One of the places players have the most "authorship" is in MMOGs. Here, though, the "writing" of your experience is more collaborative. While you can invest in parts of the game in much the same way as in open-world, single-player games, there is a fair portion of the experience that is controlled neither by the game itself nor by the player in question, but by other players roaming around the same environment. And if you're in a PvP-enabled virtual "place," the authorship is even more diffused. Your own creativity is only part of the story. Some of your deepest connections may be formed, not with NPCs or favorite places in the world but with other real live human beings. Could such relationships make you cry? Why not?
If you've ever worked closely with someone to overcome a series of challenges over a period of months, you know the joy that can result from being part of a well oiled team. If you've ever been betrayed by a close friend in your offline life, you know the pain that can arise when such a team fragments and falls apart. Though less may be at stake in an online world, the emotions are no different. But are these emotions and interactions art?
Who's to say? But it just might be, if by "art" we mean an expressive work that touches our emotions. It's just, in MMOGs, the emotions being affected can vary wildly from person to person. For some, such games will rise to the level of art; for others, they will always be only games.
As with the difference between on-rails and open-world single-player games, MMOGs come in a range of flavors, as well. The external trappings of swords versus spaceships are of little consequence, here.
More important is the extent to which players are able to interact with and affect the world around them. At one end of the scale is a game like World of Warcraft, in which important connections may be formed between players, but where those players never have an impact on the virtual world. No matter how many trolls you do away with, after all, more will always return to take their place. Adventurer after adventurer rides through the same unchanging landscape, and while your character may improve greatly over time, the backdrop against which your story unfolds remains static.
Slide along the scale a bit, though, and you come upon worlds like PlanetSide and Lineage - places where the landscape holds more than just a series of challenges to be beaten and then left behind. Both games feature players as central to the action, working both with and against each other to shape their virtual worlds by capturing and holding important points of territory. This is the battlefield, MMOG-style, and it mimics many of the emotions that are conveyed by the best big-screen portrayals of war, with one important difference: The players themselves share in the glory of conquest or the ignominy of surrender; it's you that stands triumphant after taking a rampart or hardpoint, and it's you that stands over your fallen ally on the field of battle (though, of course, he's fallen only temporarily; there's little doubt about whether he'll get up). The potential for tears of joy or bitterness is far greater in worlds like these.
But what's really at stake, here? Resource nodes are one thing, but what about scenarios in which a full-scale war - not just a battle - rages across wide swathes of territory? Anyone who knows me well knows which MMOG I'll trot out next: It's the space opera EVE Online, of course, where alliances of well over a thousand players wage war against each other, with control of dozens of star systems filled with valuable resources of many kinds hanging in the balance. Alliances rise and fall over the course of many months, politics rend what were formerly powerful ties, and you learn to depend on the people you fly with, because EVE is a world where death hurts. Your story unfolds on an epic scale, and it's a story in which the world can be bent to your will - in contrast to the constantly regenerating landscape of World of Warcraft.
