Gaming Superstitions – Searching for a Group of Burly Men?

Like any good MMO gamer, I've been a participant in the ongoing Daedalus project. While filling out the latest iteration of the questionnaire, this article on gaming superstitions caught my eye. Or, really, a brief collection of the various rituals that people go through when playing their favorite games to influence the supposedly random outcomes. It's pretty fascinating, really, and like Mr. Yee, the ones I find most outlandish are the ones from games I've never played. And some I remember from games I've played with fondness I might swear up and down are actually true. Even though I'm the sort of person who's not very superstitious, I'm more than a little inclined to look at the game's behavior and try to piece together some results amidst the randomness – the same drive that leads me to figure out damage or armor equations is the same one that leads to developing intricate rituals.

So, my mind turned to the game I'm actually playing these days, Guild Wars, and if there are any superstitions to be found there. I know there's an open argument over whether the game counts as an MMO or not but, you know, Mr. Yee includes it as an option and all. And maybe it's because of the PvP focus of the game - which pits players against players and leaves little room for mystery – but I'm hard pressed to think of much. There are a few, however.

In PvE I tend to solo so I don't run into other player's quirks very often. The AI for henchmen has steadily improved over the years but I remember when they were first introduced the contortions you'd put yourself into trying to control them. So, the days of dancing around the rez pad lest your henchies suddenly take flight and run through any terrain or obstacle to the point where you died are over. As are, for the most part, the delicate steps required to get them to start rezzing when a teammate dies. To this day, I still Ctrl-click myself when I want to retreat – the belief was that you'd cause them to break off attacking and focus on you and that led them to follow you faster. And I'll call spam a monster reapedly to make sure they're training on my chosen target. Even though I'm pretty sure the AI won't respond any faster depending on the amount of times a target is called, I'm still conditioned to fill the chat box when I want something dead and they're, seemingly, not paying attention.

But I think the biggest superstition amongst Guild Wars players has to do with the matching system. When you're enter the random matching system for GvG the program looks through all the other teams waiting for a game. Scooping through the list, if you will, of waiting teams to find a proper opponent. At first the scoop tries to match you with teams near your own ranking but the longer you wait, it starts to look beyond that narrow range to increase the chances of making a match. Wait long enough and your chances of being pitted against a much better team rise. A team like in that old Penny Arcade comic. And this technology is pretty well established and known because the developers have tweaked it in the past to ease match-making and lower waiting times. However, there's also a widespread belief that if you cancel your match and re-enter the queue that it resets this timer and you'll avoid being rolled (And also avoid being matched up against a cupcake but really the fear is that you land someone from the top100 when you're no where near that good.). I know players who put the “awaiting a worthy opponent” message on a timer or who've worked out elaborate rules for just when to cancel and restart, even going so far as to try to puzzle out the exact coding behind the scoop mechanism itself. But the only evidence that this actually works is anecdotal. And, in fact, can never be anything more than circumstantial because of the sheer number of complex factors involved – it's impossible to test out and, thus, prove. Yet, as in Mr. Yee's article, the effort required is seen as being worth the potential benefit so the superstition persists.