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The MMOSide Chat - Are MMOs Really Less Social?
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The MMOSide Chat - Are MMOs Really Less Social?
In a week where we've seen former Blizzard President Mike Morhaime talk about the decline of MMOs, the topic of social dynamics in the genre has been on my mind recently. Are MMOs today less social than traditional MMORPGS?
Comments
Social is important and part of the fun of gaming to me.
Guild Wars 2 is more social than it's given credit for, because it's great at facilitating passive social interactions. Every time you place an AoE heal on random people, soft-group with nearby players, or participate in a large event, you are socializing even if you never say a word. It's those experiences that I play online games for. I'm a quiet person, but I do like being part of things in my own way.
Why would they want to make the game "more accessible", more accessible means more people, more people means more $
They cared not about the person they only cared about their coin purse, why did he sell out to activision in the first place? They didn't need the money that's for f'cking damn sure, they sold out for $, screw the player base and all employees, cause no one is stupid enough to not know what happens when you sell out to EA or Activision. Pure self interest there.
When people are doing things fast they don't have time to chat and interact. So the personal side of the game suffers.
You hear people say, "I just want to log on and jump into the action, with no down time." But that down time had previously been used to talk and kid around with fellow players.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Amazon can claim their game is bringing a new social aspect all they want,they are integrating their platform into twitch which they own,it is ALL business and nothing at all about social/community.BTW since i'm on the topic of Twitch,Amazon has an extremely toxic platform,so nothing that resides there will be any good.
Morhaime was involved with a game that's only real social aspect was sticking people in a dungeon,so what does he know about the past or present.
The author here talks about getting a call to do a raid,this is the sad reality of gaming now a days,THE GAMES are pitiful,players only care about Loot within some boring ugly dungeon raid.Like if he gets a call that just says,hey bud want to play some LOTRO,he likely says nah maybe later,maybe if we raid.
Games/developers are moving further away from creating complete robust games and just aiming for the very superficial that sells,makes money.Personally i am not a bandwagon jumper,i stay true to my gaming,i am not joining the loot shooter revolution or the Battle Royale's or the mmorpg's that have nothing going for them except raids.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Starting in WoW cross world/server dungeon and raid finders removed alot of need for people to socialize. There was now a button you could press and it replaced that need. You are matched with strangers not even on your server that chances are will never play with again or most likly will not remember playing with due to the long gaps of time between grouping with them. Instead of people helping you progress they became tools for your progression. Things that could be discarded when you no longer needed them.
Current trends are moving away from guilds, which for this argument I am considering large groups of 50+ players not the 4-5man crap ffxiv has. The shift is moving more towards lowman groups of 4-10 people in most mmos. This is not only crippling guilds (no reason to join them anymore) it is making people lose the group mindset. And this has an impact on how you treat others around you. I still talk to around 24 people from 15yrs ago in 7 different countries that were in my guild. People who meet in my guilds married and now have families. We had guild outtings in reallife for those in the US. That guild aspect that use to be such a core part of mmos... is long dead now in almost every game due to its design.
So yes MMOS are a whole lot less social, but it is not because people are less social, it is because the CORE DESIGN of the mmo games being developed changed. THANKS WOW!!!......, and the countess sheep developers who copied that stupid design.
In the age of garbage social interactions in almost all major AAA mmos today... I went to a few private server for FFXI and Archeage for a bit when everything else was in a slump. and guess what the social aspects were the same as they were 17 years ago when I first started playing mmos. FFXI because it was oldschool but the community was just as i remembered it alittle smaller obviously on a ps but felt exactly the same. Archeage because others mattered you could not progress without the help of your guild, friends, and allied guilds.
People are naturally social animals, but we also take the path of least resistance. If it is more progression/easier progression to not socialize we as a species will not socialize with people outside our inner circles. If you need help of others to survive socialization will thrive.
Want to fix the socialization of mmos do the following in my opinion: Remove Solo progression as the main model of character progression, Remove all Instance duty finders/raid finders, Remove the ability to change your characters name, Remove all cross world/realm functionality, remove mega servers, and build endgame content designed with guilds in mind. (you know the exact opposite direction the genre has been moving in the last 10yrs)
I don't think concurrent existence combined with coincidental benefit would count as socializing to most people. It seems more collective individualism.
But online games offer spontaneity through such social encounters, big and small. It's just up to us to pick the games that best fit the kind of interaction we're looking for.
- people understand the concept of MMORPGs and no longer need to ask for help, they just adjust on their own to each game's specifics and can easily go solo mode
- the in-game QoL features allow them to go solo mode like random group finder for PvE and PvP content
- game content is so dumbed-down and easy that you don't need other people to do it (ESO questing is super easy - you can't die.. that's why I quit that game) today I played LOTRO since it's F2P and I was level 30 Champion solo-killing level 35 Elite mobs on my own without dying once.. if I tried to fight level 35 Elites in Vanilla WoW (my first and most favorite MMO) while I was level 30, I will die a miserable death, I have to have the Elites be at least 5 levels LOWER than me in order to stand a chance in solo mode... and I also have to be high level with good gear and lots of abilities unlocked
- I've played games where you're encouraged to join a guild and after doing so, a lot of those solo mode features become available so even when you're in a guild, you don't have to communicate with them
Unless a big and influential company releases an MMORPG that is massive and everyone wants to play it that breaks this cycle and forces people to really socialize in order to progress, the situation will only get worse and worse.
I don't know if Amazon's upcoming MMOs - New World and the Lord of the Rings MMO will enforce any more socialization or will they allow players to just live in their socially distanced bubble like the rest of the games.
Blizzard designed themselves into this corner. I am playing Classic WoW right now. I've socialized more with random people in Classic than I've done in WoW since BC.
Granted, in-game voice and discord are the big factors here.
Raquelis in various games
Played: Everything
Playing: Nioh 2, Civ6
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Anticipating: Everquest Next Crowfall, Pantheon, Elden Ring
But the part of ESO that had that old MMO social feeling in spades was the PvP in Cyrodiil.
For one thing the Cyrodiil campaigns functioned just like old-fashioned small servers: You play with exactly the same smallish (about 200 for your alliance these days) pool of people and against the same enemies day in and day out for a month at a time. You make friends easily there and the PvP guilds I joined were very welcoming and very tight. You also play in large warbands often with several raid-sized groups focused on the same objective and with plenty of time to just chat about whatever during the periodic down times.
But that totally falls apart when you pop over to the PvE side with its megaserver tech. Unless you go do something specific there with your guildmates you're playing with thousands of strangers and can go weeks without running into the same person twice. There have never been many things there that encourage grouping and socializing. ESO PvE is and has always been one of the more soloable things ever created in an MMO. Socializing in PvE is totally optional and you have to go out of your way to do it.
It's one hell of a contrast between the PvE and Cyrodiil PvP sides there.
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It depended on the game.....UO and FFXI had terrible communities...One was a vicious gankfest and the other was a bunch of elite snobs that had no interest whatsoever in helping out new players....EQ though had a great community...The players were very helpful. Anarchy Online also had a great community when it came to helping others.
Fewer*
You had a vastly different experience with FFXI then I did. There were hundreds of guilds of all kinds. Social, Event, Endgame. The hardcore guilds existed and yes they did try to snuff out competition. But there was constant groups of people grouping up to lvl, people forming non-guild groups doing missions, questing, bcnms, ksnms, and so on. Edit: Love autocorrect >.>
GW2 is very fast combat. It is actually one you need to move while using skills or die.
GW1 - I can see. Too many people run around with their heroes without other players. That is not fun.
GW2 - especially WvW is very much a social game. As I said, the guild I am in is VERY social as is the server I am on (that is for WvW only). Our Discords are always active.
Remember that even FF14 and GW2 have been around 8 years old or older. Nothing i've seen since about 2013 has been anything but easycore stuff where most of the content you can solo. I remember sitting in EverQuest at level 16 waiting for a goblin group in High Keep and then grinding there for hours and maybe getting a level. Leveling? leveling *was* the game, and it was fun. Not this race to the end game and then get bored or grind the same crap for miniscule gearscore increases that has become most games. Grinding is only not fun if your combat is not fun (I'm looking at you, FF14... but at least you have storylines that make up for the drab combat).
Most games have also switched to bound-gear systems so there's a LOT less trading, which also decreases socialization... along with multiple types of currency that lock people into tiers of content which segregates it as well. A lot of this is done in the name of fairness and to reduce botting and farming because they can't think of a better way to combat those problems. Until Game Developers start utilizing A.I. to combat botting and farming it's probably going to be a trade-off we are forced to live with.
Buff systems where you can't hit people outside your group with buffs and heals also decreases these aspects. Another systemic change I guess to reduce bot-leveling with high level buffs (it's not like I don't remember getting high level druid thorns and regen and letting things kill themselves on me in EQ in the Luclin era). But there's already better ways to combat that with buff level adjusting to target level.
Most of these changes were reactionary to combat other problems and impacting socializing has been an unintended byproduct. I think it takes a lot of careful and creative planning to combat the social ills without reuining the social gains (don't throw the baby out with the bath water, to so to speak). Because it takes careful craftsmanship, a lot of these indie game studios making their first MMO don't have the resources to put into that and that's why we see less well-crafted games these days.