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Ten Things 2006: Pr...For the uninitiated/non-nerds out there, MMORPG stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. Basically, a game where you create a character and interact with other people's characters in a world that exists online.
Last quarter I took a class that introduced the idea of an idea log...a little notebook that you take around with you and jot down ideas as they come to you. I really like this idea, so I'm going to get one for this class. It's nice when you're sitting in another class and you think, "But what about women that play these games?" and then you can write it down so you don't forget it. I highly recommend it, especially if you are a writer or are working on a project. Ideas come at the strangest time.
That being said, this is probably going to be my online idea log. I was toying with the idea of making another blog on http://www.livejournal.com, but probably not. I can host the pictures at http://www.photobucket.com, which is probably not a bad idea. (http://photobucket.com/albums/v42/Orinara/STS112ProjectPictures/)
A bit of explanation: The reason I'm interested in this is because I play one myself. Well, sort of. It's called Neverwinter Nights (NWN), and you can find more info at http://nwn.bioware.com/. However, it's kind of different. Most MMORPGs that you have to pay a monthly fee to play have a world where you truly do interact with hundreds or thousands of people at a time. NWN is free to play online, but you play on servers that someone else (usually other players) has bought and maintains. There's no huge persistent world like in Ultima Online (UO) or World of Warcraft (WoW). The server I play on is called Orb of Abrogation. I generally call it Orb because Abrogation is a fairly long word. The site for Orb is http://www.ooapw.net. There's a bunch of fun people there. I started on Orb because my boyfriend and some of his friends play on there, but there are hundreds (possibly more) servers that cater to different needs. Ex: Orb is for roleplaying. there are others, called Arena servers, where people try to build the strongest character possible and then fight others with it.
So, here is a series of lists that is mostly for my own use. (Couldn't get it to do outline form, the bolds and italics is my attempt at differentiating. Bold is first level, italics is second level. Hopefully it makes sense.)
Links about each of those games are forthcoming. If you Google each, probably the first link that pops up is the official site. I'll get some screen shots too, eventually.
That's all for now, but that was a lot.
Edited May 9th, 12:16AM
So I met with Prof. Shanks on Friday, and I pinned down some of the questions/topics I want to cover.
He also suggested that I set up my project like so: 10 things that are prevented or made difficult by MMORPGs, and 10 things that are enabled or made easy.
I read Nicholas Yee's paper entitled "The Psychology of Massively Multi-User Online Role-Playing Games: Motivations, Emotional Investment, Relationships, and Problematic Usage". It's bascially the results of a survey that he conducted. I think the most interesting/compelling part was how people who are related to each other in some way (romantically, brother and sister, mother and son, etc) are able to learn something and improve or better understand their relationship after playing MMORPGs together. (p. 15-21)
