Star Wars Galaxies

Stripping the "Dark" from "Dark Elf" in EQ

Sandy Brundage October 9, 2000 9:57 PM PDT

Last Monday an EverQuest (EQ) veteran known as "Mystere" was cut off without warning from the MMORPG over a story posted in July on Everlore and EQ Vault message boards. The boards were not officially affiliated with Sony Online Entertainment or its Verant Interactive studio.

Mystere said the story was an attempt to explore the dark elves, an evil race Verant chose to place in the EQ world. "At the time, there had been many dark elves who were going `against the grain' and basically turning into nice people. I was interested in returning the dark elves to their origins, that is, reminding people that they aren't portrayed as a nice race in game," he said. "Their origins are from the torture of two high elves by the god of hatred. This torture took 3000 years. The dark elves are steeped in evil." (An overstatement? Consider this tale of torture, written by Verant's official EverQuest team.)

"The idea sprang from the idea of a woman poisoning her lover with the polish on her fingernails. As I sat down to write, I felt I didn't want her to start out as completely evil, but had some major motivation for that. Something so overwhelming that she would never think twice about her killing of others later. When I was in my teens, I knew a few women who had been raped. In talking with them so many years ago, I knew this was the absolute worst torture I know of."

The controversy focused on the age of the character. Mystere said, "Her age I toyed with for quite a while. In medieval times, people were considered adults much younger than they were today. I wanted her to be young, but not overly so. So I came up with 14 `seasons,' giving the impression that this person was just out of adolescence. In the end, the story was supposed to be about an evil person getting what he deserved, and the birth of a dark presence in the world."

Lost in the Eyes of God
On July 11, the story was posted with a warning at the top about the explicit, graphic nature of its content. It stirred up some discussion, but soon disappeared from active topics on the boards. Until two weeks ago. Mystere said, "Some anonymous person(s) started posting on the Everlore Brell Serilis message boards asking about literature and our knowledge of it. Soon after that another anonymous person began to post messages about religion. These topics ranged from denouncing pagan religions to saying that we, as gamers were "lost" to the eyes of God. When this was argued, sections of my old story were dug up by this person as `proof' that gamers were satanic."

At one point the poster referred to the story as "child pornography" and threatened to take the post to various civil and Christian rights groups." Mystere believes this person complained to EverQuest Customer Service about the story. John Smedley, CEO of Verant, acknowledged that someone had complained, saying, "In this case, a parent complained to a lot of anti-child porn watchdog sites and several mainstream media outlets regarding the extremely graphic detail of the story and the fact that it apparently contained violence directed at a child."

On October 4, Mystere was playing EverQuest when his connection was abruptly lost. When he tried to reconnect, he received a message saying that he had been banned for inappropriate behavior. After speaking to two customer service representatives who didn't know what had happened, Mystere then spoke to George Scotto, the head of customer service.

"He told me that I had been banned for a very disturbing story I had written. I was further told that Sony `didn't want my kind of people' playing their game. After attempting to defend myself by saying that it was a roleplay story only, and wasn't even posted on their boards, I was informed that the council had made their decision and it was immutable." (No one contacted about this story knew anything about this council or its members.)

"I think Verant/Sony has every right to not have inappropriate material associated with their name. Personally, I think they were a bit overboard in banning without warning in this case, however. Especially with the connotations that came along with my character when I called," Mystere said.

Andrew Zaffron, legal counsel for Sony Online Entertainment, released a letter that claimed Mystere's fan fiction had violated intellectual property rights. In part, the letter said, "If this story were about Luke Skywalker or Mickey Mouse, you'd certainly expect Lucas or Disney (respectively) to resort to their legal rights to protect their valuable property and good name; this is nothing different."

My Evil is Darker Than Yours
The EQ community erupted. Players accused Verant of shooting first, asking questions later. Indeed, Verant never contacted the moderator of EQ Vault to ask that the offensive story be removed from the message board. Banning Mystere was the first step taken. In protest, players cancelled accounts and shut down fan sites like Safka's Lore. Several players wrote fan fiction that was more violent and graphic than the story Mystere wrote, and demanded that Verant now ban them as well.

The overriding issue was not Mystere's banning, but that a player was banned for posting fan fiction on a non-official site when Verant had no fan fiction policies. The community wondered who was next. We sent a list of questions to Verant on Friday, asking whether the company would post guidelines and what sort of `evil' role-play was acceptable. Verant's public relations firm said we would have the answers on Monday. But over the weekend, John Smedley, CEO of Verant, posted a letter on the official EQ board and on several fan sites. Here's an excerpt:
"Will we be policing the Internet looking for these kinds of stories? No. We won't. In fact, none of us was even aware of this until it was brought to our attention. That doesn't mean if someone crosses the line again and it's pointed out we won't do the same thing.

"The big question is - where's the line? And what right do we have to draw it outside the game? The answer is complicated and extremely subjective, so I'll just have to be honest and say we'll know it when it's over the line. We're going to discuss it in the upcoming few weeks and see if we can make it more clear, but I can't honestly say if we'll get anywhere because none of us wants to stop people from writing awesome fan-fiction about EQ.

"Did we handle this as well as we could have? No - We didn't. And for that, I apologize. In the future, we're going to handle this in a different way."
Smedley then called Mystere to apologize, but the player, while satisfied, won't be returning to EQ. The game will also undergo some changes. "We admit there was a quest in EQ that went a little far and we're taking out that part. It was a mistake and it's being fixed," Smedley said. He is probably referring to Verant's dark elf rogue quest that required the murder of a pregnant halfing woman.

Is EverQuest becoming a kinder, gentler game? Will players no longer see heads skewered on stakes, rotting corpses or skinned goblins? We don't know, because Verant chose to not answer our questions today.

Microsoft's Asheron's Call (AC) and Origin's Ultima Online (UO), the other heavy-hitters in the MMORPG arena, should thank Verant as players continue to defect from EQ. The UO player's guide only defines acceptable in-game behavior. AC public relations representative DeEtte Christie said, "Microsoft is a firm believer in freedom of speech. They do not regulate or restrict outside of the game environment."

Some EverQuest players accepted Smedley's apology. Others won't. A new domain, Boycott Verant, was registered over the weekend. The owner cited hypocrisy and freedom of speech as the issues driving the site forward. "Verant is basically becoming the `Thought Police' by saying that if you mention any words pertaining to their product that it is copyrighted and they'll ban you from the game for it. Playing the game and posting something on a web site NOT under Verant's control are two entirely different issues."

In his apology, Smedley had said, "We aren't going to be looking at every fan site and becoming the Thought Police." But without a solid set of guidelines for fans to follow, though, it's doubtful that these words will speak louder than last week's action.