What Would Matt Do

If you believe anything the Washington Post or our government tells you, this should make you very afraid:

Intelligence officials who have examined these systems [MMOs] say they’re convinced that the qualities that many computer users find so attractive about virtual worlds — including anonymity, global access and the expanded ability to make financial transfers outside normal channels — have turned them into seedbeds for transnational threats.

Yep, MMOs are the next frontier for terrorist and crazies looking to take over the world (Dear terrorists and crazies, Pinky and The Brain called and they want their shtick back). Except not. If you read the entire article, you’ll find what bothers the government really is that they can’t see exactly what everyone is doing at all times. So yeah, said bad people could be plotting bad things…but really, the big problem is that that big brother can’t see everything. One Jack Dempsey from a nonpartisan group that monitors privacy issues puts it nicely:

“They want to control this technology and make it even easier to tap than it already is,” Dempsey said. “When the government is finished, every new technology becomes a more powerful surveillance tool than the technology before it.”

This is the real fear they are actually expressing:

Intelligence officials said, however, that the spread of virtual worlds has created additional challenges because commercial services do not keep records of communication among avatars. Because of the nature of the systems, the companies also have almost no way of monitoring the creation and use of virtual buildings and training centers, some of them protected by nearly unbreakable passwords.

Now people are creating virtual training centers with “nearly unbreakable passwords”. God, that’s scary shit! What shall we do? Shut all the MMOs down? Make virtual worlds illegal? Make every single line of text uttered in them required by law to be easily monitored by big brother? Hmmm…well, what’s happened so far, to get our the government so worried?

One intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he had no evidence of activity by terrorist cells or widespread organized crime in virtual worlds. There have been numerous instances of fraud, harassment and other virtual crimes. Some computer users have used their avatars to destroy virtual buildings.

Wait a second… We have zero evidence of any terrorist cells, crazies or anyone else doing anything beyond fraud and harassment? Oh wait, virtual buildings were destroyed! Everyone flee!

You know what this is? Fear mongering. This is government officials seeing boogie men in the dark, because they can’t see in. This is bullshit passed off as real worries. And it’s not even a real worry since everything an MMO does can be tracked by specifically tracking what specific people do (at the ISP level, etc) instead of wanting the entire MMO industry to have government hooks so they can monitor everything happening in them. They shouldn’t have those rights on our phones, why should they have it on MMOs?

This is government trying to get people worried so they can get access to yet one more thing they don’t really need to have access to. It’s sad, pathetic and funny all at the same. You know, funny if laws don’t happen to give big brother access. Then it’s just sad.

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What Would Matt Do: Maybe do as Lum suggests, not take Snow Crash quite so seriously.

Yeah, I know, that sounds like it’s against everything I stand for. But it’s not really, not when it works out to our advantage. Take for instance, one Mr. Thompson who didn’t, until recently, learn the valuable lesson, that you are not anonymous on the internet.

David B. Thompson, 30, recently wrote on an Internet message board that one of the more pleasurable parts of his job is when he gets to use his Taser, thus exposing people to the agonizing sensation of 50,000 volts of electricity pulsing through their bodies.

“Seeing someone get TASER’d is second only to being the guy pulling the trigger,” Thompson wrote on an Internet message board Aug. 25. “That is money. Puts a smile on your face.”

See, so while he is a degenerate, loser, scum of a person, he’s also stupid enough to post on the CoH message boards bragging about just how much scum he his. That’s pure goodness. Because he’s now going to get prosecuted for it.

Asked by the Portland Tribune to review the posts and comment, Sheriff Bernie Giusto launched an internal investigation of Thompson that will examine, among other things, whether he lied while accusing an inmate of assaulting him as a way to justify having injured the inmate.

And people say games aren’t good for you. The City of Heroes forums + arrogant stupidity is going to get this man fired and hopefully jail time. That’s an argument for gaming if there ever was one; stupid people will go to jail.

What Would Matt Do: Put this sadistic asshole away with the people he tortured. Eh, maybe. I don’t know if I’m that mean…

Yeah, those chaps in those crazy raid guilds are organized, no question. But if you’re online for hours on hours and not organized, that doesn’t automatically make you a casual player. Heck, you might even a roleplayer *shudder*. Why do I bring this up?

Because one Azeroth Interrupted’s Robin Torres has weighed in on casual vs. hardcore players:

There is a big rivalry between the casual player and the raider. Raiders don’t want casuals in their guilds, raids and often groups because of their lack of experience. And casuals are contemptuous of the time raiders seem to spend in order to get as far as they’ve gone. The two biggest accusations made by casuals toward raiders:

1. You are in the minority
2. You don’t have a life

I don’t know if there is a big rivalry between hardcore and casual players…I don’t read WoW forums (because I value my sanity more than that). But assuming there is, and I wouldn’t be surprised…and what does that have to do with this article? Nothing.

See, Robin kinda misses the point. The players she describes in her article are all hardcore players… The players she describes as casual players, are hardcore lite at best. Why? Because they are raiding. If you’re raiding in WoW, or pretty much any MMO, you are in the minority AND you aren’t a casual player.

Now I have nothing wrong with Mrs. Torres wanting to stick up for the hardcore. Sure, they are a much maligned group and full of roses and sweet things. And they often don’t have the time to defend themselves, what with all of the time they spend playing the game… but this article misdefines casual and hardcore players and that bothers me.

I don’t think she does it on purpose. I think it’s just hard to see what a casual player is like when you’re not one yourself. Anyone who plays a game for 20 hours per week can’t really be described as casual. Sure, you may not be as organized as the big time raid guys and you probably don’t take it as seriously, but still, you’re spending 80 hours a month, 960 hours a year playing a game. That’s not the definition of a casual player.

None of this is a problem in my mind. Play the game how ever you want and so on. Have a great time. But, don’t throw me in as a 20 hour per week player when I define myself as a casual player. I have a whole mess of other things that cut into my gaming time and they leave me MAYBE 5-10 hours a week to play games. Maybe. And even when I did play WoW, was I spending every moment of that playing WoW? No. It’s just a different mindset and a different life with different time constraints.

But you know how many months I subscribed to and played WoW? Over a year at least. I loved being able to sit down with my wife and play the game for say an hour or two, depending upon the timing and life.

And that’s why I take contention with this statement:

The merits of the first argument aside (we outnumber you so we’re right nyah nyah), I would like to address why Blizzard ignores it. If it is true that only 10% of the players see the endgame content — and that is arguable since we probably still have a year before the expansion which is a lot of time for people to get there — then that is 900,000 people. Everquest at its peak had 550,000 active subscribers and that is the game that made everyone else want to make MMOs to get in on the money. To neglect 900,000 paying customers, no matter what the percentage, is just stupid. And what about all of the people who want to get to the endgame content eventually? Neglecting the high end content makes the game less exciting for everyone. This is why they are spending development time on things like Archimonde as well as more easily accessible content.

Lets just assume that 10% number is right, though I have no way to know that since Blizzard tells us nothing. But, assuming that’s right, lets take a look at it from there… so that’s 900k users that are using the end game content. Ok, lets checkout the last expansion… They released whole new lands for casual players, to go from 1 - 20 or so. New races, new classes (oh wait), and some new things like jewelcrafting. Ok, interesting. I bought the expansion, had a good time resubbing for a few months. But what did those players, the 10%, that have leveled characters beyond 59th and did raids and the like? They got 10 new levels, whole lands, a pile of new raids, flying mounts, etc. And the same stuff casual players got. That doesn’t sound like ignoring the hardcore at all. As a matter of fact, it sounds like they got the lions share to me. Well, how about the recently announced expansion? It’s all hardcore all the time. Adds ten more levels (which seems like a huge mistake to me), adds a class you can unlock after doing some 80th level quest, etc. Nice. For those other players…that make up 10% of the total population.

So, to make a long story short (too late!), this article doesn’t talk about casual players at all and defends players that spend way to much time defending themselves already AND that Blizzard already caters to. Interesting.

What Would Matt Do: To be fair to Robin, this article isn’t that big of a deal to me except defining casual the way she does. Fix that and we’re golden.

I’ll tell you what, it’s not for me. I haven’t ever gone on a raid in WoW and only completed a few instances…and only made it to level 48 before I got too bored to continue. Yeah, that’s all. Which brings me to this interview I saw on qt3:

The MMO Gamer: On the subject of raids, I obviously don’t know the exact numbers, but there are rumors floating around on the internet that only something like under two percent of players in WoW actually make use of the end-game raiding content. How do you respond to the notion that you are catering to a small, vocal minority, while ignoring the large majority of casual players?

Jeffrey Kaplan: I think that’s kind of a misconception that we’re only creating content for a small group of players. First of all, our statistics show that our most popular instance is Karazhan, that’s getting done by more players right now—each day we get statistics that show what our most popular instances are, and each day it comes back Karazhan, so a lot of people are doing that. We’re coming out with Zul’Aman in direct response to the popularity of Karazhan. (snipped)

So, MMO Gamer asks, how many people actually use the end game content you guys spend so many hours creating? It’s been suggested only about 2% of users. And Mr. Kaplan responds with, that’s silly, our numbers show Karazhan is a pretty popular raid.

Mr. Kaplan, that was a pretty lousy side step of the question. And Steve, Mr. MMO Gamer, why didn’t you press the issue?

Here’s what I want to know:

- percentage of players that have leveled a character over 59th.
- percentage of players that have leveled a character to the max level
- percentage of players that have gone on at least one raid.
- percentage of players that have or do actively raid.

As a casual player (and no, I don’t believe most casual players have leveled at least one character to 60), I lean to the idea that the numbers just aren’t there for the majority of the player base. That the majority isn’t leveling all the way up and using the high end only content they are producing. It’s never been true in any other MMO, how could I believe that WoW has somehow crossed the line?

So, if that’s true, why isn’t Blizzard working on more content for those of that aren’t high levels, but would like to play some different stuff? I don’t know either. Can we possibly be that small of a percentage? Can Blizzard actually not know the number I asked for above? Can they really think that a majority, or even half that will unlock the Death Knights they talk about in the No Casual Content™ expansion?

I don’t get it.

What Would Matt Do: I’ll probably not play WoW again and almost definitely won’t be buying the next expansion. It has almost nothing in it for me. And don’t even get me started on their mistake of adding 10 more levels and invalidating everything BC does.

On my long ass ride into work today (woe is me!) I was listening to NPR and heard about an exhibit traveling around the world called Alter Ego. It shows pictures of the real person and their characters in various MMOs along with a description of the person and how they feel about their avatar.

It was very interesting and I’d visit the Exhibit if it comes to you, listen to the interview on NPR linked above or at the very least check out the pictures.

The whole thing got me thinking my characters in MMOs… You know how I pick characters in WoW, for instance? Whatever is cool looking, starts in the lands I like and is a dwarf. :P I love the dwarves. But in CoH? I pick hot females. Why? Because the guys are ugly, retarded looking and I’d rather stare at a fine girls butt in tights than a beefy guys butt in tights. In LOTR? I picked a dwarf, of course. In Everquest? Well, a dwarf sucked since I couldn’t be a Druid, the ultimate everyman class in EQ.

I share all of that to exercise a point. I don’t pick based on creating an alter ego for myself. I’m not looking to create another identity or expand my social skills… I just want to play a game and be good at that game. But that’s apparently not how many people play the game.

So my question becomes, how does this work for other people? Do they create characters like Becky in that NPR interview, to get some respect she doesn’t feel she gets in her ever day life? Do people go into MMOs with the idea of recreating themselves? Playing different personalities?

This leads to the other part of the NPR story.

“A sociologist at MIT, Sherry Turkle, described these environments as laboratories for the construction of identity, says Spaight. “In the virtual world you can be anything you want to be … construct a persona that is wildly different from your real world self.”

I know some jackasses out there like to create weird personalities to troll / fuck with people, but aren’t most of us just looking to play the game?

I know power gamers don’t give a shit about this sort of thing, often picking one class/race over another to get tiny stat gains. So that cuts out a big portion of MMO players. So the rest of us…are our characters saying something about us we aren’t realizing? Like maybe I’ve always wanted to be a dwarf with an ass kicking ax? Maybe I should visit SL and see if I can’t get some therapy. Some sexual therapy. :P

Of course, we all know if you see a girl a in an MMO, it’s a guy. Duh.

What Would Matt Do: I think I’m going to start LOTR up for real here soon. Maybe. Maybe I’ll just wait for Conan/Warhammer.