Welcome to my blog.
I'm a student at the Utrecht School of the Arts. At the moment I'm graduating in the Game Design & Development pathway. I'm working on a self-motivated practical project, supported by a theoretical thesis. This blog is meant to organize my thoughts and ideas and to expose them to the world.
The subject I want to explore is the way in which virtual life can reflect on real life. I do this from a personal perspective, gathering different views on MMO, virtual communities and virtual identity. This question occurred to me as I started to invest time in such worlds myself, which wasn’t too long ago (about a year and a half I guess). My curiosity therefore is very personally motivated.
I first started playing Ragnarok Online. The first time I went through the tutorial to learn how the game was played. At the end of the tutorial I was asked several questions to determine my preferred class. At the end of the interview it turned out I would be a suitable Cleric. “Well, ok, so I’m a cleric. Let’s see how this works out,” I thought. I never really thought about a holy servant as a suitable character description for me. My conscious interest went mostly to wizardly characters.
I played the cleric in RO for quite a bit and actually quite liked it.
After a while I wanted to try something different so I created a new character and this time I skipped the tutorial and choose an archer. I played with it until the leveling got tough, and then I abandoned it. The activity versus the rewards just wasn’t paying of for me.
Next I tried a wizard (finally), which I liked a bit better than the archer. The wizard is relatively weak physically, but it can create spectacular magic bolts, which do an insane amount of damage in one burst. This way of dealing with monsters was very enjoyable at first, but eventually couldn’t hold my interest.
I went back to my cleric and explored the world some more. For some reason I liked the dungeons I could enter and the things I could do with my cleric better than any of the other characters.
When Guildwars came out I tried that game too. At first I trained a warrior, because that class is considered to be ‘default’ and easy to learn in any RPG. To this Warrior I added ranger abilities to add a bit of variety (ranged attacks to soften up monsters) and the opportunity to own a pet, which makes adventuring less lonely.
Yes, Guildwars is meant to be played in teams, but I couldn’t find a guild at first, so I did a lot of questing on my own. When I did find a guild it functioned badly, so I still ended up wandering around on my own a lot.
After a while I got a little bored with my warrior so I decided to try another class, a monk (which is basically the same as a cleric in RO). I played and leveled, then played some more and advanced way further into the game than with the warrior.
This monk character is still my main playing character today. The warrior is still left in the tutorial part of the game. I never went back to him again. I also tried a wizard for a while, but it just didn’t appeal to me as much as I’d hoped. He too is still waiting in pre-Searing Ascalon.
What could this subconscious preference for healer characters mean about my character in real life? I can think of 2 explanations.
First, healers are often in high demand from the community, because no party can survive a long quest without a healer to patch them up from time to time. On a more or less subconscious level I guess I like helping other people to achieve their goals. Being rewarded by other people feels more rewarding than being rewarded with tons of virtual gold.
Another reason I might like healers is that they can take care of themselves. Their healing and protecting powers can make them quite sturdy, allowing them to venture into dangerous terrain alone, where other character types would soon perish.
This corresponds to my more conscious individualistic nature. I like the idea of being self-reliant and being able to go where I please. I often feel more powerful when working alone than working in a group, because I’m forced to take care of everything myself and then do it.
What I intend to create might be described as a ‘narrative RPG’, meaning a role-playing system in which the character development isn’t mainly physical or material, as in most RPG’s, but more on an emotional and/or psychological level. The emphasis will be on interpersonal relations and taking a stand in a fictional conflict.
