State of the MMO: Name Recognition

A new series where I go all Keith Olbermann, special comment and talk about the various changes within MMO’s throughout the last ten years.

I believe something is missing from today’s MMO’s and that is name recognition, but not in the sense that people must fawn over you on message boards and blogs claiming you are the best at whatever you do. I am talking about reputation one use to earn and had to maintain on their character.

In the modern MMO your name does not mean as much as it use to. Granted there are much more MMO’s and they are much larger than in the past, but it goes beyond that. Take Everquest, the game was almost designed so that you had one character that you played for the life of the game. When you reached level twenty you could add a sir name, (last name) many took theirs seriously and from that many names became known in Everquest, not just server wide, but game wide.

While it was still just a game those who had built up a reputation as a good player were very careful to maintain it. It was rare to see people with the same last names and when you did you knew everyone under that “family” name were people you could trust.

Sure there were many who did not care about their name, but in Everquest it was different. If you appeared to not care about your character or your actions you would quickly find yourself without someone to group with and in EQ, you had to group to do anything.

At first, in the early days of World of Warcraft, people brought that idea over with them. However, many were still playing EQ2 and by the time they made the jump over to World of Warcraft things had changed.

It became about picking a name that fit into pop culture or a name you thought would be funny when you killed someone in PVP. When it became much easier to level and reroll your character, name recognition went out the door. Even those who did take pride in their name and reputation were quickly drowned out by those who did not care at all.

On the message boards your name was connected to your character and when someone who had earned their rep spoke, people listened. It was not that they were better than anyone else; it was that people knew the person speaking had something to say, something they wanted to hear.

Even the name changed to identify what we play. It use to be referred to as a character, meaning a creation that we controlled every aspect of, its identification, it is a role we play hence role playing. Now it is just a toon, a colorful animated sequence of code that we run around with doing whatever we want.

Don’t get me wrong Everquest and games of its time were not the golden age of MMO’s. There were a lot of things wrong with those games and many of the players. Many people took their name and used it to keep others out. Guilds would be created to rule over a server keeping anyone else from moving ahead.

There was still drama on the message boards, people who got into fights at conventions and names like Steala Amfek. Still, there were also names like Avibus, Proudmoore and guild names such as The Golden Eagle Trading Company which you knew you could look to for good player and good overall people.

There is something missing today in the world of MMO’s. We are drowning in a sea of Chuck Norris jokes and Rick Rolls. I find them funny to, but I guess I wish I could have a little of both. Now we have name changes, server changes, sex changes and faction changes. It just does not matter anymore who you play or even how you play to some extent. Perhaps it is just a sign of the times. Maybe I should take the rose colored glasses off.