Though players have an incredible amount of freedom in how they choose to play the game, the most important freedoms turn out to be those which require effort a bit of luck if you want to quickly beat the odds on a drop. If we consider player happiness is related to successful and easy completion of tasks then two factors are of prime importance: money and gear.

Money is primarily made via the buying and selling of items acquired when you kill an enemy. Crafting items for other players to use can also be a significant source of income but is also largely dependant on drops. With few exceptions, the rarer an item the more it sells for on the auction house because it is more useful to players. During my play I would eventually get bored; the chief factor that kept me in the game was hoping for a rare drop or wanting to finish a task that required a semi-rare item.

When a player decides to end their session for the time being it is not advantageous to just close the program and walk away. Players need to take their characters to a town, repair their gear and sell unwanted items and possibly park themselves in an inn if they are still gaining experience. It was not uncommon for me to begin my log off ritual only to lose my nerve. I would look at the money my character had available and decide it was less than I was comfortable with so I would spend time trying to get more. I might have completed one part of a quest chain only to be enticed by the reward offered by the next step in the chain. Someone from my guild may have asked for a small favor, helping them if they were being griefed, killing a particularly tough enemy, etc. This activity would pique my interest and I could easily spend another half hour in the game.

The major factor in my deciding to stay on once I became bored was chance. At the time I didn’t have a utility which would track how many enemies of a certain type I had killed. Based on that number, I could have come up with rough odds that an enemy might drop something very valuable. In my head it was easy to rationalize looking for just one more enemy to kill and hope for that drop because it was difficult to keep all the variables at play in focus. As a result, I would take on one group of enemies, then see favorable positioning on another and decide the opportunity was too easy to pass up. Then I might develop a theory as to how to kill groups of these enemies quicker with less danger, and then of course I would have to test and refine my theory.

The ultimate pay off is very similar to the motivation for playing slot machines. I could directly use the money by selling the item to better my character’s situation or use the item myself for kudos or practical reasons. In either case the pay off would make completing tasks easier. I could buy materials or gear rather than gather them myself or I could gain an advantage in combat.

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