The Collector as a Player Class -- Rarity is the Ticket

With the recent launch of Final Fantasy XIV and a surge in popularity for other MMORPG titles, there is little worry about the health or popularity of the MMO. The genre is enjoying an upswing in development, with titles like Company of Heroes Online, World of Tanks, and Vanilla Gate in final Beta providing proof that there is no shortage in variety or ingenuity in the future.

The growing popularity of Free-to-Play games that use a pay-as-you-go approach for value added content -- providing full and unrestricted access to the base game for all players, and then charging set fees for access to special items, kit, weapons, and armor, means that many of the titles that would have been marginal as pay-only games have a shot at success, but the underlying cause for that trend may be something as old as the first MMO, encompassing a class of player that has never officially been part of any of the games.

The story of the MMO/MMORPG is a volatile one fraught with disagreement, making it impossible to agree on a fact as basic as which game was first, and which established the genre, or even what constitutes the genre itself! Much of the strife in the matter stems from just what constitutes an MMO, with purists claiming that the ancient text-based MUSH and MUD being the starting point, while modernists argue that only fully-graphical 2d and 3d games should qualify.

For the sake of simplicity, and because it makes sense, we consider the MMORPG Ultima Online to be the Grandpappy of all MMO's, with the original Everyquest being second to the line after UO. Regardless of which of the pair you think came first, they both contribute something to the present level of success that is being enjoyed by the industry, and in particular the new focus that is being applied to improve the popularity of practically ever title available online today.

Origins of the Collector Class

Every game has a set class of characters, from Warrior and Mage to Thief, Cleric, and even Crafter, but none of the games consider "Collector" to be a class, in spite of the fact that the interest and activity blur the lines that separate the established classes in every game!

What is a Collector? In the simplest terms, they are a player who in the course of their routine play actively seek to own and possess rare and unique items that may or may not hold a high value in in-game money. The first organized group for this phantom class can be traced to the game Ultima Online, which inadvertently helped to create the class, and then later embraced it as a valid play style by implementing rare and unique object spawns in the game to promote it.

The Jwilson Slime Story

When UO launched on September 24, 1997 it was to an online community of gamers who had never seen anything quite like it before. The game was predicted to be a flop by Computer Gaming World Magazine, which predicted in its September 2006 issue that Ultima Online would launch as the "Coaster of the Year" game in 1997. The title is a snide reference to the practice of using the free CD's sent out by companies like CompuServe and AOL as coasters to protect surfaces from staining by setting your coffee cup upon them.

The editor of the magazine who wrote that story was one Johnny Wilson, and when UO launched to critical and gamer success, finding itself so popular that it could not maintain its server presence around the clock in the first week due to lack of adequate bandwidth to support all of the incoming connections, and unable to keep an adequate supply of game boxes on retailer shelves, the staff of developers felt fully vindicated.

In honor of the event they created an in-game mob, called "jwilson slime" for players to kill, but the slime, which is exactly what it sounds like, had nothing worthwhile in its inventory once it was killed, leaving the player only the satisfaction of having killed it, which as it turns out, was enough for most.

That was supposed to be Locked Down!

While most of the players were exploring the new world and its inhabitants, a small group destined to found the Collector Class were busy poking and prodding objects in the game, quickly discovering that something very bad had happened to the game when it was launched, causing objects that should have been locked down as part of the environment to not be, permitting the players to pick up the items, which they promptly did!

Soon the word was passed to look for objects that could be picked up, and bank vaults (at launch there was no player housing to store and present these uber rare objects, that came later) were soon bursting with the ill-gotten gains.

When the developers became aware that objects that should be part of the dressing for different areas, like a covered chair, and a set of empty jars, were disappearing each time that the server restarted after daily maintenance -- and once they grasped that players were quickly logging in to grab these items each day, they rapidly locked down the spawns, but the damage, as they say, was done.

After briefly considering the matter, the developers decided that it was actually rather cool, and so designated a set of items appearing in different locations all over the world, like an empty fruit basket, a full fruit basket, candle sticks, a broken chair, and bowl of blood, to be part of this new server rare system. These objects were not locked down, and would reappear each time that the server was restarted, creating great demand by players, who fiercely competed to obtain them.

With some of the objects valued in millions of in game gold pieces, it was not long before more unique and rare objects were added to the game world, either as part of the new phantom class or as rewards for in-game events, and the Collector Class was fully born.

Back to the Future

Like player housing and hard to obtain weapons and armor, special rare and unique rewards, objects, and treasures are the bread and butter of the Collector Class, and most MMO's include that sort of content in order to provide the Collector's in their gamer population with the pursuit that they love.

Looking in from the outside, it is easy to understand the attraction such objects can have for players; the adrenaline rush of beating everyone else out to obtain the object, and then putting it on display in your character's home, where your mates and guests can admire it? Yeah, easy to understand.

Ultima Online took the practice to extremes, creating a variety of different collectible classes, and adding new ones every so often, while trade in what are called True Rares still brings in astronomical prices, with values often in the hundreds of millions -- which can and often does work out to real money, as there is a brisk trade in both in-game money and collectibles online, with sites that either sell them outright as part of the Real Money Trade industry, or auction them.

Every new MMO that followed faced this issue, from Runescape to Final Fantasy, WoW to Everquest, and while they may not have handled the matter in precisely the same way, each game has seen the establishment of the unofficial Collector Class, and its natural growth as it spread among the official classes in game.

Some Objects to Look Out For

If you are currently an active MMO'er here are some objects that you may want to keep an eye out for -- and not just for the bragging rights of ownership, as some of these pixel treasures could net you a fortune!

Battlefield Heroes -- Rare items dropping in game to keep an eye out for include T-Shirts, Trench-coats, and weapon enhancement parts!

Blue Dragon -- Mysterious Parts: collecting all three mysterious parts means that you can take them to the lab located in Jibril Castle, where you can then have them assembled into a rare and special item. What you end up with is not always the same thing your best mate did when he traded his three Mysterious Parts to be assembled, so it possible to end up with something truly rare and worth having!

Entropia -- Rumor has it that additional rare items may be dropping as loot on major mobs, and that the items, which can appear to be mundane objects, have secret features attached to them. Everyone knows about the rare green egg that recently sold for almost $70,000 US (real money folks), despite the fact that nobody knows what will actually happen when it hatches! It could contain a new type of mob, or it could hatch a coupon good for an uber set of rare armor or weapons, who can say?

Fiesta -- This free to play online MMORPG has traditionally included special collections schemes in its online store that allowed players a chance to obtain something uber, but word is that recently some uber collectibles have been added to the world in some unlikely places. It may be time to put your explorers cap on!

World of Warcraft -- While it is not strictly speaking an in-game rare, the special card from the WoW trading card game that provides a code for the uber-rare in-game mount, Spectral Tiger could earn you an easy $1200 US if you decide you would rather sell it than ride it yourself!

The Newest Trend

Spending days on end hunting down particular mobs may not be your style, and if being able to slot your rare hunting sessions on your iPhone Scheduler App is the way you prefer to do it, you will be happy to learn that the newest trend in rare and unique items in MMO's is event-related!

Basing their schedule off of secular and non-secular real-world holidays as well as holidays particular to the game, the trend towards adding in unique and rare items as rewards for attending events is on the rise, with Sony the leading implementer for this style of distribution, but other game companies embracing it as well.

While simply showing up will not score you these uber items, showing up AND participating in the official events, quests, and missions associated with the holiday event can! Your best bet for this sort of rare's hunting is to follow the official chat boards for your games, and if there is a rares or collector's board, well, spending time there is a no-brainer.

Rarity comes with a High Price

Most Collectors are in it for the thrill of the hunt, while a smaller number do it to support their real passion -- in-game home decoration, but a very small (though increasing) group are actually in it for the money. It may be the economy, high unemployment, or simply the urge to take something that you already enjoy and make it your job, but the collector-centric environment that is created by these games has spawned a black-market economy that now serves as the primary source of income for a lot of people in the real world.

"I personally despise Chinese Gold Farmers, and I am not all that fond of the people who power-level for profit (gamers who level up characters for pay), but the way I see it, selling rares is not the same; nobody gets hurt, and the people who want the rares get what they want!" says 'TJ' who plays an elf character in World of Warcraft.

"See the real challenge is both time and skill. Say a player wants a particular item, right? But they do not have a level 70 toon, and even if they did, they do not know where to go and how to GET that item. I do! They pay me for the service that I provide, which is usually to get them an item. Sometimes they need help getting through a particular quest, so they pay me to do that for them. That is not cheating, it is time management.

"In the real world just like in the virtual you only have so much time. I lost my job in IT -- it was outsourced to India -- so I have to make a living and hey, I am really good at doing this. Now I work 20 hours a week instead of 40, and I get to spend more time with my kids, if that is not win-win I don't know what it is," TJ observes.

The growing number of rare's sellers may well be violating the terms of service for playing the games that they play, but the increasing population of rare's collectors who play by the rules are not. With the Collector Class on the rise, there has never been a better time to look into expanding your game play style!