So yeah, I must confess, one of the reasons for this project is the amount of writing time that has been leached from me by the game World of Warcraft. I resisted the urge for many, many years, but Blizzard's offer of "play for free" snagged me. I was in between interesting things to do and was randomly browsing around the web when a dancing goblin caught my eye. Play World of Warcarft for free, the advert said, until level 20.
What do I have to lose, I thought to myself. It's free. I can really decide whether I like the game by level 20.
Problem was, I REALLY liked the game.
20 levels was enough to whet my appetite for loot hunting, gaining levels, and playing in dungeons. $80 up front and $15 a month later, I was playing the full version of the game, partially cursing myself for falling into the WoW pit to doom, partly cursing myself for not having figured out how awesome it was sooner.
I did make the commitment to myself that if I ever bailed on some real life activity for one in the WoW universe, that I was going to quit immediately. I can't count how many times the last time I ever heard from one of my friends was them saying, "I'm so excited, I just bought Word of Warcraft!!!!"
Nice knowing you.
This wasn't going to be me. So far, I'm winning that battle.
One of the things that helps me immensely is the people. Sure, I've got some real life friends that I also hang out with virtually, but some of the people who play that game are either A) obsessive, B) forget that it is a game, or C) are just flat out childish.
My first experience in a dungeon (a place in the world you go with 4 other players to kill high level enemies and get cool items) was with my neat druid character who turned into a cat to beat the snot out of baddies. I was already nervous about the idea of playing with other people, because I don't play with strangers in games ever. Anyway, I'm in this dungeon, doing my part to kill enemies, and along comes this item that is good for my character, so I needed the item.
-Aside-
When venturing around with other players in dungeons, when a player picks up a valuable item, each person in the party has the option to either need the item (as in "I need this item to make my character better") or greed the item ("The item is cool, but I don't need it"). If any member of the party needs an item, that person gets it. If more than one person needs an item, then the system rolls a virtual dice for each needing character with the highest roll getting the item. If nobody needs an item, the system rolls for all the people that selected greed instead.
It is generally considered bad manners and will earn you a lot of four and five letter words if you choose need for items that are not good for your character.
-End Aside-
So anyway, I selected the need option for this item, because, well, I needed it. Crazy. Anyway, one of the other characters in the party starts freaking out. I could get into all the details of why that character didn't need the item that I had won, but that's beside the point. This person spent literally the entire duration of the dungeon cussing me out for choosing need on an item that I legitimately needed.
Sigh.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. I've put numerous (understatement) hours into that game, and have run into both really cool people, and real assholes. Unfortunately, the game seems to draw more of the latter. Sometimes, I get into a party with more than one asshole. Those are always fun. After a dungeon run with an asshole, I generally find myself logging out for the rest of the day, as that kind of behavior just leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
There's certainly no helping the fact that people are going to act in more aggressive or offensive manners online, nor is this a call to put any sort of policing system into place to try to prevent that. Rather, the rest of this post is simple observation, and my thoughts on what I've observed.
One of the things that has been fascinating me lately is the way anonymity affects personal behavior. You can meet a person in the real world and they will be courteous and respectful. You can meet that same somebody online, and they're totally different. The Internet has this power to strip away personal accountability. There is no consequence for acting like a child online. You are not held accountable for doing so, because nobody knows who you are, therefore, in most cases, you cannot be held accountable. People can hide behind an avatar and a screen name, and this really makes people think they can get away with anything.
Take music pirating as an example. It's highly unlikely that many people would walk into a Wal-Mart or a Best Buy, stuff a few (sometimes a few hundred) CDs into their pockets, then try to leave without paying. However, those same people will not hesitate to download those same hundreds of CDs using a bit torrent client or some such. The difference? The anonymity.
-Aside-
No, I'm not arguing the morals of paying for entire CDs or against any of the other arguments used when pirating music (or movies or software, for that matter), I'm merely using this as an example. THAT discussion is one for another blog post.
-End Aside-
Anyway, back to the point, the anonymity granted by the Internet allows people to behave in ways that they otherwise wouldn't in the real world. Why is that? I'd propose that this is the case because of the lack of consequences that comes with that anonymity. Think about that for a second. The person who's torrenting all that music won't go into a store and steal the physical CDs. Why not? He obviously doesn't care about the moral "wrongness" of stealing the music. He could be broke, sure, but that still doesn't explain why he won't go to the store to steal the CDs. If he's that broke, the gas to get to the store is probably cheaper than monthly Internet access, and those same, stolen, physical CDs can be resold for profit afterwards. No, he torrents instead of steals because it's less likely that he's going to get caught. He may not admit to this reasoning, however he understands it on some level. The consequences for the action have been removed, or at least minimized.
To apply this case back to my WoW gripes, let's compare cussing somebody out in real life to doing it in WoW. Pretend that you are out in the street or at work. Somebody does something that pisses you off, so you go over to them and let them have it verbally for a few minutes. You drop the four and five letter bombs; you trash the person's mother and wife and puppy and future kids. Are there consequences for doing such a thing? Damn straight there are. You could get arrested, punched in the face, fired from your job, etc., etc., and so on. That kind of behavior is just not tolerated by society.
Now, let's take that exact same scenario and apply that to the virtual world of Warcraft. Let's look at the (fictional) WoW avatar named WrathMonkeyHatesYou. WrathMonkeyHatesYou makes an immature brat of himself by telling you all the things he did to your mom last night, somewhere along the way insinuating that he's your daddy and your mom's his bitch. What are the consequences there? You don't know WrathMonkeyHatesYou, you have no idea what his real name is, you're not with him so you can't punch him in the face, and his place of work probably doesn't care how he behaves on WoW. You can ignore his ridiculous jabs or you can sink to his level and make your mom jokes back at him. Either way, there's nothing negative in this deal for WrathMonkeyHatesYou. Thus, he can behave however he wants.
Keep this image with you for a sec.
Way back in 1954, William Golding wrote a book called Lord of the Flies. In writing this book, Golding attempted to show that humans, at their core, were bestial, primal, and savage. The whole facade of being socially acceptable was just a reaction to not wanting to face consequences for any actions that did not fit into that mold. He accomplished this in his book by sticking a bunch of kids on an island, a place where there were no grownups or rules or consequences. They were completely isolated from the real world. Over the course of the novel, the children descended into utter madness, hunting each other, and devolving into violent savages.
I could go on and on about the brilliance of Lord of the Flies, but I'll get to my point. Golding's island provided the anonymity of separation from the real world and thus removed consequences from the equation.
Now, replace the island with the Internet.
Do you see the parallels?
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