Virtual Economy Research Network

The formation of online, or virtual, communities has been a feature of the Internet since its public inception. Mass participation and access to permanently stored online content have allowed for the development of the network structure into a prolific venue for sharing knowledge and common interests, and, just as the operational capabilities of the network expands, so too does the role, and potential, of the online community. The variety of ways in which users have established, developed and contributed to online communities is as diverse as culture itself, and as such, to try and map the sum of online geographies would prove rather redundant. In general however, there exist two core models of 'virtual community', within which subsist Electronic Personae.

The first community, the intellectual virtual community, can be characterised on the basis of a shared (intellectual) interest, for example, members of a political organisation, or a Lords of the Rings fan club. The second, the functional virtual community, can be defined as a group of users participating on a single application platform, for example, an online game such as Ultima Online.[1] To understand the difference as well as the potential for operational conflict between the two, one might draw upon the contrast between nations and states. Where states constitute regionally limited legal formations, nations are broader in their geographical manifestations and are decided upon shared cultural characteristics that distinguish ethnical groups.[2] Functional communities resemble states: pinpointing their online locus at specific IP addresses, they submit to fundamental operational rules, set in the launching software’s computer code.[3] Similarly, intellectual communities resemble nations. Although group members rely upon a functional community as a means of gaining network access (citizenship), they adhere to collective basic characteristics, tastes and intellectual qualities that define their shared bond beyond the procedural mechanisms of limited online geographies (nationality).

Within these virtual communities there exist Electronic Personae, that is, the individual online identity that someone adopts when participating in virtual communities. The human intellect enters the electronic environment and selects a unique digitised appearance[4] to reflect its stature and to personify communications with the setting. Concisely, the EP is encapsulated in every type of Internet service user account (e.g. yahoo!, msn or online game accounts), where digital 'bodies' are provided as either onscreen textual indicators, like nicknames and descriptions, or graphical representations (avatars). This article makes use of the concept of the EP, within the context of Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPGs), to explore the potential conflicts between intellectual and functional communities alluded to above.