I've not been blogging much recently due to real life commitments and issues that have taken priority but I feel now is a brilliant time to step away from all of this and return to what I like to consider my pass-time here on Curse. I am going to look at a behavioural complex that effects a large proportion of players who play any MMOG and this is the complex that has led to many, "hiding behind their avatar."

I have met many players from many walks of life in World of Warcraft and the game has one of the single most diverse population of people of any game I have played. Not only do we see a large representation for the different gender groups but also a large representation for different social groups. Jocks, chavs, goths, grebos etc etc. All are represented within World of Warcraft and this has led to a phenomenon that, in my honest opinion, can only serve to better the world at large.

In this day and age, we are surrounded by diversity. Religious diversity, to name but one, has led to war on a global level and we can see evidence of this by the growing tensions in the middle east between the Christian led American Government and the Muslin led Iranian Government over the presence of Israel in the area. This difference is something that is testing political stability world wide. Another example is the differences between communist countries, such as Cuba, and capitalist countries, once again like America.

In a gaming environment however, these differences seem to be very much left in the real world and guilds of people from many different religions, creeds and view points come together for a common goal - the game. So why do people feel that it is fine to leave these difference outside of gaming but perfectly ok to renew them in a real life situation?

In Britain we have a social group called chavs. Originally, much like any minority group, chavism was a trend of clothing that spread amongst teenagers and young adults on a national level but eventually, the mindset associated with this trend came to light. This mindset led to individuals becoming very hostile towards each other and chavisms is now associated with knifes, guns, petty crime, theft and robbery and a host of other malicious activity and due to the fact that the majority of chavs are older teenagers, my age group is treated with contempt due to their actions.

I have met a few people in World of Warcraft I could and willingly do label chavs. The difference between these chavs and those on the streets of the place I live are that they leave the social divides behind when they log on to WoW. I spend a lot of my time actually talking to these people and enjoying talking to them even though if it were an irl situation I would go out of my way to avoid them simply by the way they act and dress. They seem to act differently to those I meet irl and this leads to me actually liking the person they are on the internet. This is a good example of someone hiding behind their avatar but not all examples are this peachy.

Forums are a haven for trolls. That is to say people can and do at in a way that would be deemed socially unacceptable in real life. They do this because they suffer little to no repercussions for their actions if they do step out of line and feel that the line they draw irl can be moved much further away from morality in this situation. People make personal attacks on other not because they are retaliating to them but because they can. This is a bad example of why hiding behind your avatar can be detrimental to the community of people you play with.

Needless to say, avatars provide people a way of being someone different (and 99% of the time the idealistic version of themselves) without any repercussions. Some people are overly vicious and others are overly nice. In the end, not everyone is who you expect them to be and if you make that step to meeting them in irl, you could get a nasty surprise upon seeing them and talking to them or you could get a pleasant one.