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Importance of consent in World Events

Posted On Friday, October 24th, 2008 By Jay

With the Hallow’s Eve event in World of Warcraft, players abound are becoming infected, turining into zombies and in general having a hoot!  Or are they?

There is a facination social phenomenon occurring.  Many players ask for a way to “change” the world.  The zombie event provides an opportunity to do just that.  Why then would so many players be upset with the zombie event.  One word: consent.

Historically, the opening of the gates of AQ40 participation in the global world changing event lead to rewards for all, riches and titles for some and unique equip for a select few, one per server to be exact.  Players felt like they were joining a global effort!  Contributing much needed resources to the war effort.  If you didn’t play original vanilla WoW, this was a great event.  Let’s move on.

Conversely, the recent zombie event is non consental.  You’re participation in the zombie event is at the whim of other players.  Much like truly open world PVP, Your experience may change due to online play.  Your enjoyment of the zombie event is dependent on whether:

1. You enjoy being a zombie, unable to perform regular tasks in the game world.
2. You enjoy griefing to an extent.  All friendly entities become hostile and all hostile entities become friendly.  This is almost the definition of grief play.
3. You don’t mind leaving a negative impact on the game world.

Of the above three distinctions, I argue the primary reason the zombie event is failing is due to the negative impact a player has on the game world.  The majority of players want to positively impact the game world.  They want their name sung to the high heavens.  They want to save the day.  They want to belong.

Contributing, as with the opening of the AQ40 gates, versus griefing, as with the current zombie event, are two distinct activities for any human.  You’ll find in most psychology document that the need to contribute to the greater whole is intrinsically built into the human species.

The majority of players in the World of Warcraft game space would GLADLY join the fight to repel the zombie invasion, provided the zombie invasion was NPC based.

If I were a historian of MMO design, I would strongly discourage the griefing nature of the zombie world event in favor of world events where the player can positively impact the game environment.