provide unique glimpses into MMORPG worlds that numbers and graphs cannot. When players are asked to share memorable stories and experiences, a very common theme that emerges is the altruism that players find in MMORPGs. The experience is oftentimes accompanied by both surprise and lament - surprise that altruism exists in these virtual environments, and lament that it is seen so much less often in real life.
There have been several people who have done completely altruistic things that still amaze me. Giving away valuable items when they could be sold for lots of money. Fighting to save me when I was going to die. Pulling my corpse out of a completely unsafe place that I had blundered into and would never have gotten out of (darn Frontier Mountains Giants...) without help. That is the one thing that amazes me. That people, with not only no incentive to do this, but the disincentives of loss of time and possible loss of life and definate loss of money, continue to act as very good and decent human beings. --- [EQ, female, 39]
I am guild leader of a small to medium sized guild on EverQuest and the longstanding members of the guild are in some ways like a family, certainly nothing less than very good friends. So, there are close ties. Recently, I, in real life, have had a series of crises, financial and otherwise. Firstly, my roommates stopped paying their bills and then, wihtout notice, moved out of the appartment, leaving me with over $2,000 of bills to pay. A couple of weeks later, I lost my job and a few weeks after that, my grandfather had an accident, and is still in the hospital because he has contracted numerous ailments just from being in a hospital environment. There is great concern on the part of his physicians that he will live through this experience. Not because I am guild leader, but just because I have become one of the guild "family" members, I have had more than one guild member offer to help me financially. One of the young members of my guild even offered to take money from his college savings to help me. I did not accept the offers, but just the fact that these individuals who only know me from the game have offered their support, say quite a lot of good things about people in this world. I am not the first person from this guild to experience this. Another member, who passed away shortly before my crises occurred, was ailing from a heart condition which prevented him from leading a normal life. These same guild members also offered him the same support, one of them sending this person's family money to help with bills, etc. These people had never met in person, but still, just as if they had known each other in real life for years, one helped the other and we all offered this person and his family our moral support. I think this shows that there is more to a MMORPG than just the gaming part for some people. It is a way of making contact and friendships with other individuals worldwide, that would be pretty much impossible otherwise. --- [EQ, female, 40]
A Friend and I were camping the Preacher room in Permafrost. Hoping to get a Rune Circlet which neither of us had. He was a Druid 32 I was Playing my Enchanter 32. We were doing well most were green. some of the casters and the preacher was blue. Well one Mob got away and i had my DUMB enchanter animation out. We promptly had 10 Greenies beating on us. My pet had aggro'd everything. We as you guessed it died. I popped up in Everfrost and rememed spells and prepared for CR. I get this tell. hey where are you. I said i have no clue. Meet me at zone this person says i will show you to your body. I met up with this high level Euridite mage. He leads me to my body. I forgot to mention that when we were fighting all those greenies the preacher had popped again. We had just killed him 5 minutes before. He helped to finish us. Anyhow me and the Mage go into the room ITS EMPTY. My heart sank as i knew this uber mage had killed the Preacher. The mage said to me, you died camping the preacher?? Yes i said. got mobbed by Greenies he had just repopped again. All of a sudden my Trade window pops up. THE RUNE CIRCLET he said i know what its like to camp something for so long only to die trying to get it. here i killed him for you take the circlet. I couldn’t believe it. I actually had a tear forming in my eye, my mouth was wide open. This guy could have taken the circlet and gotten an easy 400pp for it. Thats what they sold for when i got it. Instead he gave it to me. My druid friend had forgotten to bind in Everfrost so he was still on his way from NK when he got there the mage showed him the way to his body also. That is the single coolest thing that ever happened to me in EQ. Somone who acutally thought more of others then themselves. Its people like that Mage that make EQ so worthwhile to play. That one act of Kindness wipes out all the other greedy idiots who continue to plague Norrath. --- [EQ, male, 37]
About one-third of players answered that they would not be willing to sell their accounts.
Further analysis showed that female players are significantly less likely to be willing to sell their accounts. Perhaps this is because selling the account means losing the social relationships that a player has formed, and these relationships are more important to female players than male players.
The average amount that players from different games were willing to sell their account at is presented below. This amount is probably directly correlated to the attachment a player has to that game.
Players were asked whether they were looking forward to switching to an upcoming MMORPG, and the following graph shows how players from 5 current MMORPGs answered. The loyalty of UO and EQ players is quite impressive in contrast with players from DAOC, AO and AC.
Because socialization is more important to female players than to male players, as demonstrated in “Men are from Ogguk. Women are from Kelethin”, it would be expected that female players are less likely to want to switch to a new game when compared with male gamers. This is because the existing social networks would be broken if a player switches to a new game.
Players were asked to type in the game they were looking forward to trying out, and Star Wars Galaxies came out as the most frequently listed.
Another interesting finding was that players who are anticipating the 3 main games had different average ages.
In an earlier essay titled “Men are from Ogguk. Women are from Kelethin”, I argued that male and female MMORPG players have very different motivations and reasons for playing.
The graph above plotting gender against age highlights another very important gender difference. Male players tend to be between 12 and 28, while female players tend to be between 23 and 40. Rather than categorizing MMORPG players as male and female players, it perhaps makes more sense to think of the two main groups as younger male players and older female players.
While most people might think that people are more likely to lie and misbehave online, the opposite is probably more true. As the following graph shows, about one-third of players feel that they act more benevolent online than they do in real-life.
It is also the case that about one-third of players feel they are more aggressive and initiative online.
The internet does indeed allow people to feel less inhibited, but as this pair of graphs suggest, the internet doesn’t turn people into pathological liars and thieves, but rather, courageous knights and brave warriors whose motives are benevolent.
Female players are more likely than male players to choose “Making Friends” as the most important aspect of the game. 50% of female players (N=385) chose it as the most important aspect, compared with 32% of male players (N=2459).
As the following graph shows, most players have made some good friends online.
These findings underscore the importance of thinking of MMORPGs as an environment where relationships form and social networks are created, rather than just a hack-and-slash playground.
This also goes along well with the finding in “Facets” that the desire to form relationships online, as opposed to other factors (such as achievement, or role-play), is the best predictor of attachment to a game, as measured by hours played per week.
Motivation for The Daedalus Project
It's hard to believe that I've been doing these online surveys and presenting the findings for almost 3 years now. Over the course of the past 3 years, I have surveyed over 25,000 MMORPG players, and covered issues ranging from demographics to gender and personality differences, from motivation to addiction, from gender-bending to how these virtual worlds can help people grow.
I see "The Daedalus Project" as a way to present findings in a more direct and accessible format. Instead of a full-length presentation with introduction and discussion, the entries at "The Daedalus Project" are short, concise and to-the-point. "The Daedalus Project" isn't a replacement for the fuller presentations, but instead, it provides a channel for me to publish findings that don’t fit directly into those presentations.
The weblog format allows me to quickly update the information here, and it is all automatically archived, and searchable. Furthermore, readers can make full use of the commenting and trackback features.
I’m also interested in trying to build a more dynamic community around this research, both to facilitate respondent rate when I run surveys, as well as to be tied closer to the player community.
How Do I Subscribe?
The subscription mailing list to "The Daedalus Project" is the same one as the "Online MMORPG Study list", so there is no separate list to subscribe to if you are already on the "Online MMORPG Study" list. I’m hoping that I can put out a new issue every month.
How You Can Help
You can help my research by telling your MMORPG friends and guildmates about this site. If you are part of a message board or forum community, please consider posting a link to either the HUB or The Daedalus Project.
I am interested in your other available presentations on the HUB. But there's so much. Where do I start?
If you are not an MMORPG player, I would recommend starting with Mosaic, which discusses how the virtual lives and identities of players affect their real lives and identities.
If you are interested in demographic information, I would recommend this page at The Norrathian Scrolls which focuses on EQ players, and this page in Codename Blue which includes players from 5 MMORPGs.
If you are interested in learning about addiction, I would recommend the full presentation Ariadne, and these pages at The Norrathian Scrolls (narratives and essay).
If you are interested in learning about the different motivations for why people play, I would recommend the Facets study.
If you are interested in how men and women play the game differently, I would begin with this essay.