MMORPG Forums
My final project takes a look at the massively multiplayer online role-playing game called Rift. In this post I will take a look at the website Trion Worlds--the developer of the game--has created. Standards set by developer-run websites for older MMORPGs like Everquest and World of Warcraft have largely determined that other developer-run websites for new games will offer users moderated forums. These forums are typically moderated by developers and others working within the company.
The forums give developers the opportunity to interact with the community in order to create a better end-product. For example, if a large number of players complain that their dwarven necromancer is weaker than the other magic-using characters, then the developers might take a look at the game to see why this is the case. In my experience playing other MMORPGs persistent, logically stated complaints and observations posted in the forums at least get the developers to look at what is bothering the community. If a problem is found, there is a period of testing that occurs on test servers (usually with volunteers from the player community), and changes are implemented to fix it through a patch.
Community interaction is important to developers that care about maintaining the profitability of their MMORPG. A particular hotbed of interaction often occurs in the forums dedicated to guilds within the game, where I will find examples of rule breaking.
Rift - Rules
Code of Conduct Violations
Applicable to in-game and forum-based interactions, these violations can and will get your account suspended or deleted.
Standard Violations
Severe Violations
Find three examples on the site where one or more rules have been broken, specifically in the form of interpersonal conflict (i.e. not just spam posts). Give a brief synopsis of each situation, along with any admin or user reactions if available, and provide a screenshot.
1. Racist, Sexist, Religious, Hate speech
The link above will take you to a (rather long) thread where a user complains about in-game chat that violates the codes of conduct. As the thread progresses other forum users eventually steer the topic toward religious/political arguments that start to get heated. The moderator of the bulletin board eventually closes the topic.
As an admin, I would do the same thing that actually happened in the example above. I would address the complaint by restating the terms of service and then closing the thread.
I do not want to encourage "low-quality contributions" by "spammers and trolls" because, as mentioned by the Cosley article, editorial oversight of these threads will hopefully lead to less antisocial behavior. (Cosley, 2005) Therefore I would choose to close the thread down after quickly addressing the original complaint.
The complaining user appears to want more interaction with moderators and GMs, so much so that it reminded me of the "self important" example of roguish behavior in the Understanding Roguish Behavior article. (Gazan, 2007) I would not directly respond to the complaining user because that would probably encourage him/her to continue ignoring the "Ignore" feature provided by developers for such cases.
There exists an "Ignore" button in the game so that users can censor speech by other users they find offensive. Ignoring another user only blocks them from your own chat window, other users can still see what they type. The user that started this thread does not find that adequate and complains that they want specialized attention. Although the complaint may have some merit, the user still wants special consideration for their problem. I would direct them back to the terms of service and restate what options there are for them to have their concerns dealt with.
Rule Violations
1. Racist, Sexist, Religious, Hate speech
The link above will take you to a (rather long) thread where a user complains about in-game chat that violates the codes of conduct. As the thread progresses other forum users eventually steer the topic toward religious/political arguments that start to get heated. The moderator of the bulletin board eventually closes the topic.
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| First post. |
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| Thread starts going off-topic. |
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| Forum mod responds to user query and closes thread. Click to read. |
Admin Reaction
I do not want to encourage "low-quality contributions" by "spammers and trolls" because, as mentioned by the Cosley article, editorial oversight of these threads will hopefully lead to less antisocial behavior. (Cosley, 2005) Therefore I would choose to close the thread down after quickly addressing the original complaint.
The complaining user appears to want more interaction with moderators and GMs, so much so that it reminded me of the "self important" example of roguish behavior in the Understanding Roguish Behavior article. (Gazan, 2007) I would not directly respond to the complaining user because that would probably encourage him/her to continue ignoring the "Ignore" feature provided by developers for such cases.
There exists an "Ignore" button in the game so that users can censor speech by other users they find offensive. Ignoring another user only blocks them from your own chat window, other users can still see what they type. The user that started this thread does not find that adequate and complains that they want specialized attention. Although the complaint may have some merit, the user still wants special consideration for their problem. I would direct them back to the terms of service and restate what options there are for them to have their concerns dealt with.
2. Botting
The link above explains what botting is. In this thread, users celebrate the banning of a player caught botting.
The link above explains what botting is. In this thread, users celebrate the banning of a player caught botting.
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| Users celebrate the banning of an account accused of "botting". |
Admin Reaction
The admin reaction in this case was appropriate. As an admin, I would not just suspend the account, I would delete the offending character from the server so that particular user will have to go through the hassle of creating a new one. The "banhammer" would fall hard upon the heads of users I caught cheating in my game.
Why do people react so angrily to botters?
I assume it is because people that use bots are unfairly obtaining in-game items and levels by circumventing the need to work for their character. This could make users that work their way up "legitimately" feel like their character is being devalued by the botters.
Madison wrote that, "Customs, traditions, patterns, and practices of reproduction, modification, and use develop and intersect via connections to things." (Madison, 2006) For a virtual item like a character in an online game to make a connection to a user, the customs, traditions, etc. of the community need to be enforced. Therefore, to protect users that don't cheat, I would ban the botters.
3. Phishing
The above link describes what a phishing violation is.
The above link links to a thread describing a phishing complaint. In this thread the original complaint is met with constructive commentary such as "Don't click on the link" and "Please don't include clickable links when asking these kinds of questions".
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| Phishing Complaint |
The reaction by the developers of RIFT has been to develop an authenticator program that is usable through a smartphone:
Another response is the "coin lock" that asks you to use a code sent to your Email when you log in to the game from say, a different country:
Admin Reaction
I would follow the example set by previous admins and developers and create something similar to the "coin lock". The coin lock function I would impose partially reflects upon what Madison wrote about "breaking down or 'modularizing' cognitive tasks," and "mitigating the consequences of a failure...so that the failure is not catastrophic." (Madison, 2007)
Coin locking keeps your character from being modified, erased, or otherwise harmed. The Wired article by Dibbel (Fantastic read if you really want to see the motivation behind 'griefing' in online games), explains that anti-social users are out there to, "destroy whatever virtual thing they've sunk the most real time, real money, and, above all, real emotion into...and get them to quit the game."
By entering your code, the developers are tasking you with a second layer of authentication to keep your account safe and prevent this from happening.
There are users that simply won't know what to do in cases of phishing--possibly due to a lack of experience with phishers, or just an insecure system compromising their account information. Implementing the coin-lock system, which employs iconic imagery to what is essentially just a code sent via email, reinforces the idea that a user account is protected.
Finally, in response to a thread where the initial question post includes a link to a phishing site, I would impose a "cooling off" period for the original poster and disallow them from posting any links or any follow-up posts. Until they read a short blurb describing why they are not allowed to post phishing site links (determined by forum moderators), they will not be able to post.
5 "Unwritten" Rules
2. Learn the vocabulary and customs of the online world you are joining to facilitate communication and cement your identity in that world. (Doneth, 2007)
3. No "clickable" links to phishing sites in forum posts, even if topic is asking about said sites.
4. Don't bother admins until you have exhausted the procedures listed in the Terms of Service.
5. Users can "vote with their feet" by not playing character builds that are significantly weaker than other builds due to overzealous nerfing.
Sources
Madison, Michael J. (2006). Social Software, Groups, and Governance. Michigan State Law Review, Vol. 2006, p. 153. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=786404
Cosley, Dan, Dan Frankowski, Sara Kiesler, Loren Terveen, John Riedl (2005). How Oversight Improves Member-Maintained Communities. CHI 2005, April 2-7 2005, Portland, Oregon.
Kollock, Peter and Marc Smith (1994). Managing the Virtual Commons: Cooperation and Conflict in Computer Communities. In: Susan Herring (ed.), Computer-Mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social, and Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 109-128. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/csoc/papers/virtcomm/Virtcomm.htm
Grimes, Justin, Paul Jaeger and Kenneth Fleischmann (2008). Obfuscatocracy: A stakeholder analysis of governing documents for virtual worlds. First Monday 13(9).http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2153/2029
Gazan, Rich (2009). When Online Communities Become Self-Aware. Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa, HI, 5-8 January 2009.
Gazan, Rich (2007). Understanding the Rogue User. In: Diane Nahl and Dania Bilal, eds. Information & Emotion: The Emergent Affective Paradigm in Information Behavior Research and Theory. Medford, New Jersey: Information Today, 177-185.
Dibbell, Julian (2008). Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World. Wired 16.02.http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/magazine/16-02/mf_goons?currentPage=all
Reed, Mike (no date). Flame Warriors. http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/index.htm
Great post! MMORPGs are definitely interesting phenomena to study. I find your first example to be quite fascinating, as the user hijacked the thread and took it in another direction. However, based on the level of the post, I am wondering if you would want to ever remove it, as opposed to solely closing the topic. If there was an extreme post, would you still want it to be available to the community to read (as a closed thread)?
ReplyDeleteRegarding your second example, I do like the idea of deleting a character and having the end user restart the “leveling up” process. However, does this action change the behavior of the end user? What if the person was only botting. If this is the case, he/she may not care and restart botting from scratch over and over causing a persistent problem. However, if this was a pay-to-play MMORPG, this may make an impact of the account was suspended. In this sense, there may be a financial loss to the customer, which may become a larger issue (customer complains, follows up with legal action, etc.). Therefore, this example has me thinking about different alternatives that can help to promote the community. If suspending the user really helped the community to grow stronger (as the screenshot implied by the cheers), what is stopping a company from creating their own botting accounts and banning themselves to demonstrate how reactive and pro community they are. Very interesting!
Your third example about fishing and coin locking is an interesting aspect of security. I do wonder how many measures and counter measures should be employed when trying to make your game secure. In most cases, we rely solely on a single password (front-end authentication) to grant full persistent access. However, different methods of persistent authentication may help to alleviate the problem of single password authentication. When considering your response, I am wondering about the level of cooling off that is needed to help the user (1 day, 1 week).
Very interesting unwritten rules! I think it is interesting that the users have such a large say in the voting process and participating in the governance of the community (Kollock and Smith, 1994; Grimes, Jaeger, and Fleischmann, 2008). In this case, I am wondering how many people vote or if it is available on threads for everyone to vote. In this case, does the vote impact the outcome if it is not in-line with the terms of service?
I wish I could give you more feedback but I know very little about MMORPGs. I am trying to relate it to other things I experienced online. When I watch live television online there is usually a social media feed happening alongside the image. I have always thought this is a cool idea but find the nearly all the posts are links or advertisements I am not interested in. Usually end up turning them off.
ReplyDeleteAlso after reading this post I can see that rule number two would be very important to anyone wanting to enter into these types of communities.
Outstanding post, particularly the explanations and examples of the different Rift transgressions and the link with Madison.
ReplyDeleteCoin locks and other layers of authentication can be valuable not just for the protection they actually provide, but for giving the perception that user security is a priority for the community. The rationale I've seen for less intense kinds of access control is that some users don't want to be bothered to confirm then reconfirm actions, even those involving sensitive data.
And as an erstwhile admin of a site, your unwritten rule #4, Don't bother admins until you have exhausted the procedures listed in the Terms of Service, is something I wished I could have posted publicly on the site. Not user friendly but oh so true.
Very nice! I really like that you include the point "learn the vocabulary and customs of the online world" since, like you said, it can facilitate the communication among members. It is like when we are using different databases, we have to learn the different terms they're using. Anyway, good luck on your final!
ReplyDeleteI also like the second unwritten rule—learn the vocabulary and customs of the online community. I think it is a good way to get someone accustomed to the culture of the online community. I used to try to join an online chat room simply because I happened to roam to the chat room. But I didn’t know how other old members interact with each other and what topics they usually talked, so after saying hello and asking some questions to the members in that room and getting no response for a while, I realized that there was going to be no chance that I could be part of the online community. If there is a webpage in the site showing the culture of the community, I think it will help newbies a lot. In this way, newbies can feel more comfortable to participate. Or if the senior members are willing to give newbies a hand, the social support can reduce newbies’ stress and increase their self-efficacy (LaRose, 2001).
ReplyDeleteMBCO- Thanks for the feedback!
ReplyDeleteI would probably just leave the thread up to read but not take it down, which is what Trion seems to be doing in their forums. Closing a thread is usually enough to squash the beef for a while.
As for the botter, the game is a pay to play game, but if an account is repeatedly found to be botting, it will be cancelled. This is outlined in the terms of service for the game so it's not a breach of contract or anything. Usually botters tend to be from gold farming farms in China (a rather big industry, as of late), so people mostly react positively to their banishment.
The voting idea would probably function best as a strong suggestion to the developers. Everything would be done within the confines of the TOS.
Thanks everyone!
This post was helpful in setting up certain things for my final project. I suggest everyone give the game a try when they offer free trials! Heh.