Disclaimer:
This is purely my opinion and assumption about why a character stereotype very well linked to the players. I apologize if there’s some points I might have missed.
Maybe you know in every game (especially MMORPG or turn-based game) people can choose and select as who or which character they wanted to be in virtual world. So in Elsword. You will meet any type of player from the kind and helpful towards newbie (a first timer), the judgemental player who stereotyped other player character, to the toxic player who likes to mock. Frankly, I place myself as the helpful player, because I don’t want people feels lonely when growing up character and left out about the contents of Elsword.
Talking about stereotype in Elword, people who playing as Ain is not many as another popular characters. Ain was released in 2018. He was introduced as the messenger of Goddess Ishmael — a goddess in Elsword lore, which held the power of El energy. His mission were only to help Her protecting the El energy, a magic crystal that contains powerful energy in the Elsword lore story. After his job done Goddess Ishmael will return him into light with no physical appearance. Alas, when Ain in the way to protect this powerful crystal, it explodes. Because of this explosion some of people near the crystal in Elrianode city were put into eternal sleep. Ain the angel, were trapped in distortion empty space. Long story short Ain awakes from the distorted space and realize himself, he was thrown back to the past exactly 500 years before the explosion. In the way Ain met the main character of the game itself, a boy named Elsword (or player like to short it as ‘Elboi’) with his alongside friends Aisha the sorcerer and Rena the elf. Ain can feel a power of El energy in Elsword.
Because of this story lore and Ain’s personal attachment towards Elsword — without letting Elsword know about his thought (as far as the story goes), players assuming that Ain had a romantic chemistry to Elsword. This stereotype issue also strengthen by the unique game feature in Elsword. Where once a player choose a character to play, they had four choices.
In Elsword player can chose their character way to life into four paths. Ain have four paths in detailed:
- Richter — The Follower of Ishmael, he become a God of Judgement. He has no emotional relation towards human.
- Bluhen — The Main Story Lore Path of Ain, he become an expressive Angel. He learnt about human emotions.
- Herrscher — The Follower of Henir, he absorbed the dark force and leave its physical body given by Goddess Ishmael. He has no emotion and his mind were corrupted by the dark force.
- Bigott or Opferung — The Extremist of Ishmael, he become Goddess Ishmael extremist and fanatic. He has emotion, but in misleading way.
Because of this paths system given by the game, Ain players gained its own stereotypical between the community. Especially about his story lore path, Bluhen. The most popular stereotype made by player is
Ain mains are either fujoshi (boy x boy ship) or gay.
which means I questioned myself because of the stereotype, is that makes me as a fujoshi? I don’t think so. Frankly, I am not interested with such ship. I chose Ain because his gameplay is fun and challenging.
Below are memes I have collected via Discord servers and reuploaded them on my personal Tumblr about Ain stereotypes. Mostly made by Reddit users
(Note: please let me know if you know the user, so I can credit them properly. Thanks!)
The Elsword page in Facebook/Instagram account also posted about meme based on their characters’ personalities, mini game, in game content update, or funny comic about the characters might have interacted because of their stereotypes made by players.
— means are they also encourage the stereotypes?
With this kind of interaction between game community and the social media admins, the developer could know the feedbacks via post comments, a forum, posts, or a update patch’s comments.
(Not So) Conclusion
From what I’ve reflected from the past and observed via various Elsword community (Discord, Tumblr, Facebook, and Reddit), the stereotypes based from a topic “which main character in Elsword did you chose?” are mainly appeared because of the community included the players wanted to share, having fun, have a discussion, and having a connection to each other. Such thing can be related in a certain character only have. For example,
Player A posted a status: “That moment when you want to hit the boss in dungeon, but you are a X main”
Player B reacted: “OMG so relatable. As a X main character, I hate this dungeon/boss so much. X character is so mana-hungry”
Player C reacted: “Hm, that can be overcome easier actually. You must do this… then this… after that… then your character gained buff/the boss gained debuff”
Meanwhile from the developer perspective itself, they have posted a series of post “Your Personality Based on Your Favorite Elsword Character…” wanted to know their player feedbacks on characters. Such as their story, the character design, the dungeon type, gear type, and the gameplay. So in the future they could change, adapt, and adjust when the story in the game updated.
