W.O.W. #2 – My Character Choices

In his essay Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs Richard Bartle discusses the four types of players in Multi-user dungeons such as World of Warcraft. He creates four categories: Achievers (diamonds), Explorers (spades), Socializers (hearts), and Killers (clubs) (Bartle 3-6). A lot of his research pertains to race/class choices in W.O.W. – players make different choices about what kind of character they want to play as based on their play-style and what they hope to get out of the game.

I chose to be a human mage for my primary character, and also created a human huntress just to see what the gameplay associated with that class was like.

I took the time and thought to make both characters look kind of like me, but I didn’t think much about why I made the choices I did regarding the race and class of my avatar(s).

Why did I decide to be a human – both times? Well, my limited knowledge of W.O.W. has led me to believe that the Alliance represents the “good guys” and the Horde are the “bad guys”. I don’t actually know if this is true or not, but the connotations of the names of the categories alone carries that weight. Out of all the potential Alliance races I could have chosen, the humans were the most appealing in appearance to me, so that’s why I chose them.

As for class, I always find myself leaning towards “magical” characters in these sorts of games, so my choice to be a mage as my primary character wasn’t difficult. For my secondary character, I chose huntress because I liked the idea of having an animal companion (clearly I thought long and hard about this). I never considered what I wanted to get out of the game when initially making these choices, or what they said about me as a player.

Referring back to Bartle’s player types, an analysis of my choices and my own gameplay leads me to believe I’m more of an explorer/achiever. I’m not interested in close combat – with other players or the enemies in the game – nor do I like being forced to fight when I’m trying to explore. I suppose we’ll see if this continues to be an issue as I explore the game further – perhaps the quests become more compelling the longer you play?

(Game session was 1 hour long, played at home on my laptop)