Originally posted by MindTrigger The auction house is both a blessing and a curse. Yes it does remove the need for player interaction or real trade instead of just buying items for currency. On the other hand I don't want the chat channels to turn into rapid fire spam like "WTS uber item X pst". Giran chat in Lineage 2 is a prime example, having a conversation in that channel is an exercise in futility. I completely agree with the player housing. It's nice for storage but the novelty of decorating it wears off quickly. It has always felt disconnected from the rest of the game. Guild halls are another story though. They do help quite a bit with the social aspect of the game. The social hubs don't work for a few reasons. The main reason, I think, is because they make too many of them. They put cities and towns in every area which spreads the population all over hells half acre. Nobody wants to have to travel anymore to get to a trainer / store / quest giver. Most people will say travel is a useless time sink, I say its another example of how mmorpg's are being made easier. As for player made entertainment, the last time i seen that was the costume contests in CoH (I never played SWG). Everything being solo friendly is another reason. But not because being in a group means everybody is going to talk it up by default. The content has to be challenging enough that the group must communicate to survive. Today tank and spank is the assumed strategy so there's no need to talk even then. WAR is the perfect example of this, I was in plenty of groups for PQ's and scenarios but they were just mindless kills and zergs so you were able to hear a pin drop in the group channel.
Thanks for the reply. The trade channel does not have to be the only means for people to sell things. In SWG you would get people barking in public areas, but it wasn't too bad (on Bria anyway). People's vendors could be seen on the overlay map, and they could be searched on the Bazzaar, sort of like an AH, but you still had to travel to pick items up, or to buy items from private vendors. This effectively quieted the chat channels for trade. Even if you don't like those options, there is plenty of room to brainstorm new ideas for trade. The auction house is just an easy cop-out solution, in my opinion. The solo / grouping thing to me is just another one of those areas where the potential to make new friends is lost. I agree about the tank and spank garbage. I hate to keep bringing SWG into all my posts (actually, no I don't) but since SOE didn't rely on the standard classes pre-CU, groups had to play smart on the tough planets like Dathomir. The witches would own just about any type of player, so group effort was really important. There was no class recipe for the right group, just good smart/skilled players. The reason people used social hubs in SWG was because there was a central purpose behind them. Entertainers were key to poison/disease healing and wound healing which were *hardcore*. If you got a disease or you died, a big chunk of your health bar were blacked out until you went and sat with entertainers to heal for a bit. As a result, conversations happened and friendships were made. What we have today is the death penalty system where you are *sorta* weaker for 10 mins or so. yawn. I prefer the social idea SWG had. The NGE version is even useful because instead of heals, you can get different kinds of buffs from entertainers. Entertainers were somewhat key to the game, and so the main cantinas were busy, and fun. Also, if you wanted to craft and you had a crafting droid, you could go sit in the cantinas and grind stuff out while talking with people. The modern version of social hubs are completely passive and people are expected to just hang out for no reason. Problem is, they get bored after a few minutes because there is nothing to do or work on there so no one hangs around.
I remember how crowded was the general chat in SWG and the first thing we did when landing at a starport was put the spammers on /ignore.
The Bazaar was a nice feature but it lacked the ability to deliver your shopping to either your bank/house/mail.
Visiting empty vendors wasn't fun and so the bazaar lacked the ability to browse through all shops or the planetary map to hide empty vendors.
The cap price on the bazaar was a pain it forced the players to shop on the forum, so more like a second out of game play.
The huge size of the groups (called raids in MMO now) let anyone join them & the lack of levels helped a lot for that. You would stop by a player camp in the wilderness to heal & take the time to chat.
Poisons & diseaase where healed by docs, wounds by docs & meds, mind wounds by entertainers Even as a former master DOC & entertainer I think 10 min downtime was too long for healing, something like 5 min would have been enoough, as for shuttle wait time.
Wel, in Lineage 2 and LOTRO people talk quite a bit. But they talk with the people who matter, their guild mates!
In L2 everyone talks to everyone else constantly. This is because although it is possible to solo the game isn't very solo friendly. You need to interact with others to get anywhere in the game. This is just the opposite of the WoW generation of games. They are solo friendly to the point that you could play for years and never have to interact with anyone. I believe that soloing should always be available in games but it should be limited in a way that groups are always preferable. The problem is that these newer MMOs have taken solo friendly to such an extreme that everyone treats them as single player games with other people running around. WAR is a good example of this taken to the absolute extreme. Sadly I see more of these games coming in the future so expect more games where nobody interacts with anyone.
What is there to talk about when you spend your whole life playing a game? There are some people in my guild that if I log on at any given time they are online and are online all day and well into the night. What do epople like this have to talk about if they are glued to their computer all day?
Maybe there is not much to talk about? About the game itself.
But I think the root of the problem is not "no chat". I think the real problem is that modern MMORPGs cater towards the solo player at all cost. As others have said: Once you can do everything alone there is no need to interact with other players unless you are a very social person by nature. Which doesn't mean that most MMORPG players are anti-social. But for some it's not that easy to get into conversation, maybe.
Furthermore, if you compare modern social platforms with social tools in MMORPG ... well, MMORPGs are horribly outdated (at least most of them). In the end it often comes down to the tools. Bring in good tools for raising a community and the community will raise. Take WoW's LFG tool for example. It has been said many times that the old plain text chat channel was a better tool. It was not perfect. But it did the job. The new system actually hinders the player. Just two simple examples:
You cannot look for any dungeon. You are forced to specify the dungeon. But if you feel like "I don't mind. And dungeon will do it. Just wanna have some fun" then what?
You cannot scan the system for players who search a team member from your twink. Not everyone likes to stand around on his main in X and wait for hours.
On almost every modern fan/social site you find tools like chatrooms, mailinglists, forums, networks and things like this. So far only EvE has ingame chatrooms (which can be queried easily) and guild-wide mailinglist (sorta). Using tools outside of the game is not the right solution imho. Because MMORPG servers are huge communities after all. A great platform. Why aren't there tools for social interaction and communication?
Since playing Everquest, my experience talking to people and amount of contacts has gone down each time.
Everquest had loads of people chatting in general chat, guilds, and /say. Then I played Vanguard which had a bit less and only region chat and no central hub. Then I played Guild wars where very few people talked, only in guild. Then I played WoW, where absolutely no one talks almost, and where I can't access a general chat, just a region chat.
I play MMO to talk to other players and to play with them. If you don't have a general chat in your MMO, but just region chat, and no central hubs, I might as well go play single player games. Do you talk in new MMO?
1) button mashing doesn't give you enough time to speak.
Why could you chat in EQ? because melee had one button to hi: melee attack, and they were done. Nukers needed to control their aggro therefore didnt permanently click the Fireball spell, and healers didn't really need to heal all that much when a spawn was broken.
2) MMO brings nothing new to the table, therefore players barely have any questions to ask. they just log in like robots, knowing what they have to do: kill stuff, get stuff and lvl.
3) you are lead by the hand on your way to leveling. The whole genre is evolving toward the associal player more than the casual.
We need the EQ fundamentals back to really enjoy this genre again.
My addiction History: >> EQ1 2000-2004 - Shaman/Bard/Wizard/Monk - nolife raid-whore >> WoW 2004-2009 + Cataclysm for 2 months - hardcore casual >> Current status : done with MMO, too old for that crap.
Single Player Online Games with Multiplayer Option
after all they would allow you to experience the content as multiplayer but by gamedesign and lazyness of players they truely feel like single player games most of the time
if your bored, visit my blog at: http://craylon.wordpress.com/ dealing with the look of mmos with the nvidia 3d vision glasses
Games that allow alot of solo playing will have a very quiet community eventually.
Games that is based on teamwork will have more people speaking.
This doesn't really mean which setting is better but the fact that: When players need someone else's help doing something, they develop better social habits to communicate.
Another problem is the use of ventrilo and teamspeak. These actually hurts the game's communication between strangers, since everyone always just talks on the headphone with their little groups of friends/guild. This also means eyes off the chat screen. I do believe ventrilo and teamspeak is helpful in massive fights that need coordinations, but over using it basically will have its side effects.
Since playing Everquest, my experience talking to people and amount of contacts has gone down each time.
Everquest had loads of people chatting in general chat, guilds, and /say. Everquest by design is a very social game, requiring groups just to farm and with a raid focused endgame. Then I played Vanguard which had a bit less and only region chat and no central hub. Then I played Guild wars where very few people talked, only in guild. Guild wars is basically Diablo with a city hub the only chatting u will do is in small group or guild. Then I played WoW, where absolutely no one talks almost, and where I can't access a general chat, just a region chat. WoW brought in a bunch of console and Fps players to the mmo genre they prefer solo,casual content. this has created the illusion of a community that doesn't socialize. Wows global chat was shutdown due to spam and the majority of the playerbase agreed with that decision.
I play MMO to talk to other players and to play with them. If you don't have a general chat in your MMO, but just region chat, and no central hubs, I might as well go play single player games. Do you talk in new MMO? I play Eve and have on going conversation all the time while playing.
I prefer games where people are talking too. I hate games that are not social. One of the main reasons I left WAR was because nobody talked. I would try to start a conversation in chat but it did not work. I would see a person and run up to them saying Hi and Hello but they would just ignore me and run away. I remember in Lineage 2 some of my favorite times came from just talking about stuff while playing. I will never play a MMO where nobody talks. If thats the case then why even have a chat box?
Since playing Everquest, my experience talking to people and amount of contacts has gone down each time.
Everquest had loads of people chatting in general chat, guilds, and /say. Then I played Vanguard which had a bit less and only region chat and no central hub. Then I played Guild wars where very few people talked, only in guild. Then I played WoW, where absolutely no one talks almost, and where I can't access a general chat, just a region chat.
I play MMO to talk to other players and to play with them. If you don't have a general chat in your MMO, but just region chat, and no central hubs, I might as well go play single player games. Do you talk in new MMO?
Uh? My guildies chat all the time. I am not sure i want to just chat with random people.
I guess most people are busy lvling/raiding or whatever.
I think taht without class restrictions it would be much easier to make groups, and people wouldn't stress as much waiting for tank/healer/whatever. Then people could talk abit more. Maybe it would help
This is something I have noticed too. I think it is because these games are so gear-based and quest-based and without the sandbox style it is just not as social. I noticed in old Ultima Online people would gather in places just to talk because we didn't have a general chat. It made the game so much fun. I just can't get into these 9 hour raiding games anymore.
yeah everquest was a big social network game as well as fun mmo crap
i really enjoyed talking to people everywhere
since wow launched i have tended to talk less and less in game.
wow and every game after it has just seemed soulless in that aspect. like the op said games use region chats and global chat has kinda died away.
even in regional chats and all that i dont talk anymore. most people are really aggressive and rude in mmo's these days. most of the cool people i remember from eq1 days stay in guilds and dont say a word outside of them
-------------------------------------- Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The force shall free me. -the Sith code
I would preffer if the people chatted all over rather then just within the guild. I remember being able to run along and find someone killing or crafting or whatever they're doing and being able to start up a conversation about anything. Now you usually get the "can't talk, leveling" or "busy killing, leave me alone". I think there's not a single thing at fault here but a collection of smaller short comings that add up to a bigger problem. The mentality of games, along with games that are quite easy to overcome on your own don't necessarily breed any sense of camraderie or any need for others around. The stigma now amongst most of these players is that other people are dumb or inept and would only hinder their progression. To them the game is a measuring pole where they can see how well they stack up to the other people and ofcourse they want to be on top, the biggest, strongest, smartest... I think you get my point.
Well that is why I usually turn off general chat. I play online games to "play" a game.
And though I've met great people and enjoy talking with them, most of my conversations go on in the guild. I have had some incredible clan/guild mates and have very much enjoyed their company.
However, I don't want to sit around and "shoot the shit" with someone "just because".Oh sure if a short conversation starts up that's fine, but in the end, if I'm not playing the game then I could be doing something else.
I don't play online games to meet people, I play them to play along side with people.
Now I do understand that many like you enjoy this. But to me that just turns the game into a glorified chat room.
So when I do see the chatty general chat I just turn it off completely. That's a shame as there might be people who need help and perhaps I can even help them. Especially because some people in game can be very insulting for no reason at all and won't help players.
But I just can't abide the whole chat room mentality.
It's very possible that other people are doing the same.
I mean, talk about killing immersion? People talking about cars, politics, debating WoW (because I see a bit too much of this). If you want to talk you can find me in real life.
However, I pay monthly so I can take my sword of "Make Evil Pay" and storm the castle.
Otherwise I can be hanging with my real life friends.
I kinda get what you're saying here, but my question is...how did you find a good guild to get in? Sure you can hit websites or forum boards and scroll through the many recruitment posts there, but myself I base it off of its membership and how much they interact with me. If they're aloof and only talk to others inside their guild, that equates to snob to me.
Its like that really lovely woman you've admired for some time in the lunchroom or the office who always keeps to herself and talks only to her select group of friends, no matter how "wonderful" she might truly be, because of her tendency to interact only with a select group she comes across as a stuck up b***ch.
Even peace may be purchased at too high a price, and the only time you are completely safe is when you lie in the grave.
I kinda get what you're saying here, but my question is...how did you find a good guild to get in? Sure you can hit websites or forum boards and scroll through the many recruitment posts there, but myself I base it off of its membership and how much they interact with me. If they're aloof and only talk to others inside their guild, that equates to snob to me. Its like that really lovely woman you've admired for some time in the lunchroom or the office who always keeps to herself and talks only to her select group of friends, no matter how "wonderful" she might truly be, because of her tendency to interact only with a select group she comes across as a stuck up b***ch.
To be honest it was easy.
For one thing, I am mostly a soloer. However, if you were to read these forums you would believe that people who solo are satan who are individually responsible for ruining mmo's and who are selfish prigs.
The reality is that we just have a different way of playing. But in no way does that preclude meeting and grouping.
To further that comment, in "real life" I would never just go up to someone and just talk to them "just because". However, I do understand that there are certain parts of the U.S. where people do just that. But being on the East Coast, that is considered "odd". yet, I have many friends and great friends.
What happens is you get to know the groups, you look at the forums, you see people in game, sometimes you will group with them or help in a quest when asked.
It is by that way you actually meet people and find them. I think the issue here is people want to sign on to these games and immediatley get "friends". But the reality is that friends are not gotten so quickly so often.
The friends I've made in Lineage 2 were some of the greatest people in game that I've ever met. But it took years to cultivate those relationships.
currently I'm in a Fellowship n LOTRO with some very good people. I just went through the forum recruting posts, got an idea about who might be interesting and wrote. Posted a bit on their forums and then joined.
But it takes years in my mind to make real and true friendships. And they are always evolving. So many times I see people complain that a friend in game scammed them and they had no idea why. Well, when people jump to instant trust then it sometimes becomes hard to see the forest from the trees. To coin a phrase.
It was like my time in Warhammer when someone offered me a guild. I said no and he asked why as I was lvl 20 or so and he thought that by that lvl I would have joined someone. I explained the whole Lineage 2 thing and that I wanted to take time and get to know people.
His response was "this is not Lineage 2" and "It's not like it's a blood contract".
and right there I knew that his guild wasn't for me. Not to say that you have to give your life to a game clan but once you play a game like Lineage 2, especiall in the early days when you dropped items when you died and were always avenging your kin, you get to know who your good "ingame friends" are and whose there just for the chat room and quest help.
So "no" I don't want to just shoot the shit with just anyone. I will continue to get to know people slowly and find people who fit my playstyle or at least my temperment. It doesn't take a huge amount of time to meet people but it does take time to learn a person's true quality.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
So "no" I don't want to just shoot the shit with just anyone. I will continue to get to know people slowly and find people who fit my playstyle or at least my temperment. It doesn't take a huge amount of time to meet people but it does take time to learn a person's true quality.
Forgive me for largely snipping your reply, I mean no disrespect by that, as I quite understand what you're saying and in large part I agree. I too am mostly a solo player, but at the same time, I will strike up a conversation with just about anyone that doesn't involve current politics, sex, real life religion, or sports.
But my point was that while some make use of such forums to scout out a guild, or move as a guild en-masse from one game to the next, quite a few people don't. I won't make grand assumptions or quote statistics that I have no way of proving, but it seems like a lot of people do it the way I do it, by initially joining up with a randomly encountered person for a quick quest solution, then repeated sharing of goals leads to more formal efforts to work together later on as compatability shows itself.
Certainly, scouting out boards beforehand is a more efficient approach to determine if the stated goals and temprament of a guild being researched is a good fit, but honestly, I do that after I've encountered some individuals from a guild who it looks like there might be a possible future, and again, I get that from initial casual conversation. Likewise, I learn whom to avoid from reading such chatter, you can usually tell if there is a personality conflict by the way someone responds to casual questions.
All the things you mentioned as taking time, for me at least, have thier seeds in casual chatter of wide area channels, and when people adopt a mentality of bothering only with fellow guild/clan members, whether they mean to or not, they shut out the good with the bad as well as projecting a attitude of elitism, again whether intentional or not, that's whats picked up in the subcontext of non response to people asking directed questions.
Even peace may be purchased at too high a price, and the only time you are completely safe is when you lie in the grave.
So "no" I don't want to just shoot the shit with just anyone. I will continue to get to know people slowly and find people who fit my playstyle or at least my temperment. It doesn't take a huge amount of time to meet people but it does take time to learn a person's true quality.
Forgive me for largely snipping your reply, I mean no disrespect by that, as I quite understand what you're saying and in large part I agree. I too am mostly a solo player, but at the same time, I will strike up a conversation with just about anyone that doesn't involve current politics, sex, real life religion, or sports.
But my point was that while some make use of such forums to scout out a guild, or move as a guild en-masse from one game to the next, quite a few people don't. I won't make grand assumptions or quote statistics that I have no way of proving, but it seems like a lot of people do it the way I do it, by initially joining up with a randomly encountered person for a quick quest solution, then repeated sharing of goals leads to more formal efforts to work together later on as compatability shows itself.
Certainly, scouting out boards beforehand is a more efficient approach to determine if the stated goals and temprament of a guild being researched is a good fit, but honestly, I do that after I've encountered some individuals from a guild who it looks like there might be a possible future, and again, I get that from initial casual conversation. Likewise, I learn whom to avoid from reading such chatter, you can usually tell if there is a personality conflict by the way someone responds to casual questions.
All the things you mentioned as taking time, for me at least, have thier seeds in casual chatter of wide area channels, and when people adopt a mentality of bothering only with fellow guild/clan members, whether they mean to or not, they shut out the good with the bad as well as projecting a attitude of elitism, again whether intentional or not, that's whats picked up in the subcontext of non response to people asking directed questions.
Well, first off you never have to apologize too me for taking a portion of a post.
Secondly, we are not really talking about different things and I think we are of like mine when it comes to how we meet people. However, my guess is that you are more gregarious and more open to approaching people "right off the bat" than I am.
In the end, it's who we meet in game and how we work together.
I however, can't stand the OOC chat for the most part and usually have it turned off. I think part of this "could" be generational. It seems that people today are very comfortable with the whole IM, facebook, online networking type of thing.
I however am not and avoid it like the plague.
So I am less inclined (or just "not" inclined) to go to chat rooms or approach people on line and assume that they are "ok". Especially since there is no actual person there, just their words.
And again, I'm from the east coast and an older player (read "41") so it doesn't realy work for me to just approach people and talk with them.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Since playing Everquest, my experience talking to people and amount of contacts has gone down each time.
Everquest had loads of people chatting in general chat, guilds, and /say. Then I played Vanguard which had a bit less and only region chat and no central hub. Then I played Guild wars where very few people talked, only in guild. Then I played WoW, where absolutely no one talks almost, and where I can't access a general chat, just a region chat.
I play MMO to talk to other players and to play with them. If you don't have a general chat in your MMO, but just region chat, and no central hubs, I might as well go play single player games. Do you talk in new MMO?
I however, can't stand the OOC chat for the most part and usually have it turned off. I think part of this "could" be generational. It seems that people today are very comfortable with the whole IM, facebook, online networking type of thing. I however am not and avoid it like the plague. So I am less inclined (or just "not" inclined) to go to chat rooms or approach people on line and assume that they are "ok". Especially since there is no actual person there, just their words.
Interesting how that works. I hate the whole Facebook, Myspace, and generally any networking site and I steer clear of all of them. But when I get into a game it's different. I end up chatting with someone for no other reason than to distract me from the grindy aspects of the game. Another reason I chat people up is because some of the people I've met came from all sorts of different backgrounds. This allows me to experience some different cultures by way of dialogue since I can't travel to some of these places... not yet anyways.
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
Comments
Thanks for the reply. The trade channel does not have to be the only means for people to sell things. In SWG you would get people barking in public areas, but it wasn't too bad (on Bria anyway). People's vendors could be seen on the overlay map, and they could be searched on the Bazzaar, sort of like an AH, but you still had to travel to pick items up, or to buy items from private vendors. This effectively quieted the chat channels for trade. Even if you don't like those options, there is plenty of room to brainstorm new ideas for trade. The auction house is just an easy cop-out solution, in my opinion.
The solo / grouping thing to me is just another one of those areas where the potential to make new friends is lost. I agree about the tank and spank garbage. I hate to keep bringing SWG into all my posts (actually, no I don't) but since SOE didn't rely on the standard classes pre-CU, groups had to play smart on the tough planets like Dathomir. The witches would own just about any type of player, so group effort was really important. There was no class recipe for the right group, just good smart/skilled players.
The reason people used social hubs in SWG was because there was a central purpose behind them. Entertainers were key to poison/disease healing and wound healing which were *hardcore*. If you got a disease or you died, a big chunk of your health bar were blacked out until you went and sat with entertainers to heal for a bit. As a result, conversations happened and friendships were made. What we have today is the death penalty system where you are *sorta* weaker for 10 mins or so. yawn. I prefer the social idea SWG had.
The NGE version is even useful because instead of heals, you can get different kinds of buffs from entertainers. Entertainers were somewhat key to the game, and so the main cantinas were busy, and fun. Also, if you wanted to craft and you had a crafting droid, you could go sit in the cantinas and grind stuff out while talking with people.
The modern version of social hubs are completely passive and people are expected to just hang out for no reason. Problem is, they get bored after a few minutes because there is nothing to do or work on there so no one hangs around.
I remember how crowded was the general chat in SWG and the first thing we did when landing at a starport was put the spammers on /ignore.
The Bazaar was a nice feature but it lacked the ability to deliver your shopping to either your bank/house/mail.
Visiting empty vendors wasn't fun and so the bazaar lacked the ability to browse through all shops or the planetary map to hide empty vendors.
The cap price on the bazaar was a pain it forced the players to shop on the forum, so more like a second out of game play.
The huge size of the groups (called raids in MMO now) let anyone join them & the lack of levels helped a lot for that. You would stop by a player camp in the wilderness to heal & take the time to chat.
Poisons & diseaase where healed by docs, wounds by docs & meds, mind wounds by entertainers
I agree there are no working social hubs anymore.
People talk in WoW all the time.
Mostly about stuff you'd rather not hear.
I think new MMOs are actively trying to discourage chat. WAR and AoC come to mind.
Vent and live voice speak is a plague on MMOGs.
In L2 everyone talks to everyone else constantly. This is because although it is possible to solo the game isn't very solo friendly. You need to interact with others to get anywhere in the game. This is just the opposite of the WoW generation of games. They are solo friendly to the point that you could play for years and never have to interact with anyone. I believe that soloing should always be available in games but it should be limited in a way that groups are always preferable. The problem is that these newer MMOs have taken solo friendly to such an extreme that everyone treats them as single player games with other people running around. WAR is a good example of this taken to the absolute extreme. Sadly I see more of these games coming in the future so expect more games where nobody interacts with anyone.
Bren
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What is there to talk about when you spend your whole life playing a game? There are some people in my guild that if I log on at any given time they are online and are online all day and well into the night. What do epople like this have to talk about if they are glued to their computer all day?
Maybe there is not much to talk about? About the game itself.
But I think the root of the problem is not "no chat". I think the real problem is that modern MMORPGs cater towards the solo player at all cost. As others have said: Once you can do everything alone there is no need to interact with other players unless you are a very social person by nature. Which doesn't mean that most MMORPG players are anti-social. But for some it's not that easy to get into conversation, maybe.
Furthermore, if you compare modern social platforms with social tools in MMORPG ... well, MMORPGs are horribly outdated (at least most of them). In the end it often comes down to the tools. Bring in good tools for raising a community and the community will raise. Take WoW's LFG tool for example. It has been said many times that the old plain text chat channel was a better tool. It was not perfect. But it did the job. The new system actually hinders the player. Just two simple examples:
On almost every modern fan/social site you find tools like chatrooms, mailinglists, forums, networks and things like this. So far only EvE has ingame chatrooms (which can be queried easily) and guild-wide mailinglist (sorta). Using tools outside of the game is not the right solution imho. Because MMORPG servers are huge communities after all. A great platform. Why aren't there tools for social interaction and communication?
1) button mashing doesn't give you enough time to speak.
Why could you chat in EQ? because melee had one button to hi: melee attack, and they were done. Nukers needed to control their aggro therefore didnt permanently click the Fireball spell, and healers didn't really need to heal all that much when a spawn was broken.
2) MMO brings nothing new to the table, therefore players barely have any questions to ask. they just log in like robots, knowing what they have to do: kill stuff, get stuff and lvl.
3) you are lead by the hand on your way to leveling. The whole genre is evolving toward the associal player more than the casual.
We need the EQ fundamentals back to really enjoy this genre again.
My addiction History:
>> EQ1 2000-2004 - Shaman/Bard/Wizard/Monk - nolife raid-whore
>> WoW 2004-2009 + Cataclysm for 2 months - hardcore casual
>> Current status : done with MMO, too old for that crap.
Pretty much nailed it.
Id like to call them SPOGMO
Single Player Online Games with Multiplayer Option
after all they would allow you to experience the content as multiplayer but by gamedesign and lazyness of players they truely feel like single player games most of the time
if your bored, visit my blog at:
http://craylon.wordpress.com/ dealing with the look of mmos with the nvidia 3d vision glasses
It depends on the game.
Games that allow alot of solo playing will have a very quiet community eventually.
Games that is based on teamwork will have more people speaking.
This doesn't really mean which setting is better but the fact that: When players need someone else's help doing something, they develop better social habits to communicate.
Another problem is the use of ventrilo and teamspeak. These actually hurts the game's communication between strangers, since everyone always just talks on the headphone with their little groups of friends/guild. This also means eyes off the chat screen. I do believe ventrilo and teamspeak is helpful in massive fights that need coordinations, but over using it basically will have its side effects.
PLaying: EvE, Ryzom
Waiting For: Earthrise, Perpetuum
I prefer games where people are talking too. I hate games that are not social. One of the main reasons I left WAR was because nobody talked. I would try to start a conversation in chat but it did not work. I would see a person and run up to them saying Hi and Hello but they would just ignore me and run away. I remember in Lineage 2 some of my favorite times came from just talking about stuff while playing. I will never play a MMO where nobody talks. If thats the case then why even have a chat box?
Uh? My guildies chat all the time. I am not sure i want to just chat with random people.
I guess most people are busy lvling/raiding or whatever.
I think taht without class restrictions it would be much easier to make groups, and people wouldn't stress as much waiting for tank/healer/whatever. Then people could talk abit more. Maybe it would help
This is something I have noticed too. I think it is because these games are so gear-based and quest-based and without the sandbox style it is just not as social. I noticed in old Ultima Online people would gather in places just to talk because we didn't have a general chat. It made the game so much fun. I just can't get into these 9 hour raiding games anymore.
Busy of leveling and stuffs, only those you;ll see talking are the gold spammers in town or the noobies asking for a gold/items.
OMG are you guys playing the wrong games!!!
yeah everquest was a big social network game as well as fun mmo crap
i really enjoyed talking to people everywhere
since wow launched i have tended to talk less and less in game.
wow and every game after it has just seemed soulless in that aspect. like the op said games use region chats and global chat has kinda died away.
even in regional chats and all that i dont talk anymore. most people are really aggressive and rude in mmo's these days. most of the cool people i remember from eq1 days stay in guilds and dont say a word outside of them
--------------------------------------
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The force shall free me.
-the Sith code
Well that is why I usually turn off general chat. I play online games to "play" a game.
And though I've met great people and enjoy talking with them, most of my conversations go on in the guild. I have had some incredible clan/guild mates and have very much enjoyed their company.
However, I don't want to sit around and "shoot the shit" with someone "just because".Oh sure if a short conversation starts up that's fine, but in the end, if I'm not playing the game then I could be doing something else.
I don't play online games to meet people, I play them to play along side with people.
Now I do understand that many like you enjoy this. But to me that just turns the game into a glorified chat room.
So when I do see the chatty general chat I just turn it off completely. That's a shame as there might be people who need help and perhaps I can even help them. Especially because some people in game can be very insulting for no reason at all and won't help players.
But I just can't abide the whole chat room mentality.
It's very possible that other people are doing the same.
I mean, talk about killing immersion? People talking about cars, politics, debating WoW (because I see a bit too much of this). If you want to talk you can find me in real life.
However, I pay monthly so I can take my sword of "Make Evil Pay" and storm the castle.
Otherwise I can be hanging with my real life friends.
I kinda get what you're saying here, but my question is...how did you find a good guild to get in? Sure you can hit websites or forum boards and scroll through the many recruitment posts there, but myself I base it off of its membership and how much they interact with me. If they're aloof and only talk to others inside their guild, that equates to snob to me.
Its like that really lovely woman you've admired for some time in the lunchroom or the office who always keeps to herself and talks only to her select group of friends, no matter how "wonderful" she might truly be, because of her tendency to interact only with a select group she comes across as a stuck up b***ch.
Even peace may be purchased at too high a price, and the only time you are completely safe is when you lie in the grave.
LOL
To be honest it was easy.
For one thing, I am mostly a soloer. However, if you were to read these forums you would believe that people who solo are satan who are individually responsible for ruining mmo's and who are selfish prigs.
The reality is that we just have a different way of playing. But in no way does that preclude meeting and grouping.
To further that comment, in "real life" I would never just go up to someone and just talk to them "just because". However, I do understand that there are certain parts of the U.S. where people do just that. But being on the East Coast, that is considered "odd". yet, I have many friends and great friends.
What happens is you get to know the groups, you look at the forums, you see people in game, sometimes you will group with them or help in a quest when asked.
It is by that way you actually meet people and find them. I think the issue here is people want to sign on to these games and immediatley get "friends". But the reality is that friends are not gotten so quickly so often.
The friends I've made in Lineage 2 were some of the greatest people in game that I've ever met. But it took years to cultivate those relationships.
currently I'm in a Fellowship n LOTRO with some very good people. I just went through the forum recruting posts, got an idea about who might be interesting and wrote. Posted a bit on their forums and then joined.
But it takes years in my mind to make real and true friendships. And they are always evolving. So many times I see people complain that a friend in game scammed them and they had no idea why. Well, when people jump to instant trust then it sometimes becomes hard to see the forest from the trees. To coin a phrase.
It was like my time in Warhammer when someone offered me a guild. I said no and he asked why as I was lvl 20 or so and he thought that by that lvl I would have joined someone. I explained the whole Lineage 2 thing and that I wanted to take time and get to know people.
His response was "this is not Lineage 2" and "It's not like it's a blood contract".
and right there I knew that his guild wasn't for me. Not to say that you have to give your life to a game clan but once you play a game like Lineage 2, especiall in the early days when you dropped items when you died and were always avenging your kin, you get to know who your good "ingame friends" are and whose there just for the chat room and quest help.
So "no" I don't want to just shoot the shit with just anyone. I will continue to get to know people slowly and find people who fit my playstyle or at least my temperment. It doesn't take a huge amount of time to meet people but it does take time to learn a person's true quality.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Forgive me for largely snipping your reply, I mean no disrespect by that, as I quite understand what you're saying and in large part I agree. I too am mostly a solo player, but at the same time, I will strike up a conversation with just about anyone that doesn't involve current politics, sex, real life religion, or sports.
But my point was that while some make use of such forums to scout out a guild, or move as a guild en-masse from one game to the next, quite a few people don't. I won't make grand assumptions or quote statistics that I have no way of proving, but it seems like a lot of people do it the way I do it, by initially joining up with a randomly encountered person for a quick quest solution, then repeated sharing of goals leads to more formal efforts to work together later on as compatability shows itself.
Certainly, scouting out boards beforehand is a more efficient approach to determine if the stated goals and temprament of a guild being researched is a good fit, but honestly, I do that after I've encountered some individuals from a guild who it looks like there might be a possible future, and again, I get that from initial casual conversation. Likewise, I learn whom to avoid from reading such chatter, you can usually tell if there is a personality conflict by the way someone responds to casual questions.
All the things you mentioned as taking time, for me at least, have thier seeds in casual chatter of wide area channels, and when people adopt a mentality of bothering only with fellow guild/clan members, whether they mean to or not, they shut out the good with the bad as well as projecting a attitude of elitism, again whether intentional or not, that's whats picked up in the subcontext of non response to people asking directed questions.
Even peace may be purchased at too high a price, and the only time you are completely safe is when you lie in the grave.
Forgive me for largely snipping your reply, I mean no disrespect by that, as I quite understand what you're saying and in large part I agree. I too am mostly a solo player, but at the same time, I will strike up a conversation with just about anyone that doesn't involve current politics, sex, real life religion, or sports.
But my point was that while some make use of such forums to scout out a guild, or move as a guild en-masse from one game to the next, quite a few people don't. I won't make grand assumptions or quote statistics that I have no way of proving, but it seems like a lot of people do it the way I do it, by initially joining up with a randomly encountered person for a quick quest solution, then repeated sharing of goals leads to more formal efforts to work together later on as compatability shows itself.
Certainly, scouting out boards beforehand is a more efficient approach to determine if the stated goals and temprament of a guild being researched is a good fit, but honestly, I do that after I've encountered some individuals from a guild who it looks like there might be a possible future, and again, I get that from initial casual conversation. Likewise, I learn whom to avoid from reading such chatter, you can usually tell if there is a personality conflict by the way someone responds to casual questions.
All the things you mentioned as taking time, for me at least, have thier seeds in casual chatter of wide area channels, and when people adopt a mentality of bothering only with fellow guild/clan members, whether they mean to or not, they shut out the good with the bad as well as projecting a attitude of elitism, again whether intentional or not, that's whats picked up in the subcontext of non response to people asking directed questions.
Well, first off you never have to apologize too me for taking a portion of a post.
Secondly, we are not really talking about different things and I think we are of like mine when it comes to how we meet people. However, my guess is that you are more gregarious and more open to approaching people "right off the bat" than I am.
In the end, it's who we meet in game and how we work together.
I however, can't stand the OOC chat for the most part and usually have it turned off. I think part of this "could" be generational. It seems that people today are very comfortable with the whole IM, facebook, online networking type of thing.
I however am not and avoid it like the plague.
So I am less inclined (or just "not" inclined) to go to chat rooms or approach people on line and assume that they are "ok". Especially since there is no actual person there, just their words.
And again, I'm from the east coast and an older player (read "41") so it doesn't realy work for me to just approach people and talk with them.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
maybe they're on vent.
Interesting how that works. I hate the whole Facebook, Myspace, and generally any networking site and I steer clear of all of them. But when I get into a game it's different. I end up chatting with someone for no other reason than to distract me from the grindy aspects of the game. Another reason I chat people up is because some of the people I've met came from all sorts of different backgrounds. This allows me to experience some different cultures by way of dialogue since I can't travel to some of these places... not yet anyways.
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-