Originally posted by aspekx i have never understood why grouping did not give loot or xp bonuses.
It does, a group can go after tougher targets than a solo player so they inherently get extra loot, more xp/hour and higher level weapons than a solo player of the same level.
You're already getting that!
No you don't since all recent games are quest grinds where it does not matter how you killed those X mobs for Y drops. Everyone gets the same experience, solo or in group.
Quest grind focused games are the problem. In GW2 for example, you can just tag along with the people you meet not even trying to kill anything, half asleep at that and you level as fast as everyone else. No one will notice or complain.
"Give players systems and tools instead of rails and rules"
One of the problems with modern mmos, in the vision of the old players, is the reduced or even complete lack of rich social interactions ingame, like in the old generation mmos. The mmos nowadays seens to be lonely experiences, with very little communication between the players, or with fugacious interactions artifficially provided by game tools, without any repercussion to the future or the formation of long-lasting ingame networks or reputations.
Well...i played several mmos, like UO, L2, WoW, Tera and some others in little bursts. After stop to think in all them, i came to some personal conclusions about what make a mmo to have a rich social enviroment (like UO and L2) or to be a solo-centric and almost lonely experience (like WoW nowadays, Tera and GW2). The features that social-friendly mmos seens to have in common are:
- The activities to get xp or itens aren't so separated by levels or circunstances. As a example: in L2 and UO, players of a wide level range can group together in the same activity by a huge extension of time. A level 50 player can do the same activity of a lv 46 or 55 player, in the same spot, with the same advantages.
As a contrast, in the "lonely" mmos, the players are usually separated even when in the same level! In WoW, the players are constantly separated by quest targets, only sometimes the targets can coincide, and hardly this can happen again with the same players.
- In the "social" mmos, althought there are solo activities available, to group is almost always advantageous and provide more gains.
- In the "social" mmos, there aren't instances.
- In the "social" mmos, there aren't fixed factions.
- In the "social" mmos, the pvp is open (althought there are harsh penaltys to gank). So, the players are compelled to group to defend yourselves against gankers/enemys, and need to behave well (less rudeness) to avoid becoming targets or being ostracized.
- In "social" mmos, the craft provide the better itens and are usually a hard and slow proccess, with specializations.
So, that is the points i can remember now. I think these are the "secrets" to make a mmo have a rich social enviroment like formely.
Awful lot of post hoc ergo propter hoc (false cause) happening in those 'secrets'.
Anyone else feel up to tackling them?
Why bother? At best it's just his opinion at worst, well, it's not worth the time to deal with.
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because it lacks a few features you prefer."
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playing an MMORPG?"
Originally posted by aspekx i have never understood why grouping did not give loot or xp bonuses.
It does, a group can go after tougher targets than a solo player so they inherently get extra loot, more xp/hour and higher level weapons than a solo player of the same level.
You're already getting that!
No you don't since all recent games are quest grinds where it does not matter how you killed those X mobs for Y drops. Everyone gets the same experience, solo or in group.
Quest grind focused games are the problem. In GW2 for example, you can just tag along with the people you meet not even trying to kill anything, half asleep at that and you level as fast as everyone else. No one will notice or complain.
As far as gw 2 goes "If i can auto-target a huge dragon, and buy/sell stuff at the AH at the same time, untill it dies then something wrong"
As a contrast, in the "lonely" mmos, the players are usually separated even when in the same level! In WoW, the players are constantly separated by quest targets, only sometimes the targets can coincide, and hardly this can happen again with the same players.
When you say social you mean meeting new players, not play with people you already know. Because then you'd play a co-op game instead, right? So that you'll build up a social circle in this game by those people?
- In the "social" mmos, althought there are solo activities available, to group is almost always advantageous and provide more gains.
See, that's the problem. If you only do it for the advantage of minmaxing you won't bother to get to know the person. You will just silently go through the whole questline and be done with it. Secret is to make a lot of things so hard that you just simply cannot do it solo unless you are over leveled for that area. And making some stuff so boring that you want people with you to talk to meanwhile you are doing mundane tasks such as gathering crafting materials.
- In the "social" mmos, there aren't instances.
Instances are good. But not where you can queue up and sit in town until something pops up. Would you really want to run a dungeon and in the last minute five more people runs in and kills the last boss whilst your team is recovering their HP?
- In the "social" mmos, there aren't fixed factions.
This is just... silly. Factions can both be a reason to form social bands such as protecting yourself from an opponent faction's players in open PvP. Like you mentioned below. Wouldn't it be strange if all your sworn enemy races could just join your faction? It's hard to work around that in the lore unless your only race is Human.
- In the "social" mmos, the pvp is open (althought there are harsh penaltys to gank). So, the players are compelled to group to defend yourselves against gankers/enemys, and need to behave well (less rudeness) to avoid becoming targets or being ostracized.
You can't give a penalty to gank. If there is open world PvP the system cannot differ from whom started it. If one fellow is attacked by the enemy and his friend helps him the system would punish the two of them for "Ganking" when they just protected themselves. And maybe two people are already fighting and a new guy comes in for the fun when passing by. This is just bad.
- In "social" mmos, the craft provide the better itens and are usually a hard and slow proccess, with specializations.
Crafting is mostly a singleplayer experience. So not until you max it out you'd be able to make any actual trade from it.
So, that is the points i can remember now. I think these are the "secrets" to make a mmo have a rich social enviroment like formely.
Originally posted by aspekx i have never understood why grouping did not give loot or xp bonuses.
It does, a group can go after tougher targets than a solo player so they inherently get extra loot, more xp/hour and higher level weapons than a solo player of the same level.
You're already getting that!
No you don't since all recent games are quest grinds where it does not matter how you killed those X mobs for Y drops. Everyone gets the same experience, solo or in group.
There are plenty of games where that's not true. Take STO for example. You can take your ship out and do deep space encounters, where you really need a bunch of other players to take down hard targets. These are not things you can do yourself at relatively low level, yet you get 3-4 other ships in the same instance and you can all take down some of the heavy hitters and get lots more experience faster than you ever could on your own. Even on encounters where you can kill all the enemy ships, it might take you 15-20 minutes to clear the system, but with a group of ships, you can clear it in 2-3 minutes, wait the usual 3-4 minutes for respawn and do it again and again, gaining much more XP and drops than you could ever do on your own.
I dont know what version of EQ some of these people played. The only solo classes were Druids and Wizards.. both AE Kiting Classes. Rest of the classes needed groups to farm XP.
Eh...I played Ranger, Dreadknight and Beastlord and could solo pretty good. Of course though...it took knowing your class and mob aggro ranges, etc too.
Necros were soloer kings. Bards could charm kite/fear kite and of course swarm kite making them IMO the best open area soloers in the game (bards soloing in a dungeon... shudder).
Paly's and clerics could solo undead.
Monks while slow could split mobs, FD and mend making them very effective soloers.
So then we have 10 out of 14 at launch, then 11 (beasts) of 14 could solo well. 16 classes now but with mercs they all solo.
Still a BIG difference in soloing in EQ (Pre- PoP) and in today's MMORPG's.
In EQ...yes, you could solo, and well if you know your class and how to use them, split mobs, and knew aggro ranges. But IMO it was MUCH harder to do than in today's games. More at stake too...because dying happened more then, and was much more painful/scary/exciting. having to do naked corpse runs to get your stuff, xp loss..maybe even a lvl loss if not far into the lvl...
Plus you could take on a couple mobs.....but any more than that could be death (Depending on the mobs and their con to you)
Now?...I can blow through several mobs with little ill effect (And this is nearly all current MMORPG's I have tried) and if I die? Eh...respawn with little loss really. Maybe a few coins to repair (If even) and a debuff for a few minutes. Makes taking risks a thoughtless matter.
Definately. It was harder to solo, you had to be much more carefull. Way way easier to solo today.
But the guy saying that only 2 could do it. Dead wrong.
Oh yes. Definitely did not play EQ very much, if at all...or only played those 2 classes.
But social interaction is not only about chatting while waiting for something. I agree to a point that excessive standing still and waiting is not a good thing, but it is necessary to some degree. It is not good for social interactions if there is constantly something to be done, a daily to farm, a queue that pops up; Everything that paces you forward relentlessly either forced or because you wan't to finish this or that you don't want to miss out on anything.
Back to the point, there are many other ways for "force" socializing than to put in pauses to chat, pauses are just one of these things. Examples:
If you need to talk to others to trade, barter, and meet them physically (in game) instead of the anonymous auction system.
Having to form groups yourself instead of queueing, it doesn't have to be an annoying chore with the right (lfg) tools.
Needing the help of others to to something, and those others needing you. It could be oldschool, rogue needed to pick lock, tracker needed to find the elusive white wolf, or less class focused stuff.
Advantages of grouping over soloing, not only for stuff where a group is needed, but also for stuff that can be soloed. More xp, better loot, whatever.
Etc... the keyword here is ROLES, we need to return ROLES to mmoRpg - (it doesn't have to be classes, it doesn't have to be holy trinity).
Having a game with a rich social environment requires players that WANT to be social.
Anyone know Bartle test statistics on how common Socializers are?
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Having a game with a rich social environment requires players that WANT to be social.
Anyone know Bartle test statistics on how common Socializers are?
Hmm well I think that depends on how narrow you want to define Socializing. Group mechanics is a form of socializing, raiding is, trading an item is, enchanting someones item is, saying "hey how do you solve the blahdiblah riddle?" is, buffing someone while you run by is (slightly, well atleast two players recognized eachother), putting a lfg message up is, saying "the Awesomenater of War just spawned" is.
Also people go with what the game gives them, if you are "forced" into some form of socializing but aren't that social but like the game otherwise, you will use these features and it will become natural suddenly.
Having a game with a rich social environment requires players that WANT to be social.
Anyone know Bartle test statistics on how common Socializers are?
Hmm well I think that depends on how narrow you want to define Socializing. Group mechanics is a form of socializing, raiding is, trading an item is, enchanting someones item is, saying "hey how do you solve the blahdiblah riddle?" is, buffing someone while you run by is (slightly, well atleast two players recognized eachother), putting a lfg message up is, saying "the Awesomenater of War just spawned" is.
Also people go with what the game gives them, if you are "forced" into some form of socializing but aren't that social but like the game otherwise, you will use these features and it will become natural suddenly.
Or they quit altogether and go play something else. Times are different and people will not stick to doing things they don't want to do...and I for one, don't blame them.
Having a game with a rich social environment requires players that WANT to be social.
Anyone know Bartle test statistics on how common Socializers are?
Hmm well I think that depends on how narrow you want to define Socializing. Group mechanics is a form of socializing, raiding is, trading an item is, enchanting someones item is, saying "hey how do you solve the blahdiblah riddle?" is, buffing someone while you run by is (slightly, well atleast two players recognized eachother), putting a lfg message up is, saying "the Awesomenater of War just spawned" is.
Also people go with what the game gives them, if you are "forced" into some form of socializing but aren't that social but like the game otherwise, you will use these features and it will become natural suddenly.
Or they quit altogether and go play something else. Times are different and people will not stick to doing things they don't want to do...and I for one, don't blame them.
Yeh. I play games the way i want to. If a game forces me to do anything i deem not fun .. i am out of there and move on. There are tons of other games to play.
If i want to social, i stop a min and go to a chat channel. I don't want a game to limit my choices. If i want to kill stuff, don't add a 10 min break just because.
Awful lot of post hoc ergo propter hoc (false cause) happening in those 'secrets'.
Anyone else feel up to tackling them?
In my post is written "The features that social-friendly mmos SEENS to have in common", and i stated that is just my opinion/observation. May very well be just a coincidence UO and L2 to have these features and be the most social-friendly from the games cited in the post.
Proposition: Games were more social before factions. Demonstrate.
The mmos without premade and fixed factions SEENS to be more social-friendly. A possible logical explanation to this is that premade and fixed factions separate "forever" half the server players from you (in some mmos the oposite factions cant even intercommunicate) and take away from the players the control over who is allied or foe, which for itself reduces the socialization need and importance to the player progression (half of the players are enemies dont matter how good you behave and half of the players are allied dont matter how bad you behave).
Proposition: Games were more social before factions. Demonstrate.
The mmos without premade and fixed factions SEENS to be more social-friendly. A possible logical explanation to this is that premade and fixed factions separate "forever" half the server players from you (in some mmos the oposite factions cant even intercommunicate) and take away from the players the control over who is allied or foe, which for itself reduces the socialization need and importance to the player progression (half of the players are enemies dont matter how good you behave and half of the players are allied dont matter how bad you behave).
I've played a few games without factions that are the friendliest games I've played.
I've stated it before and I'll say it again.
All those feature you mention may help... a bit. But IMO the biggest and by far the most significant issue for developing a social environment is the size of the game.
A small playerbase is more like minded and you get to know them better. The bigger the playerbase the more fragmented the community becomes, or rather there are multiple communities now.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Do we really need "rich social interaction" in game? Personally i don't care for it.
In a single player game? no.
Also the thread is directed only to the people that like the social aspect of mmos, so the "must" of rich social interaction is already presupossed here.
Rich social environment comes from social people, that is all.
Oh and for MMOs, [social people] don't have issues being social or having social moments in MMOs.
Takecare.
Edited: Mind you it isn't easy, but I guess it's why I and many who I socialize with random and known in a video game end up not having these issues.
I am a very very very social mmo player (i got 115% "killer" and 100% "socializer" in the Bartle Test). Being very interested in the social aspect of mmos, i could see in these mmos i've played that in some (like L2 and UO) the socializing proccess happens almost automatically, while in others (like WoW) seens to have a wrench in the socializing gearing that slows the proccess.
Do we really need "rich social interaction" in game? Personally i don't care for it.
In a single player game? no.
Also the thread is directed only to the people that like the social aspect of mmos, so the "must" of rich social interaction is already presupossed here.
At the same time, some of the "fixes" like boring waiting time impact others who just want to play a game.
Plus, it is an open question of how popular "socialization" is .. in a game .. which impacts how likely you see see social heavy games.
Lastly, there are socializing cross-game, and cross-servers. If people like to have a "rich social enviroment", they need to look at that, since a social environment encompassing more than 1 game is certainly more "rich" than a single game.
I don't disagree in general .. but what is "somewhat"? A few golds which is more expensive than a teleport? Is that enough?
I think a little more than that. Some degree of "ouch" just to get hearts to pound. Remember barely making it out alive from a train in Unrest? Thinking that kind of fear/elation, although toned down a bit.
I prefer the "chance of a penalty" over an actual determined penalty. Say, if your character dies, there is a 10% chance of an EQ1 penalty. Odds are it will only hit you every 10th death or so, but every single time you're going to sweat.
There is no sensible punishment a game can exact to cause any effect on me. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.
So the actions of gankers cant have any effect in you too. An annoyance isn't better or worse than the other.
One of the problems with modern mmos, in the vision of the old players, is the reduced or even complete lack of rich social interactions ingame, like in the old generation mmos. The mmos nowadays seens to be lonely
...
Khm.... are you looking in games replacement for your REAL LIFE social environment? I pitty any1 that does. This should never be all about gaming. Need to socialise? Fine, leave keyboard and go to socialize.
The op is rather correct but in most cases the players that say they have a good community in games have it not because of the game's design but because of the individual.
Example..ALL of the games can have friend lists and many allow for guilds,but when 90% of the game is designed to solo,community is not a factor nor is it needed.
If you consider yourself a social person,you could accomplish that in ANY game,point is the game does not deserve the credit.
However if a game FORCES you to be social,you had better be social or you are going to quit or be left in the dust.The end result of forced social is the majority of players become social and everything is for reason and designed around the social aspect.Example you need something,everyone helps but if you decide to bail on helping others,expect no help in the future.That is how a real social environment works.
BTW there is ALWAYS going to be players there to help those less capable of being social,example those timid or shy players.I am one of those,i often talk to players on a whim and always offer help,especially if i can spot that they need help.
I do not like the Pvp aspect because that is creating too much drama,winners and losers,it does NOT support a good community,just a competitive one.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Khm.... are you looking in games replacement for your REAL LIFE social environment? I pitty any1 that does. This should never be all about gaming. Need to socialise? Fine, leave keyboard and go to socialize.
Or, even if you want to be in front of a computer, you can always chat with friends.
Personally i think games should make it easy to let friends play together .. but i don't need a game to help me find friends.
This is not a troll response, or some goofy musings of a bored, anonymous poster.
If you wish to make a rich, social MMO environment: limit players to people who older than 25 years old. They have passed the age where they need to hide their opinions behind the anonymity of the internet, they have basic social skills, and are generally more mature because they are employed with responsibilities.
Hedonismbot: Your latest performance was as delectable as dipping my bottom over and over into a bath of the silkiest oils and creams.
This is not a troll response, or some goofy musings of a bored, anonymous poster.
If you wish to make a rich, social MMO environment: limit players to people who older than 25 years old. They have passed the age where they need to hide their opinions behind the anonymity of the internet, they have basic social skills, and are generally more mature because they are employed with responsibilities.
What is your real name, real phone number, and real address?
This is not a troll response, or some goofy musings of a bored, anonymous poster.
If you wish to make a rich, social MMO environment: limit players to people who older than 25 years old. They have passed the age where they need to hide their opinions behind the anonymity of the internet, they have basic social skills, and are generally more mature because they are employed with responsibilities.
Hmm I don't think that would change anything, it might actually make it worse.
IMO it is usually the adult that is the more rude, obnoxious, entitled person in games.
They should be more mature, they should have basic social skills - but often they don't. And it is because they have p"assed the age where they need to hide their opinions behind the anonymity of the internet"that is part of the problem. They give their opinion without any tact or form of reasonable discussion, or really reason at all.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
One of the problems with modern mmos, in the vision of the old players, is the reduced or even complete lack of rich social interactions ingame, like in the old generation mmos. The mmos nowadays seens to be lonely
...
Khm.... are you looking in games replacement for your REAL LIFE social environment? I pitty any1 that does. This should never be all about gaming. Need to socialise? Fine, leave keyboard and go to socialize.
Games (specially mmos) without socialization is just not amusing to me. Very simple.
When i play a mmo, i wanna challenges that simulate real life politics, society, economy, diplomacy and warfare, in a fantasy setting. Only real human beings can deliver me these challenges.
Comments
No you don't since all recent games are quest grinds where it does not matter how you killed those X mobs for Y drops. Everyone gets the same experience, solo or in group.
Quest grind focused games are the problem. In GW2 for example, you can just tag along with the people you meet not even trying to kill anything, half asleep at that and you level as fast as everyone else. No one will notice or complain.
Why bother? At best it's just his opinion at worst, well, it's not worth the time to deal with.
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Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
As far as gw 2 goes "If i can auto-target a huge dragon, and buy/sell stuff at the AH at the same time, untill it dies then something wrong"
There are plenty of games where that's not true. Take STO for example. You can take your ship out and do deep space encounters, where you really need a bunch of other players to take down hard targets. These are not things you can do yourself at relatively low level, yet you get 3-4 other ships in the same instance and you can all take down some of the heavy hitters and get lots more experience faster than you ever could on your own. Even on encounters where you can kill all the enemy ships, it might take you 15-20 minutes to clear the system, but with a group of ships, you can clear it in 2-3 minutes, wait the usual 3-4 minutes for respawn and do it again and again, gaining much more XP and drops than you could ever do on your own.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
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Hope: None
Oh yes. Definitely did not play EQ very much, if at all...or only played those 2 classes.
But social interaction is not only about chatting while waiting for something. I agree to a point that excessive standing still and waiting is not a good thing, but it is necessary to some degree. It is not good for social interactions if there is constantly something to be done, a daily to farm, a queue that pops up; Everything that paces you forward relentlessly either forced or because you wan't to finish this or that you don't want to miss out on anything.
Back to the point, there are many other ways for "force" socializing than to put in pauses to chat, pauses are just one of these things. Examples:
If you need to talk to others to trade, barter, and meet them physically (in game) instead of the anonymous auction system.
Having to form groups yourself instead of queueing, it doesn't have to be an annoying chore with the right (lfg) tools.
Needing the help of others to to something, and those others needing you. It could be oldschool, rogue needed to pick lock, tracker needed to find the elusive white wolf, or less class focused stuff.
Advantages of grouping over soloing, not only for stuff where a group is needed, but also for stuff that can be soloed. More xp, better loot, whatever.
Etc... the keyword here is ROLES, we need to return ROLES to mmoRpg - (it doesn't have to be classes, it doesn't have to be holy trinity).
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
Having a game with a rich social environment requires players that WANT to be social.
Anyone know Bartle test statistics on how common Socializers are?
Hmm well I think that depends on how narrow you want to define Socializing. Group mechanics is a form of socializing, raiding is, trading an item is, enchanting someones item is, saying "hey how do you solve the blahdiblah riddle?" is, buffing someone while you run by is (slightly, well atleast two players recognized eachother), putting a lfg message up is, saying "the Awesomenater of War just spawned" is.
Also people go with what the game gives them, if you are "forced" into some form of socializing but aren't that social but like the game otherwise, you will use these features and it will become natural suddenly.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
Or they quit altogether and go play something else. Times are different and people will not stick to doing things they don't want to do...and I for one, don't blame them.
Yeh. I play games the way i want to. If a game forces me to do anything i deem not fun .. i am out of there and move on. There are tons of other games to play.
If i want to social, i stop a min and go to a chat channel. I don't want a game to limit my choices. If i want to kill stuff, don't add a 10 min break just because.
In my post is written "The features that social-friendly mmos SEENS to have in common", and i stated that is just my opinion/observation. May very well be just a coincidence UO and L2 to have these features and be the most social-friendly from the games cited in the post.
The mmos without premade and fixed factions SEENS to be more social-friendly. A possible logical explanation to this is that premade and fixed factions separate "forever" half the server players from you (in some mmos the oposite factions cant even intercommunicate) and take away from the players the control over who is allied or foe, which for itself reduces the socialization need and importance to the player progression (half of the players are enemies dont matter how good you behave and half of the players are allied dont matter how bad you behave).
I've played a few games without factions that are the friendliest games I've played.
I've stated it before and I'll say it again.
All those feature you mention may help... a bit. But IMO the biggest and by far the most significant issue for developing a social environment is the size of the game.
A small playerbase is more like minded and you get to know them better. The bigger the playerbase the more fragmented the community becomes, or rather there are multiple communities now.
In a single player game? no.
Also the thread is directed only to the people that like the social aspect of mmos, so the "must" of rich social interaction is already presupossed here.
I am a very very very social mmo player (i got 115% "killer" and 100% "socializer" in the Bartle Test). Being very interested in the social aspect of mmos, i could see in these mmos i've played that in some (like L2 and UO) the socializing proccess happens almost automatically, while in others (like WoW) seens to have a wrench in the socializing gearing that slows the proccess.
At the same time, some of the "fixes" like boring waiting time impact others who just want to play a game.
Plus, it is an open question of how popular "socialization" is .. in a game .. which impacts how likely you see see social heavy games.
Lastly, there are socializing cross-game, and cross-servers. If people like to have a "rich social enviroment", they need to look at that, since a social environment encompassing more than 1 game is certainly more "rich" than a single game.
So the actions of gankers cant have any effect in you too. An annoyance isn't better or worse than the other.
Khm.... are you looking in games replacement for your REAL LIFE social environment? I pitty any1 that does. This should never be all about gaming. Need to socialise? Fine, leave keyboard and go to socialize.
The op is rather correct but in most cases the players that say they have a good community in games have it not because of the game's design but because of the individual.
Example..ALL of the games can have friend lists and many allow for guilds,but when 90% of the game is designed to solo,community is not a factor nor is it needed.
If you consider yourself a social person,you could accomplish that in ANY game,point is the game does not deserve the credit.
However if a game FORCES you to be social,you had better be social or you are going to quit or be left in the dust.The end result of forced social is the majority of players become social and everything is for reason and designed around the social aspect.Example you need something,everyone helps but if you decide to bail on helping others,expect no help in the future.That is how a real social environment works.
BTW there is ALWAYS going to be players there to help those less capable of being social,example those timid or shy players.I am one of those,i often talk to players on a whim and always offer help,especially if i can spot that they need help.
I do not like the Pvp aspect because that is creating too much drama,winners and losers,it does NOT support a good community,just a competitive one.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Or, even if you want to be in front of a computer, you can always chat with friends.
Personally i think games should make it easy to let friends play together .. but i don't need a game to help me find friends.
This is not a troll response, or some goofy musings of a bored, anonymous poster.
If you wish to make a rich, social MMO environment: limit players to people who older than 25 years old. They have passed the age where they need to hide their opinions behind the anonymity of the internet, they have basic social skills, and are generally more mature because they are employed with responsibilities.
Hedonismbot: Your latest performance was as delectable as dipping my bottom over and over into a bath of the silkiest oils and creams.
What is your real name, real phone number, and real address?
Hmm I don't think that would change anything, it might actually make it worse.
IMO it is usually the adult that is the more rude, obnoxious, entitled person in games.
They should be more mature, they should have basic social skills - but often they don't. And it is because they have p"assed the age where they need to hide their opinions behind the anonymity of the internet" that is part of the problem. They give their opinion without any tact or form of reasonable discussion, or really reason at all.
Games (specially mmos) without socialization is just not amusing to me. Very simple.
When i play a mmo, i wanna challenges that simulate real life politics, society, economy, diplomacy and warfare, in a fantasy setting. Only real human beings can deliver me these challenges.