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damn it, at first I thought it meant "Anarchy Online" ( http://www.anarchyonline.com/ ) ... Used to play it years ago before it became a heaven for carebears. :(

Whats the chance that they'll make more money on the advertising and just give the game away.

See Anarchy Online. You can play their "base" game for free, in exchange you get in-game ads. If you want to play the expansion packs, you need pay the monthly fee.

The in-game ads aren't all bad. The ones in town aren't too distracting and I've even stopped to watch the full motion(ie. video) ones. The annoying ads are the posters in the missions(dungeons). But for free it ain't all bad.

One request that has often been asked but hardly answered is the free-game-with-subscription model.

Anarchy Online. Free to download the basic game, free to play until January of next year. The offer is supposed to stop then, but all the news coming out of Funcom hints at it becoming a permanent feature. You pay if you upgrade to the subscriptions (and there's enough incentive in the way of perks, equipment, and PVP), but otherwise, free. There is advertising on in-game billboards (there's an option to turn it off if you upgrade), but for the most part it's unintrusive. Graphics are outdated (supposedly to be fixed in the coming expansion), but decent. The only other real problem with the game is the balance issues every MMORPG has.

Okey, now it made sense when FunCom gave free access to there MMO Anarchy Online, they put (real life) adverts on the already well used advertising boards throughout the game. People who paid monthly for their accounts would have the adverts removed.

This just seems to be another way for the MMO people to get another few $ from your account. They're breaking the immersion of it, imagine having a "Diet Coke Lemon" advert while hacking up some Orcs in a far far place...

They have it working in Anarchy Online for the free players. http://www.anarchyonline.com/
Seems to me, if you're not paying for the game, this isn't such a bad idea. I'd love to see AO extend their free accounts past January 16, 2006 and have them be funded by this. I don't know if it's possible, but it's not intrusive, really. The ads only exist on billboards inside the cities, and generally, they fit into the world. For example, an ad for AlienWare PC's.. It all looks kind of future anyways, something you could expect to see on a futuristic billboard. Now, if they decide to start subjecting me to ads on my paid EQ or WoW account.. Well, then that account is going out the window.

You might like Anarchy Online however their Shadowlands expansion strayed heavily from the sci-fi into the fantasy realm and the entire game suffered, in my opinion. I played the game off and on for years but could never truly get into it after being forced to go through the content in that expansion.

To hit level 220 you pretty much were forced to xp in the Shadowlands zones, although they did add shadowknowledge (SK) gain from killing aliens for the latest expansion Alien Invasion. That was a more recent patch and I'm not sure how it has effected the game as I've been away from it for months.

However the base game has a cyberpunk feel, with "the grid" which is your travel option, actual flight in game with personal planes, war-torn futuristic looking cities, etc. You also install implants which boost your skills and statistics along with the normal armor/weapon loot. The classes are more sci-fi in title but do similar RPG things (doctor = healer, enforcer = tank, etc).

The base game (with no expansions) is entirely free for new accounts so it's worth checking out here . Plus they use bittorrent for downloading!

What about Project Entropia and also Anarchy Online (without the expansion packs).

Anarchy Online is a game much like Everquest. But it has kinda of a twist to it. The players make up the story line. There is a war going on, between 2 divisions, the Omni, and the Clan. The players have been given the foundation of the starting storyline, but the players (with the help of some special events) keep the story going by fighting the opposing side. It is based on a more technologicly advanced culture. Good place to read into the game's story line, look here.

"...deliver a continually updated, immersive environment and storyline, with content that grows, changes and evolves constantly."

This is more or less exactly what Funcom said they would do with Anarchy Online. Now I only played the game for a few months, but the rumors I've heard indicate that any real storyline progression has been sporadic at best, and nonexistant most of the time. Can anyone who actually plays AO comment on how the storyline stuff is working out?

In an industry scrutinized by the government as a drug infested haven that pollutes our communities and destroys the ability to lead a productive life, there is another industry that has the potential to become even more dangerous than any drug addiction. I'm not supposed to be writing this. What was supposed to happen was I prove my thesis that I couldn't be sucked into a virtual reality like many people I have met before. I never really understood what I was getting myself into when I started my research experiment, playing a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.

Three years ago at a nightclub I bumped into an old friend of mine who went by the nickname "Iggy". I was really amazed to see him because no one had seen nor heard from Iggy in over a year. Many of his friends had all wondered what happened to him.

"Jesus Iggy, where in the hell have you been?!"

"Everquest," was all he said. He looked down at his feet when he said it.

"Huh?" I had no clue what he meant.

"I've been playing Everquest."

As we spoke, Iggy opened up to me and confessed that he had lost his job, his friends and didn't want to go out much anymore.

"It's an addiction. I'm only out tonight because the server is down for patching and I'm miserable."

For some reason, he couldn't look me in the eye while he was talking. He was obviously embarrassed.

"Um. Okay." I mean, what was I going to say to something as incredulous as that? I've heard of game obsessions, like those college kids in the seventies that murdered their whole family while playing a Dungeons and Dragons game, but I just thought that sort of obsession lies only in the minds of sociopaths or people with a lot bigger problems than playing a game. Iggy was a really nice, normal guy who had lost a lot to some online role-playing game called "Everquest". I had no idea what to make of it.

I never saw Iggy again. Neither has anyone else who knew him that I have asked. Since that night I really pondered the absurdity of his situation. It nagged at me.

On the web you can put the words "gaming addiction" into Google and discover a thousand and one sites for support groups, self help courses, testimonials and various studies. There's the "Everquest Widows" forum, a site called "Ariadne - Understanding MMORPG Addiction", and a myriad of articles on topics like game addiction and the innocent bystanders that suffer from it.

As one Everquest Widow puts it, "I plan on starting "Widows Weekly." It will be a group that meets in a local coffee shop. Here, spouses can talk and help one another through this difficult process, and begin to realize that there is a life out there despite the loss of our loved ones. I plan to send the bill for coffee and snacks to Verant. It would be but a small compensation on their part to repay me and others for the loss of our loved ones--so pay up, Verant!" -- Christine Gilbert CD Mag.com

What I find interesting is that many of the people who author these articles or sites have usually neither played the games or have just been the "victims" such as spouses or family. Others who dissect the topic of game addiction tend to be outsiders looking in, shaking their heads or turning the study into one giant mouse in the maze science experiment. It's rare that you find someone, who actually plays games passionately, speak up or write anything about negative side affects.

The more people I met who played computer games, the more I wanted to understand the obsession. I also had another stake in this because my partner, Low, is a gamer and a "geek" in every sense of the word. Not to mention my fiancé. It was beginning to cause some strain on us from time to time in terms of "quality time". I was getting really angry with him on a regular basis actually. According to Low, it was I who had the problem, not him. This is how most gamers think. Deal with their gaming or don't deal with it at all. They will play either way.

So I eventually decided to do some investigation and find out what makes these gamers and role players tick. What sort of recreation has the ability to absorb people to the extent that marriages break up, jobs are lost, and they lose friends? How does playing a game on a computer make someone lose functionality in the REAL world, because they want to spend too much time in some imaginary reality? For crying out loud, I thought, it's just a game.

I had a lot of questions but no one I talked to had answers. Gamers would tell me, "You won't understand unless you are a gamer yourself." Ok, no problem. I figured I could just play a game I find entertaining and get bored and write about what nut cases gamers really are.

It just wasn't that easy. This little experiment of mine turned out to be more dangerous than I ever imagined.

I wasn't able to begin playing a game right away. The opportunity just never really presented itself directly to me. There just wasn't a game I really liked enough to "get into it" for long enough. Low would play his Quake, Unreal Tournament, Black & White, Carmageddon, Fallout, Diablo II and a multitude of other first person shooters, but nothing seemed all that captivating to me and there was no way I could play these games with him due to his extreme level of skill and years of practice in a 3D environment.

I played a little Diablo and actually had a bit of fun with that, but I found I only really enjoyed it when I played with Low or our friends in multi-player mode. We would go "adventuring" together as they call it, fighting demons and wizards and monsters and coming out winning or dying, but having some fun just playing together. It was my first taste of actually playing with another player in a game as a team. But when Low moved onto the next game, bored with Diablo, I didn't have the same drive to play anymore. So I put my project aside and put up with his gaming as best as I could.

Massive Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games (MMORPG) have been around for many years. You can find thousands of websites, magazines, web-zines and the like that are devoted to the enormous market out there for online gaming. Sites like GameSpy, that literally receive millions of visits per day from gamers and industry types from all over the world, provide an almost infinite amount if information about these types of games. Hundreds of thousands of people play games like Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Asheron's Call, and Ultima Online each day from all over the world. With the upcoming launch of The Sims Online, analysts and game reviewers are expecting the largest online game community ever seen to develop.

"The Sims promises to be one of the most interesting human experiments in the history of the Net." -- David Kushner, Entertainment Weekly

Low had tried many of these MMORPG's. He never stuck with one very long because, as he puts it, "I got tired of being a crappy tree-elf that always fell out of the damn tree village." In Ultima Online, he "got tired of having all my stuff stolen from me and getting killed by stupid 'PKers' (Player Killers)." Apparently for him, the rewards were far and few between to keep him interested in these games. He also has a very short attention span with most games. Play it, beat it, and move on to the next game is his motto. The more games you play in a single year the more well rounded you are apparently. With the new enhanced graphics engines, hardware and development that goes into games these days, it's amazing how stimulating the market can be right now.

Early in 2001, however, Low's opinion of online gaming changed drastically. He read an article about a new online role-playing game that was set about 30,000 years into the future, on a colonized planet. The story line was science fiction themed, with monsters, mutants, futuristic weapons, wars, and sinister political plots. The player would have the ability to create a character avatar from a wide variety of attributes and be surrounded by very realistic 3D graphics, with incredible scenery and sound. You would have to defend yourself, form guilds, make friends and alliances and your goal would be to "learn" or level your character as the game progressed in order to increase your skills and possessions. There would be PVP (player versus player) combat, PVM combat (player verses mobile or "mob" for short, a term used to explain computer generated enemy or monster) and a variety of other things one could do while in the game online. You could fly a plane, morph into animals and go on dangerous missions and epic quests. The game was called Anarchy Online.

Something about this Anarchy Online game really had his attention and right after it came out in July of 2001, he bought his copy and began playing, and once again I lost him to a game. He could not stop going on and on about how "cool this or that was" or the graphics or all the people he was meeting. His excitement was just ridiculous in my eyes but I had been through this before. Nevertheless, the game also captured my interest because of its science fiction theme. I am a sci-fi buff and the storyline had such a great plot that they actually sell the novels online for it. I read the chapters as they were released and was hooked on the storyline.

Low bought another copy about two weeks later. "I want you to play with me." By this time we were under some strain because he was really absorbed by this game every night. It looked really intimidating to me and I opted not to play it right away, stalling for time. The 3D environment bothered me because any game I had ever played, like Diablo, for example, had always been in third person view, which is a bird's eye view of the environment. The 3D graphics were dizzying as I looked over his shoulder from time to time.

In the end I caved in under the pressure and began playing it in September of 2001. I was a horrible player in the beginning, running into walls and getting lost or killed all the time. It didn't matter to me. I was playing a game with my boyfriend and found with each day that went by, I wanted to log on and play more and more.

So what was the appeal? Before I realized what was happening, I became addicted to playing this game. While logged into this game I met wonderful people, via their avatars, laughed to funny antics via chat window discussions, and experienced a futuristic sci-fi world via incredibly realistic 3D graphics and sounds. We ran through swamps with mutant wolves chasing us, the sound of our feet making wet suction sounds just like you would have in reality. We could hear birds chirping in forests we scouted and vultures crying overhead as they spotted us and attacked.

Our adrenaline would pump as we fought for our lives against twenty-foot tall robots with buzz saws for hands, or as we went on safaris to hunt giant brontosaur-like animals. We had the ability to heal and save each other as well as other members of our team at the time. We also had the ability to gain the respect, over more than a year later, of many online players, for being a great couple of characters in this game. We have, in fact, become high-ranking officers in our guild, which is almost like a family or alliance with other people to help you in the game.

In South Korea, some in-game alliances are valued more than real life friendships. A game called Lineage: The Blood Pledge has captivated approximately a third of the population. In Lineage, characters can take on the role of Princes, Wizards, and Knights and vow their loyalty to their clan or guild. This loyalty had lead to an incident in 2001 where a player was nearly beaten to death in real life for virtually killing the character of another player.

"He boasted that he had offed the gangman's virtual character just for the fun of it. Bad idea. The roughnecks dragged the 21-year-old into the urinal and pummeled him until he was covered with real-world bruises." -- By Michelle Levander, Time Magazine

It is easy to lose yourself to your imagination while you become someone you could possibly never be in the real world. You can become a hero, a bad ass, a wealthy person, someone with special powers or gain an enormous amount of respect from people who look up to you. This isn't to say you can't be that kind of person in reality, but what if everyone had this ability to find respect, admiration and status, simply by being in the environment long enough. What if all you had to do was play each day and level higher and higher, each goal leading to a new goal of achievement and possibilities. And what if you never had to leave the comfort of your chair to do this?

What if you could really become a diva, a soldier, a magician, or a samurai, and people respected or admired you unconditionally as long as you had a long red bar looming over your virtual head. Or, as in especially my case, what if while you were in this virtual reality, you didn't have to worry about deadlines, due dates, over 1000 emails per day to read and answer, or day-to-day stress that comes with what I do. The virtual reality could absorb you so much, that for the time you are logged in, you forget everything else. It doesn't seem to matter whether you are a strict role-player (someone who stays in character) or 'hardcore' (someone who spends more time in-game than an average user). You still can be addicted and absorbed with the attention you get.

The official Anarchy Online Community Forum, which gets thousands of posts per day, has also been one of my sources for observing how obsessed people have become with the game. Recently, a devoted and well known player had to throw in the towel due to her addiction problem.

"The level to which I got into things here is what has lead me to this point where I must say goodbye. My internet addiction and denial of it has taken me to a point where I must get a hold of it. I realize that many people have what it takes to play a game like this "casually" in a healthy manner. I am unfortunately not one of those people. I am currently battling bi-polar disorder (manic depression) and the escapism that a game like AO offers is too much like a drug for me."

The ability to be respected, to be admired, and to succeed, even in an imaginary world, is a very powerful lure. It can cause a person to produce endorphins, a chemical released into the brain that causes a feeling of energy and well being. Gaming also causes adrenaline production and extreme excitability. Scientists have proven that endorphins and adrenal rushes are incredibly addictive.

"There are indications that pleasurable games and activities cause the body to produce endogenous opiates such as endorphins. These substances are actually addictive. Some addictive drugs, such as heroin, are chemically similar to these natural substances, while other addictive drugs are thought to stimulate their production."
-- Leonard Holmes, Ph.D. from the article, Is Pokémon Addictive? 1999

It should be easy to see why gaming can be addictive as a direct result of the physical effects on the body. I also believe that people can become addicted to respect, admiration and power as well. Even though the production of endorphins can be a positive side affect in one way, it can be easy to overindulge and put aside productive living. But there are many ways to do this and online gaming is not the only vice out there. People find many different ways to escape the problems in their life or to combat stress.

People log on each and every day to find a level of respect that doesn't come easily in day-to-day life. They log on to escape reality or to escape other real problems such as illness and stress. I have met people in this game who have mental disorders or physical impairments. I have also played with people who are in IT jobs all day long, listening to customer complaints, getting bitched at regularly. Some have even admitted that they never hear the words "good job" in the real world.

One player who works in the IT technical services industry, told me "I get my faith in people restored when I get online. People treat me with respect and are actually nice to me. They don't expect anything in return. Also, they believe me when I tell them something because of my level in the game."

I know of other overly stressed out people who log in each day to escape their day-to-day experience of working or living in hard reality. We met a person in game, for example, who is an EMT. Everyday he witnesses death and horrible accidents. He told us that he plays the game to get it all out of his mind. I also met a nurse online with a similar story, and a school teacher who teaches eleventh grade in the Bronx, NYC, who is very stressed out by his job.

"Most human beings pass through periods in their lives, when they feel compelled to engage in some apparently mindless activity that, for the time being, seems to provide some relief from the prevailing chaos in their lives. This could be something as simple as spending hours in front of the television set. Or going on uncontrollable buying sprees just to feel and smell the newness of the product. Or getting into a series of dead-end relationships. Or going on eating binges. Or playing computer games, uncaring of unattended work piling up. Or playing snooker every evening at the club regardless of the family's legitimate demand for more attention. In other words, binging on anything potentially destructive to the body or the soul. Fortunately for many of us, after a period of this compulsive indulgence, we pull ourselves back to the mainstream and get on with our lives, until the next compulsion hits us."
-- Dr. Vijay Nagaswami, from the article, Who? Me? An addict, The Hindu Folio 2001

This is not to say that there are not positive aspects to interacting with people online. Online gaming opens the doors to people who might not have the ability to do so due to time, geography, or many more reasons. Gaming online is an inexpensive and quick way to make new friends, chat with people all over the world and share an experience with people you would never meet because they may be continents away.

One of our online friends, for example, who goes by the character name "Docker", lives in Leiden, Netherlands. Another friend, "Chanell" lives in Einselthum, Germany. These are really interesting people we would never have met if it was not for the game we play online. I asked Chanell why he started playing online games.

"It all began with Diablo II being released. Then my friend, Yppo, made me try it online. I found it was an incredibly boring and annoying game. Then Yppo made me try it online and I loved it. I joined his clan and had months of online fun, then it got boring, close to the moment DAoC [Dark Ages of Camelot] was released in Europe. While I went to DAoC, Yppo chose to go to A.O." Eventually Chanell started playing A.O. as well.

When asked how playing A.O. affects his social life, he reflected, "As for my friends... yes we hang together a lot less. This could be related to A.O. or the fact that we don't work in the same city anymore. I am not totally sure. I still have a lot of phone calls and meetings so I am not "lonesome" it just isn't an as high frequency as before."

And with that I can only think that one's social life is in the eye of the beholder. I interact with Chanell almost every day. In fact I interact with more people than I ever have before because of playing a computer game. They just are not all physically in my proximity.

Interaction with people... It got me thinking and I began to develop my own theories on what causes the addiction. Psychologists can use fancy terminology like "Motivation Factors" and "Attraction Factors" such as self-esteem and self-image problems. They can harp on the role of achievement problems and relationship deficiencies in a person's personality. But I think I can sum it up to one word that would work for any individual needing his or her game "fix" each time they log in, regardless of how well rounded they are in their lives or how much of a basket case they could be perceived as.

RESPECT.

I think it is just that simple. I like the feeling I get when people look up to me in the game or ask my opinion. It seems to be a common drive for players in general. That is, to be respected for being the best and reaching the next level in the game.

Not everyone who plays games neatly fit into these Psychologists stereotypes. "Solories", another Anarchy Online player, is an example of someone who just logs on for the sake of play.

"I would say that I am responsibly addicted, meaning I have never been late to work due to AO.
My wife would prefer that I not play AO as much as I do, but I always make time for her every night, and try and do one thing planned together every weekend. I have never been late to work, but the first night I played AO I stayed up until 4:00 am and had to get up at 6:00 am and the next day I played until midnight. I don't feel that AO affects my work habits, work is work and when it is time to play, it is time to play. I enjoy watching my character grow in his skills and MMORPG's in general let you get away from the normal day to day monotone life and do something out of the ordinary. In AO I am Solories Enforcer of Rubi-Ka a defender of the cause. I fight battles that help my guild get better and help the clans win a war against the Omni."

In the process of my gaming experiment, I became a casualty of the concept of being respected. If someone had asked me in September of 2001 if I expected to be obsessed with an online role-playing game a year down the road, I would have said with confidence that I am one of the most level headed non-addictive persons I know. No way could this happen to me. In fact, I would have been reminded of poor old Iggy and his demise.

I technically have ended my experiment. In the process, I haven't lost my job, and due to our simultaneous obsession, I have not lost my fiancé either. I haven't lost my real life friends, but they do sometimes look at me funny when I talk about the game I play. Low and I get our work done, run our business and have a great balanced life together I think. Anyone who actually knows me in real life can tell you that I have no self image or esteem problems and in fact, I have been accused of having quite an ego. I won't even go into Low's ego. I will admit though, that I have missed quite a few parties, nights out with the girls, shopping, and some chores needed around the office and home because of Anarchy Online. I will also admit that I want to log in as much as I possibly can every single day.

People have worse entertainment addictions than playing computer games. If I am going to be addicted to something, I would choose online gaming over drugs, bowling, gambling, television, or being a baseball fanatic easily. I don't have to wear ugly shoes, lose my hard earned money or do the wave next to someone I don't know and that just about makes it a no-brainer for me. It IS after all just a video game, like Neal describes in his great novel, Snow Crash. It is just another amusement park.

"Amusement parks in the Metaverse can be fantastic, offering a wide selection of interactive three-dimensional movies. But in the end, they're still nothing more than video games."
--Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

And I will leave you with that. Signing on now... Tenjikiito, level 157 Female Solitus Adventurer, Advisor to the Clan Guild Synergy Factor, the best damn guild on the world of Rubi-Ka, with the best damn virtual people one could ever virtually meet.

Special thanks to the following people for help with my research and leveling:
Sohjiro (Low Tek), Theevilcouch, Demnspawnt, Akarah, Chanell, Sheffy, Mr. Cheeze/Conqueso, Solories, Kirishami, Docker, Ramzie, Boco (who is to blame for all of this), Sultanx, Asmoran, Caddock, Meurgen, Tergwannabe, Trus, Ayanamie, Cplkane, Spherana, Ankokujin, Thedwarf (aka Notmyfault), Stromm, Molg, Butwalrus, Ciyt/Toonot, and Yokoduna.

Related links:

Anarchy Online
Dark Age of Camelot
Ultima Online
Diablo II
The Sims
Everquest
Try Anarchy Online free for 7 days! (We dare you to). =]

In an industry scrutinized by the government as a drug infested haven that pollutes our communities and destroys the ability to lead a productive life, there is another industry that has the potential to become even more dangerous than any drug addiction. I'm not supposed to be writing this. What was supposed to happen was I prove my thesis that I couldn't be sucked into a virtual reality like many people I have met before. I never really understood what I was getting myself into when I started my research experiment, playing a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.

Three years ago at a nightclub I bumped into an old friend of mine who went by the nickname "Iggy". I was really amazed to see him because no one had seen nor heard from Iggy in over a year. Many of his friends had all wondered what happened to him.

"Jesus Iggy, where in the hell have you been?!"

"Everquest," was all he said. He looked down at his feet when he said it.

"Huh?" I had no clue what he meant.

"I've been playing Everquest."

As we spoke, Iggy opened up to me and confessed that he had lost his job, his friends and didn't want to go out much anymore.

"It's an addiction. I'm only out tonight because the server is down for patching and I'm miserable."

For some reason, he couldn't look me in the eye while he was talking. He was obviously embarrassed.

"Um. Okay." I mean, what was I going to say to something as incredulous as that? I've heard of game obsessions, like those college kids in the seventies that murdered their whole family while playing a Dungeons and Dragons game, but I just thought that sort of obsession lies only in the minds of sociopaths or people with a lot bigger problems than playing a game. Iggy was a really nice, normal guy who had lost a lot to some online role-playing game called "Everquest". I had no idea what to make of it.

I never saw Iggy again. Neither has anyone else who knew him that I have asked. Since that night I really pondered the absurdity of his situation. It nagged at me.

On the web you can put the words "gaming addiction" into Google and discover a thousand and one sites for support groups, self help courses, testimonials and various studies. There's the "Everquest Widows" forum, a site called "Ariadne - Understanding MMORPG Addiction", and a myriad of articles on topics like game addiction and the innocent bystanders that suffer from it.

As one Everquest Widow puts it, "I plan on starting "Widows Weekly." It will be a group that meets in a local coffee shop. Here, spouses can talk and help one another through this difficult process, and begin to realize that there is a life out there despite the loss of our loved ones. I plan to send the bill for coffee and snacks to Verant. It would be but a small compensation on their part to repay me and others for the loss of our loved ones--so pay up, Verant!" -- Christine Gilbert CD Mag.com

What I find interesting is that many of the people who author these articles or sites have usually neither played the games or have just been the "victims" such as spouses or family. Others who dissect the topic of game addiction tend to be outsiders looking in, shaking their heads or turning the study into one giant mouse in the maze science experiment. It's rare that you find someone, who actually plays games passionately, speak up or write anything about negative side affects.

The more people I met who played computer games, the more I wanted to understand the obsession. I also had another stake in this because my partner, Low, is a gamer and a "geek" in every sense of the word. Not to mention my fiancé. It was beginning to cause some strain on us from time to time in terms of "quality time". I was getting really angry with him on a regular basis actually. According to Low, it was I who had the problem, not him. This is how most gamers think. Deal with their gaming or don't deal with it at all. They will play either way.

So I eventually decided to do some investigation and find out what makes these gamers and role players tick. What sort of recreation has the ability to absorb people to the extent that marriages break up, jobs are lost, and they lose friends? How does playing a game on a computer make someone lose functionality in the REAL world, because they want to spend too much time in some imaginary reality? For crying out loud, I thought, it's just a game.

I had a lot of questions but no one I talked to had answers. Gamers would tell me, "You won't understand unless you are a gamer yourself." Ok, no problem. I figured I could just play a game I find entertaining and get bored and write about what nut cases gamers really are.

It just wasn't that easy. This little experiment of mine turned out to be more dangerous than I ever imagined.

I wasn't able to begin playing a game right away. The opportunity just never really presented itself directly to me. There just wasn't a game I really liked enough to "get into it" for long enough. Low would play his Quake, Unreal Tournament, Black & White, Carmageddon, Fallout, Diablo II and a multitude of other first person shooters, but nothing seemed all that captivating to me and there was no way I could play these games with him due to his extreme level of skill and years of practice in a 3D environment.

I played a little Diablo and actually had a bit of fun with that, but I found I only really enjoyed it when I played with Low or our friends in multi-player mode. We would go "adventuring" together as they call it, fighting demons and wizards and monsters and coming out winning or dying, but having some fun just playing together. It was my first taste of actually playing with another player in a game as a team. But when Low moved onto the next game, bored with Diablo, I didn't have the same drive to play anymore. So I put my project aside and put up with his gaming as best as I could.

Massive Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games (MMORPG) have been around for many years. You can find thousands of websites, magazines, web-zines and the like that are devoted to the enormous market out there for online gaming. Sites like GameSpy, that literally receive millions of visits per day from gamers and industry types from all over the world, provide an almost infinite amount if information about these types of games. Hundreds of thousands of people play games like Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Asheron's Call, and Ultima Online each day from all over the world. With the upcoming launch of The Sims Online, analysts and game reviewers are expecting the largest online game community ever seen to develop.

"The Sims promises to be one of the most interesting human experiments in the history of the Net." -- David Kushner, Entertainment Weekly

Low had tried many of these MMORPG's. He never stuck with one very long because, as he puts it, "I got tired of being a crappy tree-elf that always fell out of the damn tree village." In Ultima Online, he "got tired of having all my stuff stolen from me and getting killed by stupid 'PKers' (Player Killers)." Apparently for him, the rewards were far and few between to keep him interested in these games. He also has a very short attention span with most games. Play it, beat it, and move on to the next game is his motto. The more games you play in a single year the more well rounded you are apparently. With the new enhanced graphics engines, hardware and development that goes into games these days, it's amazing how stimulating the market can be right now.

Early in 2001, however, Low's opinion of online gaming changed drastically. He read an article about a new online role-playing game that was set about 30,000 years into the future, on a colonized planet. The story line was science fiction themed, with monsters, mutants, futuristic weapons, wars, and sinister political plots. The player would have the ability to create a character avatar from a wide variety of attributes and be surrounded by very realistic 3D graphics, with incredible scenery and sound. You would have to defend yourself, form guilds, make friends and alliances and your goal would be to "learn" or level your character as the game progressed in order to increase your skills and possessions. There would be PVP (player versus player) combat, PVM combat (player verses mobile or "mob" for short, a term used to explain computer generated enemy or monster) and a variety of other things one could do while in the game online. You could fly a plane, morph into animals and go on dangerous missions and epic quests. The game was called Anarchy Online.

Something about this Anarchy Online game really had his attention and right after it came out in July of 2001, he bought his copy and began playing, and once again I lost him to a game. He could not stop going on and on about how "cool this or that was" or the graphics or all the people he was meeting. His excitement was just ridiculous in my eyes but I had been through this before. Nevertheless, the game also captured my interest because of its science fiction theme. I am a sci-fi buff and the storyline had such a great plot that they actually sell the novels online for it. I read the chapters as they were released and was hooked on the storyline.

Low bought another copy about two weeks later. "I want you to play with me." By this time we were under some strain because he was really absorbed by this game every night. It looked really intimidating to me and I opted not to play it right away, stalling for time. The 3D environment bothered me because any game I had ever played, like Diablo, for example, had always been in third person view, which is a bird's eye view of the environment. The 3D graphics were dizzying as I looked over his shoulder from time to time.

In the end I caved in under the pressure and began playing it in September of 2001. I was a horrible player in the beginning, running into walls and getting lost or killed all the time. It didn't matter to me. I was playing a game with my boyfriend and found with each day that went by, I wanted to log on and play more and more.

So what was the appeal? Before I realized what was happening, I became addicted to playing this game. While logged into this game I met wonderful people, via their avatars, laughed to funny antics via chat window discussions, and experienced a futuristic sci-fi world via incredibly realistic 3D graphics and sounds. We ran through swamps with mutant wolves chasing us, the sound of our feet making wet suction sounds just like you would have in reality. We could hear birds chirping in forests we scouted and vultures crying overhead as they spotted us and attacked.

Our adrenaline would pump as we fought for our lives against twenty-foot tall robots with buzz saws for hands, or as we went on safaris to hunt giant brontosaur-like animals. We had the ability to heal and save each other as well as other members of our team at the time. We also had the ability to gain the respect, over more than a year later, of many online players, for being a great couple of characters in this game. We have, in fact, become high-ranking officers in our guild, which is almost like a family or alliance with other people to help you in the game.

In South Korea, some in-game alliances are valued more than real life friendships. A game called Lineage: The Blood Pledge has captivated approximately a third of the population. In Lineage, characters can take on the role of Princes, Wizards, and Knights and vow their loyalty to their clan or guild. This loyalty had lead to an incident in 2001 where a player was nearly beaten to death in real life for virtually killing the character of another player.

"He boasted that he had offed the gangman's virtual character just for the fun of it. Bad idea. The roughnecks dragged the 21-year-old into the urinal and pummeled him until he was covered with real-world bruises." -- By Michelle Levander, Time Magazine

It is easy to lose yourself to your imagination while you become someone you could possibly never be in the real world. You can become a hero, a bad ass, a wealthy person, someone with special powers or gain an enormous amount of respect from people who look up to you. This isn't to say you can't be that kind of person in reality, but what if everyone had this ability to find respect, admiration and status, simply by being in the environment long enough. What if all you had to do was play each day and level higher and higher, each goal leading to a new goal of achievement and possibilities. And what if you never had to leave the comfort of your chair to do this?

What if you could really become a diva, a soldier, a magician, or a samurai, and people respected or admired you unconditionally as long as you had a long red bar looming over your virtual head. Or, as in especially my case, what if while you were in this virtual reality, you didn't have to worry about deadlines, due dates, over 1000 emails per day to read and answer, or day-to-day stress that comes with what I do. The virtual reality could absorb you so much, that for the time you are logged in, you forget everything else. It doesn't seem to matter whether you are a strict role-player (someone who stays in character) or 'hardcore' (someone who spends more time in-game than an average user). You still can be addicted and absorbed with the attention you get.

The official Anarchy Online Community Forum, which gets thousands of posts per day, has also been one of my sources for observing how obsessed people have become with the game. Recently, a devoted and well known player had to throw in the towel due to her addiction problem.

"The level to which I got into things here is what has lead me to this point where I must say goodbye. My internet addiction and denial of it has taken me to a point where I must get a hold of it. I realize that many people have what it takes to play a game like this "casually" in a healthy manner. I am unfortunately not one of those people. I am currently battling bi-polar disorder (manic depression) and the escapism that a game like AO offers is too much like a drug for me."

The ability to be respected, to be admired, and to succeed, even in an imaginary world, is a very powerful lure. It can cause a person to produce endorphins, a chemical released into the brain that causes a feeling of energy and well being. Gaming also causes adrenaline production and extreme excitability. Scientists have proven that endorphins and adrenal rushes are incredibly addictive.

"There are indications that pleasurable games and activities cause the body to produce endogenous opiates such as endorphins. These substances are actually addictive. Some addictive drugs, such as heroin, are chemically similar to these natural substances, while other addictive drugs are thought to stimulate their production."
-- Leonard Holmes, Ph.D. from the article, Is Pokémon Addictive? 1999

It should be easy to see why gaming can be addictive as a direct result of the physical effects on the body. I also believe that people can become addicted to respect, admiration and power as well. Even though the production of endorphins can be a positive side affect in one way, it can be easy to overindulge and put aside productive living. But there are many ways to do this and online gaming is not the only vice out there. People find many different ways to escape the problems in their life or to combat stress.

People log on each and every day to find a level of respect that doesn't come easily in day-to-day life. They log on to escape reality or to escape other real problems such as illness and stress. I have met people in this game who have mental disorders or physical impairments. I have also played with people who are in IT jobs all day long, listening to customer complaints, getting bitched at regularly. Some have even admitted that they never hear the words "good job" in the real world.

One player who works in the IT technical services industry, told me "I get my faith in people restored when I get online. People treat me with respect and are actually nice to me. They don't expect anything in return. Also, they believe me when I tell them something because of my level in the game."

I know of other overly stressed out people who log in each day to escape their day-to-day experience of working or living in hard reality. We met a person in game, for example, who is an EMT. Everyday he witnesses death and horrible accidents. He told us that he plays the game to get it all out of his mind. I also met a nurse online with a similar story, and a school teacher who teaches eleventh grade in the Bronx, NYC, who is very stressed out by his job.

"Most human beings pass through periods in their lives, when they feel compelled to engage in some apparently mindless activity that, for the time being, seems to provide some relief from the prevailing chaos in their lives. This could be something as simple as spending hours in front of the television set. Or going on uncontrollable buying sprees just to feel and smell the newness of the product. Or getting into a series of dead-end relationships. Or going on eating binges. Or playing computer games, uncaring of unattended work piling up. Or playing snooker every evening at the club regardless of the family's legitimate demand for more attention. In other words, binging on anything potentially destructive to the body or the soul. Fortunately for many of us, after a period of this compulsive indulgence, we pull ourselves back to the mainstream and get on with our lives, until the next compulsion hits us."
-- Dr. Vijay Nagaswami, from the article, Who? Me? An addict, The Hindu Folio 2001

This is not to say that there are not positive aspects to interacting with people online. Online gaming opens the doors to people who might not have the ability to do so due to time, geography, or many more reasons. Gaming online is an inexpensive and quick way to make new friends, chat with people all over the world and share an experience with people you would never meet because they may be continents away.

One of our online friends, for example, who goes by the character name "Docker", lives in Leiden, Netherlands. Another friend, "Chanell" lives in Einselthum, Germany. These are really interesting people we would never have met if it was not for the game we play online. I asked Chanell why he started playing online games.

"It all began with Diablo II being released. Then my friend, Yppo, made me try it online. I found it was an incredibly boring and annoying game. Then Yppo made me try it online and I loved it. I joined his clan and had months of online fun, then it got boring, close to the moment DAoC [Dark Ages of Camelot] was released in Europe. While I went to DAoC, Yppo chose to go to A.O." Eventually Chanell started playing A.O. as well.

When asked how playing A.O. affects his social life, he reflected, "As for my friends... yes we hang together a lot less. This could be related to A.O. or the fact that we don't work in the same city anymore. I am not totally sure. I still have a lot of phone calls and meetings so I am not "lonesome" it just isn't an as high frequency as before."

And with that I can only think that one's social life is in the eye of the beholder. I interact with Chanell almost every day. In fact I interact with more people than I ever have before because of playing a computer game. They just are not all physically in my proximity.

Interaction with people... It got me thinking and I began to develop my own theories on what causes the addiction. Psychologists can use fancy terminology like "Motivation Factors" and "Attraction Factors" such as self-esteem and self-image problems. They can harp on the role of achievement problems and relationship deficiencies in a person's personality. But I think I can sum it up to one word that would work for any individual needing his or her game "fix" each time they log in, regardless of how well rounded they are in their lives or how much of a basket case they could be perceived as.

RESPECT.

I think it is just that simple. I like the feeling I get when people look up to me in the game or ask my opinion. It seems to be a common drive for players in general. That is, to be respected for being the best and reaching the next level in the game.

Not everyone who plays games neatly fit into these Psychologists stereotypes. "Solories", another Anarchy Online player, is an example of someone who just logs on for the sake of play.

"I would say that I am responsibly addicted, meaning I have never been late to work due to AO.
My wife would prefer that I not play AO as much as I do, but I always make time for her every night, and try and do one thing planned together every weekend. I have never been late to work, but the first night I played AO I stayed up until 4:00 am and had to get up at 6:00 am and the next day I played until midnight. I don't feel that AO affects my work habits, work is work and when it is time to play, it is time to play. I enjoy watching my character grow in his skills and MMORPG's in general let you get away from the normal day to day monotone life and do something out of the ordinary. In AO I am Solories Enforcer of Rubi-Ka a defender of the cause. I fight battles that help my guild get better and help the clans win a war against the Omni."

In the process of my gaming experiment, I became a casualty of the concept of being respected. If someone had asked me in September of 2001 if I expected to be obsessed with an online role-playing game a year down the road, I would have said with confidence that I am one of the most level headed non-addictive persons I know. No way could this happen to me. In fact, I would have been reminded of poor old Iggy and his demise.

I technically have ended my experiment. In the process, I haven't lost my job, and due to our simultaneous obsession, I have not lost my fiancé either. I haven't lost my real life friends, but they do sometimes look at me funny when I talk about the game I play. Low and I get our work done, run our business and have a great balanced life together I think. Anyone who actually knows me in real life can tell you that I have no self image or esteem problems and in fact, I have been accused of having quite an ego. I won't even go into Low's ego. I will admit though, that I have missed quite a few parties, nights out with the girls, shopping, and some chores needed around the office and home because of Anarchy Online. I will also admit that I want to log in as much as I possibly can every single day.

People have worse entertainment addictions than playing computer games. If I am going to be addicted to something, I would choose online gaming over drugs, bowling, gambling, television, or being a baseball fanatic easily. I don't have to wear ugly shoes, lose my hard earned money or do the wave next to someone I don't know and that just about makes it a no-brainer for me. It IS after all just a video game, like Neal describes in his great novel, Snow Crash. It is just another amusement park.

"Amusement parks in the Metaverse can be fantastic, offering a wide selection of interactive three-dimensional movies. But in the end, they're still nothing more than video games."
--Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

And I will leave you with that. Signing on now... Tenjikiito, level 157 Female Solitus Adventurer, Advisor to the Clan Guild Synergy Factor, the best damn guild on the world of Rubi-Ka, with the best damn virtual people one could ever virtually meet.

Special thanks to the following people for help with my research and leveling:
Sohjiro (Low Tek), Theevilcouch, Demnspawnt, Akarah, Chanell, Sheffy, Mr. Cheeze/Conqueso, Solories, Kirishami, Docker, Ramzie, Boco (who is to blame for all of this), Sultanx, Asmoran, Caddock, Meurgen, Tergwannabe, Trus, Ayanamie, Cplkane, Spherana, Ankokujin, Thedwarf (aka Notmyfault), Stromm, Molg, Butwalrus, Ciyt/Toonot, and Yokoduna.

Related links:

Anarchy Online
Dark Age of Camelot
Ultima Online
Diablo II
The Sims
Everquest
Try Anarchy Online free for 7 days! (We dare you to). =]

Dark Age of Camelot and Everquest do this. I think Anarchy Online does too, but I'm not positive on that one. This allows the publisher to change the EULA on the fly, and presumably makes it more difficult for the user to claim ignorance since he has to explicitly accept the terms every time the program is run.

Try it sometime.

AO

Because Sci-Fi isn't doing so hot.

MMORPGs [massive multiplayer online role playing game] are completely different from the usual product, because shipping the CD is not the final step -- it's only the first. These games have to be continually supported, not just by tech support and moderators, but by programmers, artists, designers -- an entire development team has to keep working on these games, to add new levels, new worlds, new storylines, new scenarios. To not only entice new players, but to keep the existing players playing.

Download from Funcom, East Coast, USA (This may be unavailable from time to time)

Download from Pacific Internet (Australia) Pty. Ltd

It is quite clear that the software itself is can be free, and benefit from code sharing, peer review, and all the other advantages of open development, without damaging the revenue model.

I was thinking the same thing the other day--why don't the people who publish these MMORPGs give away the games for free? I imagine most of their income is from the monthly fee anyway, and it seems like they'd get a lot more people hooked if they just gave you the software. (The drug dealer model.)

I'm really excited about Anarchy Online (www.anarchyonline.com) and I've had to resort to offers of buying people software in order to get them to play. :P