The Faces We Choose in the Worlds We Visit
By Michael Lafferty

Perceptions can be dangerous things and lead to wrongful assumptions about the “good” or “evil” of a race

Simply refer to this piece as a series of ramblings, or meanderings, in the world of massively multiplayer online game fantasy. 

There is a trend that seems all too pervasive – if you want to create an MMO, give it a medieval fantasy setting, sprinkle it with a host of familiar mobs (monster or NPC bestiary) and call it good. There is a formula and few developers are building ships to sail unchartered waters in the genre.

One attitude that seems to run rampant through most of these games is the notion that races that are bent to the will of evil are less than appealing in the looks department. Too few times are races, which have strayed from the “good” side, represented by charm or elegance. Some games do buck the trend, but even the recent Xbox title Fable, which gave players choices that followed good threads or evil, devolved the character if the lesser choices were made.

If one looks at society, one will note that most of that which we consider evil has a seductive charm to it. If the face of evil or a nasty vice were represented by a wrecked body, a “Gollum” if you will, the attractiveness of pursuing a certain lifestyle would be less appealing. Some games try to blur the line a little, creating races that are merely different, not good or evil, but if we see a certain look, do we attribute a certain behavior to that? 

Take World of Warcraft, for example. The dichotomy begins with the names of the two factions. You have the Alliance races and the Horde races. Even the names have certain connotations. Then you look at the races within each faction; the Alliance has night elves, gnomes, dwarves and humans, while the Horde are comprised of undead, orc, troll and tauren (bull-like creatures). The Alliance races have certain rounded features, are much more appealing, while the Horde races are sharp-angled and, no offence intended, somewhat unattractive from a purely aesthetic standpoint.

In World of Warcraft, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

While numbers are not released, it would be interesting to see just how many of the game’s record-setting community are Alliance and how many are Horde. Further, if such numbers were kept, how many raids are initiated by Horde races (forays into Alliance zones to kill NPCs and others who activate their PvP flags) as opposed to raids into Horde territory by Alliance classes?

Another MMO did not have appearance distinctions between the players, but distinguished the players through factions was Asheron’s Call 2. The game only had three playable races and they remained constant regardless of whether a player choose the Order, Dominion or Shadow factions. However, those who choose Order (this was quite some time ago, so things may have changed), picked the role of a little more honorable PvP, while those who embraced the Dominion or Shadow factions seemed freer to indulge in baser instincts, such as portal camping and ganking, and killing younger players to the cry of “embrace the singularity.” Wrongful behavior? Not at all – actually, kudos to those players who role-played their factions so well. And in a PvP world, there are no real rules when it comes to open combat.

The orc is presented with more nobility in Lineage II

Lineage 2 offered only four races – humans, orcs, dark elves and elves. Unlike most other games that twist the image of orcs into malformed creatures, Lineage 2 gave the orcs a strong, almost noble face. The bodies were powerful, and the race held itself straight (not hunched over and hulking) with pride.

But in the realms of role-playing, this is not often the norm. Usually, there are appealing races and unappealing races. And the players who take up the role of the less attractive races do so with a general sense of unabridged latitude in how they can play the classes, in terms of role-play elements.

For a change, it would be nice to see the either the perceived notion of good races have less appealing (physically) races, while those races defined as opposite of the “good” races not peopled by malformed or ugly classes. Literature has shown that even malformed people (like Quasimodo) can be the heart of goodness and kindness, while the youthful and handsome Dorian Gray indulged in the vices in a most hedonistic way, with no fear of consequences as long as his portrait remained intact.

Ok, before those of you who play one of the Horde races in WoW rush to send out a bevy of unkind e-mails, let it be stated that there are no good or evil races in World of Warcraft. They are merely different factions, with different homelands and different appearances. It is only perceived notions that differentiate between the factions. But just as the painting of the aforementioned Dorian Gray turned ugly through a life with no consequence, often the image we have of in-game personas begin with the picture that the developers have painted for us as our representatives.

Online gaming offers players the unique opportunity to step outside of themselves, and to play a character that has no semblance to them at all (well, at least let’s hope not), but it does seem – for the most part – that we are all locked into perceptions, and until we walk a mile or so in a tauren’s hooves, we seldom realize that even undead have feelings and are likely good folks who just wanted to play a different-looking race. Think of it as Shaquille O’Neal playing a gnome rogue, or a delicate, petite woman playing a huge male ogre warrior. The sum of who we are as players does not lay in the appearance but how we choose to play the role. There really needs to be more varied options in race appearances, and not locking people into certain notions about the race they are choosing to play.

Few games have done that, to date, but let’s hope that in the next crop of gaming, some choices are a little more wide open.

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