Abstract
This paper explores the economics of roleplaying player versus player (RP–PvP) events in World of Warcraft, on the Argent Dawn server. The RP–PvP events remain an unexamined niche in the research of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games and present a peculiar case of “anarchy” within cyberspace, being formally ungoverned by Blizzard Entertainment. To investigate this phenomenon, I construct the economic theory of RP–PvP events and hypothesize that participants can only derive utility from such events if and only if their effective time spent roleplaying is maximized. I show that to achieve this goal, roleplayers devise private rules of governance and enforce them through various means, from reputational mechanisms to aggressive monitoring of outsiders. The paper seeks to pioneer in bridging the gap between governance literature in economics and game studies by highlighting creative methods of managing complex problems of social coordination without formal supervision.
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Notes
Orcs are usually depicted as a race of primitive green-skinned barbarians whose culture promotes strength. This tidbit of information alone places constraints on how X can interact with the world through Y in roleplay. It would make no sense for this orc in roleplay dialogue to use modern jargon of the XXI century and the knowledge of our non-fictional world, as he has no connections to it.
There are many intricacies in properly defining what “roleplaying” is. This paper has no room for an extended discussion on the topic. For a more detailed analysis, see Hitchens and Drachen (2009).
RP–PvP events can take on many forms, some focused more on the narrative experience, and some focused on a competitive element. For an extended discussion on this topic, see Sect. 3 of this paper.
That is not to say that the roleplaying environment has no situations of tension or conflict. Usually, roleplaying conflict is handled through “emoting”. I define emoting as a form of literary battle where players remain stationary and can only advance battle through means of literary descriptions and dice-based resolution of combat outcomes (for more information on emoting see, for instance, Wowpedia 2019d). However, this activity requires extensive imaginative capabilities and does not provide actual gameplay to those involved. This makes emoting ill-suited for RP–PvP events, which emphasize dynamic, flashy gameplay.
To provide an example of how PvP can disrupt roleplaying, we can imagine player X writing a long, inspirational speech during battle to cheer up his allies, only to be killed during the writing, and not having this passage appear in the text channel, as usually in MMORPGs, dead characters cannot engage in dialogue.
For instance, Blizzard can force a roleplayer to change his character name if it does not adhere to the in-game standards.
For a good exposition of a Prisoner’s Dilemma as a concept, see Salter and Leeson (2014).
Roleplayers have come to a consensus that gameplay-related character death in RP–PvP usually means that a character is wounded, not dead (Blizzard Entertainment Forums 2012). If a character had to permanently die in such circumstances, the costs of participating in RP–PvP events would be prohibitive.
For a great exposition of the law of diminishing marginal utility, see Rothbard (2009, pp. 27–28).
One can argue that private rules governing roleplay (such as emoting and general code of roleplaying conduct) have existed in World of Warcraft for a long time. However, the same rules would not be easily applicable to RP–PvP events that require an entirely different approach by attempting to fuse two very different types of player activity.
The simplicity is explained by the fact that players who focus on PvE or PvP would wear the so called “Best in Slot” armor—the armor that would provide them with best attribute bonuses. But usually, such armor was disjointed in terms of appearance. This created a contrast between the orderly appearance of roleplayers and disorderly appearance of out-of-group players, which allowed for better monitoring of the outsiders.
The losing party will usually be provided with means of escape as to not cause a permanent character death and deter them from participating.
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Acknowledgements
I would kindly like to thank Natasha Purser for proofreading the paper and Georgina Reeder for helpful comments and inspiration. I also want to thank the journal editor and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions.
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Maltsev, V.V. Economics of RP–PvP Events in World of Warcraft (via the Example of Argent Dawn Server). Comput Game J 8, 241–254 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40869-019-00088-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40869-019-00088-y