"Oh sure some of them might have been older than my great grandpappy and online for "nefarious" purposes"
Right, because old people don't play video games.
This is no different than racism or sexism... and you know what word that is? Well I can't say it about Age discrimination or the Moderator will edit my post. Sound fair to you?
'Sandbox MMO' is a PTSD trigger word for anyone who has the experience to know that anonymous players invariably use a 'sandbox' in the same manner a housecat does.
When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
No game is more fun than the one you can't play, and no game is more boring than one which you've become familiar.
How to become a millionaire: Start with a billion dollars and make an MMO.
I wonder if it's the tone of the game itself that influences the community. In City of Heroes the players were ... well heroes doing good deeds and all that. Compare that to the FRPGs where the goal is to invade a creatures home and kill everything. When you play a hero, there's a tendency to act heroic and that includes helping each other.
The game also made it hard for some classes to solo. Those classes worked well with others so even having two people team up would change an impossible mission to doable. Nowadays it seems anyone can solo so there's less of a need to be social. It's like MMORPGs are turning into shared worlds where there are other players if you need them and help the ingame economy work. People can play for the company and not to chat and we're poorer for it.
Games which require - or at least strongly reward - inter-player organisation will see communities develop. Convenience-focused gameplay will not provide a good medium for communities to grow in.
The obvious example here is EVE: In 0.0, it is absolutely necessary to be in an organised group, and long-lasting, vigorous communities are the norm. In hi-sec, there is no real need to interact directly with other players for the huge majority of activities, and vigorous communities are the exception. And those exceptions are ALL based around activities that DO reward organisation, like Incursions.
I have very high hopes that Camelot Unchained will give some rebirth to this genre that WoW has maimed, and created "spoiled whiney brats" as the new gaming community.
In the original Everquest, getting your corpse back was a major task sometimes. But nobody ever cried about it, and usually in places like plane of fear, the big guild on the server would come to help you out if you wiped and got stuck.
Great post Adam... My best social days lasted from DAoC thru Vanilla WoW.
Over 10 years ago, I think people played MMOs with a "social gathering" attitude, expecting to interact with people with good manners and an interest in cooperation. Sure there were a few bad apples, but the communities were much better.
These days too many people (not all) play with a "cool to be an asshole" type of attitude, and a horrifying grudge against whatever developer is charging them to play the MMO in the first place. Good manners and generosity seem to be a lost concept to today's gamers.
(You even see the "cool to be an asshole" illness infecting the posters working for this website, although some have the infection much worse than others.)
"I'm a nerd, and I'm pretty proud of it." - Gilbert, Revenge of the Nerds[1984]
Great post Adam... My best social days lasted from DAoC thru Vanilla WoW.
Over 10 years ago, I think people played MMOs with a "social gathering" attitude, expecting to interact with people with good manners and an interest in cooperation. Sure there were a few bad apples, but the communities were much better.
These days too many people (not all) play with a "cool to be an asshole" type of attitude, and a horrifying grudge against whatever developer is charging them to play the MMO in the first place. Good manners and generosity seem to be a lost concept to today's gamers.
(You even see the "cool to be an asshole" illness infecting the posters working for this website, although some have the infection much worse than others.)
You know, this hits the nail on the head for me. I started playing MMOs in 2006 - my first being City of Heroes. The first couple of years were great; people were fun, chilled and even though some of the missions in that game were a little repetitive and grindy, if you got a fun team of 8 together no one minded. Occasionally in a PUG you'd get a dickhead, but it usually wasn't long before they left.
After about 2009 / 2010, the game seemed to gradually get to a situation where the odd dickhead was the norm rather than the exception. People yelling obscenities in general chat or the "I'm really funny because I talk endless nonsense" types filling the game. More recently, this behavious appears to be the norm in every game, culminating in MechWarrior Online where people think it's perfectly acceptable to tell someone how much they suck after they've died and they're spectating from within a still living players cockpit.
Is it any wonder that so many of us would rather play alone if these are the kinds of people that we have to group up with ?
All I have to say is that the majority of players asked for this the dungeon finder , instant travel this , instant gratification that, MMORPG's cater to awful bottom of the barrel players, along with the "I don't have time to play MMORPGs" but still want the shineys but putting forth no effort, and your suprised that people don't talk in MMOs now? These types have players have all but killed the social experience with their solo anti social agenda and till they get it thru their thick heads that MMORPG's arent single player games they will continue to get worse .
What I'm about to say may be somewhat counterintuitive, but I think it's worth thinking about...
I'm thinking the problem with the games over the years is that they made the successful completion of chained quests a rather high stakes affair. In other words, you had to successfully complete a content chain with a limited number of set people in order to get the reward (loot, an unlock, etc).
What this did was the following:
1) Since you could only take a limited number of people in a group, and you needed everyone in the group to punch at or above their weight for several encounters in a row, you gamed with the people you knew. If you didn't know them, you made them do an "initiation" (download the voice app, fill out a guild application) before you would game with him or her.
2) The games rewarded consistency over sociability. Since one screw up left you and the group with nothing, you didn't take chances with "pick up friends" or people shouting LFG. Why take the chance, when they might drop out to catch dinner, leaving you shorthanded? Why take the chance, when they could die or mess up?
3) "Lockout timers," "wipe fails," and similar mechanics raised the stakes in the uberloot raids and quests. It wasn't condusive to new people jumping in and out at whim. Once you signed in, you were in it for the long haul, or you and the group would get nothing.
See, when you look at a game like WoW (at least the WoW that rose to prominence), the incentive structure was real hostile to meeting new people. You had to do marathon raids with a set group from start to finish, and you needed to do it repeatedly for everyone to get loot. It wasn't a good setup for creating a friendly community. It was a setup that valued a group of set friends you could trust. It's the same with EVE, where you could lose it all by taking a chance on someone new. It's no wonder why both these games have a bad reputation for friendliness and sociability. Misery does not like company.
In contrast, City of Heroes had always had a great, friendly community. But you could see that the incentive structure in that game was different. The stakes were lower, so people took chances on strangers. It did have chained quests, but the chains weren't long, dying wouldn't knock you out, it would scale to the changing dynamics of the group, and everyone got a reward at the end. In short, the "stakes" were much lower, and so people weren't so squeamish about taking chances.
So, in short, high stakes grouping creates an unsociable game. Low stakes grouping creates a sociable game.
Does that make sense?
Well put, I agree with you 100%.
I've noticed this in particular in playing LOTRO. People there constantly complain about how terrible PUGs (pick up groups are), like they are the worst people on the earth.
So ironicaly, its the groupers themselves who are to blame, by being so elitist.
This is true and i feel the same way, havant realy had real MMO since 2004 or so when the shifted it all to solo play. I think one of the major thing that brought a community together was having a real death penaly that people realy want to advoid such as Everquest corpse runs. In EQ these corpse runs also tend to bring people together aswell. Nothing like some hardship to bring people together. The social apsect of the game was also enhanced with these corpse runs because player them self knew how much it sucks and they were usualy more than happy to help somone out either throwing them a buffs, corpse summons (Necro), to rezzes (cleric), corpse dragging (Rogues specialy with his sneak/hide) and even forming group for the soul purpose of defending them till they retrive there equipment back.
Ive steamrolled through GW2 with many groups tackling the bosses and many quest to reach lvl 80 and ive almost med nobody becouse they dont talk or say anything they just tag along finish and gone they are.
Then after 2-3 months when GW2 was launched i started exploring all the maps for completion and wanne see everything becouse lets be honest world looks great.
I soloed through the maps and saw sometimes people but strange thing was i met more players who helped tackle bosses and talked then my first few months reaching 80 with hundreds of players.
It seems when people solo in guild wars 2 there not on vent/teamsp or with guildies they suddenly can chat and sometimes even very nice.
Dungeon's later ruined it all for me not only was tiria empty also 90% did only fractals or other dungeons runs and in dungeon partys the the trash/curse/swearing cameback unbelievely how rude and nasty people are to each other in instance.
I left GW2 not to comeback community for me dont do it anymore plus the treadmill for items and constant instance runs GW2 is fraction of what i thought it would be a open world dynamic events sad real sad.
Social is alive and kicking in Asheron's call 2 as you rememeber 10 years ago realy community is great try it.
Comments
"Oh sure some of them might have been older than my great grandpappy and online for "nefarious" purposes"
Right, because old people don't play video games.
This is no different than racism or sexism... and you know what word that is? Well I can't say it about Age discrimination or the Moderator will edit my post. Sound fair to you?
'Sandbox MMO' is a PTSD trigger word for anyone who has the experience to know that anonymous players invariably use a 'sandbox' in the same manner a housecat does.
When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
No game is more fun than the one you can't play, and no game is more boring than one which you've become familiar.
How to become a millionaire:
Start with a billion dollars and make an MMO.
I wonder if it's the tone of the game itself that influences the community. In City of Heroes the players were ... well heroes doing good deeds and all that. Compare that to the FRPGs where the goal is to invade a creatures home and kill everything. When you play a hero, there's a tendency to act heroic and that includes helping each other.
The game also made it hard for some classes to solo. Those classes worked well with others so even having two people team up would change an impossible mission to doable. Nowadays it seems anyone can solo so there's less of a need to be social. It's like MMORPGs are turning into shared worlds where there are other players if you need them and help the ingame economy work. People can play for the company and not to chat and we're poorer for it.
Games which require - or at least strongly reward - inter-player organisation will see communities develop. Convenience-focused gameplay will not provide a good medium for communities to grow in.
The obvious example here is EVE: In 0.0, it is absolutely necessary to be in an organised group, and long-lasting, vigorous communities are the norm. In hi-sec, there is no real need to interact directly with other players for the huge majority of activities, and vigorous communities are the exception. And those exceptions are ALL based around activities that DO reward organisation, like Incursions.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
I agree with the post 100%.
The MMORPG has been turned into a SORPG.
I have very high hopes that Camelot Unchained will give some rebirth to this genre that WoW has maimed, and created "spoiled whiney brats" as the new gaming community.
In the original Everquest, getting your corpse back was a major task sometimes. But nobody ever cried about it, and usually in places like plane of fear, the big guild on the server would come to help you out if you wiped and got stuck.
Great post Adam... My best social days lasted from DAoC thru Vanilla WoW.
Over 10 years ago, I think people played MMOs with a "social gathering" attitude, expecting to interact with people with good manners and an interest in cooperation. Sure there were a few bad apples, but the communities were much better.
These days too many people (not all) play with a "cool to be an asshole" type of attitude, and a horrifying grudge against whatever developer is charging them to play the MMO in the first place. Good manners and generosity seem to be a lost concept to today's gamers.
(You even see the "cool to be an asshole" illness infecting the posters working for this website, although some have the infection much worse than others.)
"I'm a nerd, and I'm pretty proud of it." - Gilbert, Revenge of the Nerds[1984]
Well put, I agree with you 100%.
I've noticed this in particular in playing LOTRO. People there constantly complain about how terrible PUGs (pick up groups are), like they are the worst people on the earth.
So ironicaly, its the groupers themselves who are to blame, by being so elitist.
R.I.P. City of Heroes and my 17 characters there
Ive steamrolled through GW2 with many groups tackling the bosses and many quest to reach lvl 80 and ive almost med nobody becouse they dont talk or say anything they just tag along finish and gone they are.
Then after 2-3 months when GW2 was launched i started exploring all the maps for completion and wanne see everything becouse lets be honest world looks great.
I soloed through the maps and saw sometimes people but strange thing was i met more players who helped tackle bosses and talked then my first few months reaching 80 with hundreds of players.
It seems when people solo in guild wars 2 there not on vent/teamsp or with guildies they suddenly can chat and sometimes even very nice.
Dungeon's later ruined it all for me not only was tiria empty also 90% did only fractals or other dungeons runs and in dungeon partys the the trash/curse/swearing cameback unbelievely how rude and nasty people are to each other in instance.
I left GW2 not to comeback community for me dont do it anymore plus the treadmill for items and constant instance runs GW2 is fraction of what i thought it would be a open world dynamic events sad real sad.
Social is alive and kicking in Asheron's call 2 as you rememeber 10 years ago realy community is great try it.