The Daily Grind: Why do people love to play the good guys?

I will be curious to see how this trend goes in All Points Bulletin.

My gut tells me a lot of players will want to play criminals to enact a sort of MMO Grand Theft Auto style.

I think the designers are hoping for this as they have said that Criminals can fight the law *OR* go after each others' scores.

I'm hoping for this as well since all I'm interested in is playing an Enforcer and 'keeping the peace' so to speak.

I think it's not necessarily a matter of "good guys vs. bad guys," it's more a matter of PvE vs. PvP. A larger amount of PvP oriented players will gravitate to the more destructive side, whereas people that are more focused on PvE, game lore, and roleplaying seem to gravitate more to being on the "good guys."

Of course this isn't true for everyone, but if you look at it, WoW is a much more PvE intense experience, and Warhammer is a much more PvP oriented game. Back in the day in WoW, the racial abilities for the horde had a more pvp oriented slant, where the alliance racials had a more PvE slant to their abilities.

It makes sense to me, I mean, in pvp you get better over the corpses of your enemies and friends alike, where as in pve you actually act heroic and work with a team to accomplish goals. Which sounds more destructive to you?

It is partly the number of people that view the 'good' guys, or the side that appears to be 'good', as positive and attractive. Which side almost always wins in movies/stories? The 'good' guys.

Taking WoW as an example, at launch it was almost strictly PvE -- there were no battlegrounds, no ranks, no arena, nothing save open world PvP that had little meaning outside of straight killing (which was fun). As such the game attracted PvE players and had a high Alliance population because of it. If you look at WAR, though, you'll see a higher population of the 'bad' guys and a focus on PvP. Also, as soon as PvP in WoW started getting bigger and bigger you could see a shift in population, in fact there were several PvP servers (back when I played, years ago mind you) that had higher Horde populations than Alliance. So, PvE/PvP plays a role in the choice. There's plenty of PvE centered MMOs out there that appeal to 'good' guy type players, and there are far fewer PvP centered MMOs. It should also be noted that the (MMO) PvP crowd tends to be a good bit smaller than the PvE crowd. EVE's breakdown of players that venture into 0.0/low sec versus staying in high sec is also indicative of this.

CoH/V is a bit more interesting on this topic, since the 'good' and 'bad' guys have different power sets and play styles. Players that typically choose 'good' characters may be tempted to play a 'bad' one because they enjoy the play style more. The highly customizable avatars also allow them to have a 'bad' character that looks 'good'. PvP is also optional and was added after the game launched, much like WoW. Given an option of straight PvE and different power sets than the 'good' guys, there's plenty of reason for a 'good' player to play a 'bad' one as well.

TL;DR: PvE = 'good', PvP = 'bad', more PvE than PvP.

Personally, I usually play the "good" side, b/c in my exp, the player mentality that goes along with it tends to be a more helpful & mature community then the the "bad" guys.

It's why I rolled Order. It's why I'll roll Republic. At least in faction based games.

I'm a "good side" PvE type of player, all the way.

For me the "good" side generally looks better. How a character looks is important to me - I like to play characters that look good. I also prefer the "heroic quest" type of gameplay - feeling like the hero. If I'm an evil character, on the path to destruction and the destruction of other people (fictionally, of course!) - I just won't bother. I don't see why I can't make more or less moral sorts of choices in a game.

I do want to play Aion, so that will be interesting to me. I'm not much of a PvPer, and to me, neither of those worlds looks evil or bad. I'm not all that happy on having to make a choice, in game.

There are so many factors, from character looks to marketing.

Frankly, I find games that have preset factions to be rather limiting. It creates a false structure that doesn't truly tell you much about the players themselves. A good game design would have no set factions at character creation, but allow you to develop relationships in game, with both players and NPC's, and then you decide where you fall. I think this creates a more realistic and interesting world, and you get truly great betrayal stories like we've seen in EVE Online.

But most games, both out and coming out, have these preset factions, preset wars, and so it's so often then decided by looks, marketing and lore. I worry for TOR that all the kiddies will be going Sith, like all the kiddies did in WAR. They want to be perceived as "badass", even though they often are just rude children.

I just think there's a lot of room for improvement when it comes to warring factions in games, and there needs to be more room for shades of gray and neutrality.

I would be refreshed if people picked Alliance due to their strong moral code (even if it is only them parroting films and tv), but frankly most players, Allies or Horde, run around acting like jerks. I think it is more that they pick the race they can more easily project themselves into, aka looks more like they do, aka the "prettier" race. Some people might fantasize about roleplaying a zombie or troll, but most would rather just look like a human for hundreds and hundreds of hours. They fantasize about killing zombies and orcs I guess. For the young ones, it might also demonstrate that the parents have picked their character for them. They want to look relatively close to themselves (albeit in shape), but they want to do stuff they couldnt get away with in real life, like run up to something and grab it before someone else can, or bully others verbally. I guess its harder to pretend its you doing it, if the toon has green skin. Sort of seems like a limited span of passive-aggressive imagination to me, but to each their own.

I have no idea why I generally avoid the "good" side in MMOs. I guess I don't need to look pretty in an MMO to enjoy playing. :) In WoW, I like the lore on the Horde side better, and I'll admit to getting a little internal kick out of being a woman playing female orcs. In WAR, I played destro because I loved greenskins, and my WAR guild, which is branching into Aion in Sept., is going to be playing Asmodian.

When I first started playing WoW, I didn't really stop to consider whether I wanted to be good or ugly. For me it was more a case of: which side has the best looking avatars? The Horde had ugly green people (orcs), cows on two legs (tauren), weird fellows with bizarre accents (trolls) and walking corpses (undead) {ok, the undead were kinda cool}, whereas the Alliance had night elves and humans (the less said about gnomes and dwarves the better). It wasn't hard to understand why I picked the Alliance.

If the Horde had had blood elves at the time, though...

I play good guys almost exclusively. I've seen enough scumbaggery in my real life, that there's nothing I find cool about it.

Besides, many evil players are just looking for ways to feel "powerful" or "rebellious". I don't need a game to do this for me,

Beyond all this, I find it more of a challenge to play the good guy -- to be dedicated to things beyond merely my own survival and advancement.

Following the good path can be hard, requiring you to commit to tasks which may not be in your own best interests.

By contrast, the evil path tends to be simplistic in its "serve yourself first above all" agenda, and thus, often too easy.

I would like to see more MMOs create sides without giving the implication that there's are good guys or bad guys. I think everyone avatar should start neutral and ultimately find themselves on a side based on their deeds. I don't believe people like to refer to themselves as bad guys or "I'm on the team of wrongdoers."

People do bad deeds because they are borne out of situation they were thrust upon, sometimes it's premeditated, but even when someone has intent to do evil deeds they feel justified in their actions. In some weird way they feel right about the evil acts they committed.

I would like to see the lines blurred and let your actions decide the which side you are on. Even if your race is like a Dark Elf, you aren't born evil, but it should be harder to succeed as hero than the path of darkness.

I generally pick the good guys when I first play a game, once I get the hang of things I dabble with the other side.

Everyone has it wrong..

It's all about elves! Go back to EQ days, evil races were always the most popular. Dark Elves by themselves outnumbered everyone else. Evil has always appealed to the younger player, they see good guys as stale/boring, same old same old. Give them the choice of good vs. evil, evil wins everytime.

When wow hit it had nothing to do with pretty races or good vs. evil at all, because the only thing that trumps the good vs. evil choice it the elf factor. Only Alliance had elves thats the whole reason alliance was popular. Look at it now Blood Elves outnumber everyone else put together!

When WAR was comming out people were saying it would be like WoW and when it went live eveyone would go Order because people like the good guys (even though throughout the entire beta Destruction outnumbered Order). But I said since both factions have elves to choose from you will see what people really want to play, and that is the bad guy.

I started as alliance in wow because all the characters I've ever played were good. It's just who I am.

I've cursed the stupidity ever since. Horde always crushes Alliance in my battlegroup :(

My gf curses my stupidity too, all her friends are horde. She's got a 3 alliance 80s simply cause once you have one it's easier to make them all alliance.

Now we're working on a horde priest and warrior hoping things will be different :>

The only time I ever really felt "evil is good" was Dungeon Keeper :>