The world of massively multiplayer online role play games used to be the realm of the unsocial geek and nerd. A sanctuary to escape the pains of modern life and be someone else. Because of the audience and the perception of what these games were, most people considered them an unsocial practice. Now with the rise of web based social networking and celebrity players such as Jonathon Ross coming out of their RPG closet (he spoke about his adventures on World of Warcraft on his TV show) they are looked upon in a whole new way. MMORPGs are similar to face book and myspace as they give users an environment to interact in. However high spec MMORPGs take it to the next level with rich 3D worlds and characters bringing a realistic feel to the user. These games have now become part of some peoples lives. Many people will dedicate hours of the day to just levelling up their characters, talking with friends and hunting for treasures. So to what extent do these games supply and nurture their social aspect and does game play suffer or benefit from it? Most MMORPGs fail because of a lack of the ability to facilitate social construction. Few MMORPGs allow complicated social structures and relationships. (Rauterberg 2004: 205) To explore this more I will now be focusing on one of the industries most successful MMORPGs, Ragnarok Online. It was originally launched in Korea on 31 st August 2001 by Gravity, making it about 7 years old. Despite its age it is still being developed and expanded for those who love to play it. I myself have 4 years experience playing the game, which I will be drawing on in this report. In a nut shell the game is a simple point and click where players can move around a 3D map (the characters are still 2d sprites however) and do all the things you would expect from an RPG level up, get items, make money etc. It has different classes that change the game play for each character and the ultimate goal of hitting level 99 (the maximum level). The users can create custom builds and equipment sets to increase the power of their characters in specific aspects and it is here where the social mechanics begin to come into play.
Multiplayer functionality helps to keep the game unpredictable and fresh. If everything on the game were to be controlled by a computer AI, players would be able to figure out patterns in game and soon be able to complete things with extreme speed and ease. the audience in multiplayer games is unlike an audience in any other form of entertainment: Participant and audience are one. As a player, you are, at once, participant and spectator, beholder and creator of the game environment. (Mulligan, Patrovsky 2003: 318) Players all think differently. Sean Patrick Fannon showed this with his group participation in his talk on NEW WORLDS, NEW PARADIGMS(AGAIN): More on the Frontier of Online Role-Playing. The example immediately highlights how people want to achieve different things, go to different places and how these people can interact with in the environment. The richness in player variety helps stop the game from becoming too predictable. A higher level of strategy is required for working in teams or defeating other players. No MMO would be complete with out the party. It is one of the basic fundamentals for the games social structure. Parties allow players to come together and fight stronger monsters and explore more dangerous dungeons whilst receiving huge in game benefits. Ragnarok specifically allows users within 10 levels of each other to share the experience from any monsters killed and also to share the items collected. It also uses a special bonus where if more than one person attacks a monster it will give more experience points. The party system they use allows players of similar levels (or rather similar stages in the game) to make friends who they can talk to and assist. I fell that the party system in Ragnarok is a very good one however there is one particular MMO that I feel has fallen off the track when it comes to parties. The MMO Guild Wars uses a very odd system and in many ways it concentrates on the missions that game provides. When in a town in Guild Wars you are surrounded by all the other players who are connected. However when you leave the town you are given your own version of the fields and dungeons that you are in. If you join a party you will be accompanied on the same map with the player you are in a party with and like in Ragnarok you can reap the benefits of teaming up. This is where it all starts to go wrong for Guild Wars. Firstly they have all but removed the chance of meeting someone randomly in a dungeon or a field and limited it only to towns. This makes it harder for people too meet. To put the final nail in the coffin you don t actually need to get human players to
join your party. The game provides 4 or 5 NPC henchmen that you can get to join your party. They are controlled by AI and offer no verbal communication meaning you cannot ask them to do something for you. This system manages to remove almost all of the key elements for a successful social interaction. Like many successful MMORPGs Ragnarok provides a class devoted to helping others. The main support class in the game are the priests, who have the ability to heal and aid their allies but have very little ability to attack themselves. Thus the nature of this class makes it almost completely dependent on other players to hunt or level up. One of the main skills you need when playing as a priest is the ability to communicate and socialise as gaining a party is essential to anything that you do. For these reasons this class is aimed at people who wish to use the games underlying social network to communicate and make friends. For other players the priest can act as a catalyst for creating or joining a party. For example if you wished to explore an area that was very dangerous but would give great rewards you would be more confident about going if you had a priest going with you. Also some areas are impossible to go to unless you are in a party as you are almost guaranteed to receive large amounts of damage. This is where players would want a priest to come with them. Guilds are basically a collection of people who all band together under a single name. There are no in game benefits automatically generated from being in a game other than being in direct communication with a smaller collection of players. Guilds usually form from friends who have met each other and want to stay in touch easily and see how other people are doing even when not online. The other reason for guilds is the War of Emperium (WoE). WoE is usually held on a weekly basis and lasts for about 2 hours. The overall goal is to steal castles off of other guilds so you and your guild can get the treasures from it. WoE is an extremely important part of Ragnaroks social structure. Many players play and level all for this one event at the end of the week where they can show off to other players just how strong they are.
There are many different ways to play Ragnarok Online and players have a wide range of goals when they join the game. This means there are a huge number of social links that can be made which explain how other mechanics in the game work or occur. One of the most heavily effected mechanics is the market. For example larger guilds usually buy all of their equipment from other players. Other players can hunt for the PvP gears that the other players need and sell them to them to make money for buying their own items. Despite the amount of player classes and player types all can be sorted into 3 social circles that exist within the game. WoE Guild Players Guild Players Non Guild players Each social circle has different types of the player but this model helps to show where people fit in a grand scale of the game. The interactions between these social circles is what drives Ragnarok. The items and treasures each circle generates will affect the market. The availability of specific items will influence where people want to go to party. Over all the social interactions in the game do not specifically benefit the game play. The social interactions and the consequences they produce are integral to the game itself. With out these detailed and complex social systems this game would become boring very quickly as it would lack any form of developing
interaction. Bibliography / resources iro - www.iro.ragnarokonline.com - Official international Ragnarok Online Server iro Wiki - www.irowiki.org - User created database of guides and items based on the international Ragnarok Online server. Guild Wars - www.guildwars.com - MMORPG Guild wars Matthias Rauterberg (2004) Entertainment Computing Jessica Mulligan, Bridgette Patrovsky (2003)Developing Online Games