Superstitions

I made a short, speculative post on MMO superstitions on the Terra Nova blog a while back when I first began to think about the idea. This article is a more elaborate exploration drawing on a survey asking players to describe superstitions they have seen in an MMO. But I want to begin with the most interesting comment made on the Terra Nova blog post which was posted by Heather Sinclair, a member of the Dungeon and Dragons Online development team:

B.F. Skinner is well-known for his theory of behavioral conditioning, but one of his quirkiest studies involved inducing superstition in pigeons (1948). 8 pigeons were placed in a reinforcement contraption (i.e., Skinner Box) and were given a food pellet every 15 seconds no matter what they did. After several days, each pigeon had fixated on a particular superstitious behavior. One pigeon danced counter-clockwise, another two developed a left-to-right head-swinging motion, another attacked an invisible object in the top right corner of the cage, and so forth. This phenomenon has also been replicated among high-school students (Bruner & Revuski, 1961). And given that MMOs are a kind of Skinner Box that offer some random rewards (e.g., rare drops), it's not surprising that superstitious behaviors emerge in MMOs as well.

I want to make clear that I am using the word "superstition" in the context of MMOs without reference to spirits or religion in the way "superstitious" sometimes implies when used in everyday language. Specifically, I'm using the word "superstition" to refer to repeated behaviors driven by strong beliefs that doing X (or not doing X) will cause Y even though there is no good evidence that this is the case, or despite countering evidence. Superstition falls along a spectrum of related phenomena, such as urban legends and speculation. What differentiates superstition from these other two terms is that urban legends are typically stories which have no repeated behavioral component and speculation usually forms the basis for somewhat systematic testing. Of course, the distinctions among all these terms are not clear cut.

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In this particular survey, about 380 MMO players described one or more superstitions they had seen in an MMO. As I read through the player-submitted superstitions, I was struck by several things, and I will list some of these here to help frame the phenomena we're looking at and the stories that follow:

1) Other people's superstitions always seem crazier. When reading through the superstitions, I felt more sympathetic towards ones in games I've played and more likely to laugh at superstitions in games I haven't played. But, of course, most of the superstitions are incredibly similar across games and I think reading superstitions from other games will help us think more seriously about the ones in the games we do play.

2) Some people argue that all MMO superstitions must be false because it's just easier for developers to use a random number generator throughout, but it's also true that it takes just several lines of code to increase the chances of all rare drops on Tuesdays. And while it is impossible to prove that gods or spirits exist in the real world, there actually is an omnipotent, omniscient god in MMOs (known as the game developer) who can and does mess with the rules. In other words, there is no logical reason why a four-leaf clover would bring you good luck in real life, but this is plausible and easy to implement in an MMO. So ironically, there is a better basis in believing in an MMO superstition than a real life superstition.

3) A corollary of #2 is that we may never know whether a particular superstition is actually true or false because: a) most of the scenarios occur with sufficiently low frequencies (i.e., rare mob drops) that they are hard to sample for testing, b) we will never have access to the actual code base in most cases, and c) even if we did, weird features do arise from complex code that developers never put in explicitly but nevertheless might exist (e.g., the case of the "wi flag" in Asheron's Call). However, while some of these superstitions may be true, it is likely that most of them are in fact false.

But enough of my thoughts. Let's turn to the superstitions that players have seen in the games they play.

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Instance Seeding

Most superstitions players described involved low-chance or high-risk events. For example, a low-chance event may be a rare loot drop. In World of Warcraft, there is a pervasive superstition that the loot table in high-level instances is determined by the first member of the group who steps foot inside the instance.

While a superstition involving a common scenario may be easily disproved by testing, one reason why superstitions involving uncommon scenarios sustain themselves is because "it can't hurt" to try it. And if you only get to run a high-level instance once each week, then why not try something out that only takes 30 seconds?

Some People Are Luckier

One interesting variation of the instance seeder superstition claims that certain characters are luckier or have better loot tables.

What fascinates me here is that certain characters come to be seen as being inherently lucky or unlucky (even divine or cursed), analogous to how certain people in life are sometimes perceived to have divine or miraculous powers.

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Lucky Charms

There is also a pervasive item-based superstition regarding drop rates across many MMOs and this is the belief that having certain objects in your inventory will improve the drop rate of rare items. The specific item changes from game to game, but takes the same general form.

And again, here we see the interesting behavior where players may not themselves "believe" in the superstition, but they do it anyways because the behavior requires little effort in comparison with the potential gains.

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Over-Enchanting

An interesting case study of a high-risk event is something known as over-enchanting, a crafting mechanic present in games such as Ragnarok Online, Ultima Online, and Lineage 2.

In addition to standing in specific places, players described a wide variety of other superstitions related to over-enchanting. Some of these involve eating before enchanting.

Others have developed a more elaborate set of rituals.

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Crafting in FFXI

The most interesting superstitions related to crafting actually come from Final Fantasy XI, and it's because the developers have a history of messing with the players.

Deliberately strange rules like this have spawned an entire legion of crafting superstitions in FFXI.

As a side note, I've never felt so relieved to not be playing an MMO where moonphases are involved. Just imagine the beliefs that might spring up in WoW if that were the case.

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Spawning

Spawning as a game mechanic used to be a much bigger deal, such as in the original EverQuest. This is because some mobs would have spawn times of an hour or six hours in addition to having place-holder spawns. This helps to partly explain why there were many superstitions regarding spawning in EQ in a way that there aren't in a game like WoW where spawning is faster and less painful. One prevalent superstition was the existence of an "anti-spawn" radius.

Other superstitions involved cleaning up after yourself.

And of course, some people developed ritual dances for spawning. As you're reading these, please note the uncanny resemblance of this to Skinner's pigeons.

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Loaded Dice

Given the prevalence of random rolling systems in many MMOs, it makes sense that players might develop superstitions on what is ostensibly a random number generator. Of course, badly-implemented random number generators (or overly imaginative players) often give the impression of having patterns. One of the most popular superstitions is that you can get rid of your "bad rolls".

A variant of this is waiting till someone else makes a bad roll and then rolling yourself.

Others prefer an order-based method of rolling.

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Risks, Costs, and Persistence of Superstitions

It bears pointing out the conditions that encourage superstitions to develop and the irrational and social mechanisms that sustain them. As we've seen, superstitions are more likely to involve low-chance and high-risk events. In practice, they are partly sustained because the cost of a 30 second superstitious behavior is extremely low in comparison with a raid wipe (and the consequent regrouping time).

Another mechanism is that we tend to remember confirming cases more than disconfirming cases. But typically, one confirming case is enough to create a new group of converts.

Overall, I was most surprised by how widespread superstitions were across MMOs and how adamantly some players follow them. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, a few of these superstitions might in fact be true, but most are likely to be false. I'll close this exploration of superstitions with an anecdote that is a little more light-hearted.

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Appendix

There were a bunch of interesting submitted superstitions that didn't neatly fit into the narrative flow of the article, but I wanted to make sure that they were shared as well. Here they are.

Bovine Assault

A Special, Happy Place

Paint Brush of Souls