How MMORPGS Work

It's one of those one of those few times where the acronym is is almost, if not more difficult to say than the full thing. Right. Yeah, they they're they're very, very popular, extremely popular. They're so popular, they're more popular than popular things. Okay, I don't know what you know. And Korea they're huge too, that's true. That's their enormous Actually Asia really they really do dominate. But let's let's jump ahead of our kind of talk about what these

things are. So for those of you who don't know UM, and I imagine that's probably a very small minority, but this is a there, it's a game that UM that you where you take on the persona of a character that lives within a certain virtual world. That world could be anything from fantasy setting, like a token esque kind of fantasy sorcery right sword and sorcery, Or it could be science fiction. It could be the wild West, it

could be a vampire society. Really, it's just limited to the imagination of the person creating the game or corporation creating the game. Um. But you create a persona that exists within this universe, and you play through that persona, exploring the world, achieving tasks, making friends and enemies. Um. And you're doing it online over the internet along at with about you know, a couple of thousand to several

hundred thousand other people at the same time. So it's it's a social thing because you do encounter actual other players. I mean they're the characters. Many of the characters you encounter will have at the other end of them a real, live human being controlling that character. Um. And yet it's also a computer game. So that's that's sort of the the pie in the sky kind of m m O RPG rundown I guess. Yeah. But if you didn't know

the the acronym and the name for it. You probably heard at least of some of the games like World of Warcraft, which is by far the most popular it's got in the United States. Well, that's true. Well it's got quite a few fans overseas as well, but request um some others. Right, Well, and we can wait, Loot spent a couple of Yeah, we can spend a couple of minutes talking about sort of where this whole idea came from. Yeah, that's true, that's that's where we are now.

But you know it didn't happen overnight. No, this is this is a It was a process of evolution, and Chris and I can probably talk a little bit about the the source for this, UH this kind of game because he and I have both been exposed to it. UM. Back in the late seventies, UH a war gamer or a few war gamers were trying to find a way to have smaller UM squad based adventures as opposed to giant battle confrontations, and a couple of them UH started to develop this idea of a role playing game. This

was a paper and pencil game. You had you had a piece of paper where you would create a character and you would generate stats with some sort of random number generator, which in those days were dice. Um, different sided dice to to create different kind of stats. Yeah, I once upon a time had quite the dice bag, a huge collection. That is, since I have no idea where it is now, it's probably somewhere in my parents house. Um, but I have not seen it for many, many years.

But at any rate, you would use these dice to create your character, also to kind of determine how random or or events that were based on chance, how what the outcome was, right? Right, So let's say you're encountering, uh, you're playing the most popular one is Dungeons and Dragons. I think that most people have probably heard it, right,

That's the one everyone's probably at least heard in passing. Um. So let's say you're playing your Dungeons and Dragons, your your your third level paladin, your third level paladin encounters a cobald and you want to the cobolds attacking you, and you want to attack it. You know, you would roll a die to determine, based upon your paladin's abilities,

whether or not your strike makes contact. Yeah, it's not like you have to imagine here if you've never played one of these pencil and paper games that it's not if you've played World of Warcraft, it all sort of happens in real time. The computer is generating those numbers as you're playing the game, and it's you know, you attack and you can only swing your sword so fast. Um. But with these pencil and paper games, there was somebody

who would run the game. It would tell you what's going on, and you'd have to ask, you know, well, what does my character see? Like, Well, this is all of a sudden, this thing jumps out at you and you don't know what it is. It's like, what does it look like? And you have to ask because you're playing a role you don't know, you know, it's not

in front of you. You have to guess. And they have to say, well, there's a thirty percent chance that you're going to completely miss roll the die and it says, well, sorry, you missed, and now you're getting ready to die. It was really really a kind of interactive storytelling. Sure, and some people got more into it than others. Some people would really take the role playing part of the game very seriously. They would they would be in character as

they're playing. Yeah, we even have an article called how live action role play, which is about people who dress up in the costumes and actual to go out and and you know, interact with one another in person and pretend to be those characters, right and so um, for them, the role is the most important part. Other people, it's the game part. You know, they're really interested in their

stats and uh, you know, collecting the weapons exactly. They and the same sort of uh, some sort of behaviors have kind of spilled into the m M O RPG world.

But before we get into that, we can go to the next step, which really was the computer role playing game, which was again text, right, the original ones were text and then and then you would get some primitive graphics like I played the Wizardry series and the Wizardry one, two, and three, infect um, and those were those had some graphics, although they were very primitive graphics, and things like Bard's Tail and the Ultimate series and uh, but in general,

you still weren't playing these online with other people. You were basically they were just telling you what you were doing and you say, okay, I go left. Right. There was no real role playing like that. I mean, you had you had a character you controlled, but you didn't really they told you your role, yeah, you and you didn't really you know, you couldn't, especially the early ones, you couldn't really talk to anyone. You couldn't establish a personality.

You were just kind of, you know, taking through stuff right. The later ones ultimate things like that, there was a little bit more where you you know, depending on how you talk to people during conversations that could change the outcome of the game. So that kind of started getting a little bit of a role playing thing in there, but still it was it was a one person, one

computer experience, so there wasn't any real social interaction. You're just kind of it's this artificial social interaction with these these nonplayer characters that are all controlled by the computer. So that moves us on to when the Internet started really making it big. One of the first things that college students started figuring out how to do was making games that they could play with other people over the Internet. And there were three major kinds of these games when

they first started hitting the internet. Um, they were all kind of related. Uh. There were MUDs, which stands for multi User Dungeon. There were Moves, which was a mud object oriented game, so the objects could have their own um um abilities and traits and objects or anything in the game. Really they could not just necessarily like a sword or a pot, but it could be a person, that could be a table, it could be you know, pretty much anything. And then you had the Mush, which

was a multi user shared hallucination. A little tripy there, but these these were text based games where you could actually interact with other people all at the same time. So you'd be in this this world um reading about it and performing actions and um. There was a bit of a role playing aspect to it, although again a lot of people were really focusing more on the game than on the role and in my experience, a lot

of them turned into chat rooms. You'd go into a section of the castle or whatever, and then people would jump out of character and just start talking about whatever. It was very it was very much like uh like using some of the I r C type chatting, except that people were you were theoretically in a castle somewhere and you know, and some people just chose it. They'd look at it as the challenge to see who could get the highest level the fastest. You know. Again, it's

not a lot of role playing there. But then UM as time went on, there were some game developers who were really determined on making bringing this to the next level, which is really adding graphics to it and having a um at least a two D, if not three D kind of experience. UM so that it made it more immersive, and it wasn't you know, you weren't just reading text because a lot of people just skip over the text anyway.

You might have spent twenty minutes writing the perfect room description, but everyone else just wants to see what's the monster that's in there and where's the nearest exit. Um. So that's when two games in particular really started taking the lead on that. One of them was Ultimate Online, which was a project that that evolved out of the Ultimate Game series developed by Richard Garriott Richard lord Ish Garriott UM.

And the other was ever Quest, and for the longest time that was the that was the Those were the two biggies. Ever Quest and Ultimate Online really battled it out to be the leader, and ultimon Line I think had the early edge, but ever Quest quickly overtook them.

Um ultimon On line suffered some problems with griefers, which are players who specifically make it their purpose in life to ruin the good time of everybody else, right right, And these, uh, these games are what I think of, at least in my from what I've read or what I think I was the beginning of the M M O RPG economy because people started and and this may sound weird to you if you've never played one of these games, but people would start selling virtual items for

real cash. Um. There was an article in Wired magazine a few years ago about somebody who was a player on Ultima who had a horde of weapons and things that he was selling for American dollars um, so you could he Basically, they would play the game. And there are people if you look on some of the search engines,

you can find a way to play for money. And I think what they're doing, I didn't, you know, it's in a hurry, but I think what they're doing is they pay you to go on, create a character, play through, get some weapons, and then also they will give you cash for those weapons so that they can turn around and give uh, you know, get five for a plus two sort of cleaving vegetables. Right. There's also there are also people who will play your character for you so

that you advanced. There will be an experienced grinders, right, just so that you have a stronger character faster, and you don't have to go through the drudgery of leveling up, which really kind of defeats the whole purpose of a game when you think about it. I mean, they're looking for the reward, and yeah, there, it depends on what you're trying to get out of virtual reward. It's not a real reward. The whole point of the game is to enjoy it while you're playing it, and the only

enjoyment you get is having the strongest character. How long does that last? That's that's true. That's true, And and there are other examples. A Second Life had a crash of its it's bank system a few months ago. Of course, Second Life isn't really a role playing game, well it kind of, I guess in a way, it's more I think of it more of as a virtual environment. But it does definitely have some m m O RPG elements to it, and and do create an avatar. And I

have I have a controversial thing. I want to uh to mention it. I don't know. I don't want to take you off the track because you had some things you wanted to talk about. But um here here's what I think we should rename mm O RPGs. I think we should just call them games because pretty much everything

now has some kind of online component to it. You can get a console game like Halo or you know some of the even some of the sports games and things, and you can play with other people and essentially you are playing maybe you're playing you know, Madden Football with somebody else online while you're playing you know, the Kansas City Chiefs. It's a it's a role and to some degree it is a role playing game. Yeah, you can

think of it as a spectrum. I think. I mean because when I think of role playing games, I really do think that you're you're taking on a character. And ideally, if it's a true role playing game, you're you're in character, you're playing as that character. You're not you're not you wouldn't be Chris who happens to be playing the Dark Elf Mohawk like like Mr t Um. I don't know

if you've seen that commercial. It's awesome, but it's uh yeah, so you you would want to you would want to be kind of part of this world, right, You're not, You're not just someone who's controlling a little guy. It's not like a remote control car. Ideally, ideally you are an inhabitant of this world. Um and I think, but even in games that are designed for that, you don't

really find that the majority of players treated that way. Um. There there's always a core of players who really are serious about it, and they have a good time and they have fun with each other. But there are a lot more people, I think, who just go on there just to you know, kill a couple of hours, so they're not really into the hole. Let me take on

this role and play this character. I think you have to be if you're one of the serious, more serious minded gamers, you have to be a little tolerant of the people who are just there to kill a couple of hours, right, And unfortunately the people are just there to kill a couple of hours aren't always tolerant of the core players because I mean, we think about it, it it does seem a little strange to run into someone who's something you know, it's a real person on the

other end of this character, but they're still talking to you. Kind of funny that there there's a disconnect there that's hard to get past. But there are tons of these games out there right now, yea. And they're not all you know, shoot them ups. There are things like uh, you know, Puzzle Pirates, which is one of my favorite hope, Puzzle Pirates in which you solve puzzles to do your h to do your duties on the ship with your your mates, but you everyone talks like a pirate and

they basically there is a chat element of it. It's a casual gaming thing. Um. They are other things like Club Penguin for kids or Hello Kitty online. You can tell I have a daughter in kindergarten because actually, oh stop, I just like um and and my my personal favorite that I'm really interested to see come out, which is supposed to be here in two thousand nine Lego Universe, in which you can play a Lego minifig, which is just really cool. And but they're I mean, you're right,

it's a there's a spectrum. There's everything from you know, going online to play Capture the Flag and Unreal to you know, where you're actually one of the soldiers go running around or you know, a little mini fig. Yeah, and you've got I would say that fantasy probably dominates the genre, and we've got things like the Ultuan Line EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, which came out not that long ago. Um uh, the role. Let's see, there's

a Warhammer online which is shipping right now. I think it's Brandon according this podcast. Um yeah, a Lord of the Rings online. So there are all these games that that kind of stem off of existing licenses as well. I'll tell you one that I almost joined, but then I waited to kind of see how it would go.

And then I'm glad I waited because it's like I would have been disappointed was Star Wars Galaxies, because you know, I'm a big original trilogy Star Wars I'm gonna say that again, Original trilogy Star Wars band and uh and and just the thought of being able to play, and immediately I was like, I want to be I want to be on the Empire. I want to be in the Empire and I want to hunt down those rebel scum and um, which kind of gives you incited into

my personality. But uh, but it didn't pan out so well. Apparently there are a lot of problems with it. So I'm glad I kind of took my time. But there are tons of them out there and pretty much they'll you know, just like you can find websites all cater to just about anything, you can probably find a game that caters to just about any kind of genre. But

be prepared if you're interested in in starting these. Not all of them have a giant financial commitment where you have to pay dollars to buy the game and then loaded in. Uh. Some of them are are free, yeah, and they'll give you an opportunity to try the game or or you can play all that you want for free. It's up you can't access certain features, which is how they lure you in to pay your ten dollars a

month to get access. Well, you know, you can't have the ability to change your character's clothes, but if you paid the ten dollars a month, you could. Or you won't be able to use this particular really cool sword exactly.

But if you pay this the subscription fee and become a premium member, you totally could and uh if you if you do start doing that, you may find out why the people who played EverQuest used to call it Evercrack because, as a friend of mine found out as he came in bleary eyed to work one day, They can be extremely addictive, and all of a sudden, it's four thirty in the morning, you find you've been playing all night, and then you end up doing that every night,

your job performance mighty suffer. Well. Uh, you know, so be be warned if you get into this there could be some financial commitment to it and uh maybe a little lost time. Right. Yeah, if you have an addictive personality, you might want to take it easy on these exactly. But they can be a lot of fun. Yeah, I thought i'd mentioned one other kind of tangential. It's kind of interesting here. Um I was going to talk a

little bit about the Avatar Machine. This is just just a cool little project that um I engineering and art student named Mark Owens created and he's over in the United Kingdom, and the Avatar Machine. The purpose of it was to see how because Owens is very interested in the way that people and objects interact and whether or not we imprint an emotional kind of UH status to certain objects like UH and he's done lots of experiments

with this very kind of interesting philosophical experiments. One of them is the Avatar Machine, and the idea behind it was that he made an observation that people within these worlds often have show a lack of empathy towards others. Um, they're not real, right. You know you're you're interacting with a computer generated character. You know you've you're removed from

the actual person who is controlling that other character. So it's harder to think of things like, oh, I could be hurting this person's feelings or I could you know, how would how would I feel if this person were

doing that what I'm doing to them to me? Um. So he created this thing called the Avatar Machine, and what it is is it's a helmet that has a monitor in it um and a harness that that that suspends a camera a few feet above and behind the person who's wearing the costume and behind their head, so the cameras focused down on the person wearing the gig.

So you're like wearing this thing, and from your view when you look in the monitor, you see yourself from a third person perspective, just like you would in a lot of them. Many of the M M O RPGs had that same thing, and he even designed it so it had a kind of world of warcraft look to it. Decided that as one of his inspirations, and so he said that you know, at first when people start wearing it, they're a little disoriented, and then they they start to

move around once they gain a little confidence. You know, It's it's weird to look at your alf from the third person perspective and then still try and move in a space because you know, you're not seeing the ground immediately in front of you as you would normally. It's pretty literally an out of body experience, it really is. It's a it's a computerized out of experience. And um.

He said that after a few minutes, people would start swinging their arms and stomping around as if they were this giant, you know, character, and even intimidating other people. And they were behaving the way that people who control a third person perspective character behave online. So maybe there's this thing that if you're not within your own skin, you just don't have that kind of ability to feel

empathy for other people, or at least it's reduced. I mean, you're no one like went on a spree and started, you know, picked up a branch and start whacking people over the head. I mean, nothing in that extreme, but you know, there was definitely a change in behavior. It helps to be in work. Yeah, So, if you'd like to read more, you can check out how m m O RPGs work and that's live right now on how stuff works dot com. Farewell, good gentles, we'll talk to

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