Artifex Guild, Mining, and Business Deals

After a couple weeks with Mabinogi, Kazukikun recommended I join a friend's guild specifically targeting "older" players. "I'm in college, though," I thought. I'm not that old! But I wasn't opposed to belonging to some guild, since I felt a little noob-ish running around without a guild association. Besides, I would appreciate the opportunity to meet more players and be a part of a grander purpose.

A few days later I was messaged by the guild leader of Artifex, Ashrayne. She wanted to meet me "face to face" to talk about joining. It's always a little awkward meeting new people, be it real life or virtual, but this was especially nerve-wracking considering our mutual contact, Kazukikun, wasn't there.

We took a seat in a quiet spot to chat. I didn't know what to say since I thought it would be like a job interview. So I just introduced myself, how long I've been playing Mabinogi, and that I'd started the game for my CSS 490 Virtual Worlds class. Ashrayne introduced herself as a mid-20's player who was fed up with the younger "LOL pwned!" crowd and started the Artifex guild to attract more mature players she could socialize with.

The guild initiation process
Eventually, she came to the conclusion that I would be a good fit and would be welcome to join her guild. I eagerly accepted the invitation. Why not expand my experience in this virtual world to include the camaraderie of guild membership? Plus, because the guild was production-oriented (thus the name Artifex), I now had a sub-goal of developing one of the production skills.

So I got to work. Because I'd need to write a research paper based on some aspect of Mabinogi, and I would become a production-inclined character, I felt it would be a great opportunity to investigate the game's economy. Metal refining and blacksmithing are among the more rare skills players develop (for various reasons), so I decided it would be a market that had little supply. Unfortunately, the mines where metal ore can be gathered doubles as a dungeon, so I had to trek solo with my pickaxe into the depths. It gets pretty lonely.

After a weekend of trying to level my rank F refining skills up to E (and dying several meaningless deaths in the mines), I realized that I couldn't yet refine the more valuable metals I was pulling. Copper, Silver, and Gold ore was useless to me, and the NPC's were giving me only 5, 10, and 20 gold for each unit. Bah! Those rates don't cover the cost of potions spent recovering HP and equipment durability. So I got my first chance to sell a commodity earlier than I thought.

Approaching the only other player at a refining furnace, I politely asked if he wanted some copper ore. "I'll take," he said. Hm, I didn't want to give the ore away, since 0 is less than 5 gold. "How about 100g apiece," I asked. He opened the trade window. I dropped 8 units of copper ore for him. He dropped 800 gold. I threw in the one gold ore I had since I wanted to build goodwill. He dropped another 100 gold. I was just going to give it to him, but that was fine by me. Thus the deal was made, and I had completed my first business transaction with this character, Zeroace:

What remains to be seen is the true market value of copper ore, which I will be looking into the next time I log in. Regardless of how much I may have lost, the sale was still 20 times the NPC buying rate, so I'll consider the transaction a success.

Mabinogi

With a three-day weekend on the horizon, I figured it would be a better time than any to dive head first into an MMO. Since I wasn't playing one before I enrolled in this course, I didn't want to pay money to play just in case I never picked up the game after the quarter was over. Maple Story is a very popular free MMO, so I investigated Nexon's webpage for a client download. On a whim, I instead downloaded Mabinogi from their site, a more traditional fantasy-oriented game since the 2D aspect of Maple Story didn't really appeal to me.

Nexon's business model in this game is to offer premium services and goods to paying customers, while letting freeloaders like me play (almost) as long as I want without paying a dime. Eventually, because of the game's age system, my character will reach a prohibitive age and I'll need to "rebirth" the character into a youthful 10 year-old in order to keep growing (getting skills, experience, etc.).

I spent Friday night getting acclimated to Mabinogi, and as a console gamer at heart, I struggled with hotkeys and clicking on things. I died several times trying to navigate a field of wolf cubs. I didn't know anybody in the world, so my NPC-only gameplay wasn't captivating. By bedtime, I wasn't convinced these MMO-things were so great.

Saturday, I logged in again just to give the game a chance to show me anything that could hold my interest. Running mundane errands around the initiation village, I encountered the hook. After learning a "campfire" skill, I tried immediately to start one. It was midnight gametime, and I figured it would be appropriate. I failed repeatedly (I don't think I understood the procedure), but another player had a nice fire burning already. I took a seat opposite her at the fire and asked her how she did it. Politely, she explained. Then, innocently enough, asked, "You're new, aren't you?" My n00b status was clearly evident. After a little conversation, she mentioned she was interested in the weaving skill. I had mentioned that my beginner's clothes were an eyesore, and she (surprisingly) offered to make me a new garment. Thus I met Vampireai.

I spent the rest of the night running around the graveyards filled with spiders collecting silk for my new duds. Diligently Vampireai spun threads in town. A beginner tailor herself, this process took 3 hours. It didn't bother me though, because I had suddenly discovered a meaningful quest: make me a shirt and friend simultaneously! When it was all said and done, this charming character posed with me and my new outfit:
I was very grateful for her work. But what now? Instead of parting ways, she offered to show me around the world. She said she liked to help newbies, and that it was just in her nature. I wasn't arguing, so I tagged along with her as we crossed vibrant plains to other cities before stopping in a town roughly a 20 minute sprint from the crutch of the initial town.

The place was deserted. Maybe the server is underpopulated. Maybe it really is too far away from anything useful. Either way, we hung out in an auditorium and chatted. Before long, another player who had overheard our "public" conversation, stopped to chime in:

His name was Kazukikun, and out of pure boredom, stayed to chat. Later, the three of us went fishing as a makeshift late-night band of buddies. It really was a surreal experience. This never happens in real life. Yet there I was, with 2 real people, fishing the serene waters of an isolated lake chatting about our real lives!

Thus I discovered the true power behind the MMO concept. As an online game, Mabinogi cannot master the single-player experience of a dedicated masterpiece like Zelda: a Link to the Past. Yet it also cannot master the multiplayer frenzies of online FPS deathmatches. It's niche is the social interactions both in the foreground (guilds, trading, etc.) and in the background (getting to know the player behind the persona). After my weekend expedition into the world of Mabinogi, it is the friendships I've established that will pull me back into the game, even if only to say hello to Vampireai and Kazukikun.

Competitive TCG Guilds

I haven't played and MMO since Phantasy Star Online back on the Dreamcast, and I've been reluctant to dive back into one despite CSS 490C making MMO participation a requirement. At the moment, I haven't signed up for a new game since I'm still looking for one that will feel right, but I will blog about my weekend at a Magic the Gathering pro tour qualifying event.

In an attempt to draw parallels between my tournament experience and MMO's, I struggled for the majority of the day, both with the assignment and in my matches. I dropped rounds 1 and 2 to quickly eliminate my chances at a coveted top 8 berth. I've been doing that a lot recently as I fall back to mediocrity since my heyday on the tournament scene about 2 years ago. But I paid $25 to get into this damn tournament, so I was going to play the remaining 6 rounds and get my money's worth of Magic. From there, I went 3-3 to finish the day at a disappointing 3-5 record.

"Why have I begun to suck at this game," I asked myself in between rounds. "What's changed?" After some thought, I've spent considerably less time playing games in general in my year-and-a-half here at UW Bothell, which I attribute to more demanding schoolwork and/or a renewed dedication to my education. As a result, I've scaled back my time with Magic to the point where I play roughly once every 2 months. Contrast that to my previous years, where I would play every Friday night and about one Saturday a month. I've given up a lot of practice time!

To liken this to an MMO, this play habit is super casual; hardly a real player at all. If Magic were an MMO, my account would be constantly idle; I wouldn't make meaningful progress. I'd be a WoW "scrub."

But much of the skill of playing the TCG isn't lost over time. I still understand the concepts of game tempo, card advantage, who's the beatdown, etc. My fundamentals are intact. What I think has really been affected by my departure from hardcore status is my "guild" membership. That is, my group of players I practice with in advance for these kind of large events. As I looked around the tournament hall, there were obvious groupings of players who know eachother, who've done their testing in preparation for the event, and in general form a collective whole of competitors who are stronger than they would be individually.

This struck me as an MMO concept that can be applied to competitive Magic. When I was "good," I was very much a member of a local group of players who shared secret tech, who practiced all the time, and would provide the cards to members who needed them so no one had to play an underpowered deck for lack of other options. Magic for the most part is an individual competition officially, but really the battle begins prior to the first round as the "guilds" set forth battle plans to take down their enemies and claim the invitation to the pro tour.

In this regard, I've been playing this game solo for the last year-and-a-half in a world where information passing, resource sharing, and strategic planning in a guild offers tremendous advantages to a player before the first cards are drawn.

The next major tournament will be in March, right around the end of the school quarter. As an attempt to prove my theory, I plan on getting much more involved with the old group I used to play with. Hopefully I'll see positive results in my next outing, which I will take as confirmation of the advantages of belonging to a Magic guild. Luckily for me, my CSS 490 class may even welcome a return to heavy gaming!