Arno's Journal

CONSENT FORM

Researcher: Arno Kristel, Department of Communication, Trinity University
Supervisor: Dr. Aaron Delwiche, Department of Communication, Trinity University (210-999-8153)

Researcher’s statement

PURPOSE AND BENEFITS

This interview is being conducted as part of a course titled "Ethnography of Massively Multiplayer Online Games." In this class, we are studying the behaviors and attitudes of gamers who enjoy virtual worlds such as Vanguard and World of Warcraft. Our research will benefit game developers, scholars, and broader player community by increasing our understanding of this emerging medium. The results of my study might also be interesting to you. At the end of the semester (December 17, 2008), I will share my findings with Vanguard players and with the broader community of gamers. My paper will be linked to the course web site and made available to anyone with an Internet connection.

PROCEDURES

I am asking you to take part in an interview or an on-line questionnaire. Both should be relatively short and easy to fill out. I would like to do interviews over AIM. The survey can be filled out at your leisure. The second scenario is an on-line questionnaire using a system such as Survey Monkey. I will not use any names and not include any info you do not wish me to.

RISK, STRESS OR DISCOMFORT

No risk, stress or discomfort is anticipated as a result of this study. I will do everything that I can to make sure that your responses are both private and anonymous. If at any time you feel uncomfortable or stressed, you may terminate the interview immediately.

OTHER INFORMATION

You must be 18 years or older in order to participate in this study. This interview is voluntary. You may refuse to answer any questions that I ask. You may terminate the session at any time.

This data will be used as a basis for my academic research. My professor and I are the only people who will have access to the transcripts and survey data.

If your comments appear in my research, a pseudonym will be used to protect the anonymity of your real-life identity and your game character. You may refuse to participate or may withdraw from this study at any time without penalty.

This study has been approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at Trinity University. If you have any questions about this research, you can also contact the IRB chair: Professor J. Paul Giolma, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Engineering Science, Trinity University, 1 Trinity Place, San Antonio, Texas, 78212-7200. Professor Giolma's telephone number is (210) 999-7563.


___________________________________________________
Signature of Researcher Date




Participant's statement:

The study described above has been explained to me. I voluntarily consent to participate in this activity. I have had an opportunity to ask questions. I understand that future questions I may have about the research or about my rights as a subject will be answered by one of the researchers listed above.

____________________________________________________________________________
Signature of Participant Date

Today we talked about educational games in the class discussions. One game in particular that came up a lot was Oregon Trail. In this game you take a family, buy yourself some wagons and some oxen and then set off to travel to Oregon. The goal was to make it there alive and hopefully with your full family intact. The game taught you about resource management, risk assessment, but most of all, it taught that if you kill too many buffalo, they go extinct.

In the spirit of this discussion, today's assignment was to find some educational games and talk about them. My first instinct was, of course, to talk about Oregon Trail, but since that was already discussed heavily in class, that idea went out the window. Another great game that I thought of immediately was The Incredible Machine, a great logic and puzzle solving game with gravity and color-blending goodness. Then I thought of one of the classic examples of educational games: SimEarth. This seemed too easy for me to pick, but it did get me thinking, so in the end, I'll choose SimAnt.

SimAnt is an ant simulation game, as its name implies. The game teaches about colony management, population balance, and resource management. It is a great game where you can see small ant colonies form, grow and then expand to new colonies. The overarching goal of the game is to infest the entire house while battling such menaces as lawnmowers, floods, humans, and rival ants. The game can be as simple or as complicated as you want. The game has been, I believe, classed as abandonware, and as such can be retrieved from any abandonware website. I would encourage anyone interested in really old simulation and educational games to don their black ant-skin suit and go eat a few of those red ants!

Recently, we had adapted a version of the game "Mafia" to Vanguard and played it in game. In that spirit, today's assignment is to take a parlor game, and modify the rules so that it can be played within Vanguard.

My pick is Carnelli, a parlor game often played at Mensa gatherings and created by Mensa member Jan Carnell. The rules of the game are very simple. All players sit in a circle other than the Carnelli master who does not participate in the game other than as moderator and judge. He will start the game by pointing to someone and naming a title of something. At this point, that person has to name a different title that is somehow associated with the title the master gave. The association could be a common word, a pun, a common actor, a common author, etc. The game then moves to the next player and so on. If a player cannot come up with a title within the time limit(set and upheld by the master) then he/she is eliminated. If a player repeats a title or names a illegitimate title, then another player may challenge, at which point the master will decide whether the challenger or challengee is right and eliminates the one who is wrong.

The game can very easily be adapted to any MMO. Just have all players arrange in a circle and then have a master stand in the center. Gameplay then proceeds as one would normally have it proceed. One way in which the game could be enhanced is by playing when full PvP is enabled, and then having the game master literally eliminate players who are out, or by having players who are out jump off cliffs or drown themselves.

We're starting to really delve into the research now and are deciding on our topics and research methods. So, because I really don't have much else to say, here is what I currently have planned. Now, I do admit that these research questions and the methods could use refining, but it's a start.

Research Questions:
What skills do players of MMOs, and particularly Vanguard, learn from the game?
Do players think that MMOs could be used as a teaching tool where traditional methods fail?

Research Methods:
Currently, I am planning to gather my data by by interviewing volunteers either through in-game chat, instant messages, or e-mails. I plan to recruit these volunteers by posting on various forums that I am in search of volunteers who would like to be interviewed as part of a research project. I would like to get a variety of players because it could be possible that players filling a certain role learn different skills than other players in differing roles.

So there it is. This is what I have so far. I do think that maybe my research questions bear some explaining. Like I said in a previous post, the article on moose attack survival really intrigued me, and while it was no doubt a extreme case, it got me wondering as to what people do learn from MMOs. I have read other articles and papers that say that MMOs might have an influence on business , economics, and management skills, so these questions are, I think, well-worth exploring.

One of the key things we've been discussing as a class about research is that we are supposed to be completely unbiased when conducting our research. This is really difficult and for that reason, we are going to write about three different ways that would help keep our possible bias from influencing our research. I will be using the furry culture as an example.

One way to better acquaint yourself with a culture is through reading its literature. What I would do, if I were studying the furry culture would be to read some forum postings and fan fiction written by people who are part of the culture. This would allow me to better understand the motivations of many of them, and also indoctrinate me a little bit into their ways. It would give me a deeper understanding of the culture and help me see things from their point of view.

Another way is to, if possible, join the community. For furry community, this could be relatively easy.You could, for example, decide to play Second Life as a furry. This would give you a greater insight into how the culture is treated by other people. The problem with this and the previous method though, is that it may cause you to sympathize with the culture, and that is not what you want either. You want to be neutral.

One last method I can think of addresses those who are sympathetic towards the culture. What they might want to try to do is to leave the culture for a while. I think that by distancing oneself from a culture for an extended period of time would sever any emotional attachments you may have to the culture. This is of course not a very recommended method, but it would get the job done.

I was scanning Terra Nova when I ran across an article titled "Fly Safe" by Nate Combs. At first this caught my eye because it seemed like it would be an article on gaming lingo. Fly safe is very specific to Eve Online because it is one of the very few games where you fly rather than walk. It is an interesting phrase since it seems to have evolved from the game itself. Delving deeper, the article also shows a little bit on how the game itself was involved in the evolution of lingo through the use of the word 'fleet' instead of 'gang'. Lastly, it also delved into the use of lingo as part of role-playing and storytelling. The evolution of language in various MMOs might be a fun thing to study.

The second article that really caught my eye was "Feigning Death" by Nate Combs. In this article, he talks about how a boy first taunted a moose that was about to attack his sister and then escaped death by moose by feigning death. Apart from this being a very odd story, it is indeed really weird that the strangest of things translate into real life. He states that he thinks that while the experiences don't directly translate, they could potentially be useful as analogies for real life. It would be interesting to see what other skills carry over from games to real life.

So both of these are very interesting topics and are concerned with in-game skills and abilities translating over in real life. Also, Nate Combs seems to like writing about things that are interesting to me... Hmmmm

Fly Safe - http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2007/11/fly-safe.html
Feigning Death - http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2007/12/feigning-death.html

Guilds are an important part of any MMO. They provide the members with various advantages that just cannot be gotten in any other way. Guilds can provide its members with access to other members for the purpose of grouping, raiding, or information. Often other members will support you in any way that they can. Guilds can also provide members with resources such as crafters, harvesters, and people simply looking to get rid of some of their loot. To meet these ends, many different types of guilds have formed.

There are many different kinds of guilds that I encountered. The top guilds in size were social guilds. These guilds are around to provide the other members with a social network. They seem to have no real goal in the game other than to have fun. Next came a guild that I found to be somewhat surprising. The Knights of 3305 guild is a democratic guild that speaks a lot of item trade in their guild documents. There were many raiding guilds around, dedicated to the exploration of endgame content. Lastly there was guild labeled as an oligarchy named The New Outriders. This guild seemed to be heavily focused on proper protocol.

Guilds that I think would be a good fit for my project are The Platinum Order, Knights of 3305, Silky Venom, and Resurrected Legends. I chose The Platinum Order because it is the largest guild on the server and it is a social guild. Attaining membership should be relatively easy and it provides great access to resources. Silky Venom would be another good choice because it is a raiding guild, but it does have some casual members. Lastly, Resurrected Legends seems to be a guild dedicated solely to attaining knowledge of end game content and thus is the hardest of the guilds to attain membership in, but would also provide the richest amount of data on raiders and raiding. The Knights of 3305 also seem to be a fairly good fit for the same reasons as the others

The interesting things that I observed about the guilds are, that while the top few guilds are indeed social guilds, there are also plenty of highly populated guilds out there with other goals. A surprising find was the traders guild. There are crafting guilds out there, and there are very large raiding guilds as well.

Above you can see what I scored on Bartle's gamer psychology quiz. In case the numbers are unreadable, they are:
Killer: 80%
Socializer: 67%
Achiever: 47%
Explorer: 7%

So this quiz claims that I am a killer. What this means that is that I enjoy the competitive, PvP aspects of an MMO. This means that I enjoy battling and winning against other players, and that this is how I measure my own skill as a gamer. This quiz also claims that I am a fairly social gamer and enjoy the company of others and talking with them about various things. Even my achiever score was fairly high, showing that I like to set goals and see what items I can find and how fast I can reach a high level. Which leaves explorer, the kind of guy who roams the world looking for new and exciting things and who delves deeply into game mechanics. According to this quiz, I am not that guy.

So how accurate do I think this is? Well, in my opinion, I think that is a pretty good estimation of my tastes in MMOs. Ever since discovering the rush of fighting another player in PvP in the game Dark Age of Camelot, I've enjoyed stomping other players into the ground. At the same time, however I still enjoy grouping with other players, especially people that I know. I am also highly competitive when it comes to levels and gear and often find myself racing against other people that I know. I've never really cared much for the exploration aspects of the game, preferring to just head straight for my goal, finishing it, and getting back to town to reap the rewards of my conquest.

According to GamerDNA, this means that I would like WoW and DAoC a lot as games, as well as EQ , Guild Wars and FFXI, and I must say they get kudos for picking only games that I have already played. Out of these games DAoC holds a special place in my heart for being the game that really introduced me to good PvP in a game. All this leads me to believe that Bartle's categories do make a fairly decent estimation of what kind of gamer you are, but at the same time, it could be a lot more accurate. Yes I have played all five games on the list, but of those games, only two or three were games I enjoyed for a lengthy amount of time. I also think that certain mentalities from all four categories overlap and could really skew the data if you only like the overlapping areas. Perhaps these overlaps should be split off and create new, more specific categories for a more accurate system.

One of the bigger issues recently in the world of MMOs is the use of real world money, such as the dollar, to purchase in-game things, such as money, characters, power-leveling services or in some cases, virtual property such as land and housing. One of the easiest ways to get in-game items is through the use of eBay. No surprise here as eBay will sell anything including the coveted position of mayor in some town. Here you can buy characters that have been leveled up and geared out, saving the potential buyer many hours of gameplay reaching that point in the game.Another way to easily purchase in-game items is through the use of one of the many gold farming sites that exist such as www.wowmine.com. At these sites you can exchange your real dollars for in-game gold at the drop of a hat.

One last interesting way to get ingame-items is through some of the games themselves. Some games have exclusive items that are only for sale if you spend real dollars. Games such as Gunbound have many items that are only available for purchase if you spend dollars on them. One extreme example of such a game would be Project Entropia where players have an actual exchange rate for in game money and can buy property within the game. One extreme example of this would be the purchase of in-game land for literally hundreds of thousands of dollars. http://www.metrocorpcounsel.com/current.php?artType=view&artMonth=September&artYear=2008&EntryNo=8703 has an extensive article on the exchange on the sale of virtual property and cites an example of a sale for $100,000.

There are some issues related to these methods of buying and selling property. While selling characters is certainly legal, it does give a less skilled player control over a character that has high expectations from members in the community. Many people view this as a kind of cheating, skipping all the work and valuable experience to instantly gain a fully grown character. Buying gold on the market is looked down upon a little less as it simply saves the buyer the time required to gather the gold himself. When the game itself offers various items for sale, it seems fair because the service is provided by the game itself. Still, this gives players who are willing to pay an advantage over the people who either don't have the money to spend or are simply unwilling to spend the amount necessary. This could sometimes lead to more skilled players being at a disadvantage. This usually balances out however since normally only the more skilled players spend their money on such in-game items anyway.

So we've finally made our first foray into the wonderful world of Vanguard as a class and I must say I am honestly a little surprised by the game. The game still looks good for today's standards(especially compared to other MMOs that never looked good to begin with). The game itself acts and plays a lot like the other MMOs out there(which is not surprising). It does have some interesting features that other MMOs could benefit from. Unfortunately, these features will most likely go largely ignored due to the lack of popularity of the game. One particular thing I liked was the arrow that points to your target and the distance meter that shows how far it is. The fact that you can have both a defensive and offensive target is also really nice and helps offensive healers out tremendously. Lastly, I'm a big fan of the way locations are done. You can select what your current target location is in your log and then a handy pointer will appear on your compass making finding things much easier.

There are a couple of tips for new players that I think would be particularly handy. The first is, don't be afraid to experiment or die in the early levels. You get practically free deaths until and including level 6. This allows you plenty of time to get used to the play mechanics of the game. Secondly, I would advise you to pay attention to the tutorials and do the quests. Not only will these familiarize you with the game, but you will also earn yourself some pretty decent equipment, increasing your odds of surviving particularly hard encounters. Third, when you go looking for a group of players, be sure that there is one tanking class to soak up the damage and one class that heals in the group. These two will increase your survivability greatly. Another useful class to have would be a crowd-controller, to make sure your group does not get overwhelmed. My last piece of advice is to fight monsters that are at or slightly above your level. You can gauge this by either holding your mouse over them, or hitting 'i' with them targetted. Also, you want to pay attention to the number of dots that are hovering over their heads. One dot is easy, two dots are the normal level and should be no problem, three dots make the fight doable, four dots and you need to be very careful, five dots and you will die if the monster is of equal level to you.

I suppose this is it as far as the first day of Vanguard is concerned. For other opinions and experiences, check out my classmates. You can find a list of us at:
http://www.trinity.edu/adelwich/vanguard/students.html

Hello everyone!

The name is Arno. Most people who are familiar with me are more likely to know me by one of my three aliases: Trunn, Ristherion, and Baghthru. In actuality, I am a half Cambodian, half Dutch college student who is rapidly approaching his 21st birthday. I am an experienced MMOer, and I feel comfortable saying so, not just because I've experienced most of the major MMORPGs out there, but also because I am familiar with a few other MMOs as well, but more about that later. Also, as a slight side note, I have another blog out there that might interest you if you just like to read about other issues and topics that are of importance to me at trunn.blogspot.com (funny how there's some similarities in URLs huh?).

First off, the purpose of this blog is to do the assignments for a class that I am in and to note my observations as I play an MMO called Vanguard. I am not sure what the life of this blog will be like after this class, but until then, it should be much more stable than my other blog(as you will notice, posts come in spurts on that one). So, about Vanguard... From what I understand it was created by the original EQ team, which in other words means that it was supposed to be the "real" successor to EQ, but due to it being rushed, it was released unfinished and lost much of its fanbase practically overnight. I have played the game before this class, but quit due to many of its issues. Because of this, I am approaching my return to the game with a mix of worry and excitement. When I first logged in(in stress test), the graphic for the longsword wasn't even in, so my worries are quite founded. On the other hand, I am really excited to see whether they improved the game enough to make it a worthy successor to the EQ name. And before you yell at me, yes, I know EQ2 is out there, and it is the sequel to EQ in name, but I do not believe it is in spirit.

So what am I thinking about as I return to the world of Vanguard? Well, as previously stated, I really look forward to the changes and improvements since my last foray. Also, I hope to actually reach and participate in some end-game content as last time I was so discouraged by the game that I could not reach the rest of the content. I am excited to be delving deeper into the diplomatic and crafting aspect of the game and (I am slightly embarrassed to admit this) if I reach the stage where I can erect my own house, I am going to be spending quite a few hours decorating and furnishing it. Also, since the player base is much smaller than in most MMOs, I am interested in seeing how this affects player interactions and party/guild play.

Well, I think that sums up my introduction, and I think I feel like writing about my previous experiences at some point, so I might be doing that soon. Have fun reading this blog guys, and to my fellow classmates and professor, I look forward to reading yours!