Originally posted by Gadareth If you want to bring back the community you need to bring back the downtime. Current games have NO downtime so no body talks.
In EQ1 you talked while travelling on the boat, you talked waiting for respawns during a camp and you talked while recovering after the fight.
In TERA you kill mob A ,then B run to C kill D run to E kill F colllect rewards find you now have a bunch of grp only quests so join a grp kill G H I K and L mobs go collect rewards find your back to solo so disband and start all over. All of this with no downtime so nobody talks.
Until the games stop this trend of faster and faster and return to the slower more tactical RPG game the community spirit will decline further.
If the average player of a MMORPG is expected to hit lvl cap within 6 months of a games release the game designer is doing it WRONG.
I agree with the downtime comment. MMOs need dead space to let players stop for a minute and notice their fellow inhabitants. You design an mmo to be about hotjoining battles or teleporting to the action. Or if you make it so everything that used to require talking to someone is now automatic, you lose out on allowing your game to grow a community. Its also important to create social spaces for the sole purpose of just hanging out. Not everything has to be some game mechanic with an arbitrary reward attached.
Devs are so preoccupied with giving us things to do that they neglect the point of going online in the first place.
Also agree about downtime. In EQ1 you'd be sitting in group waiting for the puller to bring back a mob. Might as well chat, right? My guild did naking boxing matches while waiting for help on corpse runs. Sitting at the zone line shouting for a group, there's be couple of us shooting the breeze (never Clerics though, those bastards didn't shout for long).
I remember a Paladin lost his body on a pick-up Plane of Fear raid. Since my guild couldn't break it at the time, he had to wait at the portal hoping to catch another guild going in. Because he was sitting there naked and lonely, people would stop by to keep him company - not just guildmates mind you, but groups in the area.
Unfortunately, people vote with their wallets, and the mechanics that nurtured strong communities have just fallen out of favor. MMOs are becoming faster and faster paced, with less and less risk, and less and less interaction.
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Also agree about downtime. In EQ1 you'd be sitting in group waiting for the puller to bring back a mob. Might as well chat, right? My guild did naking boxing matches while waiting for help on corpse runs. Sitting at the zone line shouting for a group, there's be couple of us shooting the breeze (never Clerics though, those bastards didn't shout for long).
I remember a Paladin lost his body on a pick-up Plane of Fear raid. Since my guild couldn't break it at the time, he had to wait at the portal hoping to catch another guild going in. Because he was sitting there naked and lonely, people would stop by to keep him company - not just guildmates mind you, but groups in the area.
Unfortunately, people vote with their wallets, and the mechanics that nurtured strong communities have just fallen out of favor. MMOs are becoming faster and faster paced, with less and less risk, and less and less interaction.