The Proteus Paradox

by Nick Yee

  On an abstract level, death penalties are all variants of time penalties (with the exception of the case of complete erasure, or perma-death); dying means spending extra time to catch up to where you were, but nothing is lost permanently. Of course, losing accrued experience is subjectively more painful than a temporarily slower experience gain. One of the most striking trends in online games over the past decade is the softening of the death penalty. For example, in early EverQuest, you had to run back to your corpse naked. All your equipment stayed with your corpse. And there was a corpse timer. If you couldn’t retrieve your corpse in time, your equipment decayed and disappeared. Because players are more likely to die in dangerous places, retrieving a corpse while naked is doubly dangerous and can result in dying again. Death in the early online games was a costly mishap.

  You could play for six hours and lose all the progress by dying twice. You could log in and log off with less than you came on with. [World of Warcraft, female, 25, describing experience in EverQuest]

  In contrast, dying in most contemporary online games is almost a lighthearted affair.

  I have spent significant time in Dark Age of Camelot, EverQuest II, and Lord of The Rings Online since playing EverQuest classic. . . . In subsequent games, I have found it absolutely does not matter if I die. Really, who cares about some repair bills and some dread, or decreased experience gain for a short time? Running naked after your corpse in a dungeon? Potentially losing all your equipment if your corpse decayed or losing a level? That was a penalty. [Lord of the Rings Online, male, 31]

  The severe death penalties in earlier online games created a pervasive sense of risk and danger in the world. The EverQuest world of Norrath was simply not a safe place to be running around in. Staying alive was a constant concern. In comparison, the contemporary World of Warcraft world of Azeroth is like a rubber-padded playground.

  I remember working for two weeks in the original EverQuest to get to level 5. I finally got brave and wandered a few hundred yards away from the guards in Kelethin and promptly got lost in the fog. I was soon attacked by several level 8 mobs and died. I’ve never experienced that level of fear and concern as I searched frantically for my corpse. I currently play World of Warcraft and enjoy it for the most part. However, there is no need to ask for help as the game does 90% of the work for you. In some ways I like that, but at times I really wish someone could come up with a way to recapture the original spark that kept me playing EverQuest for close to five years. [World of Warcraft, male, 39, describing earlier experience in EverQuest]

  It is this shared understanding of the pervasive specter of death that contributed to a higher level of willingness of players to help each other. Norrath was fundamentally a world in which you could not survive alone. Players helped each other because they knew that one day they would be the ones asking for help; building a social support network was key to one’s survival in EverQuest.

  It was definitely more important to work together when there were death penalties. Finding someone who could rez [resurrect] or summon your corpse, or someone to help you retrieve it was key. People helped others because they knew they themselves would probably need similar help later. [World of Warcraft, female, 21, describing experience in EverQuest]

  Guilds, even enemy guilds, would help each other recover from bad wipes because they knew that there were occasions when they would need help. This helped to mitigate annoying behavior since you knew you may need to work together at times. [Vanguard, male, 42, describing experience in EverQuest]

  In an earlier survey of EverQuest players I ran in 2000, I asked players to describe their most memorable experience from the game. Many players’ stories revolved around altruism. The following player narrative exemplifies these stories.

  My primary character is a Cleric, so on one occasion my guild was on a raid in a dungeon area and I came across one player’s corpse. This was unusual because of where we were and how deep we were in the dungeon. I sent this person a “tell” to see if she needed a res. She replied and was very excited that I was there to res her. After she gathered her equipment she tried to give me some Platinum pieces, which I refused since I didn’t go out of my way to help her . . . I was just there. A month later, my guild was performing another raid and we were wiped out by some unexpected baddies. . . . The person I resurrected happened to be in a group near the beginning of the dungeon where we were wiped out, and before I knew it, most of her guild was there to help clear the dungeon and get our corpses back. I mean about 30 other players went out of their way to come and help my friends out just because I helped one of their friends a month before. I don’t know many people who would do that in real life. . . . All I can say is . . . Thank you Ostara. [EverQuest, male, 32]

  Death was certainly painful in EverQuest, but oddly, it was precisely death that brought people together. The shared crises and aftermath created salient memories for everyone involved. Death was the bright red thread that wove itself through the social fabric of EverQuest.

  As much as I hated corpse runs back in old EQ, having to run naked from Fironia Vie to Chardok with a coffin to have my corpse summoned after a raid wipe with my guild was a bonding experience. [World of Warcraft, male, 20, describing experience in EverQuest]

  While I’m glad the severe death penalty has been removed from Ever-Quest, I think it helped my character bond with her friends. I’m still playing with the same folks I met 8 years ago, and we often talk about the dreaded CRs (corpse retrievals) we went through, especially one in Chardok that lasted hours. [EverQuest, female, 61]

  Saying you will help someone and actually doing it are two different things. EverQuest allowed players to prove themselves trustworthy through their actions. The willingness to spend an hour to help a friend to retrieve a corpse isn’t something that can be faked.

  To succeed in EverQuest you need to form relationships with people you can trust. The game does a wonderful job of forcing people in this situation. RL [real life] rarely offers this opportunity as technological advances mean we have little reliance on others. [EverQuest, male, 29]

  In these early online games, as much as everyone was trying to avoid dying, death was actually a bonding experience. Death created debts and then allowed those debts to be repaid over time. Death created deep bonds based on mutual trust.

  Weaving the Social Fabric

  In older online games like EverQuest, combat occurred at a glacial pace; monsters took minutes to kill and players had time to chat during combat. Contemporary online game designers have streamlined pacing to minimize any downtime. The action is brisk and constant. But downtime performed a valuable social function in the older games. It gave players a chance to talk to each other. In streamlined games, chatting is instead viewed as slowing down the combat (and thus experience gain). In EverQuest, if you didn’t chat during the downtime, there was nothing else to do.

  Relationships always seemed more based on the speed of the game and the speed of progress than anything else—EverQuest was so slow and had so much downtime that you had plenty of time to chat, help people in fights, buff passersby and answer questions. In World of Warcraft no one stops to look [because] by the time they have stopped to see if someone needs helps it’s probably too late. [World of Warcraft, male, 38]

  I think the total lack of downtime where you rest and relax together before fighting the next challenge lowers your chances of having a good interaction with people. Without those connections, those hooks most people will never ask questions about each other or make commonality discoveries. [EverQuest, male, 35]

  As the player in the first narrative notes, the glacial pace of combat in EverQuest also made it more likely that a random passerby could jump in and provide assistance. In games like World of Warcraft, there is much less time to react, to ask for help, and to provide help.

  Another game mechanism that has changed a great deal over time is character independence. In the original EverQuest, many crucial or useful abilities were limited
to one or two character classes. Binding is one of these abilities. When a character dies in EverQuest, it is teleported back to its bind location. To change your bind location, you must ask a magic user to cast the binding spell on you. Given the hassles of corpse runs, players would rebind themselves frequently as they adventured. Thus, nonmagic users often shouted out for binding when they reached a new zone. The same is true of other spells that dramatically increased traveling time or mana recovery—the shaman’s Spirit of Wolf spell and the enchanter’s Clarity spell, respectively. And only the wizard class had access to group teleportation spells. In EverQuest, asking other players for these spells was the only way to get many things done in a timely manner.

  Compare this with more recent online games, which tend to emphasize character independence. In World of Warcraft, players can bind themselves to any tavern without any help. And there are flight paths and mounts that anyone can use to decrease traveling time. There are also multiple ways of teleporting group members. Dependence on other players in EverQuest encouraged social interaction in two important ways. It provided many opportunities for approaching and talking to someone, often a stranger. And one subtle point bears emphasizing: the more people you have the opportunity to interact with, the more likely your social network will grow. You can’t make friends if you never talk to anyone.

  In the old days of EverQuest, people helped people because they had no other way to get help. [World of Warcraft, male, 32]

  This created a cultural norm of asking for and providing help to strangers. For example, because Spirit of Wolf was such a valuable traveling aid, shamans were used to being asked to cast it. And enchanters were used to being asked to cast Clarity.

  The opposite is true in most contemporary online games. The shift to high levels of character independence—to attract and retain more casual players—means that it is possible to solo the game to the maximum level. While early online games made it mandatory to group up, this mandate has shifted over time to encouragement and, recently, simply to an option. Certainly, players must form dedicated guilds to complete the high-level raids in World of Warcraft, but a great deal of the game content can be completed alone or with ad hoc groups.

  The big solo experience that today’s MMOs focus at make it easier to log in just for a little while and achieve something, but in my experience it takes away a lot of immersion and bonding to other players/guild/game. [EverQuest II, female, 28]

  In general, I think EverQuest required more dependence and community. And heck, you HAD to group to get much of anything done. There was virtually no level-appropriate solo content. Now, a person can actually level all the way to max level in both EverQuest II (although it was not always true of this game) and certainly in Lord of the Rings Online without ever grouping. [Lord of the Rings Online, female, 44]

  In a world where you never have to ask other players for help and can do everything alone, the social fabric suffers. Asking for help becomes a sign of weakness and incompetence. Personal reputations no longer matter.

  When I started playing World of Warcraft I was amazed with the total lack of respect that people have for each other. It didn’t take me long to realize because the game is easy, you don’t need to respect anybody or make friends. You can solo to maximum level. You can ninja-loot epics and then just switch servers or even change your name now. In EverQuest you lived by your reputation. I remember an incident where I somehow got under somebody’s skin in a group and then I couldn’t get a grinding group in Dreadlands for like 3 days. [Vanguard, male, 25]

  I keep contacts with former EverQuest companions to this day as we went through thick and thin together. In the new games, notably World of Warcraft or EverQuest 2, you can hardly agree with people on which server we will play—because who cares; there is no need for real cooperation. [Vanguard, male, 39]

  In Adam Guettal’s musical The Light in the Piazza, there is a wonderful moment in the beginning of the second act when the matriarch of a lively Italian family unexpectedly breaks the fourth wall. The orchestration stops abruptly; she turns to the audience and says, “I don’t speak English, but I have to tell you what’s going on.”

  Aiutami means “help me” in Italian

  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  Risk is everything

  Without risk, there is no drama

  Without drama,there is no “aiutami”

  Without asking for help

  No love! No love!

  The pervasive danger in the world of EverQuest made asking for help a necessity. Finding players you could trust was a fundamental strategy for survival. And from these unending trials and tribulations, lasting relationships were forged.

  In chapter 9, when I describe the historical development of the study of personality traits, I briefly mentioned that research on traits was abandoned in the 1970s and early 1980s. Psychologist Walter Mischel sparked this paradigm shift. Using published research on trait psychology, he pointed out that traits could not predict how a person would behave in a specific situation. Instead, Mischel argued, situations largely shape human behavior and the notion of static personality traits is a myth. Thus, Bob is talkative and gregarious at a party but quiet in the library. And Rachel is nervous when interviewing for a job but calm when watching TV at home. Differences among individuals are thus largely overshadowed by differences across situations. In the decades following Mischel’s critique and since trait theory has come back into fashion, researchers like Allan Buss have called for a move toward an interactionist approach—blending trait theory with understanding contextual demands—but as a field, personality psychology has tended to focus on standardizing trait measures.2

  Mischel’s perspective provides a fascinating way of interpreting the social fabric of EverQuest. We’re used to thinking of altruism as a personality trait, but altruism can also be a system trait. A community can be designed with rules and mechanisms that engineer altruistic behavior, as seen with the relatively larger percentage of wallet returns in Japan and with the cultural norms that emerged in EverQuest. In the world of EverQuest, altruism was something you needed to exhibit in order to survive in the game. The rules in a virtual world create an invisible scaffold that favors the creation of certain social norms, tacitly dictating how and when players interact. These invisible scaffolds are the social architectures of virtual worlds; they are the ground rules that govern the DNA of the community that emerges.

  Information Access

  Game developers usually design and control social architectures, but not always. This is because a great deal of the game actually exists outside the virtual world itself. The complexity of rules and abundance of information in online games mean that players frequently encounter quests, items, and game mechanics that they are unfamiliar with. Online gamers spend on average 3.5 hours each week looking for game-related information, another 3.5 hours each week reading or posting on forums. And players who belong to guilds spend another 2.7 hours each week on their guild’s website forums or managing guild-related tasks (such as scheduling). Thus, the average online gamer spends about 22 hours in the game each week and an additional 10.8 hours in the meta-game.3

  In early online games, before the days of game wikis, a great deal of forum activity was devoted to information sharing, but searching for specific information was cumbersome. Different people used different terminology and phrasings, and a player, even after finding the correct thread, would have to scan and read all the posts to find the one with the definitive answer.

  Now, the data-sharing initiatives in games like World of Warcraft make it possible for gamers to get their hands directly on the information that matters to them. The same data sources that allowed my PARC colleagues and me to study World of Warcraft also allowed intrepid developers to create valuable information databases. One of the best-known examples of these efforts was the database Thottbot. There were two parts to Thottbot. The first was a minimalist website where players could go to se
arch for World of Warcraft information. The second was an add-on called Cosmos that came with several useful in-game features. But along with Cosmos was a background data logger. Any monster you killed, any item you found, and any quest you were working on were meticulously tracked by the add-on. Players who had installed Cosmos could then periodically upload their data logs to Thottbot.

  The things that Cosmos tracked may not seem particularly useful at first glance, but the accumulated data contained a kind of crowd-sourced wisdom. On the Thottbot website, players could type in the name of a quest and see a map showing where the requisite items were located. If the quest involved killing a monster, a map showed the wandering range of the monster and the percentage likelihood that the monster would drop the needed item. Alternatively, players could search for an item and view a sorted list of all the monsters that dropped it or the quests that provided the item as a reward. And each item, quest, and monster had a comments page, allowing players to discuss tricky strategies or confusing parts of a quest. Players have aggregated information on almost every in-game aspect of World of Warcraft that they can search and sort in a unified and easy-to-use website.

  Game developers have also provided in-game access to information, and this has tended to increase over the years. You can ask computer-controlled guards in World of Warcraft cities for directions. They then provide a red marker on your map. Many games provide the player with a map of a zone automatically once they step foot in that zone. And a mini-map is always present at the top right corner of the user interface showing a top-down view of the surroundings. This is in stark contrast to earlier games such as EverQuest, which did not provide any maps to players.