task 4

Part 1:

I ended up choosing to (hypothetically) play Everquest 2. I chose to play this game over WOW because it was my first choice.

The race I chose was dwarfs because the description of them applied to what I belive I would be like if I were to ever be in a war. What appealed to me was the description of the dwarfs. Even though they are dwarfs no one should ever underestimate them or judge them based on there height. They can always surprise the enemy on what capabilities they have.

The class I chose to be was a beserker. The reason being is that if I were to ever be in a battle or war I would want to be the one on the front lines trying to kill as many enemies as I possibly could. What appealed to me at first was the type of armour the beserker was wearing. The second thing which appealed to me was the description of what a beserker does in battle. He is the one at the front of the army. I hate seeing in movies the general of the army sitting at the back of the batallion on his horse sending in all his men to die.


If I were to name my character, he would be called Des Troy (Destroy). The type of personality my character would have is anti-social and is very blunt. He doesn't care what anyone thinks. He takes his own orders within boundaries.


Not all of this is related to my real life identity. I'm actually very gentle, nice and sociable. The description matches more of my identity when someone pisses me off.


I do not have an avatar at all. If I ever were to have an avatar in a virtual world I would not be concerned at all about the appearance or personality of the avatar. If people in the virtual world want to judge my real life identity based on my avatar, that's there problem. Online gameplay is online gameplay. I don't live that life, I live my real life.

Part 2:
One theory that could apply to the discussion topics from my previous blog would be the narrative theory raised in Simons' article. It talks about how majority of games has a beginning and an end and that the players playing them know that. Well it's the same thing in real life, people know that there is a beginning to life on earth and that it eventually comes to an end. In the article it states that if something bad happens to a persons avatar in the game it will not happen in real life. This statement seperates the virtual world from the real world, however there are some similarities between virtual and real life. Both are a quest, the same person has goals in real life and has goals playing in the virtual world and you have to go through certain stages to reach them in both cases.
A second theory I would use is brought up in Taylors article dealing with Women and gaming. It says that video games are played predominately by men. The majority of game creators are men and the real world is predominately controlled by men. Women in the gaming world are looked at the same way in the real world, mainly as weaker than men are.

The strengths of both of these theories is that they point out the similarities between both worlds.
The weakness is that they can be contridicting and show how different the two worlds are from each other.