Internet has majorly supported the growth of Virtual World. In this world, anyone could make their own customizable cyberspace or identity (this has been seen in Facebook, Myspace and many other social networking applications). Like in the real world that we lived in, we need identity to identify our self, to distinguish our self from other people. Virtual world allows us to re-identify or re-introduce our identity in this new world. The term for ‘identity’ inside the virtual world is avatar. With the capability of virtual world, it allows players inside make actions that is similar to the real life (such as buying selling trading etc), this encourage the player itself using that actions to develop their avatar inside the virtual world. The avatar is connected to the virtual world, like many other avatars inside the world, this opens possibility meeting with other avatars, this where community in the virtual world builds from.
Meadows (2008:51) argues that experiences create a grounding of belief. Well, I totally agree with Meadows statement. Since people play in virtual world, they build their own life, which they cannot have in the real world. In second life, they literally could customise any character they want and create a significantly different character than their real appearances. And you can make changes to the world itself. That is the reason why people enjoy virtual world, they have another life beside their real life!
Not only actions, the idea of improving the avatar are another feature from virtual world. This idea has been used in MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) games. Games that allow users to role-play the character inside the game, improving and making it stronger, that eventually encourage the user to spend more time inside the game’s world. This accumulative-building-system inside the virtual world differentiates between the worst and the best, the superior and the inferior. Many features inside virtual worlds mimics systems in the real world, this would give acknowledgements to the user’s avatar inside virtual world. Virtual world is a world where an imaginary cyber life takes on.
Socializing through the virtual world definitely makes the player more motivate. Not just with levels and quests, World of Warcraft for instance, it focuses on grouping and teamwork to give social feature to the game. Players can join or form which called Guild. Guild is a group of 10 or more players in the game. Within the guild also apply the hierarchy rank, leader as the highest rank and an initiate for the lowest rank. The higher rank in the guild, the more authority that the player has within the guild only. Guilding is another way to socialise with people in virtual game, they discuss and talk about the game.
Some of players playing World of Warcraft for their income, by trading the account or Warcraft’s money in game with real money currency, it is considering as illegal, but it is unavoidable for the game developer. This trading has an adequate market itself, there is many selling and buying transactions for World of Warcraft happened in real life, especially in Ebay. As the fact that, some gamer wants to skip the leveling part of the game and jump into the maximum character, many of them provide some leveling service for them or even selling the character that already in high level. The stronger of the character in that account, the more expensive will the price be for that character.
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