11 - World of Warcraft, a Religion?

     Just when you thought you've heard it all, MMO gamers are now being called religious zealots.

     During my research, I found this 72-page Master's Thesis entitled Cyberpilgrims by Theo Zijderveld. In his thesis, Zijderveld cites many sources as he tries to draw a correlation between gaming in a virtual world and seeking enlightenment by using the virtual world like Azeroth in a spiritual way to ascend in a sense from our physical bodies.

     Based on the French sociologist, Danil Hervieu-Lger's definition of religion, Zijderveld argues that, though World of Warcraft isn't a religion proper, it actually contains the four key ingredients: community, ethics, culture and emotion. He states that the communal aspect comes from playing with people and making friends within the game. As for the ethics, the rules of the game and presumably the rules of the community constitute that. "Thou shalt not ninja loot" being a rough equivalent of "Thou shalt not steal," I'm guessing. The rich Warcraft lore and mythos provide the culture, and the feeling of belonging that WoW players experience in-game provides the emotional dimension.

"The community dimension is present in World of Warcraft as well as in Second Life. People are using their avatar online meet other avatars of real people. Avilion is clearly a community of people with the same interest in the fantasy world. The social markers are clear; the rules of how to dress and how to behave are very explicit. Avatars who do not fit in this picture are (sometimes actively) excluded by the community or by the moderators." - Theo Zijderveld

     According to Zijderveld, gamers who experience online worlds, like World of Warcraft, are doing so to transcend their physical bodies and realize a new identity in cyberspace. He said that it is a way of acting out a quest for enlightenment and spiritual identity in a supremely secular world. "You have to level up as a way of self-realization," he explained. "It can be very spiritual."

     Though a virtual space like World of Warcraft is not actually real, Zijderveld would say that the very fact of it not being ultimately real makes it even more like a religion. Religion is based in illusions and fictions, but the important part is that even though people may know it's not real, they experience it that way.

"Though virtual realities are in fact not real, they are experienced as real," he writes. Like religion, "they offer a framework that makes sense by offering a narrative and rules of the game... People can experiment and develop their cyber-character, and thus contribute to self-realization. In an enchanted virtual world, they can truly find a spiritual identity."

      After reading his paper I ended up asking myself if playing World of Warcraft does constitute a religion. Overall, Zijderveld actually has a point. I mean technically, World of Warcraft does contain the key ingredients of being a religion. I guess, if you just base it by definition, it can be considered as a religion. So, being called a religious zealot, from playing MMOs, was inevitable.

10 - Capitalism in World of Warcraft

     Like a lot of MMORPG’s, World of Warcraft has its own in-game economy. To make it more interesting to play, Blizzard has made it a free market, which means that the distribution and costs of goods or services are coordinated by the supply and demand. In WoW, there are many different options on obtaining items, like through completing quests, purchasing them from vendors or NPCs, negotiating or trading with other players, having a profession, or by bidding on items at the auction house. Basically, the lower an item’s drop rate is, the higher its demand. So, if a player gets his hands on a rare item, he could sell it at the auction house for a high price or trade it with something of equal value; doing this can make the game more interesting to keep playing since the items have to be earned. If the game would give away the items, it would make it seem less challenging for the players.

     I found this article entitled Virtual Capitalism which explained how capitalism was present in WoW. Here’s what the author stated in the said article,

“Now what really blows me away is when I am in game and notice on the chat channels that people are complaining about “Obama bashers.” They defend him and say things like, “So what if he is socialist? What is so bad about socialism?” All the while they are competing in a free market economy. Understand that the players in the game, not Blizzard set the prices on the vast majority of all items. This means that the in game economy is elastic and suffers the same trials and tribulations of real world economies; inflation, supply and demand, etc…

     If Blizzard tried to implement the policies that Obama is attempting to force upon the American public, then the number of subscribers would drop greatly. For, to have everything provided by a centralized authority would take away all the goals and accomplishments that make the game fun to play. An epic sword that has a low drop rate is held in high regard because it is so difficult to obtain. A player might run a certain instance dozens or even hundreds of times to get the item he or she is looking for. If Blizzard simply provided it to the players, where would the satisfaction be?”

     With that said, politicians could actually learn a thing or two from games like WoW. Since it’s becoming a world of its own already, we could compare that virtual world to the real world and apply the same tactics which helped in the game’s success in hopes that it would do the same for the real world. In fact, we could use MMORPGs as ways to experiment on economy. For example, one game could focus on socialism while the other could focus on capitalism. Then we could compare how the two will work out; see which one works better.

9 - World of Warcraft Portends The Future of the Real World

     When I started this blog, I was really interested in finding out more about the real world concerns portrayed in the game, World of Warcraft, but as I got further into my research, I started to have second thoughts if they were really there, if they were actually portrayed in the game. I thought that maybe people were just over-thinking these kinds of things and were just paranoid or whatever. Instead of giving up though, I did even more research.

     I came across this book called, "The Warcraft Civilization: Social Science in a Virtual World" by William Sims Bainbridge. A sociologist suggested in the book that we can learn about the future of our world by studying World of Warcraft.

     Bainbridge argues in the book that the game isn't just a mere "escapist fantasy" but offers an insight into "how people are going to be respectful of each other in a world in which there aren't enough resources" – something we are already facing in reality. He also stated in the book that sociologists could glean as much from virtual worlds about human concerns and attitudes as they can from the real world. The challenge is then how to interpret the information.

"The real world is fragmented into small parts where human nature acts itself out under different constraints. So the challenge in translating sociological insights from virtual worlds to the 'real world' is the same challenge we have when going from one part of the traditional world to other parts of the traditional world. One nation to another. One language to another." - William Sims Bainbridge

      I also found an interview of Bainbridge with Samantha Murphy. In the interview he explained how World of Warcraft may have the potential to become the first real afterlife. He said:

"Every movement a player makes in WoW is recorded, even their interactions with others. The avatar captures their social self. To what extent the avatar is its controller is a philosophical question, but the avatar can outlive its creator and continue functioning in WoW as a non-player character (NPC). Research is under way that will make NPCs behave more like specific people."

      I think it would be pretty cool if that happens. For some reason, a bit creepy, because there is a possibility that you might be interacting with a dead guy. Oh well. Still, one question makes me wonder. Does World of Warcraft reflect the real world, or is it designed to do the opposite -– to let us escape to a place completely removed from the humdrum?

8 - Stereotyping Women

     MMORPG's are bound to have issues men stereotyping women who play them, like the ones who play World of Warcraft. The most common stereotypes would probably be that girls are not good at playing WoW, they are more suited to using characters that heal, and that they don't play PvP sessions, However, as we all know, these kinds of stereotypes are of course common misconceptions. I mean, some may be true, however, it all depends really on the player herself; whether she's actually into playing WoW or is only doing it to spend time with her partner who plays it.

     Through my research, I came across an article which was written by Olivia Grace, entitled Breakfast Topic: What's behind stereotypes about what ladies play in WoW? In it, she explained her opinion on the said subject and she wondered why such an idea even existed in the first place (however, she doesn't answer that question).

Here's what she stated in the said article:

"While I was taking a well-earned break from a particularly demanding PvP session, I got to thinking. I'd been at a gaming society meeting a few days earlier where I had a discussion with a man about my gaming -- principally, PvP. Now, I'm a PvP columnist here at WoW Insider, and I PvP a great deal, so when said man told me that PvP "isn't something that women do," to say I was a little surprised was an understatement."

     Obviously the said stereotype is not at all true, since, as you can see, women do play PvP sessions. It's kind of unfortunate how, even in the virtual world, men still insist on stereotyping women. I, too, am unsure of how these sort of things even exist in the first place. I mean, I'm sure that at some point we could meet female players that show prowess in playing the game. So, why continue this kind of stereotyping?

     I also found this another article which was entitled Wow and Stereotypes, and was written by Analogue. The author talk about the two stereotypes which are: women are bad at WoW and women who can play WoW, are healers, and argues about how much truth there is in those statements. For the first stereotype she stated:

 "Truth: not everyone who plays WoW is any good at it. People can be stupid and therefor, play badly. People can have other reasons for playing besides being good (social reasons). This second group is less likely to give up when they know they are bad at the game because being good at the game is a secondary goal. My parents have played WoW; my dad liked it, although he's gone back to EverQuest, my mom followed him around with her priest, clicked the "heal" buttons when he said to, and picked flowers. She didn't like the game, but she did it to spend time with my dad."

      Her solution to this was that the player should learn to feel more interested in the game in order for her to get better at it. If there's no motivation for her to keep playing, then she would definitely continue to get stereotyped. For the second stereotype, she said:

"Women tend to be more nurturing than men. Guys tend to be more protective/aggressive than girls. Women tend to work towards the success of the group; men strive for personal achievement. Both genders are drawn to both goals, of course, but the dominant leanings tend to be as I've stated. Avoiding any discussion of whether this is good or bad, these tendencies would explain why there tend to be more female healers out there."

      So, with that said, it's not really much of a negative thing for a girl to be a healer. I mean, she should be whatever she wants to be, as long as it will help her progress in the game. It's better to have good female players than stupid ones. So, one shouldn't really look down on a female player, otherwise, it will only provoke her into quitting that getting better.

3 - Videogame SWEATSHOPS?

     World of Warcraft is an entire artificial society, complete with its own disenfranchised underbelly. Apparently gold is a real commodity that translates into real dollars, so workshops of people in other countries are paid to farm wealth for American gamers. These "Gold Farmers" spend the time creating whole characters and performing the menial work so American's don't have to. Sound familiar?

     I came across this video on Youtube about Chinese Gold Farmers that was posted on March 8, 2006. Here check it out.

     I always knew that you could farm for gold and items and sell it for some real dollars. There are even some who are like bounty hunters, for example a player wants to get a particular item but doesn't know where to get it, so he just goes to the "Item Hunter", as I would call it to get it for him for a particular amount of either in-game cash or real dollar. What I didn't know though, is that there are actually gaming workshops in China that hire people to play the game. They call these people, Gaming Workers, but the American gamers call them Chinese Gold Farmers. They play at least 12 hours a day to produce in-game currency, equipment and items and whole characters that are sold to American gamers for real dollar. 

"I don't know if this is a service industry. It does not even have a name yet, but it should count as a service industry. In some sense, Chinese players are spending time providing a service to American players. . . I suddenly realized that exporting virtual items through the internet is the same as transmitting Chinese labor to America." said Tietou, an owner of a gaming workshop in China.

     Some of the gaming workers say that they are playing at the highest level not just for money but also for fun. Well, If you think about it, if you are earning money while playing games, then that sure as hell sounds fun. But not all of the gaming workers are the same though, some may be successful, some may be not. 

     I found this article from July 5, 2005 by James Lee, entitled Wage Slaves. It talked about this one gaming worker who was payed 56 cents an hour to work in a videogame "sweatshop." The author called him "Sack", I don't know why. He says. He works long, boring hours for low pay and gets no holidays. Carefully constructed macros do most of the work; He is just there to fend off the occasional player itching for a fight or game master who's hunting for these automated farming programs. "Everyone knows where the good places are, and GMs know that your account has been online for a whole month," he says. "[A GM will] message me asking, .Hello, what level are you, please?' I know he isn't asking my level; he just wants to know if [there's actually a person at the computer]."

     So, how does it work? The macros for World of WarCraft, for example, control a high-level hunter and cleric. The hunter kills while the cleric automatically heals. Once they are fully loaded with gold and items, the "farmer" who's monitoring their progress manually controls them out of the dungeon to go sell their goods. These automated agents are then returned to the dungeons to do their thing again. The articles stated that Sack's typical 12-hour sessions can earn his employers as much as $60,000 per month while he walks away with a measly $150. See, now that just seems unfair, doesn't it?

     If you actually think about it, the real money is made by the people with the resources and the right programs. That is the first step, I guess. It isn't too difficult from there to make the leap into creating your own sweatshop. All you need is the ability to write game macros or the money to purchase them. That's right, if you know where to look, they are on the open market. A macro that uses a teleportation exploit in WOW is currently going for $3,000. Then just hire cheap labor to monitor the bots. So basically, this is what the employers for videogame "sweatshops" are doing.

     In the article, I also read about this man in his 30s who goes by the name Smooth Criminal; a partner in one of the largest sellers of MMORPG gold, and he isn't apologetic. His rap sheet: banned from Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, Shadowbane, Star Wars Galaxies, and Ultima Online again. He says once someone even traded him a wedding ring worth $2,000 for WOW gold. 

     Smooth Criminal's game cartel made $1.5 million from Star Wars Galaxies alone last year, and individually, he's made as much as $700,000 in a single year. Smooth Criminal is in charge of writing programs, finding exploits, and locating in-game "dupes" (bugs for duplicating gold or items). "I have a real job, but when there's a dupe, I call in sick," he says. It costs him more money to actually go to his "real job." "When I dupe," Smooth Criminal adds, "I farm billions on every game server and spread out my activities." He then uses three accounts to launder the gold: a duper account, a filter account, and a delivery account?each created using different IPs, credit cards, and computers. This way, it's hard to trace the source, and the gold comes back clean.

     From sweatshops to stateside corporations, some people are profiting off of MMO gold. A lot of these gaming workers don't really mind their jobs, and they aren't exactly working in sweatshop conditions. There's a world of difference between making sneakers and watching bots fight all day. However, they are still underpaid, or as Smooth Criminal puts it, "They get paid dirt. But dirt is good where they live."

2 - Discrimination in World of Warcraft

     Now, what would a world be without discrimination? Based on my own understanding, Discrimination is the distinguishing treatment of an individual based on their actual or perceived membership in a particular group or category, such as their age, ethnicity, gender, nationality, religion, skin color and other characteristics.

     There's a lot of discrimination in the world right now, though a lot of people are actually fighting against it, but I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to talk about a different world.

     Like the actual world, World of Warcraft has a lot of discrimination as well. I came across this article from January 2006, that was entitled, It's racist, it's sexist, it's virtual: welcome to Azeroth!, which was written by Aleks Krotoski. It talks about how discrimination is being portrayed in the game. Here's a quote from that article.

"Much has been made of the internet as a panacea in which people can interact without the lead weights of real-world race, class and gender dragging them into socially constructed categories. Of course, such idealism has been refuted after almost two decades of social science research, so it's not surprising that the world's largest online world is witnessing some rather crude social discrimination"

     With a population of more than five million people (in 2006), for a world that doesn't actually exist, physically that is, the game has a lot of dedicated followers scattered all over the globe,boasting over 2.5 million users in North America and 1.5 million in China and the other accounts are scattered around Europe, South America, Africa and Asia (2006 statistics), giving it a diverse and culture-mixed population. So, I guess, it's  because of this huge population of different cultures that causes discrimination. I mean, the game is like a melting pot of people who have their own moral sensibilities, beliefs and whatnot. Just like in the real world, they get along better with people who share the same beliefs and stuff like that, and if you don't "fit in" in their group, then most probably you will be the outcast or discriminated.

     In another article I stumbled upon, that was also from January 2006, I found out that during that time, apparently, discrimination was becoming a problem in World of Warcraft, because some players were refusing to accept other players into their group unless they can chat in perfect, unbroken English. This phenomenon was being blamed on a widespread backlash against the practice of gold farming, which was unfairly associated with all non-English speakers in general. In the article the writer said:

"There is nothing new to this. The particulars might be unique, but the basis for this behavior has always been there, lying just under the surface of all multiplayer video games. I will never forget the first time I logged onto a multiplayer server and saw one game session entitled “NO JEWS”. I joined the session, of course (in addition to all our other faults, we Jews can’t follow directions.) I thought I might learn something from the experience, but after 20 very sad minutes, all I’d discovered was a strong correlation between bigotry and the use of foul language."

      Even in the virtual world, the players who enter it continue to reflect their own cultural mores and stuff. Despite all the discrimination though, through time, there wasn't really that much of stereotyping that emerged, instead, it integrated the populations from different places around the globe, in ways that would never be possible in the real world.

1 - Racism in World of Warcraft

     Well, Racism is usually defined as views, practices and actions reflecting the belief that humanity is divided into distinct biological groups, races, and that members of a certain group share the same attributes which make that group as a whole less desirable, more desirable, inferior or superior.

     I read some articles about racism in World of Warcraft, apparently there are a lot of players who think that there is actually a lot of racism going on in the game.

     This topic popped up numerous times in a lot of articles and forums, about WORGENS. Now, for those of you who don't know, Worgens are wolf-like creatures, very much similar to the werewolf. A lot of people had conspiracies about this part of the game is racist. Why? Because if you spell WORGEN backwards, you'll get NEGROW, and some players actually thought that this was a reference to African Americans or something. But, it doesn't end there, there's a place in the game called Shadowfang Keep, which is run by a White Guy, who has worgens as slaves and when you loot a worgen corpse they drop Snapvine Watermelon and Chicken Legs.

     When I saw this, I was like, "Oh. yeaaah. I did not notice that." I mean, why not name the race werewolf or lycan, they do look the same. Why name it something like Worgen? I did some research and I found out where the name Worgen isn't a reference to the term "negro". In fact, the 'worg' from WoW stems from Tolkien's world, which stemmed from varg (Swedish for wolf) and wargaz (German for 'strangler' which leads to criminal or outcast). The modern German term for wargaz is würgen. So yeah, just to clarify things, the name Worgen is not a racist reference.

     Of course, it did stir up an argument and some players thought that the people who think that there's racism in the game are just over-thinking things, that they're just being paranoid or something. A player named Neotaeo said this in of his posts in his blog, "How in the wide wide world of sports could a game be racist?  It is based in a fake world where fake events happen based on fake evolutions/ intergalactic nudging or evolution or species and how they interact with the world around them. To say that anything in a game such as WoW is, in my opinion, racist is completely absurd. People create things by taking elements from the world around them.  If you look at every character in WoW, you can see a mixing of cultures in each race. They all have good sides and dark pasts, this is what gives things in the game a bit more depth. But to sit back and say that the troll race represents 1 specific race here in the real world is ludicrous at best.  Why does it have to be about race in everything?  Why? Picking it apart only ruins and destroys a part of the game that you can never get back.  Once you go down the path of picking things apart, you will not be able to look at the fun world you play in the same way again."

     There was a lot more racism going on in the game than I initially thought, but then again, it always depends on how a person perceives it. If he finds it offensive or not. Everyone is entitled to there own opinion, some are sensitive to these kinds of things some are not.