Players of Everquest, when provoked with yet another frustrating social or personal situation having to do with game play, often fall back on the argument that "it's just a game." In truth, it is a game, a recreational activity that takes place on a mechanical server that uses computer code to create a fantasy world. But to call it just a game, with the implication that the relationships inside the virtual world are at best superficial, is to not do justice to the a world that is persistent and as real as the world we inhabit as we play it.

If one reads the message boards, it becomes clear that human emotions and passions are stirred not just by the actions of playing the game as it is designed, but by the social and personal relationships that develop between people in the game. Characters take on the attributes of player personas, reflecting age, educational level, and life experiences. A player's character of course will not reflect every aspect of that person, but at a fundamental level reveals much about the person at the keyboard. This fact is most clearly revealed when a character is taken over by another individual--traded, borrowed, or sold. That character will no longer reflect the personality of the original player, despite having the same basic characteristics they had before, such as appearance and level of skill. The new player inhabiting the avatar will have a different outlook on social relationships, a different way of playing, a different sense of humor, honor, fairness. Conversly, a new character or alternate character started by a player may be instantly recognized as that person if they have a particularly dynamic or distinctive way of expressing themselves. Those that know the person's main character will expect that person's alternate character to comport themselves similarly to their main character's personality. The creation of an alter-ego, such as a person who might make a troll character so he can talk in "troll speech" will not change the basic values and behaviors that the player expresses in game. A player may choose to be "evil" as an alternate to his good "paladin", for instance, but those aspects of a person must both be within the basic person of a player for them to be convincing. We expect a character player in the game to have a multi-dimensional personality. The use of grammar, spelling ability, level of vocabulary, all give secondary clues about what people may be like both in the game and out of it. When so much of the game depends on forming social relationships, the ability of a player to get along in a group becomes paramount. This fundamental truth is what makes this world a true society formed within a virtual space. In a game where "dying," even if temporary, is a setback to achieving most player's goals, trust in one's fellow players is a decisive factor in deciding who is liked or disliked. The issue of trust is further extended to the knowledge of gender. We want to know what sex a person is. Knowledge of a person's gender colors much of what we thing about them and how we react to them. It is part of our social training. And so, a more subtle effect of the importance of the social relationships that develop through the game is the concern over whether a person at the other end of a character is in fact socially male or female in real life. Age and economic status, even sexual orientation, are not near the catalysts for discussion as the assigned sex of the individual's character in the virtual world. Granted, as most players are male and there are many female characters in the game, it is the men that seem to be most concerned with the problems that arise with "gender bending." Some of the most heated debates on the game forums have had to do with the gender of players and the characters they play. Sexual orientation is an issue that is deeply rooted in modern Western culture, and so the issues that arise with the ability to conceal one's "true" gender result in controversy that can always be assured of eliciting a reaction. A shocking revelation that someone's character had virtual sex with another character, played by a person of the same gender, when that other person was concealing that same sex identity--and purporting it to be a heterosexual encounter-- sends a tremor of unease throughout the community of players. The virtual sex remains unchanged, but the encounter then becomes the subject of discussion of the larger issue of shame--that it was a homosexual experience--and deception.

Everquest society has its own governing body, in the form of players and the higher authorities, as represented by the GMs. The player-constructed society is much more authoritarian and powerful than the overarching rule enforcing employees of Verant. Players know they can call on the highest authority to perhaps decide a dispute, but if one looks carefully at the boards the GM is generally called to settle a social dispute over fairness and justice that has already been decided by a player. Players use the "play nice policy" that the GMs are there to enforce when they feel they need the extra leverage of the governing body to help them assert power over another player. This is social interaction of the highest order, using authority to assert individual and group rights. If one reads the boards, players would much rather solve problems themselves than have a representative of Verant solve it. This use of the justice system to further individual goals of economic gain is as important as the act of disciplining someone who works their way out of the bounds of "civilized" society.

The economic and political structures on the Everquest servers are the core to understanding why Everquest is not "just a game." The social and political structure as a whole has been designed by Verant to make economic power the most relevant aspect of game play. All aspects of Everquest society revolve around achieving and maintaining economic power for individuals. Leveling one's character is important so one can get more buying power, both through the accumulation of cash and the ability to acquire objects of more economic importance. Accumulating power cannot be accomplished on a large scale without the cooperation of other players, whether it be through help in fighting, to accumulate experience or items, or by selling items to other players for money in game. The social structures in Everquest, specifically seen most clearly with the formation of player guilds, are based for the most part around accumulating wealth and therefore power, which leads to the accumulation of more wealth. There are some guilds who "role play." Role playing does not preclude gaining levels of experience and economic power. Players who strive for power come into direct conflict at times with those who do not, who play the game for the social aspects. The players who try to subvert the dominant paradigm, which is the quest for power, often find themselves at odds with the basic premise of the society. As one's friends and compatriots move up in the hierarchy, which is judged by levels, those players who do not choose this path are left behind. This struggle over power is expressed socially in many ways, and causes conflicts between players. The idea of "twinking", giving a character more equipment than his current economic status would normally allow him, sparks numerous debates among players as to if it is "wrong" or "right". A twinked player would, in the not too distant past, feel shame at his display of wealth far beyond his means. Envy, jealousy, the realization that non-enhanced players could not achieve power as quickly as those that had better equipment, allowing them to fight harder creatures, sparked social debates over the fairness to the player society as a whole. As the game matured, so many people had achieved enough power to enhance alternate characters, or were in player guilds that had the economic power to do so, that enhancing one's character became the normal state, rather than the exception. Degrees of "twinking" became apparent, and suddenly those players who were "poor" for whatever reason and could not equip their characters with the best equipment became liabilities to society. The pressures to fight more difficult creatures and acquire wealth more quickly increased as the power of individual players increased. It is more than a game when players feel the emotional need to level at any cost, and find ways to do so never imagined by the games designers. And with those economic pressures came the tangential vices that occur in any society where some people have more goods than others. Crime--petty theft, con artists, and forcibly taking other people's territory to get items--exists side by side with the player-appointed social structures of calendars for the most difficult and best areas, waiting lists for desireable spots, guild hunts to make items available for guild members, and support networks for helping friends. The "victimless" practice of prostitution (sex for items and platinum) is yet another offshoot of the pursuit of wealth and power, as characters--regardless of gender in real life--trade a valued commodity of sexual attention for valued commodities in game. Beggars abound, using a different sort of talent and ambition to receive money and items from richer, more powerful players. Verant of course is inherently encouraging this system of economic power building. Creating a world that has a limited amount of resources but unlimited cash resources, and making the limited items to be an essential to obtaining power (better armor and weapons), they started a chain of events that perhaps could only have resulted in what is occurring now. Human nature being what it is, and a player base firmly planted in Western culture, it is not surprising that the game becomes personal, and much more than something people can dismiss easily. The acquisition of wealth and power, so central to each player's own "real life" cultural base, is now mirrored in a virtual world real people inhabit, for hours and days at a time. The difficulty and time required to achieve the economic goals in the game add to the personal investment of each player, as 200,000 people try to gain power over the game and each other. The arguments, personal epithets, discussions of fairness and exploits, all are more than understandable given the fundamental drives of people playing each character.

And then came Ebay, where players could sell equipment and money for a currency that was accepted outside the game, to buy goods and services the players needed outside the world of Norrath. Suddenly the game acquired a new dimension that made it all the more difficult for those who were not in the relentless pursuit of wealth and power. Much like in world history when trade routes were opened up for small countries, so Norrath became a trade route to a larger world, the one outside of the Verant server universe, and so like those small countries, was fundamentally changed, taking on the values of the larger society by which it was engulfed. Now players had even more incentive to hunt for expensive items, and the economic factors of wealth and power that heretofore had been confined to each server now extended to the wealth and power of individual players. Those with money in the world outside Norrath could now bring their economic power to bear on the societies of the servers. Players with money could afford to buy the best equipment, and even powerful high level characters. The balance of power was now on a new playing field, one that brought the players behind the keyboard into focus. Those with ambition and in-game power (in the form of a high level character that could hunt npcs with valuable items) could "farm" items to sell; those players with economic power outside of the game could buy the best equipment or money to use in-game, thus making their own characters much more powerful. Again, words such as "fairness" and "cheating" are used in discussions about what is most important in the game. The society of players on any given server is no longer in a closed system; and so it becomes more than a game because it effects much more of a person than just the persona of a character that only exists in Verant's universe. The ideas of wealth and power became larger, as the ability to acquire wealth became greater. The very notion that the ideas of fairness and justice could be brought to bear on the issue of player equipment and the economic system, which now exists very much outside the game as well as in it, illuminates the idea that it is more than just a "game" that people have no personal feelings about. The drive to succeed, for no apparent reward other than power, can hardly be explained in the context of the game itself--what is the intrinsic reward? It is the inclusion of other human beings that makes it so much more rich in scope. The states of human emotion--pride, power, ones relation to others in society--make this much more than a game, because real people have brought human interactions of the most fundamental kind into this closed universe.

The social aspects of the game, fueled by the need to acquire more goods and services, solidified the player guilds into a necessary aspect of success within the game. The guilds became political entities, vying for the most power and influence over acquisition of wealth and power. The more powerful guilds became, the more of the closed world of the server they were able to control at one time. Player guilds with the most power were able to influence policy at the highest levels, and accusations of corruption among Verant employees were leveled and often confirmed. The amount of power the large guilds with high level characters could wield make for personality conflicts among players, influencing a much wider sphere than just the world of the server. People talk with one another outside the game environment, through email, on forums, over websites. Personalities and people with power and influence become known outside the server environment, and are judged on the standards of the larger society they inhabit. Real life issues become mixed with game issues, friends and enemies are made, emotions run high. People fall in love, become friends, have affairs with one another. It is not "just a game" because people cannot divorce human emotions from gameplay in which those human emotions bring so much to bear on the success of any endeavor in Everquest. Persistence, group loyalty, courage, honesty, caring…those are all character traits that make a person's character successful in Norrath. Even if one chooses never to group with others, which some people do choose to do, it is inevitable that a player will interact with others to some degree. Even the expressions of selfishness, cowardice, dishonesty are all human attributes that effect other players as personas at a keyboard somewhere outside the virtual world. When creating a character, people are advised to pick one that will fit their basic personality traits--healer, fighter, making magic and not meleeing, going it alone, backstabbing. The names people choose for their characters, especially last names, reflect how much they want to imbue these avatars with an identity that somehow reflects their own. Players can further define a character's personality by writing statements seen when they are inspected by another player. These messages often reflect something about the player at the keyboard as well as the persona of the character in game.

This bleeding together of fundamental issues--emotions, mores, and social norms of the player's lives outside of the game is one of the reasons that players of Everquest cannot just say that "it's only a game." The game gives rise to too much passion in the pursuit of wealth and power to be divorced from the basic human instincts of the players that inhabit the world. It is only a game in the sense that if everyone stopped playing it, nothing would be destroyed in the world we inhabit when not playing. But we cannot say it is only a game when so many of our most fundamental beliefs and character traits, as well as our most basic emotions, are brought to bear as we interact with others. It is a mistaken notion to think that we are not emotionally involved in the world of Everquest, and that it does not affect players in a fundamental way. Those who leave the game are missed, and most of those who have achieved a measure of success have a need to take a formal leave-taking if they decide to stop playing. Those who choose to stay, despite the flaws in the game design and with fellow players, have a loyalty that is surprisingly strong.