Property practices in World of Warcraft
Short Abstract: Observing property practices that occur in the online world of World of Warcraft
means to deal with a complex phenomena. Property inside the virtual world is socially constructed
using a set of technical possibilities give to players by game programmers. Objects here are not only
digital entities with no reference with physical world but they are described by a unique set of
properties that can’t be find anywhere else. Dealing with this set of possibilities, that are part of the
rules of the world instead of being part of game’s rules, is the way players generate their peculiar
property experience. This kind of experience is obviously bounded to the specific game we’re studying
but has some collateral effect also to the offline economic system as we can observe in the growing
value of the goldselling phenomena.
Keywords: World of Wacraft; property; MMO; social practices;
Author: Luca Rossi, PhD, Department of Communication studies, University of Urbino “Carlo Bo”
Address: c/o LaRiCA, via Saffi 15, 61029 Urbino (PS), Italy
Phone: +39 0722 305726
Fax: +39 0722 305727
Email: [email protected]
Property in MMORPG some conceptual boundaries
Gahrotz, the mighty mage is riding his swift raptor through the Outlands when a couple of
evil ogres ambush him. The fight is short, more powerful enemies had failed trying to beat the
frost power of Gahrotz and the two ogres lie now down in the dust. Gahrotz loots the bodies
and founds a sharp legendary sword known as the Shadowrend Longblade. While he is
picking up the sword he ‘d got just a single thought:- Damn! It’s BoP… well’ always good for
disenchanting-.
Aim of this paper is to fully analyse the meaning of Gahroz’s thoughts, to investigate property
practices in a specific Massive Multiplayer Online Game like World of Warcraft and trying to
understand the way this kind of property is different from what we know in the real world and
how those can co-exists.
Observing a MMORPG means observing a border line object that is not always easy to define
as a game. This is due to its typical lack of goals (Juul 2005). In MMORPG fun happens
interacting with other players or with the game itself in a digital environment that has to
resemble in some way the world we all know (Castronova 2005). There is no need for
MMORPG to be like the world, players can easily accept some grade of contradiction but
they need it to be like a world, to be provided with some kind of inner worldliness. This
worldliness can even define a completely different world but that have to be coherent within
his boundaries. This kind of coherence is provided by what we’re going to call world’s rules
that are given to players and are, by many ways, something players have to deal with in order
to play.
As a first step we’re going to observe property practices at this level of analysis: property as
it’s constructed inside the game’s world by the continuous interaction between world’s rules
and player’s actions. This kind of perpetual interaction define the social nature of MMORPGs
where social concepts are impossible to be defined by the simple list of possibilities that the
program code gives to players. Observing private property in this perspective means not only
to be aware of what you can or can’t do with a specific object but also to recognize how the
value of objects is affected by these given possibilities and to describe what deviant actions
can occur in the described scenario. Property seems then to be just the central node of a wider
semantic net of meanings related each other; a net so wide that could easily move through the
conceptual boundaries we’ve tried to make and reach our everyday life in the off-game world.
A World of Objects
Though the idea of starting from this wide net of meaning is tempting we should start from
the core element of every property practice: objects as are given in the world. Describing the
objects as they are constructed in World of Warcraft leads us to outline some world’s rule that
make them completely different from any previous real-life property experience. WowObjects are defined by: required skill, quality and item bound type. The combination of
possibilities given by those three object’s characteristics will describe our in-game
possibilities of property.
Required skill is that specific skill you have to master if you want to use that kind of object.
Even if we could see some kind of analogy between this characteristic and what happen in
the real world it’s important to stress that in MMORPG (as it is in every Virtual Worlds) rules
are not something that are supposed to be respected; rules are something that you can’t avoid
to respect. Even if I’ve never been taught how to shoot, I could start haunting and learn how
to do it. In Wow there’s no way for a mage to learn how to use a rifle or how to use a two
hand axe and, of course, it’s also impossible to use these objects without a proper training,
you simply can’t equip them.
Quality is that characteristic that is supposed to show how good an item is. Is visually
represented with a colour scale that goes from pale grey for poor quality items to orange for
legendary items. In some way quality of a specific object is linked to the scarcity of the item
itself: high quality objects are very hard to find while every players have bags full of poor
quality-crap items.
Item bound type describe the characteristic that some objects have to bound themselves to the
character when picked-up, equipped or used. This characteristic is not necessarily linked to
any other characteristic but it’s true that usually powerful items that are founded by killing
monsters in instance tend to be “binds on pickup”.
Except for the Quality of the objects that is mainly related to the chance to find a specific item
and the correspondent value, both the required skill and bound type represent some kind of
limitation of what we can do with a specific object. The skill requirement is some kind of first
step restriction that say us in advance if we can use or not that item and sometime it say us
even if we can have it or not. Warlocks for example can’t buy reagents used by rogues for
their poisons. Most interesting is surely the bound type. This characteristic has no equivalence
in our off-game experience and it’s a core element for the whole wow property experience.
The bound type defines what kind of action you can realize with a specific item once you’ve
got it. According the official Wow web site1 there are five bound type in the game: Not
bound, Bind on Equip, Bind on Use, Bind on Acquire, Quest Items. Every single type describe
a set of possible actions:
Bound Type
items can be:
Not bound
Equipped, Shared, Sold, Disenchanted, Dropped,
destroyed,
Binds on PickUp
Disenchanted, Dropped, destroyed
Binds on
(Before equipped/use): Gifted Sold,
1
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/items/basics.html
Equipement/Use
(After equipped/use): Disenchanted, Dropped,
destroyed
Quest Items
(always bounded to the character) Dropped
table 1
The table should easily show that what we can do with a specific item is not only due to what
we want to do but also to what we are allowed to do by the type of the item we’re dealing
with. Within this perspective world’s rules define a field of possibilities where social
interactions between players can realize social phenomena. Property would emerge as a
complex interaction between an unavoidable set of world’s rule and perpetual users
interactions. Here we are observing the in-game reality and we are letting behind the relations
occurring between in-game and out-game property practices as well as how Social Systems in
real life can react to such a perturbation. We are planning to go on that topic during our
conclusions, at the moment we need to define the set of world’s rule concerning property in
order to describe the in-game property practices.
As well as item’s potential utilisation is strongly defined by world’s rules, also the way we’ve
got to acquire items is strongly restricted. Most common ways to get objects in Wow are:
looting killed monsters, buying them from vendors, obtaining rewards for completed quests or
crafting the needed items with character’s special skill. For this point of view all these
methods are a way to supply valuable resources (items) to players. The keeper of resources is
the world itself and characters are just trying to get as many of them as they can. Opposite to
what happen in real life other’s players can’t be sources of valuable things: players can kill
other players but they can’t loot them, and pick pocketing is possible only against monsters.
When unavoidable world’s rules forbid stealing and looting from player’s corpses the main
function of property can’t no longer be the same that we’re used to know in real life. If
according to Social System Theory private property is an institution developed by social
systems to avoid conflicts on scarce and valuable resources (Luhmann 1991) it is impossible
use the same functional definition for the property that we’re facing in World of Warcraft. To
fully understand how property works in WoW we should approach the problem on two
different levels:
a) the property still exist: at least on two different and independents layers: the code and
the gamers. The code implies the institution of property with the bounding of specific
items to a specific character and giving the possibility to characters to buy objects, and
buying it is the most common way we’ve got in our everyday life to became owners of
something;
b) characters feel the property: every players knows what he has got, and got a property
feeling upon digital items often perceived as a part of character’s identity and in this
way a personal creation of the player.
Between those two borders we should consider that while in real life property social function
is to avoid conflicts on scarce resources (in short to lead someone accepting that someone else
can own something he’d like to have) in Word of Warcraft property seems to deal with the
possibility to accept unequal distribution of valuable resources. According to this perspective
it is possible to observe how common deviant practices usually related to property (such as
stealing or robbing) redefine them as the deviant practices of ninja looting.
New deviant practices
Ninja Looting is the activity performed by a player to take loot which he or she is not entitled.
That could happens in many different ways: rolling on every drop regardless the class or skills
of the characters, looting a corpse without permission after everyone passed on a Binds on
Pickup object, rolling an object when raid leader said that everyone should pass and many
other ways. While most of traditional deviant practices are, in WoW, forbidden by the code
layer of the game the looting phase open an uncertain scenario of interaction between players.
During the looting phase player must believe that other players are going to follow looting
rules but, at the same time, there is no way to predict the way they are going to act. It’s a
matter of trust. As I’m quite confident walking along the street in my hometown thinking
there are few chances that someone will steal my wallet, players are supposed to be confident
about something they can’t really control. Despite the high level of control that game
structure has in different aspects of the game experience the looting phase is extraordinary
free. The game doesn’t check any correspondence between character’s class or skills and
items that are going to be rolled:
P1: Can I need on this? I’ve already had the sandals from this set
P2.: NO! It’s a priest set.
P1: ok
In the reported example P1 chooses to act according to party leader’s orders even if there
were no real way for the leader to enforce his order. The lack of a real enforcing power
against Ninja looting practices would lead us thinking that the practice is far more spread as is
it in facts. In real game experience even if Ninja Looting is a real practice it is quite easy to
play several time without face such a behaviour. One would say that Azeroth is a safe place,
but since the lack of real rule enforcement system the question is why. In order to answer this
question one should try to enlarge the perspective in time and observe looting phase not as
something that happens just one time but as something that occurs several time in the world’s
life. Within this temporal perspective we would like to describe looting practices in game
theory terms. Looting in Wow could be described as a game with sum other than zero, very
similar to the famous prisoner’s dilemma: player can follow loot rules (so he’s going to
collaborate with others players) or can ninjaloot (so he’s going to break the rules and the
collaboration to gain a personal profit).
In a very simple way, with a 2 members party, the looting could be described with the
following schema:
Player 2
Player 1
Follows rules
ninjaloots
Follows rules
A
B
ninjaloots
C
D
table 2
Now we’ve got four options.
In the first case (A) both players follows loot rules (they pass if they don’t care about the
object, they greed if they want to sell or DE it and they need if they need the item). The outcoming situation will probably be that someone will have something he really needs and
someone will be unlucky for the drop or for the roll. In the medium time after several looting
session we can imagine to have an equal distribution of drops.
Options (B) and (C) are the same: one player acts according the loot rules and the other one
acts as a Ninja looter. The loyal player will soon leave the group the looter, but as long as the
party goes on the Ninja looter has higher chance to get more drops.
Situation like this could easily lead a loyal player to start ninja looting. So we would have
case (D) where all the group need on every drop. Since when all hit need all have to roll for
the drop the out coming situation seems to be quite similar to the first one (A). If we get a
better look at this case we would notice a substantial difference. In (D) case items
distribution will be completely unintentional and could easily lead the party to the absurd
result of characters full of useless items. Obviously such analysis assume that the Ninja looter
acts in a deviant way every time he can. In order to understand the complexity of the looting
phase we should add a last dowel: reputation. Since Wow is a deeply social game as most of
MMORPG are, reputation is a strategic resource that have to be played in game:
(guild chat channel )
P1: didn’t notice that there are two [guildname] guys in this group… think I’m going to leave it soon.
To gain a bad reputation in a closed world like a single server of WoW could easily led you or
your guild to be excluded from many activities that require grouping. Going in high level raid
instances could be quite impossible if a character or the guild get the reputation of
ninjalooting, and this would mean to be unable to experience important parts of the game. So
the reputation seems to be the only enforcing technique that is available in WoW to deal with
deviant practices.
In/off-game property
So far I’ve tried to describe how property works inside the world of World of Warcraft:
starting from a different set of possibilities given by the digital items of the world I’ve
described what could be defined as the inner function of property in Wow (to deal with
unequal distribution of valuable resources), consequents deviant practices and social
strategies born to handle them. The whole could be defined as an in-game semantic related to
the property. In this last part I’d like to focus on what happen when a player, and not a
character, have to deal with such a peculiar form of property. Wow-property, as it has been
described is a full and complete semantic (Luhmann 1991) fully coherent with the in-game
reality and able to deal and reduce the complexity of the game-social system. But if we move
our perspective out of the game and we observe the player we will observe a completely
different scenario. The in-game property’s semantic is not necessarily coherent with the offgame property’s semantic. According to Dibbel (2006) every virtual world could be its own
legal universe, completely independent inside its boundaries and protected from external
law’s inability to deal with game’s proper possibilities. From a legal point of view this means
that using the EULA licence system every online world would be able to set the distinction of
what it is legal and what is not within its boundaries. That is nothing really new, every
territorial entity has always established a set of laws and virtual worlds seems to want to be
perceived as worlds inside the world (Castronova 2005). Every world would define what is
legal and what is illegal according to what is possible to realize inside that specific world. In
World of Warcraft, for example, one would say that ninjalooting is an illegal act, but
ninjalooting is possible only within the WoW set of world’s rules. Even if players seems to be
able to shift easily from a specific semantic to another, it doesn’t seem the same for the
general law system. Actually despite what has made the economic system, law system seems
to be unable to handle virtual worlds within its boundaries. To understand this point in World
of Warcraft we could observe what is going on every time a goldseller sells gold online.
Within the game, for the player everything is quite simple: he needs some gold and he decide
to buy it online. While I’m writing you can buy 1000G on the EU-Moonglade RP Server of
Wow for 48,90$, that’s quite a reasonable price. The player pays USD with his credit card
and get 1000G in the mailbox. Everything seems to be quite smooth and simple except that
according with the World of Warcraft EULA nothing really happened. Since everything
inside the game, including gold, is owned by Blizzard Inc, the only legal explanation is that
the player gifted 48,90$ to someone else. Obviously the player has a completely different
opinion and perception about that. Here we are observing a very interesting case of lack of
synchronization between the user’s ability to shift between different semantic, the economic
system able to manage an economic transaction between different worlds and the law system
that still have to redefine its borders in order to be able to include virtual worlds.
Conclusion
My goal with this article is to contribute to the larger and ongoing conversation about
emergent social phenomena within virtual worlds (Taylor 2006). Virtual Worlds represent
today a brand new field of analysis for game theory, a field that require theoretical
instruments borrowed from others disciplines: such as Sociology or Social Psychology. This
new requirement is mainly due to the brand new kind of interaction that players actualize in
Virtual Worlds. In MMO games such as World of Warcraft obviously interactions are not
only simple human-computer interactions but lot of time is dedicated interacting with real
people. Human-Human interaction is not only typical of MMORPG, every game when is
played in multiplayer mode is mainly focused on human-human interactions. What makes
MMORPG different is that this interactions take place within a structured world with a
temporal continuum. Interactions take place in a world-like environment defined as persistent,
physical and interactive by Castronova (2005).
Observing property’s practices in the specific example of World of Warcraft I wanted to aim
two different goal:
- to study a widely known social phenomena in a specific virtual world environment in
order to describe the related specific semantic.
- to stress that every emergent phenomena occurring online need to be studied using a
multi-column approach (Juul 2005) that define the game as a formal system, the
relationship between the player and the game and the relationship between the game
and the world. In addition to this three column schema we could add the relationships
occurring between players inside the game worlds that are strongly related both to the
game as a formal system and to the relationship between the single player and the
game.
Applying this four colums schema to the property example one would have something like
this:
World of
Worcraft
property’s
experience
The Game as a
Formal System
World’s
rules
describing items
characteristics
and
characters
possibilities.
Player and the
game
How single player
perceive
the
property relation
with the items of
the world.
The player and
others players
Here
trust
between players
is required, space
for
deviant
behaviours.
The Game and the
rest of the world
How inner game
semantic interact
with the social
systems.
table 3
As we can see from this brief analysis every single emergent social phenomena in Virtual
Worlds need a complex study able to move along on different layers in order to provide us a
complete description of the phenomena at least for the single game we’re observing.
References:
Castronova E. (2005). Synthetic worlds. The business and culture of online games. Chicago,
IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Dibbel J. (2006). Owned! Intellectual property in the Age of eBayers, Gold Farmers, and
Other Enemies of the Virtual State OR, How I learned to Stop Worryng and Love the EndUser License Agreement. In J. M. Back and B. S. Noveck (Ed), The State of play. Law,
Games and Virtual Worlds (pp. 137-145). New York: New York University Press.
Juul J. (2005). Half-real- Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds.
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Luhmann N. (1991). Soziologie des Risikos. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co.
Taylor T.L. (2006). Does Wow Change Everything? How a PvP Server, Multinational Player
Base, and Surveillance Mod Scene Caused Me Pause. Games and Culture, 1-4, 318-337.