CHAPTER 7

Large-Scale Technical and Cultural Variation

With the earlier chapters as background, the concluding chapter will consider the large-scale structure of virtual worlds, which typically exists on several levels. Most of these worlds consist of multiple regions, each of which may support a local community of nonplayer characters (NPCs) to which, in some cases, people may also belong. Connected sets of regions may function as nations or factions. For example, in World of Warcraft, the main Human city is Stormwind, on a temperate seacoast, whereas the Dwarves concentrate in a city named Ironforge in a less hospitable region to the north. But both belong to the Alliance faction, in competition with the Horde, and Stormwind is connected to Ironforge by an underground railway. Two classic examples dating from 2001, Anarchy Online and Dark Age of Camelot, divide their worlds into multiple regions organized in three competing factions, rather than just two. All popular MMOs exist in multiple forms, supported on separate Internet servers, differing by time zone, by language, and in the specific rules governing human interaction, notably more or less violent. The MMOs differ greatly in how their internal economic systems connect to the economy of the wider world, notably in the extent to which users pay only a standard subscription fee or buy advantages inside the MMO using money from outside.

Thus the virtual local communities are both separate from but also within a much wider and complex virtual civilization, as the local communities of our own real world will be in the coming years. Commercially successful MMOs tend to add territory over the years of their profitability, chiefly to keep veteran players active, by providing additional interesting activities and environments, thereby motivating them to pay subscriptions or continue to buy virtual goods. A game that stops growing fades from public awareness, both because the gamer news sites feature it less often and because players do not encourage friends to join them in new group missions. Regions of a gameworld primarily differ in how experienced and thus both skilled and well-provisioned an avatar must be, which seems unlikely to model the meaning of geography in our real world. However, spatial variation is often used as a metaphor for social, cultural, and economic variations, such as the “fields of science,” “sectors of the economy,” and “social distance.” Most MMOs depict conflict between ethnic or political coalitions, each having some home territory, which could represent the areas served by competing Internet providers as well as it does nation states. Typically, each virtual faction has a distinctive culture, whether framed in terms of race, religion, or revolutionary ideology. We might prefer the local manufacturing of the future to be independent of any of these traditional human conflicts, but to some degree they may be unavoidable.

The Structure of Open Virtual Geographies

A good example to begin with is a virtual world that is about to go out of existence, erasing all its geography from human experience, with limited exceptions like this description that had been copied into a wiki that may survive for a while:

Nexus itself is wild and unsettled, with an endless variety of dangerous frontiers just waiting to be explored. Crumbling Eldan ruins lie hidden within majestic forests, towering mountains, and murky swamps, containing arcane magic and ancient technology of unimaginable power. The rusting wrecks of giant robots lie half-buried in shifting desert sands, and strange and deadly alien creatures prowl in the shadows of extraordinary monolithic machines. And hidden among all of these wonders are the dark secrets of the Eldan themselves, and the answers to why they disappeared from planet Nexus so long ago.¹

This was the nexus for complex interactions between human beings, in the MMO WildStar, and connected a score of rather large regions, with gateways between adjacent regions and air-taxi services. Like World of Warcraft and many other MMOs, avatars were divided into two factions, the Dominion and the Exiles, each of which controls some of the regions designed for avatars at low experience levels. In an earlier book chapter devoted entirely to WildStar, I explained the structure and function of the early-level geography:

New players begin in a tutorial set in outer space, on an arkship, then select one of two starter regions in which to enter Nexus. The initial choices for the Dominion are Crimson Isle and Levian Bay, while for the Exiles they are Northern Wilds and Everstar Grove. These are very earthlike but somewhat wild lands that serve as advanced tutorials. There are 50 levels of general experience advancement in WildStar, the first 3 levels being earned easily on the arkship, and levels 4 through 6 gained through very active missions in a Nexus starter zone, that would be challenging for anyone who is not an experienced MMO player, but are not especially difficult for veteran players. Each of the four starter regions leads to a second separate region: Crimson Isle to Deradune, Levian Bay to Ellevar, Northern Wilds to Algoroc, and Everstar Grove to Celestion. These four routes take avatars to experience level 15, and their geographic diversity supports different story-based quest arcs, motivating players to create multiple characters, thus paying subscription fees longer, or buying more virtual goods for real money.²

At this point in their process, avatars gain easy access to their faction’s huge capital city, Illium in the case of the Dominion and Thayd in the case of the Exiles. These are centers of commerce and industry, and many players do their virtual manufacturing at extensive sets of simulated machinery, near NPC vendors, including a pair representing the two parallel player markets, one primarily for raw materials and the other for products. The next full region dominated by the Dominion is Auroria, and the Exiles hold Galeras, both of which are good for farming and gathering raw materials. Higher level regions are contested between the two factions, which the WildStar wiki describes thus:

The Dominion is a powerful interstellar empire that rules the galaxy, using military strength, religious fervor, and advanced weaponry and technology. Established by the Eldan more than a thousand years ago, the Dominion has now claimed Nexus as its own—and will stop at nothing to ensure that the fabled planet is completely under their control. Having recently arrived in force, the Dominion is prepared to crush the ragtag alliance of the Exiles, unleashing the full power of their formidable military against those who would dare trespass upon the sacred ground of planet Nexus!³

The Exiles are a gutsy group of mercenaries, refugees and exiles that have forged an unlikely alliance upon the planet Nexus. Scattered beyond the edge of known space by the violent expansion of their sworn enemy, the Dominion, the races of the Exiles have now banded together to explore the wonders and face the dangers of Nexus, hoping to make a new life among the planet’s mysterious ruins and unexplored frontiers. United by a burning hatred of the Dominion, the Aurin, the Granok, the Mordesh, and the Humans of the Exile Fleet are prepared to make a final stand against the invading empire that has claimed the planet. The Exiles consider Nexus their last hope, and they are willing to die for it.⁴

Note that these two paragraphs not only explain the contest between the two factions, but also express the meaning of the geography to them, “sacred ground” or “last hope.” Manufacturing in WildStar was exceedingly complex and included a selection of six tradeskills, five of which produced products to help avatars during their adventures: armorer (heavy, metal armor), outfitter (medium, leather armor), tailor (light, cloth armor), technologist (medical supplies), and weaponsmith (weapons).⁵ The sixth production tradeskill was architect, who crafted a wide variety of objects that can be added to a player’s home, which was located in the faction’s capital city, was unusually important in this particular MMO, and was capable of extensive customization, as the housing article in the wiki explains: “You start off with simple designs and can build them up into more desirable designs with different features, the inner outer, walls, roofs, doors, windows, wallpapers and furniture can all be changed or added onto your home.”⁶ Table 7.1 documents the series of 21 special architecture quests completed by one of my Dominion avatars, on the way to total mastery of this profession. Each quest was obtained from a work order board in a particular region, but usually the manufacture was done in Illium, then the product was delivered back to an NPC at the same location where the quest was obtained.

Table 7.1 A series of region-specific architect quests to manufacture home products

Region	Product	Schematic	Raw materials	Rank	XPS	Vouchers
Deradune or Ellevar 6–14	5 metal platforms	Metal plank	25 iron chunks	Novice	10	211
	5 bramble bushes (small)	Bramble bush (small)	10 knotted heartwood, 15 bladeleaf	Novice	16	316
	3 long fences (Granok)	Short fence (Granok)	25 iron chunks	Novice	27	474
Auroria 14–22	5 Galeras walls	Crude fence	15 knotted heartwood, 10 iron chunks	Novice	40	342
	5 single metal crates	Airtight container	20 titanium chunks, 5 ironbark wood	Apprentice	66	513
	5 wicked fire totems	Moodie totem	25 ironbark wood	Apprentice	110	770
Whitevale 22–28	5 medical cots (hovering)	Medical cot (hovering)	25 titanium chunks, 5 zyphyrite crystals	Apprentice	40	342
	5 snapping traps	Snapping trap	25 platinum chunks, 5 hydrogem crystals	Journeyman	66	513
	5 marauder lamp post	Bronze lamp post	20 platinum chunks, 5 hydrogem crystals	Journeyman	110	770
Farside 28–34	3 purple star pillow piles	Comfortable pillows	15 whimfibers, 6 reinforced leather	Journeyman	80	556
	3 wall-mounted generators	Holovision set	6 platinum chunks, 6 hydrogen crystals	Journeyman	132	834
	2 fuel pumps	Easycrank panel	4 platinum chunks, 2 diamonds	Journeyman	220	1,251
Wilderrun 35–40	3 shiphand lockers	Burnished treasure chest	9 augmented hardwood, 9 xenocite chunks	Artisan	80	556
	3 fancy dressers ­(Dominion)	Dresser (ornate)	15 augmented hardwood, 3 xenocite chunks	Artisan	132	834
	2 triple wall dividers (honey)	Wall dividers (honey)	6 xenocite chunks, 6 augmented hardwood	Artisan	220	1,251
Malgrave 40–44	3 chests (gold)	Skinny-waisted barrel	12 augmented hardwood, 6 xenocite chunks	Artisan	160	903
	3 peeping eye security cameras	Chua spotlight	12 xenocite chunks, 6 shadeslate crystals	Artisan	265	1,355
	2 coffee tables (heart-­collection)	Heart-collection side table	6 primal hardwood, 4 denimite, 3 galactium chunks	Expert	440	2,033
Grimvault 45–50	3 Tiki torches	Tiki torch	12 primal hardwood, 6 augmented leather	Expert	0	1,467
	3 nautical wheels	Nautical chair	9 primal hardwood, 6 augmented leather, 3 galactium chunks	Expert	0	2,201
	3 Freebot surge protectors	Dreg wind-well	9 galactium chunks, 9 primar hardwood, 3 starshards	Expert	0	3,303

The first example, producing five metal platforms, can explain the general process. The mission to make these products was obtained in one of the early Dominion regions, either Deradune or Elevar, that are designed for avatars of experience level 6 to 14. Each tradeskill began by giving the avatar a small number of simple schematics, conceptualized as the computer program used by the production equipment to manufacture a particular product. Schematics to make the items in Table 7.1 could be gained by manufacturing earlier items in a very complex network of 128 schematics, while also increasing the avatar’s general skill in a 6-rank system: novice, apprentice, journeyman, artisan, expert, and master. The required raw materials, 25 iron chunks in this case, could be obtained by a gathering tradeskill like mining in the same region where the quest was obtained or purchased from other players through the ­marketplace in the capital city.

As the wiki explains, “The schematic for Metal Platform is a variant of the Metal Plank schematic.”⁷ This means that making a platform required special action while using the plank schematic in a manufacturing device. The user interface displayed a circular design space, defined by two orthogonal dimensions, aesthetic versus function and organic versus synthetic. A small circular area somewhere in this space was marked for each variant of the main schematic, and the user must purchase and apply as many as three additives, as explained by this text in the interface: “Use additives to move your target into the green zones to uncover recipe variants!” The player needs to experiment, as well as analyze, to figure out which sequence of additives will give the greatest probability of success. Delivering the required product back to the region where the quest was obtained would give two rewards, an increase in architect experience (XPS) and crafting vouchers, which the wiki explains: “A crafting voucher is a form of currency obtained from work order quests. These vouchers are used to purchase tradeskill schematics, crafting materials and tradeskill talent respecs.”⁸

If WildStar simulates a future economy, A Tale in the Desert simulates an ancient one, but in a way that suggests how distributed manufacturing may indeed require differentiation of social organizations across territory. There are, of course, many reasons why production of the same goods at different locations might be organized differently, including (1) natural differences in available raw materials, (2) issues of transportation over long distances, (3) regional social and political conditions, and (4) explicit territorial separation such as represented by independent nations. A Tale in the Desert incorporates all of these factors.

As Chapter 3 explained, Tale is unusual in that it cycles through a repeated simulation of building ancient Egypt called a telling, each taking about 2 years. Egypt is divided into many regions, but the main geographic variable is latitude, the distance north or south roughly along the river Nile. In the eighth telling a new feature was introduced, three ethnic factions, the Meshwesh in northern Egypt, the Hyksos in central Egypt, and the Kush in southern Egypt.⁹ Upon entry, players must select membership in one of these three, and most will seek to gain prestige within it, although there is an option to change factions later on. Very early in each telling, players set up guilds, and each player may belong to several. To set up one of these groups, avatars must build a guild hall at a geographic location of their choice, with the implication that it will belong to the faction that dominates that area. Players do not fight each other, but compete peacefully, claiming additional territory for their faction.

To offer a clear picture of this system, on June 2, 2018, I visited the guild halls of all the large guilds I could locate, obtaining a list of members from the hall’s information interface, while simultaneously accessing the avatar search system within the general interface. I found 17 guilds with at least 35 members each, for a total of 511 avatars, in most cases representing one player each given that Tale does not have classes and every avatar can experience all dimensions of Egyptian life. Of these 511, 119 belonged to Meshwesh, 246 to Hyksos, and 146 to Kush. Table 7.2 arranges the guilds by latitude from north to south, using Tale’s mapping system that employs coords, each of which represents a subjective meter or two. So, the simulated Egypt is much smaller than the original, but still large, perhaps 20 kilometers north to south.¹⁰

Table 7.2 Major guilds in a simulated Egypt

Guild name	Latitude of hall	Member avatars	Interlocks		Faction membership
			KaPoW	zFree	Kush	Hyksos	Meshwesh
DIMWITS	7234	41	0	2	0	1	40
Ritual Tattoo Guild	7036	40	2	7	2	11	27
Meshwesh Research Initiative	7036	40	0	1	0	0	40
PKURFL4X	4817	40	0	1	1	0	39
Alpha	2355	39	1	7	1	37	1
zFree	2287	147	12	147	13	131	3
Safari Club	2080	87	14	45	16	63	8
Shroomers of the Darkest Night	2080	68	10	32	12	48	8
Acro Maniacs	2080	36	5	16	6	30	0
Our Land!	2020	52	0	28	0	52	0
Vigils	1490	52	1	25	2	47	3
Amigos	–974	79	1	27	4	72	3
Les diamants du Nil	–980	45	0	11	1	38	6
Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy	–1799	35	22	13	22	12	1
The BFG (Big Friendly Guild)	–3738	50	22	14	23	15	12
Garden of Eden	–6000	51	36	15	42	6	3
KaPoW	–7111	133	133	12	132	1	0

Many of the guilds are revivals of ones from previous tellings, which explains why two are much larger than the others, zFree and KaPoW. The wiki page for zFree says:

Our guild is most importantly a social hub for members. zFree aims to provide the facilities that enable us all to achieve our individual and collective goals, including regional research. We are a large guild, so it is important that we all follow some Common Guidelines.¹¹

A wiki page lists zFree’s guidelines concerning proper behavior, ending: “If in doubt, please ask a guild elder. In-game you can see a list of elders by typing in ‘/info zFree’ in the chat area, then clicking on the Members tab.”¹² KaPoW’s wiki pages stress the practical means for making products, such as the locations of mines and natural resources and of the guild’s storage and manufacturing facilities: “You can always help by donating: Wood, Clay, Charcoal, Jugs, Papyrus seeds, Linen, ­Canvas, Rope, Metals, Ores, gems, Insects, Salt, Acid, Coconuts, Sulphurous Water.”¹³

The second and third columns of data in Table 7.2 show how many avatars belong to zFree and KaPoW, as well as to the guild represented by the row in the table. Just 12 avatars belong to both of the two largest guilds, and the largest numbers of interlocks for both tend to be at roughly the same latitude as the big guild. The three columns of data at the right show that the members of guilds do tend to belong to the same faction that dominates their third of Egypt. However, membership in two of the guilds is really not local, but they do communicate information that has geographic character. Safari Club operates a text chat where members can tell each other where specific animals can be hunted at the moment, and Shroomers of the Darkest Night does the same for collectable mushrooms.

The Structure of Closed Virtual Geographies

In contrast to the open-world structure of A Tale in the Desert, some MMOs consist of a very large number of separate environments, some of which exist simultaneously in multiple versions and thus are correctly called instances, but others of which merely serve specific functions without doing so in multiple forms. The classic example is the original Guild Wars.¹⁴ As Wikipedia explains:

The Guild Wars universe consists of persistent staging zones known as towns and outposts. These areas normally contain non-player characters that provide services such as merchandising or storage. Other NPCs provide quests and present rewards to adventurers. These areas are also used when forming groups of people to go out into the world and play cooperatively. Players that venture out from the staging area and into an explorable area are then able to use their weapons and skills to defeat monsters and interact with other objects in the game. As players progress through the game, they gain access to additional staging zones. Players can then transport their characters instantly from one staging area to another using a process commonly referred to as “map traveling.”¹⁵

An extreme recent example is Shroud of the Avatar, as it was explored in 2018. At that point in its history, one rather large continent was open, plus islands of various sizes. It is quite common for virtual worlds to add new territory, in expansions that also add story-based quests and experience levels, but Shroud is an extreme case because it was open to some players very early in its development, because its funding largely came from contributors to a Kickstarter campaign launched in 2013 by ­Portalarium, the development company, and from early purchases by players.¹⁶ The largest island, named Hidden Vale, was the first area available, during pre-alpha testing, December 12, 2013, through May 25, 2014.¹⁷ The starter area when I began in July 7, 2018, was a place called Solace Bridge Outskirts, in Perennial Coast on the southeast corner of the main continent, Novia.

There were three locations along the border of Solace Bridge Outskirts where one could leave that area, jumping to the world map, which was represented symbolically as a miniature territory across which the avatar could walk, with tiny trees, towns, and adventuring areas of various difficulty levels.¹⁸ To enter a town or adventuring area required clicking on a small sign in the air representing its entrance. Each adventuring area was identified as belonging to a difficulty tier, from 1 to 5, and survival required advancing one’s avatar high up the experience ladder before entering a tier 4 or 5 area. While walking along a road in the world map, one would occasionally see an enemy or animal, and coming close would hurl one into an encounter, the equivalent of a mobile adventuring area. Mountains ringed the Perennial Coast on the north and west, and there were only two obvious paths through them, Brightbone Pass and ­Eastridge Gap, but both were lethal tier 5, and two hidden routes I also discovered were equally dangerous.

There was a safe way out of the Perennial Coast, however, a lunar rift that was inside Solace Bridge, a tier 1 adventuring area very near Solace Bridge Outskirts. These lunar rifts are clearly an adaptation of the moongates in Ultima Online, the predecessor of Shroud of the Avatar. There were eight of these across the regions of the world, and the one in Hidden Vale was located in a city named Owl’s Head.¹⁹ Each lunar rift was a small version of Stonehenge, with a glowing ball of light at the center, and a bolt of lightning firing toward one of eight standing stones, each representing one of the possible destinations. The lightning slowly moved from one stone to another, taking fully 70 minutes to complete a circuit. Jumping into the ball of light would teleport the avatar to the corresponding destination, so often one was forced to wait a long time if a particular location were the goal. When the lighting focused on the stone representing one’s current location, the teleport would still work, but the destination was random. Thus, it was difficult, but not impossible, to explore all of the continent before reaching a very high level of experience.

Some story-based quests required travel, and also one could gain 100 coins of the game’s currency the first time one visited any town. A dynamic online map offered information about all the instanced locations, so efficient exploration required walking one’s avatar everywhere, while also checking information in the map’s database and a list of towns in a wiki.²⁰ A sense of the range of destinations available is conveyed by Table 7.3, which lists the major categories of fixed locations in the ­Perennial Coast. NPC towns offered many services, and both kinds had lots where players could place houses of various styles and sizes.

Table 7.3 Locations confirmed by exploring the Perennial Coast

Type of instance	Number	Names
Tier 0 Adventuring	1	Solace Bridge Outskirts (starting location)
Tier 1 Adventuring	1	Solace Bridge (contains lunar rift)
Tier 2 Adventuring	5	East Perennial Trail, South Celestial Wetlands, West Perennial Trail, West Veiled Swamp, Whiteguard Foothills
Tier 3 Adventuring	5	Desolate Hills, North Celestial Wetlands, Solace Forest, South Brightbone Woods, Spectral Mountains
Tier 4 Adventuring	4	Approach to the Shuttered Eye, North Brightbone Woods, Restless Woods, Spectral Foothills
Tier 5 Adventuring	5	Brightbone Pass, East Veiled Swamp, Eastridge Gap, Necropolis Barrens, Spectral Mines
NPC Town	11	Aldhaven, Aldwater, Ardoris, Celestis, Grayacre, Highiron, Lochfield, Redmill, Shadowmist, Solania, Soltown
Player Town	15	Artemis Outland, Enclave, Glenraas, Hameln, Hometown, Knight’s Bastion, Mithril Underdarc, Nivenshire, Oceania, Outlander Welcome Center, Refugees Haven, Seers Sanctuary, Sidus Clarum, Taht Al’ard, Wolves Den

Given that Shroud was constantly under development, the actual list of towns was constantly changing, so Table 7.3 counts only those I could actually find on August 25, 2018. Some player-operated towns had either been removed or renamed. According to a wiki page, there were two kinds of towns operated by players:

Player run towns are the locations in the game that are controlled by Portalarium but populated, nearly exclusively, by the Avatars. There are usually not going to be quests and there will not be Gathering nodes or Monsters in these towns, unless they are under siege. Players can freely, and safely, live in these towns as long as they can pay their rent. Player owned towns are the locations in the game that were paid for by a player and added to the game by Portalarium. The player that purchased the town controls who has access to lots. At any time the town owner, or town stewards, can kick players from their lots.²¹

The user interfaces of most well-developed gameworlds include maps of the territories, often becoming visible step-by-step as the player explores, or readily available from the beginning. Physical books of maps, comparable to atlases, were published in connection with the launch of MMOs that publishers expected would be very popular, such as Star Wars the Old Republic Explorer’s Guide. Explicitly referring to itself as an atlas, it begins:

It’s light years from Alderaan to Voss. If you get stuck on ­Tatooine, you’ll end up a shriveled husk amid the desert sands if you don’t know where you’re going. Every Star Wars: The Old Republic player needs an atlas; one that displays every zone on every planet is essential for novice and expert alike. After a brief rundown on all the game’s classes, the atlas is organized in alphabetical order by planet. Within each map chapter, you will find four main map types: world, enemy, zone, and interior maps.²²

Enemy maps mark areas where specific groups of enemies concentrate, whereas zones are large outdoor areas defined by a cluster of quests as well as by geographic features. Interior maps outline indoor instances. Each planet is an instance, comparable to a different Internet server, even offering players a list of avatars belonging to the same faction currently active on that world. But planets in space-oriented science fiction MMOs are not the largest possible geographic units. Star Wars: The Old Republic simulates only one galaxy, but it is divided into five regions: Coreward Worlds, Seat of the Empire, Hutt Space, Distant Outer Rim, and Unknown Regions.²³

Transformed Real-World Geographies

Many solo-player computer games are set in real-world locations, such as Washington DC for Fallout 3 and Boston for Fallout 4, which are role-playing games, or the Total War series that are strategy games recreating specific historical battles, in which the player operates an entire army rather than just a single avatar, on a simulation of the original battlefield. Defiance, an MMO set in the San Francisco area, has multiple connections to the real world but is set at a time in the near future when civilization has collapsed, which is also the premise of the Fallout games. The violent transformation of our real world as it became virtual in an MMO can be seen as an extreme metaphor for the fact that information technology is changing the meaning of geography, if not exactly as Peter Goldmark, quoted in Chapter 1, hoped it would. Defiance was connected to the 38-episode television series of the same name, set under the same social conditions but taking place in the ruins of St. Louis. Many games have been based on television programs, notably the Star Trek series, but Defiance was unusual in that the game launched simultaneously with the TV program, and for a time there were joint promotional activities.

According to the backstory, a colonization fleet of spaceships arrived at Earth in 2013, under the mistaken belief that our planet was uninhabited, and their multispecies passengers called Votans could make it their new home. Attempts to broker peace failed, and the Votan technology intended to adjust Earth to resemble one of their home planets went wild:

While the Votans had intended to use their terraforming technology in a carefully planned manner, the Arkfall haphazardly unleashed chaotic and radical changes to the biosphere and even the geology of Earth, making the planet dangerous to both humans and the aliens. The earth was scorched, chasms opened in the ground, new mountain ranges were raised, and the surface of the planet was covered with dust and debris.²⁴

The consequence for San Francisco was equivalent to a rise in the sea level, with many local disruptions of roads and other structures, even as some fragile landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge survived. Notably, Silicon Valley has become an island, completely separated from the mainland. The game contains a convenient map system; another map with many of the locations marked exists online (but dated from the game’s launch and lacking Silicon Valley), and both can easily be compared with real-world maps.²⁵ The player enters Defiance in an area slightly northwest of Mount Tam (Tamalpais), and the main area east and south contains regions named Madera, Marin, and Sausalito, Madera in this case not being the city of that name that is far inland, but taking its name from the nearby town of Corte Madera. Much of a player’s early work consists of doing story-based missions across these four regions while increasing skills, armor, and weaponry. Then it becomes possible to cross southward into the heart of San Francisco, which like Silicon Valley is now an island.

Early levels of experience involve a rich story having connections to the television series which include the occasional appearance of NPCs representing its main characters, Joshua Nolan and his adopted alien daughter, Irisa Nyira. But after the beginning, the nature of the action shifts primarily to randomly occurring arkfalls. As a wiki devoted to both the game and the TV program explains, a vast ring of shattered spaceships now circles the Earth, called the Ark Belt, so chaotic that debris is constantly falling to Earth:

Common arkfalls are intermittent meteorite showers caused by falling debris from the Ark Belt. This includes everything from cargo pods to entirely intact sections of an Ark. These arkfalls can bring precious resources, alien technology, and sometimes nasty forms of life to the planet’s surface.²⁶

In the game, arkfalls almost always deliver nasty aliens, some of them intelligent warriors, but also many monsters. Main goals of the game are to kill these enemies and loot their corpses of valuable resources.

The arkfalls occur essentially at random and are immediately marked on the in-game map, so players rush to the location and instantly collaborate with each other, without the need of any prior social organization. The company that developed Defiance, Trion Worlds, had included a similar feature in its earlier and more conventional MMO, Rift. Note that this special feature gives Defiance and Rift very dynamic geographies, with the consequence that social organization is also dynamic. One implication is that much local manufacture in future years will also be dynamic, frequently changing the nature of the products and the social organizations producing them, supported by agile communication technologies. An early online review raised an issue very relevant for the theme of this book:

My biggest complaint about Defiance is the fact that there is no crafting system. I know, I know; I can hear you say “not every MMO has to have crafting.” Well, you sir are wrong. A semi post-apocalyptic world certainly warrants the need for crafting and trading, especially when there is rampant talk about crystals that are necessary for power and plants that have special chemicals in them. If Defiance had some form of crafting, it would give the game the needed variation in gameplay that it currently lacks.

Actually, Defiance does have crafting, just of a very different kind from that found in more conventional games that have less emphasis on very rapid action. Resources gathered at an arkfall can be sold and often salvaged, which means taking them apart to obtain components. A portion of the “EGO” interface specifically serves the salvage function, as this in-game message explains: “This EGO extension allows for the modifying of weapons and for the salvaging of old components. The salvage matrix can be used to upgrade items, breakdown items, attach mods, and remove mods.” At random I just now selected one of many looted weapons that happened to be in my avatar’s inventory, an assault carbine. Right clicking allows me to see that I could earn 250 coins by breaking it down to resources. I could also attach a mod, remove or retrieve one, and for 1,000 coins I could even add a mod slot. The inventory also contained a large number of looted mods, including a good collection of different scopes that could give guns greater accuracy. Placing a scope on a gun is a legitimate form of crafting, albeit a simple action. A page of the IGN game-oriented website offered an initial overview of the four kinds of mods that could be added to weapons. “Stock Modifications usually affect stability,” and IGN listed 12 examples. “Barrel Modifications usually affect accuracy” (21 examples). “Magazine Modifications usually affect reloading or ammo capacity” (20 examples). “Sight Modifications usually affect accuracy and will replace your zoom with a scoped zoom (similar to a Sniper Scope),” with 15 examples, many of which were in my inventory.²⁷

The insights relevant for real-world distributed manufacturing should be obvious: Even though our main focus should be on complex systems for producing diverse products, very significant portions of the future economy may be much more specialized. Under conditions in which the surrounding socioeconomic environment is changing rapidly, simple production systems may be more adaptive than complex ones.

Another real-location game, Xsyon, deserves close study, for being a rather pure sandbox, lacking many prescripted quests or other story aspects, yet offering a rich world where residents may create their own homes and fortresses. The location is Lake Tahoe at the California–Nevada border, similar in geography to the real place, but lacking ruins of today’s settlements and containing two small but prominent islands. There are two Xsyon servers, one named War for player-versus-player combat and one named Peace where cooperation is favored. Wikipedia explains the main principles of this virtual geography:

The edge of the playable world is surrounded by a toxic green mist, which will kill players which venture too far into it, and causes animals to mutate. The zones have varying Danger Levels depending on the types and amounts of hostile creatures in the zone. The Danger level generally increases as you move away from the center of the map toward the mist. Players claim protected areas of land by forming a tribe and placing a totem.²⁸

In my earlier book, Virtual Sociocultural Convergence, I offered a cultural analysis:

We can reasonably speculate that Xsyon is intended to be pronounced Zion, which is the name of the last redoubt of human civilization in the Matrix movies, in addition to having many traditional religious and utopian connotations. The Xsyon wiki describes the situation in five words: “Modern technology has consumed itself.”²⁹ The avatars prowl the resultant rubbish heaps, while feeling some affinity to the Native American cultures that had preceded industrialism. Yet the gameplay requires the user to gather material resources, create tools, produce more and more products necessary for life, and gain technical skills. Thus, Xsyon is the rebirth of technological civilization, potentially recapitulating William F. Ogburn’s theory of technological determinism. In so doing, it places in the foreground of the experience a set of activities that a very large fraction of more popular MMOs place in the background. Thus it is an excellent virtual world in which to learn about resource gathering and crafting.³⁰

Technological determinism is the widely influential theory that the main driver of history is technological invention. In 1776, Adam Smith argued that investment in technological innovation would reduce the amount of human labor required to produce goods.³¹ In 1813, Robert Owen analyzed the impact of the industrial revolution, arguing that it required new perspectives to guide the creation of better forms of society.³² In 1857, Herbert Spencer asserted that technological development followed laws similar to those governing biological evolution.³³

In his 1922 book, Social Change, William F. Ogburn modeled history as a sequence of four constantly repeated steps: (1) invention, (2) accumulation of inventions that could be combined to make new inventions, (3) diffusion of inventions both geographically and from one area of human endeavor to another, and (4) adjustment which often involved cultural lag as the institutions of society took time to adapt to the changed technological circumstances.³⁴

Of course, there are alternate theoretical perspectives. Beginning in 1776, the same year as Smith, Edward Gibbon published the massive History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that argued societies could overextend themselves, seeking to achieve more than they practically could, in the Roman case producing centuries of glory followed by a thousand-year Dark Age.³⁵ Gibbon’s erudite rival of the 20th century, Arnold Toynbee, published a dozen books arguing that the fate of any society was largely determined by how well its elite responded to ­challenges, with collapse being the likely but not inevitable long-term outcome.³⁶ Over these years, many serious authors have contemplated the possibility that our own civilization was fated to fall, including Oswald Spengler, Pitirim Sorokin, James Burnham, and Patrick Buchanan.³⁷ Our third example of a postapocalyptic virtual world, Fallen Earth, has this rather sophisticated backstory:

The Fallen Earth story begins in the 21st Century, when the first in a series of natural disasters hits the United States. As Americans struggle to recover, an investment tycoon named Brenhauer buys a controlling stake in a mega-corporation named GlobalTech. By 2051, he moves his headquarters to the Grand Canyon Province, where GlobalTech eventually creates a self-sufficient economic and military mini-state. Meanwhile, in India and Pakistan, the Shiva virus, named for the dance-like convulsions that it caused in its victims, appears among the human populace. As the infection starts to spread, countries accuse each other of engineering the virus. Political paranoia turns to open aggression and nuclear conflict. The nuclear conflict combined with the virus devastates the planet. Less than one percent of Earth’s population survived the Fall, and the Hoover Dam Garrison and Grand Canyon Province are the only known outposts of human civilization. Outside the protective confines of the Hoover Dam Garrison, the player encounters ruins of the old world, genetically altered creatures, strange technology, and six warring factions. Some factions seek to rebuild the old world, others wish to build a new one in their own image, and some simply desire chaos and anarchy.³⁸

For earlier projects I ran one avatar throughout Fallen Earth to explore the entire territory and all kinds of action, then added two others specifically named for two of the main theorists of civilization collapse, Oswald Spengler who was a violent avatar and Pitirim Sorokin who was dedicated to peaceful advancement through technology.³⁹ Originally, the six warring factions were organized in a complex circle, each having one mortal enemy at the opposite side of the circle, two less intense hostilities with the two factions on either side of the main enemy, and two potentially friendly factions nearby on the circle. Later during the years when I periodically returned to Fallen Earth, the system was simplified to just three pairs of mortal enemies, without alliances between factions:

Children of the Apocalypse (Anarchy, Chaos): The CHOTA work to destroy the remains of the old world to create a new world where all men are free.

At war with:

Enforcers (Order): The Enforcers labor tirelessly to restore law and societal standards in a world where chaos and death reign.

Lightbearers (Spirituality, Society): The Lightbearers are mystics, healers, and warriors, united on a quest for harmony and peace.

At war with:

Travelers (Profit, Self): The Travelers do what it takes to get the most benefit with the lowest cost, even if that means breaking a kneecap or two.

Vistas (Balance, Nature): The Vistas work to create a harmonious existence between humankind and nature.

At war with:

Techs (Technology, Science): Only by restoring the scientific accomplishments of the old world can the new world be saved.

The terms in parentheses are taken from various wiki pages, and the descriptive sentences are taken from within the user interface.⁴⁰ Geographically, this world is divided into a series of ever more difficult sectors, which map onto the territory in Arizona near the Grand Canyon. Sector 1, named Plateau, is right beside the Grand Canyon and lacks forts belonging to the warring factions, presumably to give new ­players time to adjust before making serious decisions about faction affiliation. Embry Crossroads is the largest town and may represent Prescott, ­Arizona, because it is surrounded by many crashed aircraft, and Prescott is the home of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Each of the high-level sectors has a town for each of the six factions, offering allied avatars a few quests and facilities for crafting and economic exchange, and guarded by NPCs who will kill any enemy avatar who approaches. There is also a barter town, which in the second sector is named New Flagstaff after the city of Flagstaff that is northeast of Prescott. The Fallen Earth wiki says: “There are currently 4 sectors, with 4 additional pseudo-sectors, one of them being PvP-only.”⁴¹ The four regular sectors have separate bases for the six factions, while the pseudosectors have more distinctive sociogeographic structures:

Sectors:

Plateau—levels 1 to 15

Northfields—levels 16 to 30

Kaibab Forest—levels 31 to 46

Alpha County—levels 50 to 55

Pseudosectors:

The District (Territory Control)—PvP “sector”

Deadfall—levels 45 to 50

Terminal Woods—levels 45 to 50

Epsilon Zone (The Outpost)—levels 50 to 55

Note that a player who merely seeks to ascend to the experience level cap of 55 would naturally go through the first three regular sectors, then climb five levels in either Deadfall or Terminal Woods, before returning to finish in Alpha county. Kaibab is a real forest in Arizona, and ­Deadfall is described as a county of Kaibab, containing a town that seems to have taken its name from the Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico that played such a key role in development of the atomic bomb:

The capital city of Los Alamos offers access to Sector, Barter, VIP and Utility vaults; as well as a myriad of crafting material vendors, craft trainers and skill vendors. However, some skill books are notably absent, such as Group Tactics, Social and lower level First Aid. All towns in this sector are faction neutral with the exception of Tabara which will be hostile to players that do not have ­sufficient Shiva’s Favored faction.⁴²

Shiva’s Favored is a seventh ideological faction, with which an avatar can develop a positive relationship. They are mutant humans who cannot survive without chemicals that would be toxic to ordinary humans, so they intentionally seek to pollute the environment. They are at war with another faction that calls itself Shiva’s Blessed, and both take their name from the Shiva virus that was so significant for the fall of civilization, and itself was named for Shiva, the destroyer god in Hinduism.

A sense of more local geography can be gained by considering where an avatar needs to go in and around New Flagstaff to accomplish various kinds of manufacturing. Several blocks of ruined buildings surround a park that contains a LifeNet pod used for fast teleport travel, outside which are standing two NPCs, Edward Gadbaw the stable manager and Chase Ricketts the garage manager, who can take care of any horse or vehicle the player does not plan to use for a while. On one side are bank vaults, a mailbox, and NPC Rodney Hassle who is the local auctioneer. Players buy and sell not only products they have made, or raw materials they harvested, but also a very large number of books that an avatar needs to read (consume) in order to gain specific skills and other abilities. NPC merchants specializing in 4 of the 11 tradeskills are standing at a gazebo nearby: Chelsey Camps (geology), Tori Tryon (medicine), Ines Bigby (mutagenics), and Kylan Heidelbrecht (nature). Trainers for their tradeskills are only a couple of blocks away in the ruined city. An Armorcraft workshop is at the southwest edge of the park. Across the street outside the west corner of the park stands the weaponry workshop, where Karter Jennett sells books that teach how to make swords, knives, axes, hammers, and other tools. A merchant named Yugene Quinn sells some of the raw materials for making these products, although they can also be harvested from the environment or obtained from other players. One of the simplest tools, a utility knife, requires just four pieces of scrap iron, whereas a pitchfork requires seven pieces of scrap iron plus five pieces of salvaged wood. Down the street to the northwest can be found a lab for the science tradeskill, a ballistics workshop, and a cooking facility.

Outside the east corner of the square stands Donny McNabb, the construction trainer and a construction foreman who explains what this tradeskill is all about. Here is the conversation this NPC had with my avatar named Sorokin, in which Sorokin’s words were fixed choices selected to move the conversation along:

Foreman: Hey! Careful, Sorokin, this is a construction area. Or will soon be. We’ve been working on methods to do more than just restore old buildings and live in them, and you can be part of the effort if you like.

Sorokin: Sure, how’s this work?

Foreman: Well, you get some instruction manuals and tools from my friend here to get the basics. Before you move up to anything fancy though, you’ll want to start small with stuff like campsites.

Sorokin: Tell me how camps work.

Foreman: Camps are very simple. You have to make construction materials out of the junk you’ll be scavenging in your travels and use them to put together tents and basic fortifications. Honestly, if you’ve ever built an ATV or put together a gun, the principle is the same: get parts, refine them, then put them together to get the end product. You following so far?

Sorokin: Cool. What kinds of camps can I build?

Foreman: We’ve got the tools and the knowledge to help you put together simple camps with fires and tents and such, but we’ve also gotten with the Bankers, the Riders, and all those whacky warring factions to come up with some fancy stuff...

Sorokin bought from Donny McNabb a Camps 1 instruction book for 10 coins and a construction kit for 50. A construction workshop stood very near the park, but he could also build components anywhere, the workshops merely speeding up the process. For example, a wooden support could be made anywhere at a rate of 1 per 15 minutes, whereas the time in a workshop was only 11 minutes and 15 seconds. There was in fact no equipment in the workshop, and Sorokin did not need to do anything with his hands, so except for the delay this construction procedure was entirely implicit. At first, he had the skill only to make wooden supports, but at skill level 15 he could also make cotton canvas, and then as he progressed “bundles” for four of the low-level structures: campfire at skill 30, pup tent at 45, and both firing range and training dummy at level 60. Here are the materials required:

Wooden support: five scrap wood, one weak adhesive

Cotton canvas: six ragged cottons

Campfire bundle: eight scrap woods, seven scrap coals, three ragged cottons

Pup tent bundle: six wooden supports, two cotton canvases, two scrap fasteners

Firing range bundle: six wooden supports, four cotton canvases, two scrap papers, two scrap fasteners

Training dummy bundle: six wooden supports, four cotton canvases, four frayed cottons, one scrap fastener

There are several different sets of construction products, including four levels of camps, each requiring the avatar to acquire and use a tradeskill manual. The introduction in the Fallen Earth wiki explains:

Construction allows players to construct “Campsites” and their components. Campsites are one-shot items that occupy an area and give various buffs to nearby friendly players. Campsites last for 3 hours in general, and buffs gained from them increase in efficiency as time is spent in the area... Harvesters and Farms are used for producing materials.

Another one of my avatars had constructed a farm that produced the raw materials for cooking.⁴³ Here are the applications of the four camp bundles, quoted from the in-game interface:

Campfire bundle: This camp creates a warm fire which boosts your stamina regeneration.

Pup tent bundle: This camp creates a simple tent that makes you rested, increasing health regeneration for 1 hour, and the bonus improves depending how long you remain at the camp.

Firing range bundle: Remaining at the camp grants you a bonus to firearm skills for 1 hour.

Training dummy bundle: Remaining at the camp grants you a bonus to Melee, Dodge, and Melee Defense for 1 hour.

One avatar may activate only one bundle at a time, for example, starting a campfire. Note the range of metaphors associated with buffs in general: clothing, jewelry, potions, magical spells, and here location near a constructed camp. As an avatar advances in general experience, it gains points that can be invested in the “stats,” such as dexterity and will power, that set limits to the avatar’s abilities. Whereas perception is of some value for the tradeskills, the most important stat is intelligence.

Sociocultural Geography in the Original EverQuest

One of the earliest gameworlds, dating from 1999, EverQuest has one of the most finely differentiated systems of classes and number of races, plus an exceedingly rich polytheistic mythology, practically defining the fantasy genre. It also provided a conceptual map of the finely differentiated social system. In its heyday, a sufficient number of avatars were constantly being created, by old and new players alike, that it made sense for them to originate at different locations in the virtual geography. In the earlier years, and even today at lower levels of avatar experience, the races and thus cities were categorized in terms of three alignments: good, neutral, and evil. For example, the natural home for Dark Elves was ­Neriac, an underground city considered by players to be the “evil capital” of Norrath.⁴⁴

In ancient days on our real Earth, polytheism offered a prescientific conceptual scheme for categorizing primarily three classes of things. First, each deity may personify a particular phenomenon of nature, as Poseidon and Neptune signify the waters of the sea and Gaia represents land or the earth. Second, some deities represent aspects of human psychology, as Ares and Mars symbolize the aggression of war and Loki (or Loge) is unreliability or even deceit. Third, a deity may be a tribal totem, as Jehovah began his existence as the god of the ancient Hebrews, thus geographically located. All three dimensions were incorporated in the EverQuest mythos, in a way that allows us to analyze how they fitted together.

Online social media offer a great variety of means by which to conduct quantitative social science comparable to censuses and questionnaire surveys, and a good source for EverQuest data is the online guide ZAM, also known as Allakhazam’s Magical Realm.⁴⁵ When players registered at ZAM, data could be ported over from EverQuest itself about the Internet server, race, class, experience level, and deity of their avatars. In ­October and November 2017, I downloaded data about all 33,833 avatars for which all these variables were recorded. The method was somewhat laborious and very careful, working with a search page of the Allakhazam website.⁴⁶ One could, for example, search for all the Half-Elf Druid avatars who worshiped the rain deity Karana, and the displayed results would be a list of avatars giving all the variables except deity on a row of text.

In order to explore how geography correlates with culture, a reasonable way to summarize the research results is to consider the three factions of deities separately: Good, Neutral, and Evil. These terms have somewhat unconventional meaning, because avatars in all three factions regularly violate norms against killing and stealing, slaughtering vast numbers of NPCs including animals and innocent citizens of communities the player’s avatar does not happen to be friendly with. Unlike more recent virtual worlds, like EverQuest II, the original EverQuest does not offer the player precise information about the avatar’s reputation with the large number of local factions encountered, only giving vague text like “Scowls at you ready to attack!” versus “Regards you as an ally.” But the reputation ranges are the same for all three player factions, thus giving Good and Evil avatars equal numbers of mortal enemies and friends. The chief differences I observed are two: (1) The Evil starting area and home cities are dark, gloomy, and populated by horrors, whereas the Good ones are bright and pretty. (2) The philosophical concepts associated with the deities are different, with Neutral being rather more sophisticated than either Good or Evil.

Table 7.4 lists the 5 Good deities, reporting their 13,837 adherents, who are 40.9 percent of the total. Most popular is the Goddess of Nature, or Mother of All, named Tunare. More than half of her 9,046 adherents are Wood Elves, and the other races with more than 10 percent are High Elves and Half Elves. Both High Elves and Wood Elves naturally belong to the Good faction, but the four other races listed in Table 7.4 are by nature Neutral: Half Elf, Human, Froglok who are humanoid amphibians, and the unusually intelligent humanoids who call themselves Erudites. In general, members of the Neutral races have the option of becoming Good or Evil, depending upon the major choices they take.

Table 7.4 The Good deities of EverQuest

Deity	Title	Adherents	Main races	Main classes
Tunare	The Mother of All	9,046	55.3% Wood Elf 26.6% High Elf 12.3% Half Elf	36.8% druid 29.3% ranger 14.6% cleric
Mithaniel Marr	The Truthbringer	2,042	43.8% Human 24.6% Froglok 12.9% Half Elf 10.6% High Elf	44.7% paladin 12.1% cleric
Quellious	The Tranquil	1,574	59.7% Human 32.1% Erudite	58.8% monk
Erollisi Marr	The Queen of Love	712	38.9% Human 29.1% High Elf 22.1% Half Elf	23.9% paladin 20.6% enchanter 16.2% bard 11.5% cleric 10.4% magician
Rodcet Nife	The Prime Healer	463	73.9% Human 20.3% Half Elf	37.4% paladin 36.5% cleric

Among Tunare’s adherents, almost exactly half are either druids or clerics, two of the priestly classes. Another large fraction, rangers, are a hybrid class especially oriented toward Tunare, described as “warriors attuned to the ways of nature, able to call upon the power of the wild to aid them in their fights.”⁴⁷ The other deity-class connections are similarly meaningful. Quellious is a pacifist child goddess, and thus it superficially makes sense that a majority of her followers are monks. Yet this class is somewhat violent, using martial arts techniques and thus representing the popular-culture stereotype of Asian kung fu experts who remain calm while in combat.⁴⁸ The fact that the god Rodcet Nife is called The Prime Healer obviously draws clerics to him, given that their primary social function is healing wounded teammates. Paladins are a hybrid class, who wear heavy armor and directly battle foes, yet they alternate with healing their teammates when that function is needed.

The 10,486 adherents of 7 Neutral deities, listed in Table 7.5, are 31.0 percent of the total 33,833 avatars. I like to think that Karana and The Tribunal represent the ambivalent nature of reality, Karana being the forces of nature that simultaneously create and destroy and The Tribunal being the judicial processes of humanity that carefully weigh evidence pro and con. In the EverQuest theology, both Dwarves and Gnomes were created by the Neutral deity Brell Serilis. Dwarves belong to the Good faction but are drawn to their god because of their cultural tradition of mining beneath the ground, and he is The Duke of Below, sanctifying the caverns and tunnels beneath the surface of the Earth. Like the Gnomes, the Drakkin are Neutral, related to Humans but having a touch of dragon blood. The Dark Elves belong to the Evil faction, which means they can easily ally themselves with a Neutral god, but not a Good one. It is possible to obtain a magical scroll to change an avatar’s race or deity.⁴⁹ Of the 3,246 Dark Elves in the dataset, just 17 converted to the worship of a Good god, compared with 249 who had gone Neutral without the need for such a scroll.

Table 7.5 The Neutral deities of EverQuest

Deity	Title	Adherents	Main Races	Main Classes
Karana	The Rain Keeper	3,033	43.2% Halfling 22.6% Half Elf 22.0% Human	52.6% druid 23.8% ranger
Brell Serilis	The Duke of Below	2,589	80.8% Dwarf 14.4% Gnome	38.1% cleric 31.2% paladin 14.6% warrior
The Tribunal	The Council of Justice	2,144	95.6% Barbarian	66.9% shaman 20.0% warrior
Bristlebane	The King of Thieves	1,468	32.2% Halfling 16.6% Wood Elf 16.1% Half Elf	63.2% rogue 17.5% cleric 14.2% bard
Solusek Ro	The Burning Prince	774	27.6% Erudite 26.2% High Elf 15.6% Gnome 15.1% Dark Elf	91.6% wizard
Veeshan	The Mother of all Wurms (dragons)	272	47.4% Drakkin 16.5% Half Elf 12.5% Wood Elf	33.5% bard
Prexus	The Ocean Lord	206	79.1% Erudite	24.8% magician 19.4% enchanter 19.4% paladin 11.7% cleric
The Nameless	None	0	None	None

Note that four of these deities seem to symbolize the traditional four elements: Brell Serilis (earth), Karana (air), Solusek Ro (fire), and Prexus (water). Karana is not the water god, merely because his title mentions rain, because he causes sandstorms and tornados as well as rain. Perhaps the most interesting of the Neutral deities is the one with zero adherents, The Nameless. Indeed, no avatar is allowed to follow this deity, who was the ultimate force behind the creation of reality, lacking a distinctive personality, and seeking no personal relationship with living beings.⁵⁰

With only 28.1 percent of the total, the 9,510 adherents of Evil deities are shown in Table 7.6. The situation with Terris-Thule, who has no adherents, is very different from that of The Nameless. A standard part of the EverQuest theology is that gods, for a variety of reasons, may abandon their followers and leave the world. Her title, The Dream Scorcher, comes from the fact that she is the origin of nightmares. She can appear temporarily, as an NPC with lines to speak in conversation with other gods and in challenging the player’s avatar, notably as one of the opponents in a quest series called Raid Expedition: Plane of Time.⁵¹ Conceivably, in some hypothetical future EverQuest expansion, she could return, perhaps as the patron of literal nightmares in some new region, and become a goddess capable of having adherents.

Table 7.6 The Evil deities of EverQuest

Deity	Title	Adherents	Main Races	Main Classes
Cazic-Thule	The Faceless	3,508	73.1% Iksar 14.2% Erudite	32.8% monk 20.3% shadowknight 19.5% necromancer 12.6% shaman
Innoruuk	The Prince of Hate	3,501	82.0% Dark Elf	32.1% necromancer 14.9% cleric
Rallos Zek	The Warlord	1,790	37.0% Ogre 24.5% Barbarian 10.7% Human	74.3% warrior
Bertoxxulous	The Plaguebringer	711	56.3% Gnome 28.4% Human	53.4% necromancer 24.9% shadowknight
Terris-Thule	The Dream Scorcher	0	None	None

We see that fully 73.1 percent of the followers of Cazic-Thule are Iksar, the reptilian race that has no other choice of deities. However, this does not mean they are monotheists, because they recognize the existence of the deities which other races worship. Necromancers are common among the adherents of Evil gods and are a very interesting class. An EverQuest wiki describes this Evil but transcendent profession:

Necromancers are required to worship an evil god: Bertoxxulous, Innoruuk, or Cazic-Thule, and generally have faction problems in good cities because of this, regardless of race... Necromancers are servants of the dark gods, studying ancient and mysterious tomes to gain power over the dead... Necromancers are able to raise the dead, commanding them to do their bidding and aid them in battle.⁵²

To be sure, the EverQuest polytheism seems neither realistic to modern secular audiences nor particularly connected to the materialist professions that practice manufacturing. And yet this example suggests a potentially profound insight. If distributed manufacturing erodes globalism, it may result in a proliferation of local cultures, not merely creating household furniture according to local customs, but conceptualizing existence and morality in distinctive terms. A likely etymology of the word pagan is that it represents a locality or a relatively small geographic district, and paganism can refer to a religious tradition in which each community has its own spirit or demigod.⁵³ The pair of EverQuest MMOs is by no means the only ones that postulated local religions, World of Warcraft being the most influential example. Local communities in a deglobalized era may not go so far as to invent their own religions, but to some degree they are likely to detach from cosmopolitan culture.

Conclusion

Internet-based corporations and professional networks can serve and thereby connect local communities, supporting their independence within a wider technological and economic world. Each MMO has some of the character of a franchise that provides services only to formally registered persons and groups. Thus, the field simulates a future economy that will be highly differentiated yet composed of connections between individuals and corporations at many scales and for many functions. Given the cultural and political diversity the world still possesses, it is entirely likely that manufacture will become local in some areas, whereas other areas perform specialized functions like raw material provision or centralized mass production. Similarly, we cannot be entirely sure which products will be produced locally, although we can guess that really complex products like cars and computers, which require assembly of standardized components manufactured from varied raw materials, will continue to be mass-produced. There is a sense in which the entire computer game industry is a model of the future economy. The games themselves tend to be created by rather small, local companies that may grow if very successful, be bought up by bigger companies, or use big companies as publishers. The past two decades were a period of radical development in massively multiplayer online games, thus plausibly reflecting any general rules of sociocultural development that apply to the human species, and thereby earning the right to be studied intensively.

¹ wildstar.gamepedia.com/Nexus

² Bainbridge, W.S. 2017. Dynamic Secularization: Information Technology and the Tension between Religion and Science, 185. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

³ wildstar.gamepedia.com/Dominion

⁴ wildstar.gamepedia.com/Exile

⁵ wildstar.gamepedia.com/Tradeskill

⁶ wildstar.gamepedia.com/Housing

⁷ wildstar.gamepedia.com/Metal_Platform

⁸ wildstar.gamepedia.com/Crafting_voucher

⁹ atitd.wiki/tale8/Factions

¹⁰ atitd.wiki/tale8/Maps

¹¹ atitd.wiki/tale8/ZFree

¹² atitd.wiki/tale8/ZFree/Common_guidelines

¹³ atitd.wiki/tale8/KaPoW/projects

¹⁴ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild_Wars

¹⁵ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild_Wars

¹⁶ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shroud_of_the_Avatar:_Forsaken_Virtues

¹⁷ sotawiki.net/sota/Hidden_Vale

¹⁸ sotawiki.net/sota/Novia_regions; www.shroudoftheavatar.com/map

¹⁹ sotawiki.net/sota/Lunar_Rift

²⁰ www.shroudoftheavatar.com/map/; sotawiki.net/sota/Perennial_Coast

²¹ sotawiki.net/sota/Community:Towns

²² Searle, M. 2011. Star Wars the Old Republic Explorer’s Guide, 3. Roseville, ­California: Prima Games.

²³ swtor.wikia.com/wiki/Galaxy_Map

²⁴ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defiance_(TV_series)

²⁵ www.ign.com/maps/defiance/world

²⁶ defiance.wikia.com/wiki/Arkfall

²⁷ www.ign.com/wikis/defiance/Modifications

²⁸ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xsyon

²⁹ www.xsyon.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Xsyon_History, accessed May 17, 2014.

³⁰ Bainbridge, W.S. 2016. Virtual Sociocultural Convergence, 29–30. London: Springer.

³¹ Smith, A. 1812. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 133. London.

³² Owen, A. 1813. A New View of Society. London: Cadell, and Davies.

³³ Spencer, H. 1857. “Progress: Its Law and Causes.” The Westminster Review 67, pp. 445–85.

³⁴ Ogburn, W.F. 1922. Social Change with Respect to Culture and Original Nature. New York, NY: Huebsch.

³⁵ Gibbon, E. 1880. History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. New York, NY: Hurst and Company.

³⁶ Toynbee, A. 1947–1957. A Study of History. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

³⁷ Spengler, O. 1926–1928. The Decline of the West. New York, NY: A. A. Knopf; Sorokin, P.A. 1937–1941. Social and Cultural Dynamics. New York, NY: American Book Company; Burnham, J. 1964. Suicide of the West. New York, NY: John Day; Buchanan, P.J. 2002. The Death of the West. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.

³⁸ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen_Earth

³⁹ Bainbridge, B.S. 2016. Virtual Sociocultural Convergence, 211–35. London: Springer.

⁴⁰ fallenearth.wikia.com/wiki/Factions

⁴¹ fallenearth.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Sectors

⁴² fallenearth.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Deadfall

⁴³ fallenearth.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Construction

⁴⁴ everquest.wikia.com/wiki/Neriak

⁴⁵ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allakhazam

⁴⁶ everquest.allakhazam.com/db/charsearch.html

⁴⁷ www.everquest.com/classes

⁴⁸ everquest.wikia.com/wiki/Monk

⁴⁹help.daybreakgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/230631567-Marketplace-Race-Change-Scroll-

⁵⁰ www.everquest.com/creation

⁵¹ everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4552

⁵² everquest.wikia.com/wiki/Necromancer

⁵³ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paganism; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagus