Buffing Your Brain: World of Warcraft and The Choices We Make

Gengar Has Switched Pokeballs:

Before I get into my post I would like to thank Yiska for adding me onto the Eurospective team.  I have to say that I am surprised he would have me considering I am an American, but I have promised top quality posts and thats exactly what I intend to do.  For those of you who have been following me from my blog, Stormwind Commoner I ask that you now direct your reading to Eurospective.  I will continue to post on the material that I have in the past, just from a new home.  Now that the formalities are out of the way, let's get into the good stuff.

What is Right and What is Wrong?

Imagine for a moment you are out in town going about your day when suddenly a guy walks up to you, begins to dance, laughs, and then promptly smashes your head in with a battle axe.  No one around you calls for help, in fact they all run over and begin laughing and dancing around your body...naked I might add.  This seems like an awful and somewhat odd scene, but in fact it's quite common in the World of Warcraft.  The act mentioned above is what we Warcraftians call "ganking" and it's an everyday occurrence.  We all have different views on what we think is considered "good" or "bad", but when we enter the virtual world, some of us completely throw away or morals and do whatever we think is fun.  Before you ask, this is not some lecture, but rather a look into how we play the game and the interesting choices we make.

When talking about the ethics of your character in World of Warcraft most people laugh.  Ethics?  Are you kidding?  It's a game, l2p noob!  Whether you know it or not a code of ethics is present within WoW.  When we play a game such as Dragon Age: Origins we see ethics appear in just about every choice we make.  This is because our choices directly affect the outcome of our game, but in WoW the line between what is right and what is not is very thin.  Think if every time you killed an ingame player you got 5 points of evil.  After 25 points of evil you became a wanted criminal and every city guard was on the lookout for you.  Once caught you would either pay a fine or you would be jailed for an extended amount of time.  Would you still go about ganking lowbies?  In other words, we act like good people not out of our own inherent goodness, but because we fear the retribution from the rest of society. 

For those who do not play WoW, a virtual world is the perfect example of a world without consequence.  A place where anyone can give into their dark side and do all the wonderfully awful things to people that they can't do while in the real world.  However, for those of us who play the game, we realize this is not the case.  WoW is populated with the same ratio of good friends, odd strangers, and absolute jerks as the real world.  While we are limited in what we can and cannot do within the game, players still find ways to commit immoral, ruthless, or just outright annoying actions against one another.  So, the question is, why are there so many ordinary citizens among the greifers of World of Warcraft?


Trade [Manaisgood]: WARNING! Evilturtle is a NINJA!  He Ninga looted [ Blade of Tarasque ]!!!



World of Warcraft has it's own culture and therefore we are our own society and we enforce our own rules and guidelines.  We depend of each other for raid groups, we form guilds with ingame friends and real life friends, we trade goods and services in every city of the game, and we slaughter one another on the arenas and battlegrounds.  In doing this we build reputations for ourselves and our characters, for good or bad, based on our actions in the game.  There are very few ways for your character can make you yourself receive real life consequences (Blizzard bans you for botting), but there are many, MANY way for you to receive ingame consequences, something that many ninja looters are well aware of after being promptly kicked from their guild and blacklisted by all those who hear of his/her actions.  Those who choose to act badly suffer ingame and other who choose to act in a kindly manner are rewarded.  They choose to act in a morally right way because they value this society of players, rather it be their guildmates or every stranger behind that character walking about the world.

Whether you believe these ethical structures are present in WoW or not, we can all agree that ethical decisions occur between humans and not computers.  In WoW most of us pick up quests, use our mods to tell us where to go, and get the quest done asap.  Not many of us stop to think about what we are doing even though some of the actions we perform in the quests are questionable.  For example, a quest found in Borean Tundra has a member of the Kirin To ask you to intervene with a prisoner you've just captured.  He tells you that the faction code of conduct frowns upon taking certain actions of extreme nature to gain answers from prisoners.  He hints that you are not bounded to this code of conduct and could do whatever you wish while he turns his back and places books on the shelf across the room.  In this quest there is no choice of allowing the prisoner go or telling him you will help him if you could just have answers.  You are forced to torture him with a special device until he talks.  If you don't do this quest you will not gain access to the quests for the instance The Nexus since this is part of a very long chain quest.  For players like myself this usually does not phase me, considering I just get the quest done without thinking, but lately I've been paying attention with my mage I'm leveling up and there are a lot of "dirty work" quests out there.

In WoW we do not have the choice to take a different path and lately that has somewhat bothered me.  I wish there was a deeper level to the game and choices were presented while accepting a quest.  It would allow for a lot more diversity in how you play your character and maybe this could lead to certain achievements and or titles based on the choices you make. It would be great if we could enter Gnomeregan and find our lost family (if you are gnome) and help them to the surface or, as many people have said, it would be great to see an army of gnome players enter Gnomeregan and take it back.  Sadly, this idea of "choices in MMOs" likely will not happen anytime soon, but possibly it is an idea for Blizzard in their next mmo.  The allowing of choices opens up a whole lot more as far as character development goes and presents consequences for ingame actions, which could help to develop a better and more "colorful", so to speak, society within the game. 

Creating Your Own World:



In the end the game is formed around how we decide to design it, and of course how the developers design it.  Each server has it's own ethical code and each server has it's own uniqueness.  As a PvP player I find it odd that RP-PVP servers organize world PvP events with a lot of success and yet the core PvP servers do nothing more than raid cities occasionally. Think of what you could do within your server if you put your mind to it.

It is possible that, with enough support, a server could elect their own government and judicial system.  Hold court for ninja looters and gankers alike, sentencing them to eternal blacklisting or continuous gangs of gankers killing them each time they log in.  We have our limits though.  We cannot force a player to appear before a judge nor can we force a player to stay out of major cities where they are safe.  The point of this all though is to realize just how deep this game and all MMORPGs are in terms of ethical conduct, social structure, and the building in cultures.  We are nations within our own world, fighting for what we believe in and joining those we wish to serve.  You may say I am looking to deep into this, but I find it amazing how deep this game is and how a culture can build itself so quickly and so efficiently without ever seeing a single real life person.  So, the next time you think about ninja looting that item that just dropped, first think of the wrath that will be brought down on you by your server's society.

A Small Note To Add:

I will be rerolling a paladin on my server soon and I thought it would be nice to see some of the readers on here in game.  If you would like to join me in a fun reroll on Shadownmoon-US-PvP (Alliance) comment below with the name of your character and class you plan to make.  My name is Effinsnorlax-Human level 1 Paladin.  Thanks for reading and don't forget to +1 if you liked it.  Hope to see you ingame soon!