Is WoW a Caillois-complete game?

If that name looks unfamiliar to you, don't worry; I didn't know who the man was myself until a week or two ago. Roger Caillois was a French philosopher who wrote a book called Les Jeux et Les Hommes, which traslates to English as Men, Play and Games. In this book, Caillois discussed games and what truly constitutes a game, and he came up with six points about what makes a game a game. For a game to be a "Caillois-complete" game, it must fit all six of these points, or else it is just not a game. It might be an interesting tool or an entertaining diversion, nonetheless, but it is not a game. For a game to be Caillois-complete, it must be:

-Free: “in which playing is not obligatory; if it were, it would at once lose its attractive and joyous quality as diversion.”
-Separate: “circumscribed within limits of space and time, defined and fixed in advance.”
-Uncertain: “the course of which cannot be determined, nor the result attained beforehand; and some latitude for innovations being left to the player’s initiative.”
-Unproductive: “creating neither goods, nor wealth, nor new elements of any kind; and, except for the exchange of property among the players, ending in a situation identical to that prevailing at the beginning of the game.”
-Governed by Rules: “under conventions that suspend ordinary laws and for the moment establish new legislation, which alone counts.”
-Make-Believe: “accompanied by a special awareness of a second reality, or of a free unreality, as against real life.”
(transcribed from a post on the blog "Cope")

What I would like to look at today is whether World of Warcraft is a Caillois-complete game, i.e. whether WoW counts as a game. Now, astute readers will remember my post, Is WoW "just a game"?, in which I concluded that, in some instances, WoW was more than a game. However, I did end the post by saying, "WoW is not just a game, but it is still a game," so I can still examine whether it is a Caillois-complete game. Besides, even if I had concluded that WoW was not "just a game", it would not prevent me from examining whether WoW is a Caillois-complete game, for one could not conclude that WoW not being a game means it isn't a Caillois-complete game. That would be a "converse error", a logical fallacy in which you assume that if one fact implies another, and that if the second fact is true, then the first one must also be true. In this case, the implication is that if WoW is not a Caillois-complete game, then it isn't a game. If I had concluded that WoW isn't a game, it would be a converse error to assume that that means it isn't a Caillois-complete game.

Right, so now that your lesson in logic is over, let's get to the examination.

Free: “in which playing is not obligatory; if it were, it would at once lose its attractive and joyous quality as diversion.”

Interestingly, WoW is one of the few games that actually has a mechanism in place to encourage players to play less and rewards players who do not play as if they are required to play; that mechanism is rested state, which you gain when you log out and which doubles the experience you gain from killing enemies. Of course, once you hit the level cap, rested state is no longer useful to you, so this point no longer necessarily applies. Thus we must ask; at level-cap content, it playing obligatory? Are players at a disadvantage if they take a break from playing?

I would say that in the days of Burning Crusade, that answer to this question was a definite "yes". I tried to get into raiding back then, but I was behind in gearing up, and the guild I was in didn't have the time to run me through older content to help me catch up. Now, granted, this lack of gear was a result of trying to start raiding too late, rather than a result of me taking a break, but the end product would have been the same either way. Fortunately, in today's WoW, we have the emblem system, which allows people to get gear in heroics that is good enough for them to go right into the current tier of raiding. Thus players are able to take a break from raiding, and if their gear falls behind, it's easier for them to catch up without their guild needing to drag them through old content. This was a big step for making WoW a more Caillois-complete game, in addition to a more casual-friendly game.

For progression guilds filled with hard-core players, however, the situation is likely not the same. After all, if you are doing cutting-edge content, you need to get as much gear as you can get your hands on so you can gain that much of an edge, and if you take a break and fall behind your guild, even if the difference is small, it could be enough of a disadvantage that your guild will leave you out in favor of someone who is more geared than you. And all that practice you missed? Not to mention needing to make it to raids on time or else being replaced and being less likely to be picked for a future raid. Of course, that content isn't going anywhere, so if you do take a break, you can always find a group of people who are at your current skill and gear level and run with them, instead. Suffice it to say that the design of WoW is Caillois-complete in the sense of being "free", but the social structures and obligations created by the players sometimes make it otherwise.

Separate: “circumscribed within limits of space and time, defined and fixed in advance.”

Well, it's certainly safe to say that WoW and the real world are separate entities... objectively, at least. But as I said above, when you look at the ways hard-core players approach WoW, the line between WoW and the real world gets blurry quite fast. When I was in a raiding guild, it wasn't uncommon for one guild member to call another guild member when we were trying to form a raid and were short one person. If that isn't WoW bleeding into the real world, I don't know what is. So, again, WoW is only as separate as its players want it to be.

Uncertain: “the course of which cannot be determined, nor the result attained beforehand; and some latitude for innovations being left to the player’s initiative.”

On the surface, this one seems much harder to defend than the others. After all, think of all of the raiders who do dailies for the money to enchant and gem their new gear, as well as pay the repair bills that endless wipes will lead to. Why do they run these dailies? Because they know exactly how much money they will get from those dailies, and they know it's enough to pay the bills. Think, also, of the raiders who run a heroic each day for the extra Emblems of Frost to get their tier gear that much faster. They know exactly what is going to happens in those heroics, and because of their gear, they know that failure just isn't a possibility. In other words, the outcome of dailies and heroics is certain, and thus they are not a Caillois-complete part of the game.

Of course, players only do these chores (let's call them what they really are) because they feel they have to, but the game doesn't require them to enchant and gem all their gear, and the money from the raid enemies themselves is usually enough to pay the repair bills if you don't wipe. And there are even ways to earn the money for gems and enchantments that are uncertain, and thus are a Caillois-complete part of the game. After all, one of my favorite parts of the game is fishing, and fishing is a great way to make money. The out-come is still uncertain, though; you don't know how much of the profitable fish you are going to get, and you don't know whether people will actually buy your fish. Still, it is a great way to make money, and the same facts apply to all gathering professions (except perhaps skinning). Thus, once again, dailies and heroics are only a Caillois-incomplete part of the game because players chose to continue to do them when they become chores.

Unproductive: “creating neither goods, nor wealth, nor new elements of any kind; and, except for the exchange of property among the players, ending in a situation identical to that prevailing at the beginning of the game.”

Two words come to mind when I see this rule: gold sellers. Where it not for the trade of in-game currency for real-world currency and the hacking that takes place as a result, this point would apply to WoW without exception. But gold sellers exist, and their presence means that WoW can be a productive activity, and thus not a game. Of course, their presence is only made possible by players who buy the gold those gold sellers sell steal, so yet again, the only reason this point doesn't apply to WoW is because the players don't let it.

Governed by Rules: “under conventions that suspend ordinary laws and for the moment establish new legislation, which alone counts.”

WoW certainly suspends ordinary laws and establishes new legislation. The fact that a human being can drop down in Goldshire and throw fire at a wolf, or the fact that the Undead Forsaken exist is enough proof that the game makes its own rules of what is possible. The game also makes new rules that are less fantastic and are still feasible by real world sensibilities, like the fact that we are literally unable to directly kill anyone on our side. The key to this point, however, is that the game establishes new rules to replace the old rules, and only those new rules matter. This means that none of our real-world rules bleed into the game unless we want to them to. Well, as a social game, it's likely that the rules we have for social interactions in the real world are going to become a part of WoW, but its safe to say that we want that to happen. WoW is just more fun when people act civilly around one another.

But what about when a player doesn't want that to happen? I'm talking about trolls, griefers, and people who generally make other players' experiences miserable. Where do we get the idea that their activities are to be frowned upon? Why, from the real world of course. If WoW somehow punished griefing and trolling in some way other than players reporting trolls and griefers to GMs, this wouldn't be the case. However, there currently exist no in-game mechanics (and thus no "new legislation") to discourage this kind of behavior, so because the players bring with them their sensibilities of what is and isn't allowed in social interaction, WoW doesn't fit this point.

Make-Believe: “accompanied by a special awareness of a second reality, or of a free unreality, as against real life.”

I think you can see the pattern developing. While WoW certainly can invoke a second reality for us players, that reality is tainted by all of the exceptions brought up in the previous points. It's difficult to acknowledge WoW as a second reality when there are consequences for not entering that reality regularly, when players contact each other outside the game to ask each other to enter that new reality, when we know how exactly how some of our interactions with that reality will end, when financial transactions take place in which currency within that reality is exchanged for currency in real life, and when our rules for social interaction in our reality bleed into our second reality. Suffice it to say that because of the players themselves, WoW doesn't create a second reality, or an unreality against real life.

So it seems that the general trend is that WoW is an objectively Caillois-complete game, but not a subjectively complete one. In other words, once players actually start playing, the Caillois-completeness of the game breaks down. I wouldn't say that this is WoW's fault, though. Perhaps with a smaller, more intimate playerbase, these issues wouldn't arise the way they do now. Because there would be fewer raiders to pick from, the raiding guilds would be happy to help guildies who took a break gear up again. With fewer potential customers, the gold-selling business wouldn't be as lucrative. With a more intimate playerbase, it's less likely that trolls would necessitate the infusion of real-world social rules into the game. Maybe WoW isn't a Caillois-complete game because it's playerbase is just too big.

Or perhaps we don't want WoW to be just a game, so we try to make it more than just a game, subconsciously or otherwise, and thus is loses some of what makes it a game in the process. That's an issue too big for me to consider in this post, though. Maybe next time.

Kantian ethics and group quests

One of the things I have noticed about group quests is that many times when I have done them, I was helped by at least one person who had already completed the quest and was just helping me out of the goodness of his/her heart. When you think about it, this kind of charity is necessary for people to complete group quests, especially as the expansion wears on and most people have completed those quests. If no one helped others with quests they had already done, people who started leveling later than other people or who leveled an alt would probably never be able to complete group quests. I always got the sense for this kind of charity to work, we must be on the giving end of it as much as we are on the receiving end, but I never knew how to consider it further. Luckily, there exists a philosophical system perfectly set up to examine this kind of issue: deontology.

Specifically, I want to look at Kantian deontology and what it may have to say about group quests. Immanual Kant was a philosopher who came up with the idea of the categorical imperative, which is a way to evaluate the motivation for a person's actions as either moral or amoral. Among other things, Kant said that when we chose how we act, we must always "act only according to that maxim by which you can also will that it would become a universal law." What this means in regular English is that when we decide how we act, we should ask ourselves, "Would the world work if everyone acted like this?" Kantian deontology would say, for example, that music piracy is immoral because if everyone pirated music, musicians would have no motivation to make music, and there would be no music to pirate.

So what would Kantian deontology say about group quests? Well, if everyone only helped people with quests they themselves needed to complete, it would be difficult to find people to help you with your quests, especially as the number of people who hadn't completed those quests grew smaller, and it would be impossible once the number of people who hadn't completed that quest but have it in their quest log reached a number below the number of players required to complete the quest itself. Thus it is necessary that those of us who have already completed a group quest help others with that group quest after we have completed it so that they may complete it as well.

But how frequently should we help others with quests we have already done? (What follows is semi-stream-of-consciousness writing about how I derived the system for determining how frequently we should help others, so if you want to skip right to the system I came up with, scroll down to the second-to-last paragraph, the one that begins with "Here's the short version." Of course, if you do that, you'll probably think, "My God, why is this so complex?", since you skipped that parts that showed why it needed to be so complex, and dismiss it outright. Do what you will; there's a simpler less at the end, anyways.) We can't always be the recipients of charity without helping others in return, for if everyone refused to help other players with quests they themselves weren't on but expected other players to help them, no one would ever help each other, and we have already determined that we can't have that. So a balance must be found; when others help you, you must help someone else.

It's tempting to make a simple statement like, for every person that helps you with a quest without being on that quest, you should help someone else with a quest that you aren't on. This works fine when group quests are done in pairs, but not when they are done in groups of three. Here's why: suppose one person in a group of three wasn't on the quest involved. If we accept the statement I made before, then both of the members in that group who were on that quest would need to go out and help someone. If all group quests were three-man quests and all people went out and helped someone with a quest they had already done for every person who helped them with a quest that they had already done, this would create an imbalance of givers and recipients of charity, with the balance skewed toward the givers side.

Allow me to explain what I mean. Suppose Alice helps Bob and Carl with a group quest. At this point, neither Alice nor Bob nor Carl has helped a group with a quest they weren't on, nor have they been the recipient of this kind of charity. However, Alice has already completed this group quest with a different group, but Bob and Carl have not. So Alice helps them complete the quest, and by the assumption made before, Bob and Carl must now go out and help another group with a quest that they aren't on. As you can see, though one act of charity, Alice has necessitated that two acts of charities be performed. This will continue in an endless cycle as Bob and Carl go out and help people, creating an even greater imbalance between the need for this kind of charity and the availability of it. And it's only going to happen faster when 5-man group quests enter the equation (though I have yet to encounter a "5 players recommended" quest in Wrath of the Lich King that couldn't be done by a competent tank (yours truly), a competent healer, and a DPS for good measure).

You may not see a surplus of people wanting to do good for other people as a bad thing, and practically applied, it probably wouldn't be, but this system would still not work from a deontological perspective because we would run out of opportunities for people to "pay off" their "debt" of charity. As such, those who were late to the game and didn't have the opportunity to pay off their debt would get the long end of the stick (metaphorically), while those who go there first and had the first opportunities to pay off their debts will have done more work that those who got there late. A system like this would result in a scenario where there is more debt than ways to pay it off, and that can't be a good thing.

So then, for all this to remain balanced, there must be a system whereby for every time one person helps a group with a quest that they themselves aren't on, one other person will do the same thing. This means that when Alice helps Bob and Carl with a quest she herself isn't on, either Bob or Carl must do the same for another group, and that will allow things to work out. In more general terms, when a group gets together to do a quest, for every person in that group who isn't on that quest, one person in the group who is on that quest needs to help another group with a quest he/she isn't on.

But even that system is too simple to be applied universally. Suppose both Alice and Bob have completed a group quest that Carl has yet to do, and they help him with that quest. By the logic above, he must now twice help a group with a quest he hasn't done. But suppose our group of three are the only players on a realm (work with me here). If Carl helps Alice and Bob with one quest (rather than two) that he has already done but they haven't, surely he has repaid his debt to them. After all, if he had to help them twice, then he would have had to help a group with two quests he had already done, while Alice and Bob would only have to do that once. As such, Carl would have done more work than Alice or Bob.

So we must revise our previous claim. When a group quest is done, for every person in that group who isn't on that quest, someone in that group who was on that quest must help one person with a quest that they themselves aren't on. If we take the situation above and Carl goes out and helps a group of two with a quest that he isn't on and both of them are, he has fulfilled his debt. If one person in that group isn't on the quest, and one person is, Carl has fulfilled half of his debt, while the other person in the group who isn't on the quest has also fulfilled part of his own debt, whatever it may be, and the person who was on the quest has incurred his own debt. Because the other person in the group used the group to pay off some of his own debt, Carl can't claim that he has paid off all of his debt by helping that group. With a system like this, the number of people who help people with quests they themselves aren't on and the number of people who receive that kind of help will remain balanced. Thus it is deontologically sound.

But how to put it into practice? I suppose that since I have already used the word "debt" to describe this phenomenon, a currency system of sorts isn't out of the question. For now, we'll call this currency someone's "charity value". Obviously, when a group does a quest that everyone in the group needs to do, no one's charity value would change. A person's charity value would go up when they do a group quest that they aren't on and help someone who is on that quest, while a person's charity value would go down when they are the recipient of such help. In order to keep things balanced, a person would need to work to keep their charity value as close to zero as possible. This doesn't mean trying all the time to keep it at zero; it just means not letting it fall too far in either direction.

Working out the exact values by which someone's charity value would go up and down is a bit more difficult, but it can be done. Let's look at our final conclusion again: "When a group quest is done, for every person in that group who isn't on that quest, someone in that group who was on that quest must help one person with a quest that they themselves aren't on." Here are some formulas we can start with: when a person helps a group with a quest that they aren't on, their charity value would increase by an amount equal 1 divided by the number of people in the group who aren't on the quest. When a person in a group is helped by someone who isn't on the quest is question, their charity value would decrease by an amount equal to 1 divided by the number of people in the group who are on the quest. This means that the total debt and credit in the system would always be equal to zero, and it would not incur any sort of inflation or deflation.

To give you an example of this system in action, suppose five people are grouping together for a quest: Alice, Bob, Carl, Daniel, and Ethan. Alice is the only one in the group who isn't on the quest, so her charity value would go up by 1, i.e. 1 divided by 1. Bob's, Carl's, Daniel's, and Ethan's charity value would decrease because they received Alice's help, but because most of the people in the group were on the quest, their charity values wouldn't decrease by that much. There were four of them in the group who were on the quest, so their charity values would decrease by 1/4, or 1 divided by 4. So the charity values are as such: Alice: 1. Bob: -1/4. Carl: -1/4. Daniel: -1/4. Ethan: -1/4. The sum of the system is zero, showing that it is balanced.

Now suppose the next day, Bob helps Alice with a quest he has already done. Her charity value decreases by 1, and his increases by one, so the values are as such: Alice: 0. Bob: 3/4. Carl: -1/4. Daniel: -1/4. Ethan: -1/4. Again, the system is still balanced. Now suppose Carl, Daniel, and Ethan help Alice with a quest they all have already done. He charity value goes down by one again, while theirs go up by 1/3. The values would now be as such: Alice: -1. Bob: 3/4. Carl: 1/12. Daniel: 1/12. Ethan: 1/12. The system is still balanced, and reflects the general amount of charity given by each person: Alice has received help twice and given it once, so she is in the negatives. Carl, Daniel, and Ethan have been on the receiving end of charity towards a group and the giving end of group charity, so they are close to zero. Bob, however, is an anomaly; he was on the receiving end of charity towards a group but helped Alice alone, so he is in the higher end of the positive spectrum.

Bob's charity value illustrates a potential problem with this system: under this system, if you give or receive charity as a group, your general debt towards or credit in the system won't change as much. What I mean by that is, if you and some of your friends help one person with a quest, your charity value won't increase as much as it would have if you had helped that person alone. And if you receive help in a group with other people receiving help, your individual charity values won't decrease as much as they would have if you had each received help on your own.

This issue can be addressed by changing the formulas slightly to reward more credit or incur more debt based on the size of a group. We can change the formulas thusly: when a person helps a group with a quest that they aren't on, their charity value would increase by an amount equal the total number of people in the group divided by the number of people in the group who aren't on the quest. When a person in a group is helped by someone who isn't on the quest is question, their charity value would decrease by an amount equal to the total number of people in the group divided by the number of people in the group who are on the quest. Under this new system, your debt towards the system would be much greater if four people help you than if one person helped you, and your credit would be much greater if you help four people than if you help one person. Since it would also keep all things balanced (the sum of everyone's charity value would always be zero), we can conclude that this is the superior system out of all of the ones we have derived here.

Here's the short version. Everyone who engages in group quests would have what is known as a charity value. That value would increase when a person helps a group with a quest they themselves are not on or have already completed and would decrease when a person is helped by someone who isn't on the quest or has already completed it. Because of these parameters, a person's charity value would not change if everyone in the group is on the quest in question. The exactly values by which it increases or decreases would be as follows: When a person helps a group with a quest that they aren't on, their charity value would increase by an amount equal the total number of people in the group divided by the number of people in the group who aren't on the quest, including themselves. When a person in a group is helped by someone who isn't on the quest is question, their charity value would decrease by an amount equal to the total number of people in the group divided by the number of people in the group who are on the quest, including themselves. It will be everyone's responsibility to try to keep their individual number as close to zero as possible.

Whew, well that was a doozy. If you understood what I wrote, then great; if not, just take this much away from it: when someone helps you with a group quest that they have already done, try some time to help someone else with a group quest that you have already done. It's only fair.

The "gaping chasm" between blog readers and bad players

One of the reasons I love blogging is the commenters. When people comment on my blog, it reassures me that I am not writing for only myself and that people are actually interested in what I write. However, one of the best things about having commenters is when a commenter posts something that makes me think even more deeply about what I have written. That happened on my last post, Damage Meters and compensation, when Mzungu of The Hitchhiker's Guide to Azeroth said, "I get the feeling that there is a world of reasonable minded folk that read and write wow blogs, and then a gaping chasm separating them from the annoying people who post meters, who obsess over gearscore and who sell single arrows on the auction house." This is something I have seen lamented in the comments section on other blogs as well. Whenever someone posts a post with sage advice that would make our gaming experience much more smooth if everyone took it, inevitably someone will comment saying, "Sadly, the people who do [undesirable behavior] will probably never read this." One has to wonder, then: why do we write such posts?

I suppose one of the reasons is camaraderie. When someone writes a post admonishing something the masses are doing, it allows us to rally around a common purpose, the purpose of trying to eradicate that behavior. Whether or not we do eradicate that behavior really doesn't factor into it, for we feel as if we are somehow part of the solution. We feel that by agreeing with the person writing the post and perhaps writing about the topic in our own blog, we are supporting the cause (whether it be the anti-recount cause or the anti-DPS-doing-the-tank's-job cause) in question. This feeling of camaraderie feeds into another aspect of the "gaping chasm phenomenon" that I feel is worth mentioning: feelings of superiority. Don't try to deny it; when you read a post about some bad behavior that the masses are perpetuating that you yourself are not participating in, you feel good knowing that you aren't part of the problem, even if you aren't part of the solution. You feel like a better player, compared to those who pull for the tank or shout "go go go" in party chat. Posts telling people how not to behave help those who don't behave that way feel good about not behaving that way.

But do these posts do the community any good? We know that they allow us feeling smugly superior to those who perpetuate the behaviors we look down upon, but what if that is a bad thing? After all, the idea that there is a "gaping chasm" between blog readers and bad players is a very essentialist* idea, so it precludes the notion that these bad players could improve with the right guidance and advice. By shoving all of the players we encounter in our time in the game into the category of "bad players," we forget that there is nothing inherent in players that makes them bad, and truth be told, that concerns me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are players out there who chose to not improve (those who deserve the title of "noob", rather than the title of "newb"), and the people who maliciously do things like listing single arrows on the auction house at full price or ninja'ing loot probably won't be as eager to change as someone who is just making mistakes in a PuG, but I think there's something wrong about the idea that there are "bad players" and "good players". Now, I'm sure people will be eager to say, "But they can improve; we aren't saying they can't." Perhaps you aren't, but allow me to propose a hypothetical situation. Suppose you are in a heroic. A mage in full ICC gear is AoE'ing everything to death and causing more threat than the tank can keep up with, so he is constantly pulling aggro and drawing the attention of the healer away from the tank. Then, to top it all off, as the run is nearing its end, he posts recount in the party chat to show that he had the highest DPS.

Now, there are a few things you can do in this situation. One is to say nothing to him, to curse his ways silently under your breath, and leave when the run is over, happy to just have your emblems. You can also admonish him by calling him out on his behavior and talking down to him. Finally, you could take the proactive approach in, whispering him if possible, asking him at the beginning of the run to tone down his AoE and give the tank some time to build aggro. I would guess that 99% of people take the first option, while a select few of us take the second from time to time. I have done it in the past, and I can tell you from experience that it doesn't change a thing. That leaves us with the third option, and though many people would like to see it as the ideal way to handle this kind of situation, I bet many of you haven't tried to proactively help people improve their gameplay, and I would bet those who have did so with a person who was clearly just new to heroics, not the kind of person who seemed to be more well-acquainted with the game and more set in their ways, like an overgeared DPS who pulls aggro.

Of course, perhaps these people are capable of change. Perhaps some of those DPS don't realize that they are making the tank's job difficult and are thinking," as long as everything is dying and none of us die, it's ok." Perhaps those DPS that over-aggro the tank and think nothing of it would be willing to change their ways. Perhaps those inconsiderate people who seem set in their ways could change with the right guidance. Or perhaps they're just jerks who will never change and just need to be put up with. If you disagreed with me until that last sentence, then you just proved my previous point about essentialist thinking.

So where does that leave us bloggers? If there is indeed as wide a chasm between blog readers and "bad players" as we seem to think there is, then writing these posts is really a self-serving activity. We do it to feel like we are making a difference while giving us a way to feel superior to other people, boosting our ego. I'm not saying that someone who works with their group rather than against their group shouldn't feel superior to those whose impatience and desire to show off hinder the run, nor am I saying that people who practice fair auction house etiquette shouldn't feel superior to the kind of people who put up single arrows at the price of stacks. What I am saying is that those feelings shouldn't need enforcement. We shouldn't need to encourage each other to feel better about ourselves as players because we engage in these fair practices.

With that said, I am not suggesting that we all accept that these players exist without trying to do anything about it. I fully support healers who refuse to heal DPS who consistently pull aggro, as well as tank who go into DPS mode when that happens. I encourage people to undercut players who put up single arrows for full price or to warn other people about their scam. What I am suggesting, however, is that if we truly believe that the members of the WoW blogosphere are indeed superior in their behavior to the general hoi polloi of Azeroth, then we should focus our efforts on trying to improve the behavior of the non-blog-reading community, rather than on preaching to the choir by writing posts giving advice that we already follow. We should focus on posts that talk about how we can get the community to not focus so intently on damage meters, rather than posts that simply talk about how bad damage meters are. We should focus on posts that talk about how we can discourage worship of the all-mighty gear score, rather than posts that simply talk about how skill is more important than gear. In general, we should focus on mobilizing the blogosphere, rather than telling it things it already knows.

And if I am wrong, and if there are members of the WoW blogosphere who can benefit from being told to not focus exclusively on damage or to not make other such basic mistakes, then there must not be such a gaping chasm between blog readers and bad players in the first place, meaning our posts are good for something.

*For those who don't know, essentialism is the view that if someone or something has a certain identity (such as "WoW player" or "bad player"), then there must be certain aspects of that person or thing that are always true. For example, the idea that all WoW players are anti-social and must be addicted to the game is an essentialist idea.

Spontaneous grouping and what it may mean for the real world

As you know if you spend any significant amount of time reading WoW news (as yours truly does), researchers love to look at WoW for their various projects to gain insight into how humans act in group and how they can apply the things we do in-game to the real world. One of the things that captures their interest frequently (such as in the latest project detailed by WoW.com) is the ability of WoW players to spontaneously form groups to cooperate on a certain task (be it a quest, a heroic, or killing an enemy player who walked too far into your starting zone) then disband the group and continue on their way, perhaps forming another group later. Many of the researchers who look at fluid group formation WoW are interested in how they can get that dynamic to apply to the real world. After all, if we could get people to cooperate more frequently, we could probably solve certain world problems more easily. But is it that easy? Can the elements of WoW that facilitate spontaneous cooperation really be replicated in the real world? Now, keep in mind, I'm only talking about fluid, spontaneous group formation here; I'm only talking about groups you cooperate with but don't get attached to. As such, I will not be going over the various motivating factors for joining raiding guilds and the like.

To answer that question, we must first look at what elements of the game facilitate those spontaneous groups. Some of those elements show themselves while we are out questing in the open world; they include a perceived common purpose and the knowledge that if you cooperate, it means less individual effort for each participant. If you need to kill tigers in Stranglethron Vale and you see another person killing those same tigers, it's reasonable to assume that they are doing so because they are on the same quest as you. This coupled with the knowledge that if you are in a group, you will both get quest credit for the kill, makes it a very reasonable idea for you to simply send the person a group invite without even needing to ask if they are on the same quest, and for the two of you to cooperate to kill the tigers. It means less effort for both of you, and you won't be competing for kills.

Another element that makes grouping up in WoW so easy and lucrative is the fact that, in some cases, it is automated. You want to group up with some allies and fight the opposing faction in a battleground? Automated. You want to run a heroic but don't want to go through the effort of finding a tank, a healer, and/or three DPS? Automated. Simply click a few buttons and you are now automatically grouped up with people with the same goal as you (there's that common purpose, again). For heroics, you are automatically put in a group that, from a composition stand-point, is capable of beating the heroic (assuming no one lied about their role), and for battlegrounds, you are automatically put with people with similar gear and pitted against people of similar gear. The heroic finder contains similar functionality, in that it won't let you queue for a heroic that you don't reach the minimum standard of gear for. So not only is some grouping in WoW completely automated, but those automated grouping systems won't pit you against a challenge you are completely incapable of overcoming.

Another important motivating factor for these groups is that the better rewards in the game are only available to those who are willing to cooperate with other people, and that the more one is willing to cooperate and work with others, the better the rewards get. While heroic raids give the best rewards, they also require commitment and extensive teamwork, something many people aren't willing and/or able to put into the game. However, spontaneous groups allow a middle-ground between the inferior rewards of being a lone wolf and the superior rewards of extended group play. By joining a spontaneous group, one is able to do group quests and run heroics for gear that may not be the best, but is certainly vastly superior to what one could get on his own. It also helps that, thanks to the clear indication of numerical stats, those rewards are objectively better than the rewards one can obtain exclusively through solo play.

So, in review, there are five aspects of WoW that make forming spontaneous groups so lucrative and easy: an implicit common goal between those considering cooperating, clear benefits to that cooperation, automation of the process, said automation limiting you to reasonable challenges, and objectively better rewards for cooperating. While I'm no sociologist or programmer, it seems reasonable to me that these motivating elements could be transitioned into the real world. I imagine that wish some decent programming skill and a good knowledge of how to motivate people, these motivating aspects for spontaneous group formation could be replicated in the real world. Perhaps there could be a web program that has you answering a few questions about things that interest you, for it could then match you with a cause you can feel really motivated about without matching you with one that you aren't capable of doing anything for. It could then match you with other people to work for that same cause. If the satisfaction that comes from doing good isn't enough to motivate people to use such a program, perhaps tax breaks or similar incentives could be given to people who do so, or perhaps the networking involved would be its own reward.

But should these motivating elements really be transitioned into the real world? I know it seems like the obvious answer should be yes, but I am a bit hesitant. Imagine a world where these elements were successfully implemented to get people to more easily cooperate on solving various issues, from intra-office issues to global problems. It seems like a recipe utopia, and it probably would be, but therein lies the problem. As I said in my post on the wisdom of Death Knights (and for the record, what follows in the rest of this post will be much less shocking to you if you have read the wisdom of Death Knights; if you haven't read it, then please, do so for my sake), our lives are defined by how we overcome the difficulties we face, so making those difficulties easier to face and automating the process almost seems... cheap. In other words, copying these elements of fluid group formation into the larger world could vastly reduce the amount of hardship in our lives, which might not be a good thing.

I know this may come as a shock to you to hear me say that there being less suffering in the world could be a bad thing, and I know you may accuse me of having it too easy, as I sit here in my cozy dorm room typing this on my own laptop, to be able to say that a dearth of suffering is a bad thing, but let me explain. As I went over in post on the wisdom of Death Knights, Schopenhauer says that if we don't suffer, our lives become boring and we either "die of boredom or hang ourselves." These may seem like the inane ramblings of a man who is disconnected from the real world, but studies have shown the suicide rates increase as you go up in income brackets, and general satisfaction with life tends to decrease. Having more doesn't make you happier, and it actually makes it more difficult for you to be happy with what you have. I can tell you from personal experience that I am more satisfied with my life when I face some sort of challenge than when I have it easy. Take away that challenge, take away the adversities we face in our lives, and our lives become rather pointless. If you think about it, our lives are defined by the challenges we have overcome and the rewards we have reaped from overcoming them (much like WoW), so it really isn't such a great thing for hardship to be done away with.

However, all is not so bleak as it seems. Now, copying these elements of fluid group formation into the real world probably wouldn't successfully get rid of all of the problems in the world, but it would certain go a long way towards it. After all, if all you have to do to help the world is open up a program that automatically matches you to a cause you can support and groups you with other people who support that cause and can help you further it, people would probably do good more frequently, and if people did good more frequently, perhaps the world's problems could be reduced or even done away with. That's fine and good for the people who are actually doing that good work, for they get the satisfaction of helping other people, and that can replace the satisfaction they would otherwise get from overcoming their own hardship, but what about those that benefit? Well, studies once found that the ideal income in terms of making you happy is somewhere around $40,000 a year, so I'd imagine that as long as those benefiting were being taken out of bad living situations into better ones without having all of their problems disappear, the net effect would be that they would be happier. And if they were the recipient of so much charity that their suffering was relieved to the extent that that they started feeling less satisfied with their lives, they could then open that program and help those in need, and thus it would be a virtuous cycle (opposite of a vicious cycle) that would make lives better for everyone.

That is, of course, assuming people could actually design such a program and market it correctly, and that people would actually use it, but I am in no way qualified to muse on any of those points.

My personal philosophy of the meaning of life

Considering all that I have written looking at WoW from a philosophical point of view, it's amazing how little I have used this blog to look at greater things philosophically. Oh sure, I've looked philosophically at non-WoW-related things in the past, but I'm talking about something greater, the biggest thing one can look at philosophically, the very thing philosophy was conceived of in the exploration of: life. I went through an ordeal this weekend through which I gained greater clarity into my viewpoint of the world, and after going through that, I have been inspired to share my view of life here.

For starters, I am an absurdist. I believe that our existence is inherently without meaning, though it is still the prerogative of the individual to attempt to find meaning in his life. However, that search has yielded little for me. Much of my existential musings in the past have been over what the meaning of it all is, and I could never come up with an answer that satisfied me. That was until I realized what I now see as the truth: our lives are meaningless. We are simply the result of unguided evolutionary change, and our search meaning is simply the result of an advanced mind no longer being occupied by the needs of survival.

You may be wondering, why would I be so interested in philosophy if I am an absurdist and think that our lives are without meaning? Well, the meaning of life is merely one philosophical question. Though many people think of it as the ultimate issue of philosophy, it is merely one of many. (If anything, the question of suicide is the ultimate question of philosophy, at least according to Albert Camus, but that is another topic.) To say that an absurdist cannot hold philosophical beliefs just because he doesn't believe that life has a basis meaning is like saying an atheist cannot have faith in anything just because he doesn't have faith in God. An atheist can still have faith that humans are basically good, or that hope is worth having, or that he will find love, and similarly, an absurdist can examine things philosophically even if he thinks life is without meaning.

Back on topic: for the longest time, I simply ignored the fact that my life was inherently meaningless, for it was too depressing to deal with. My lack of faith in a higher power or an afterlife certainly didn't help to allay my sorrow, but I found ways of coping. One was in recognizing that the possibility of death truly being the end should not be a frightening thought; it should be a freeing thought. If death is truly the end and there is nothing for us beyond the grave, then death truly is the great escape. It is a state without remorse, without regret. It is a liberation from the absurd, for once we are gone, we can no longer ponder our absurdity. However, this solace in the idea of death as the end did not help the issue I faced premortem. If life was meaningless, and death was an escape from the meaninglessness, why live?

I realize now that the angst I put myself through while pondering this question stemmed from the fact that I thought there was an answer. I thought that there had to be some larger meaning to my life that I was just missing, and that if I found that meaning, all of my issues would be solved. I somehow believed this while still publicly professing the belief that our lives are inherently meaningless. I suppose I was too afraid to face the absurd in my private life, even when I publicly put up the facade of having faced it, but that finally changed. The big change came when I read Albert Camus' The Stranger, in which Camus explores the idea of the absurd* and how man can react to it. Without spoiling too much of the plot, I'll say that the protagonist, Meursault, eventually comes to terms with the absurd and comes to the belief that man can face the absurd and live anyways.

This somehow brought about a great change in how I saw the world. I realized that to reject the possibility of higher meaning is to affirm the mundane, to affirm our earthly existence, and to affirm that it is enough, that we do not need a higher meaning to keep living. Two passages from the book brought about this realization in me. One takes place when a chaplain is talking to Meursault, trying to convince him to turn to God, and Meursault tells the chaplain exactly what he thinks of his philosophy: "But I was sure about me, about everything, surer than he could ever be, sure of my life and sure of the death I had waiting for me. Yes, that was all I had. But at least I had as much of a hold on it as it had on me." That passage made me realize that when we hope for more than just the absurd, we negate the possibility of being happy within the absurd. However, the absurd is all we have; if we wish to be truly happy, we must embrace the absurdity of our existence. We must embrace our suffering, our joy, our life, our death, for they are all we have. When we embrace these things, we no longer need any sort of higher justification for them.

The other passage that really spoke to me takes place when the chaplain asks Meursault, "Do you really love this earth as much as all that?" In the context of the story, it made me realize that when we can affirm our earthly existence and be satisfied with only that, we don't need anything else. We don't need a greater meaning to our lives, we don't need something intangible to make our lives worth living, hell, we don't need anything to make our lives worth living. Loving life is reason enough to live.

The practical question (at least for me; if experience has shown me anything, it's that my beliefs and the subsequent questions I ask are hardly universal) is, how can someone reach that point where life is reason enough to live? Well, affirming the absurd is probably a start. By recognizing that the mundane is all we have and that nothing can come of searching for anything more, we stop seeing the physical world as something to be surpassed. This world is all we have; to try to move beyond it is to be trapped by disappointment. Still, the question remains: why? Why put forth the effort to live in this world? Why face the sorrow that will inevitably visit someone who faces the absurd? Why live a meaningless life? I suppose this article has come full circle, for those are exactly the questions that motivated my first forays into philosophy. So, I ask again: why live?

For me, I am the answer to that question; the thing that makes life worth living is me. If the mundane is all I have, then I am the only thing I can depend on. If there is no higher meaning or power that I can rely on to give my life purpose, who else can do such a thing other than myself? I am the only other option. I live so that I can live. I put forth the effort so that I can reap the rewards. I face the sorrow so that I can experience the joy. I live a meaningless life because it is the only life I have; I may as well make the best of it. These are all things I could have said and believed before discovering The Stranger, but having a reason behind them makes them all the more powerful.

I suppose my philosophy on life could be summed up by saying that the mundane, physical, absurd world is all we have. From there, the other pieces seem to fall into place rather nicely.

*For the uninitiated, the Absurd is defined as the fundamental disconnect between human interests and an indifferent world. In layman's terms, its the fact that our desires really have no meaning or value other than what meaning or value we give them.

The wisdom of death knights: "Suffer well."

If you have done the Death Knight starting zone questline or have interacted with the Knights of the Ebon Blade, you have likely heard one of those reanimated warriors say "suffer well" after you finish talking with them. This always seemed a bit odd to me, but I just chalked it up to their deathly nature. However, a chapter from Arthur Schopenhauer's Studies in Pessimism entitled "On the Sufferings of the World" gave me a new perspective on this salutation, perspective I would like to share here.

Before I talk about that, let me summarize the relevant portions of On the Sufferings of the World. (You can read the whole thing here if you are interested. If you are familiar with it, skip this paragraph and the next two.) On the Sufferings of the World begins by acknowledging that everyone, by virtue of their existence, suffers. Our friends and family die, time is slowly wearing away on us, and tragedy enjoys visiting us on a regular basis. Schopenhauer also contends that happiness is really the absence of suffering, for happiness only serves to distract us from the miseries of the world. Thus the default mode of our life is suffering, so life is suffering. As such, suffering must have a purpose, for if suffering has no purpose, than life has no purpose. After all, if there is no point to suffering, then why go on living if we are doomed to suffer?

Schopenhauer discovers a few purposes for suffering in this chapter. One is that it gives our lives meaning--purpose, if you will. Most of what we do is motivated by the desire to avoid suffering. We work so we can make money so we can eat so we don't feel hungry. We socialize so we can have friends so we don't feel alone. We play World of Warcraft so we don't feel bored. "..if all wishes were fulfilled as soon as they arose, how would men occupy their lives? what would they do with their time? If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves..." In other words, eliminate suffering, and our lives have no purpose, causing us to become depressed from the lack of things to do. That may sound absurd to you, but it turns out that suicide rates increase as you move up social brackets, so Schopenhauer is right when he says that, if there were no suffering, we would die of boredom or hang ourselves.

Schopenhauer then goes on to talk about how our powers of reflection and and expectation cause us to suffer even more, but let me skip to the important part, the part you'll want to pay attention to. Towards the end of On the Sufferings of the World, Schopenhauer says that the best perspective to see this world from is to see it as a prison of pain, a penitentiary of misery, a jailhouse of suffering. Why, you may wonder? Because then we can adjust our view of the world accordingly and brace ourselves for the suffering we will inevitably face. If we see life as full of misery, then when tragedy does strike our lives, it will not come as some great surprise, and it shouldn't, for we all know that bad things happen. More importantly, when we recognize that we are suffering, and that other people are suffering, it's much easier to be empathetic towards others. After all, when our we perceive our lives as good, it's difficult to be empathetic towards others because we don't want to get bogged down in their misery. And, of course, if others' lives seem good, we have no reason to be empathetic towards them, for they don't need our empathy. However, if we see our lives as bad and others' lives as bad, "...it reminds us of that which is after all the most necessary thing in life—the tolerance, patience, regard, and love of neighbor, of which everyone stands in need, and which, therefore, every man owes to his fellow."

So, what does that have to do with Death Knights? By saying "Suffer well" to people who talk to them, Death Knights (from here on in, I am referring to Death Knight NPCs, not Death Knight players) acknowledge that suffering is a part of life; they don't try to sugar coat it. This is especially true in WoW, where your character gets attacked by wild beasts, monsters, and agents of the scourge on a daily basis, or even other players if you PvP. Suffering is an intrinsic part of your character's life; in fact, it probably defines your character's life. Death Knights' saying "suffer well" acknowledges that suffering and the fact that without it, your character's life would likely be meaningless. "Suffer well" is simply a more appropriate greeting than something like "Have a good day," for such a greeting ignores the suffering that is a necessary part of life.

What can we take away from these former agents of the Lich King and their Schopenhauer-inspired salutation? For starters, we can realize that everyone around us is fighting their own personal battles, that everyone around us suffers, and thus when we suffer, we won't feel so alone. We can recognize that suffering motivates most of what we do and thus have some appreciation for it; we can see it as the unfortunate necessity that it is, rather than proof that this is a cold, uncaring universe (although that is a completely different topic). When suffering seems pointless, like when someone is slowly dying of a terminal disease or when you lose a family member, we can recognize that suffering is a vector for empathy, an experiences that motivates us to connect with others. And so, I say to you, my readers, suffer well.

If you found this post depressing, let me leave you with one more quote from On the Sufferings of the World: "I shall be told, I suppose, that my philosophy is comfortless—because I speak the truth; and people prefer to be assured that everything the Lord has made is good. Go to the priests, then, and leave philosophers in peace! At any rate, do not ask us to accommodate our doctrines to the lessons you have been taught. That is what those rascals of sham philosophers will do for you. Ask them for any doctrine you please, and you will get it."