Students Blog

Surprizingly, Bartle's four categories of players fits well with Ragnarok Online. This may be because Ragnarok Online offers players many social and competitive options, such as belonging to a guild, getting access to guild dungeons (whereby only guild members can enter), and fighting in pvp or WOE (War of Emperium, aka Guild Wars). Ragnarok helps solidify socialization by allowing players to form guilds of their friends. Once in a guild, players can turn on guild chat and easily speak to their guildies anytime, unlike "pming," which is equivalent to whispering to one person at a time. Guilds are often composed of people who share the same ideology, or characteristic, such as Bartle's 4 types; explorer, socializer, killer and achiever. Certain guilds become famous often times for this generalization. For instance, a guild called CowBoysFromHell have been known as the killer guild; haughty, rude people who enjoy mocking others by owning them in battle or "ksing" people. There are also other guilds known for it's achiever ideology; guilds that threaten to expell a member if they're not active enough, or if they don't gain enough levels. And of course, pure social guilds, who do not WOE at all.

On an individual basis, Bartle's 4 personalities are still strong in Ragnarok Online. There are some socializers who almost camp out at towns and can always be found there chatting to friends. There are other hard-core achievers who are always found on the hardest maps everyday, leveling non-stop. The only times they come to town is to restock, and soon after they leave to level again. Ragnarok Online has such a big world with so many maps and hidden dungeons its a lot of fun for explorers. In addiction, there are many quests players can engage in for entertainment. Lastly, the killers of RO hardly go unnoticed. Many players gain reputations for being the best fighters, which includes both the respectful, nice players, and the disgustingly debasing players. Since RO offers WOE and pvp, many players have become addicted killer machines who gloat over every victory. Bartle mentions that increasing killers tends to decrease achievers; this predicted trend is quite easily seen in Ragnarok Online and yet it also further motivates some achievers. They become enraged at disrespectful killers and level even harder to get stronger and save money to buy pvp specific gear.

Overall however, the killers greatly dampen the achiever's motivation to fight in pvp or WOE. Some players even refuse to pvp or WOE at all, and because pvp and WOE is an available option that players choose, the socializers are spared being killed by the bloodthirsty killers. Killers in RO then, can only directly fight those who chose to fight in pvp or WOE. However, there are ways for killers to mass murder people. In the past, an item called a "dead branch" could be used in towns to summon a random enemy, anything from a simple bug to a mini boss. Killers used to release as many as over a thousand dead branches in towns to destroy everyone. The GMs have restricted this ability, so killers can now only dead branch outside of towns. Still, they often mass murder mobs of people that enjoy socializing right outside towns, espeically where the popular leveling places for nubs are. One more way that killers can harm others indirectly is by mob training aggro enemies and leading them onto other players. In general, since the establishment of WOE (where as many as a hundred players will fight each other in one area) the nonkiller players have become fustrated and annoyed, especially the achievers who specialize in fighting well against boss and regular monsters and not pvp. In terms of play production, Ragnarok Online has more capacity for creativity since the entire game is about avatar customization. Players cannot create new items within Ragnarok online, but they can create hundreds of gear items and form strong ties to their guilds.

Shattered Galaxies does show a high correspondance to Bartle's 4 types of players but not as well as Ragnarok Online. Being a real time strategy MMOG already constrains the limits of socialization in Shattered Galaxies. Players have a small avatar that doesn't fight; they use small units for fighting squads which really fails to personalize the player within the avatar. In addition, battles rage constantly in real time so many players only stop in town to resupply before going off to kill again. This game offers three factions to join, so the loyalty is not as strong as when players can form their own groups, further dampening the socialization factor. Not all players in this game were killers however, some were happy to help lost players. In addition, the three nations that players choose to belong to help promote unity since players cannot win battles by themselves.