The relative scarcity of tanks and healers in this new system means that they can often afford to be jerks, and unfortunately many are. Something about the combination of being in demand, being anonymous, and in some cases being good at playing the game tends to bring out the worst in some people. I’ve known tanks and healers to quit a group, leaving the other players waiting around for a replacement, because they didn’t like the gear other players were wearing, or the way they talked in chat, or the method they used to move through the dungeon. Some of the ones that don’t quit feel that it’s okay to insult the other players, tell them how to play their toons, or just be generally rude. This behavior isn’t limited to tanks and healers; DPS classes are very easy to replace, though, and tend not to get away with it as much.

And of course not all tanks and healers act like jerks just because they can. I’d say the majority just quietly do the dungeon, and if they are annoyed, they keep it to themselves. The runs usually end in about 20 minutes anyway. But recently I actually met a nice one, which was rare enough that it caught my attention. This person was helpful without being pushy or rude, and when someone in the party made an error, he or she (the toon was female, but I don’t know about the player) was very forgiving and actually tried to make the person feel better. It got me thinking about behavior in a largely anonymous virtual space, especially where there is a different value placed on different players not because of their personal ability to play the game well, but because of the abilities of the class they are playing (tank, healer, or DPS).

It’s not really possible to find out who a player is, unless they have connected their character name with their RL identity elsewhere on the web (as I have by naming some of my toons here on my blog). A player’s identity within the game is persistent — that is, your character always has the same name in the game, short of paying for a name change, which is not common. But you can’t generally find out who someone really is. With the new dungeon system, it’s possible to be in a group with players that you will never encounter again, because the new system pulls people together from different servers, and you can only communicate with people on your own server (outside of random groups like these). You’d have to set up a new character on that player’s server in order to talk to them, and you may never get grouped randomly with that same person again. So the level of anonymity is really high.

The goals of the people in these random dungeon groups are related to moving as quickly as possible through the dungeon and moving on. You get rewards for completing them, and there are penalties for ditching a group in the middle, so there is an incentive to stay even if there are unpleasant people in the party. Most of the groups operate in near or total silence, without text chat (voice chat isn’t really a viable option and no one ever uses it in random groups). Yet there are still a few people who feel compelled to be insulting. It’s interesting to me that in the midst of what must be a cooperative activity — even the best tank or healer isn’t going to be able to solo these instances — some people are still willing to be rude. I’m curious about the characteristics these folks have in common; are they all young, and just don’t know any better? Are they all very good players, or do they all perceive themselves to be good? Is it a personality trait, and they’d be just as annoying if they weren’t anonymous, and were labeled with RL names or were in a face-to-face group? Mostly one gender or the other? Just like having a captive audience?

And in such a system, what personal characteristics make someone behave as well as the tank I met? There’s no special reward for being helpful. It’s easier to just keep quiet. What makes someone go out of their way to be nice to someone they may never run into again? Lucky for me, this tank plays on my server, and is now added to my friends list. But that’s not a “reward” from his or her point of view (especially if s/he doesn’t feel the same about grouping with me!). What makes people be nice in an anonymous environment?

cute little lava-breather

aww, he wants a lava biscuit!

Narila, the pup, and my fighting pet, Warborn

The image here shows the whole interface. Also, you don’t actually have to pay it any attention whatsoever — it plays itself. All the other stuff is the same, though: you get some gear; you head out to kill some stuff; you pick up the random bits that drop from the stuff you kill; you head back to town to learn more spells, sell your random stuff, and get better gear; and you head out again to kill more stuff. There are quests that get checked off and levels to progress through. It’s free to download and install, and the monthly subscription is priced quite reasonably at $0.00.

Oddly enough, I’m still playing World of Warcraft. The difference is that now Progress Quest is running in the background!

Fair warning: the rest of this post contains spoilers about the movie, so go watch it first if you prefer. (Now would be a good time. Go on, I'll wait.) It's worth the time it takes to download. Use headphones if you share an office.

There are some remarkable qualities of this piece that you might not notice if you don't play MMOs. The movie was made by capturing what was going on on the screen while playing the game, so everything you see is happening within the constraints of the game world.

The significance of the dress. Each piece of armor in the game has a certain "look" that players can't change. Mages (the main character in the movie is a mage) can only wear cloth armor. At high levels, if you want a piece of cloth armor that gives good protection and also, say, gives you a bonus when you use fire spells, you pick the Robe of Flaming Might or something (I made that one up). It looks a particular way and that's that. Most high-level cloth armor looks like robes, so you're pretty much stuck wearing one. The point is underscored in the movie by letting the amount of damage this guy is doing show (i.e., the yellow numbers that appear over the heads of the characters he hits) — 1300+ per hit is a healthy amount of damage, so this is a pretty powerful character. The other on-screen information is turned off, so the numbers stand out more to someone who is used to playing the game.

The music-video quality. All animations are pre-scripted in-game, and players can't change them. The dancing gnomes, for instance, are animated by typing a dance command, at which point the gnome starts dancing. All gnomes dance alike and you can't change that. To get the synchronized dancing, those three players all started the command at the same time, after carefully lining up their characters in the right spots. The way the characters seem to sing happens because of another command that animates the mouth, so they had to throw that one in at the right time, too. Some care went into this, in terms of timing and getting the best command to make the gestures look appropriate for the song. Oh yeah, and the guy's actually singing, and he edited the footage and the soundtrack to make a coherent video. I'm impressed.

The camera angles. You can zoom in and out, set the position of the camera, and so forth, but it requires some preplanning and mousework. The angles are used in the video to great effect, framing the tight shots and panning past the character while he's walking or riding.

Like all fan art, the movies you might find will vary widely in artistic merit and taste. My point is that the game world can make people want to be creative, to bring some part of it out of the game and into the rest of their world. We make art about stuff that inspires us, among other things. I think that's pretty cool.

And I’m here to tell you, they’ve nerfed the quests. There’s one quest in Wetlands where you have to recover a bag that a lady dropped when she was chased by some oozes (hey, if you are without weird hobbies, you may cast stones. Otherwise, play it before you point and laugh.). The first time I did this quest, it took HOURS. My friend Caradoc and I must have killed 70 or 80 oozes before the stupid bag dropped. When I did it again with my second character, it took… hours. Again. This is a grinding quest, and no question.

So how do you explain what happened last night? I was helping some lowbie friends in Wetlands, and they needed the ooze bag. Oh boy, I thought. Here we go. At least Doc was with us, in all his level 60 glory (I was playing a 32 alt), so the level 26 oozes would be no problem. We’d still have to get through dozens of them, but they’d go down fast.

Alas, I failed to factor in (a) the nerfing of quests and (b) the presence in our party of the Luckiest Man Alice. In terms of (a), all old-timers are aware that the gamers you get nowadays just don’t have the grit that we had in our day. All the quests are easier. The flight paths are more plentiful. None of this “fight your way through a bunch of mobs only to find a bugged NPC who won’t talk to you” questing anymore. In our day, back in early 2005, questing built character. Now, not so much. Anyway, Blizz has made the drop rate of the bag higher. Now you only have to kill a couple dozen oozes before it drops.

Unless, of course, you are under the influence of (b) the Luckiest Man Alice. (This is his nickname, not his character name. It’s a typo that stuck.) The guy who always finds a parking spot in San Francisco right outside the restaurant he wants to go to. Always. The guy who gets the ooze-covered quest drop after three, count ‘em, three oozes. Ventrilo echoed with my and Caradoc’s outraged protests.

What happened to the good old days? No grit, I tell you. And the next time I’m grinding a quest with a lowbie alt, I want the Luckiest Man Alice in my group, dangit.

Edited to make up for WordPress’s inability to print 19 words in a row that are separated by hyphens.

My toon, Ninmah, hit level six last night. Woo hoo! She’s well on her way to raising that 10g guild fee, too — I think she’s got more than two silver pieces! Oh yeah! So if you haven’t got your toon started yet, get in there and level up!

P.S. This slayed me. (Warning: Sluggy Freelance is addictive)

Okay, first we’ll have to get to sixty, but that’s doable. Look for Ninmah on Runetotem (Alliance side) where I will be slowly building up the 10g guild startup fee. My main is on Khadgar, which is one of the closed realms, but I’m willing to start from scratch for a good cause.

Post your name here and I’ll keep an eye out for you. We can’t start the guild until we have ten, and so far we have two (I’m holding you to your word, Bryan, dialup or no). Roll call! Who’s in?