Raiding, guilds, and by extension exclusivity. These are the things which brought early EQ to an end.
Absolutely true. Guilds created artificial, arbitrary fractures in the player base which wasn't a big deal at first but as raiding became more and more important that "us versus them" mentality grew as well and spilled over into every facet of the game. When progression is the only goal and progression is dependant entirely on guild based activities it's inevitable that the community will deteriorate from that just as surely as it will deteriorate in a solo-centric game in which nobody ever needs anybody. The only difference is that instead of being "me versus everyone" it's "my guild versus everyone".
It amazes me that some people still can't see this.
In my opinion the goal should be to create a game in which people need each other but not to the extreme that you need an entire guild to progress at any point. In fact, I'd be in favor of not even having mechanics to officially support guilds as all it accomplishes is to create artificial divisions among the players.
In EQ I used to jump line for monster kills. Why you ask? Well I found it ridiculous when there was a 3 hour wait line for a friggin monster. The fact that people would line up to waste their entire day waiting was insane, and I wasn't going to stand for that kind of bs. Also in EQ when I'd get bored I would sneak down to the bottom on a dungeon on my rogue and train all the monsters back up because let's admit it, that was friggin fun!
Misunderstanding stuff about my post
I played EQ for the first 2 months it was out, it was all I could take and I switched to Asheron's Call and never looked back. I had fun in UO (before the alignment color crap) and fun in AC but EQ wasn't a very exciting game. There were lines everywhere for everything in those first couple months. When they introduced the rvr pvp server it was good for a little while, I had a blast. But the people who prefered the EQ style of boring gaming seemed to also hate rvr pvp so the server pop died pretty quickly, luckily AC was around by then.
There's a difference between having a mob spawn the moment you show up, and not at all respecting the people waiting when it does spawn. It was interesting the day I got reported for it and an admin told me it was against the rules, it helped clue me in to how ridiculous EQ was when the rules included grabbing a mob when there were people standing there waiting for the mob. But it certainly didn't make me stop, the risk of admin action was not something that bothered me because I wasn't into the game.
Yes I did jump lines and no I couldn't care less if you believe this or not.
Now oddly enough the games that you think helped push the anti-social sentiments were the games I helped people more in. I didn't help people at all in The Realm, UO, or EQ. I helped my vassals in AC but that was it.
In newer games like WoW, LotRO, even the short amount of time I tried WAR I help people a lot. These are games where I can solo through the majority of stuff, don't really need a guild for what I want to do, and hardly ever need groups. But yet in these same games I help people a lot more then I ever did in those early games that forced you to deal with other players.
Whenever I am forced to do something, I don't like it and I am not likely to do it when I don't have to. When I'm not forced to do something, I am much more likely to do it.
I see, I did misunderstand a bit. Apparantly you meant you stole kills on common mobs. When you talked about people waiting 3 hours or all day for mobs which you jumped in and killed I naturally assumed you were talking about rare spawn mobs because they are the only ones which would spawn so..well, rarely.
So yeah, I can believe that you kill stole ordinary mobs. It's not impossible to do it on a rare spawn but it would be difficult to believe anyone made a successfull habit of that, which is why I questioned it when I thought that's what you meant.
There was never a golden age of MMO players working together and everyone sharing and helping. There was a day with smaller populations and more dedicated guilds which falsely made players think back and see how wonderful things were. There has and will always be griefing and selfishness, just as there will always be foolish players and those who pretend the game is real life. There will be those who play 10 hours a day and don't mind sitting around all day, and those who only have an hour to play and want action now.
I don't look for a group for quests any more than most of you, but when I'm out there and someone else shows up for the same quest mob, I toss them a group invite. It's just common sense.
It's funny you say that. I just went back to Vanguard simply for the fact that there is a lot of group leveling content. If anything with Vanguard there isn't enough solo leveling content. So in my spare time I run around doing diplomacy and constantly looking at /who and regularly posting in general chat for a group to such areas. MMOs have become stale for me simply because they are not MMOs anymore. They are RPGs with a chat box, least till endgame.
I am not sure MMOs will ever be the same for me because it seems unlikely at this point that a game centered around group content can succeed. Granted as I mentioned before, most of these games have you soloing to end game, and then demanding you have friends in order to kill the icons. The next logical step for MMOs is to either revert back to a lot more group content, or soloing the Lich King. Neither of which is a good solution, but just like casuals and raiders, sandboxers and themeparkers can't seem to get along .. the two can't seem to coexist very well. Unfortunately for me, more ppl enjoy being able to log on for 20 minutes and feel like they are king of the world because they can solo some content. Even 5 mans in wow these days are 1 step away from being soloable. I imagine I could run most of them with me and a healer at this point.
IDK what the answer is. I wish I did. I have been dreaming of making an MMO for years. So in the meantime I just continue to hope someone has the balls to create a solid multiplayer experience, and the MMO saavy to make it successful enough to not dissapear or require you to spend $50 a month in a cash shop. Hey, we can dream, right?
EDIT : Actually I have been thinking a lot about these kinds of things, and the sort of solution that I have spinning around is actually somewhat similar to WoW's instant instances .. at least if you are a tank ..
Imagine if you entered a zone, and the game automatically lumped you in with other people. Forget about +/- for group experience and anything like that, but at the south end of the zone is 1 dots mobs, and at the North end were a couple of 5 dot mobs in some kind of ramparts structure .. yadda yadda. So you zone in, and start farming easy mobs and the game sticks you in a group. You venture up to 2 dot mobs then 3 dot mobs and sooner or later the ppl in the group happen across each other (or they have to foresite to say, meet up at the 4 dot mobs) .. but anyway, the 2 solo ppl happen upon each other and one pulls a 3 dot mob. They kill it with a little effort and then emboldened by their success start mowing down 3 dots till 1 pulls a 4 dot, Hopefully by then they figure, "hey 3rd random person that joined the group, come help us kill 4 dots" ... etc etc
Now obviously there would need to be some smart group switching / handling mechanics .. not to mention loot options are always uninspired in these games. So you should be able to "switch groups" to another random group at any time .. or on a 10 min cooldown or w/e works. You should also be able to "form new group" which would also have a lengthy cooldown, and would give you about 5 minutes to fill the group before turning it into another random group.
Anyway, it's not perfectly thought out, but a mechanic like this seems obvious to me. The industry needs to innovate or it may get left behind via farmville, etc.
Though hey, left behind might actually be a good thing. Then we would be back to smaller populations and "tighter" communities. Maybe.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Original quote: "They may want to play the game in peace, not having to worry about what other people might do, say, or think - that is, it's their game and the rest of the world can just deal with it. Such attitudes, of course, leave a question about playing social games in the first place, but every solo-only MMO player has their own reasons."
And this is perhaps what confuses me most about the "I like to solo" crowd in MMOs. If you like to solo - great - but why not play one of dozens of games geared towards solo players so that you don't have to pollute my gaming world with your lone-wolf attitude? The entire purpose, to me, of an MMO world - as when I first played the original Everquest and later, the original DDO, is to meet people and interact with people in an online world that cannot exist in "real space" - I never, ever understood the "solo MMO player" - it's like the only reason they play the MMO in question is to a) avoid everyone else and b) show how uber they are by whatever accomplishments they can achieve alone. Fine, but... don't you have an X-Box 360 game to get back to or an achievement to achieve or... something?
From Everquest, originally, I met many, many people in the online world. I made new friends, in my early 20's (I'm 30 now) - some of whom I even met in real life! The WHOLE POINT of MMO gaming, for me, was basically a social construct - a way to bring my weekly D&D game to the world at large, and even have a chance to play in it. I met people through EQ - people were, by and large, helpful when you were trying to complete a quest. (Just compare this to, say, a rare drop in Aion. Have fun, Aion grinders.)
From DDO, I actually met several people in my own home city (Phoenix, AZ) where I was able to meet them for a beer and - lo and behold - we met four or five years ago over a beer and now we're close friends, even though none of us actually play DDO anymore. We met in game, GROUPED together in game, talked together - had fun together. Isn't that the point of team games?
At any rate, some of the DDO players I met became regular players in my weekly D&D game. I picked Sarlona, of course, the 'unofficial" RP server of DDO, at the time. Maybe this helped.
I would LOVE a group-oriented game to come out, like EQ. I play Fallen Earth right now, and I love the game, but one of my biggest complaints about the game is that there is next to no incentive to PvE grouping.
FORCE us to group, force us to socialize... then again, it seems odd that there would need to be any "force" involved considering, if you're playing an MMO and your goal is to avoid everyone else and solo the game... you probably shouldn't be playing an MMO. Go be an introvert somewhere else; like in your newspaper crossword puzzle, which you can do alone and nobody will bother you.
Original quote: "They may want to play the game in peace, not having to worry about what other people might do, say, or think - that is, it's their game and the rest of the world can just deal with it. Such attitudes, of course, leave a question about playing social games in the first place, but every solo-only MMO player has their own reasons."
And this is perhaps what confuses me most about the "I like to solo" crowd in MMOs.
They like the freedom of soloing, but that doesn't mean that when the mood strikes them, that they don't enjoy group content as well. Which is why there should always be solo content.
One of the issues I run into a lot when looking for groups, is the anonimity, the .. strange separation between two people. They probably want the same or similar things, and contrary to what a lot of ppl in this thread think, they are probably nice enough people that would help others, and would even let you take a kill before them or group with you if asked.
The problem again I think is much more in the mechanics than it is in the people. There are both better ways to spawn mobs to avoid this problem, and better ways to "force" grouping (if that is the intent, which I don't even think it is, I think this all comes from lack of foresight or innovation).
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Original quote: "They may want to play the game in peace, not having to worry about what other people might do, say, or think - that is, it's their game and the rest of the world can just deal with it. Such attitudes, of course, leave a question about playing social games in the first place, but every solo-only MMO player has their own reasons."
And this is perhaps what confuses me most about the "I like to solo" crowd in MMOs. If you like to solo - great - but why not play one of dozens of games geared towards solo players so that you don't have to pollute my gaming world with your lone-wolf attitude? The entire purpose, to me, of an MMO world - as when I first played the original Everquest and later, the original DDO, is to meet people and interact with people in an online world that cannot exist in "real space" - I never, ever understood the "solo MMO player" - it's like the only reason they play the MMO in question is to a) avoid everyone else and b) show how uber they are by whatever accomplishments they can achieve alone. Fine, but... don't you have an X-Box 360 game to get back to or an achievement to achieve or... something? From Everquest, originally, I met many, many people in the online world. I made new friends, in my early 20's (I'm 30 now) - some of whom I even met in real life! The WHOLE POINT of MMO gaming, for me, was basically a social construct - a way to bring my weekly D&D game to the world at large, and even have a chance to play in it. I met people through EQ - people were, by and large, helpful when you were trying to complete a quest. (Just compare this to, say, a rare drop in Aion. Have fun, Aion grinders.) From DDO, I actually met several people in my own home city (Phoenix, AZ) where I was able to meet them for a beer and - lo and behold - we met four or five years ago over a beer and now we're close friends, even though none of us actually play DDO anymore. We met in game, GROUPED together in game, talked together - had fun together. Isn't that the point of team games? At any rate, some of the DDO players I met became regular players in my weekly D&D game. I picked Sarlona, of course, the 'unofficial" RP server of DDO, at the time. Maybe this helped. I would LOVE a group-oriented game to come out, like EQ. I play Fallen Earth right now, and I love the game, but one of my biggest complaints about the game is that there is next to no incentive to PvE grouping. FORCE us to group, force us to socialize... then again, it seems odd that there would need to be any "force" involved considering, if you're playing an MMO and your goal is to avoid everyone else and solo the game... you probably shouldn't be playing an MMO. Go be an introvert somewhere else; like in your newspaper crossword puzzle, which you can do alone and nobody will bother you.
Lots of people have different reasons for wanting to solo, it doesnt mean youre some anti-social introvert who should stick to playing single player games. Personally, i tend to seek out other people with similar playstyles and thinking, which tends to be tough to find outside of a small circle of friends and my brother that ive played several games with, so when theyre not around or if i play a different game than them then yeah i tend to solo. The main reason i got into MMOs was for the PvP and the challenge of fighting other players rather than some scripted AI, and ive got real life friends, i dont need an MMO to be my social life. That doesnt mean i havent made friends, and i dont go out of my way to avoid people or anything, i usually just login and play without feeling the need to find a group to do anything. If you ask me to join up with you sure ill join so long as youre not hindering my progress or preventing me from finishing something i was in the middle of doing.
But even my soloing isnt 100% of the time, i also do help out people a lot, and if i see someone with questions, or someone struggling to complete a quest or something ill usually stop by for a few minutes to help out and then be on my way again. Its a pretty common misconception that just because someone likes to solo, that they dont want to be bothered at all. Theres lots of us who simply find it easier to do our own thing without having to wait for others, but we can still socialize a bit and help out if theres anything going on. I think the bigger problem is people who insist on grouping unde rthe pretext of wanting to socialize, but its really just for the sake of having someone to do most of the work for them, while offering nothing in return, even something as simple as being able to hold an interesting conversation for more than 2 minutes. Theres been plenty of times where ill party with random people just because they actually entertain me and have something fun & interesting to discuss, but if youre just riding on my work to level up and dont at least do me the favor of entertaining me with discussion, i might as well solo.
Anyway, the way i figure it is if youre capable of soloing and dont need the help of others, then whats wrong with it? Doesnt that leave more room in parties for those that do need help or just want to socialize? Shouldnt you be happy that we solo rather than joining with you and making things way too easy and boring for the rest of the group?
You say the reason some people prefer to just kill the quest objective by themselves is because they are anti-social. I guess to a certain extent that may be true. But quite frankly, unless I'm in a giving mood and not in a hurry I'd do that in a heart beat. For the simple reason that people usually don't give a crap about what I want, either. Isn't THAT the TRUTH. When I first started playing MMOs, I have to say, I was a much more kind and generous individual in game. Having said that...I still sometimes get in a "helping mood" and go help newbies in starting zones, handing out bigger bags, or travel across continents to help someone who is seemingly hopelessly lost, etc. But I don't do those things every day now like I used to. Now...I DO think of myself first, because the gaming community (in multiple games) has proven to me....they don't, over all, care about what I think of need. That leaves only ME to give a crap about ME. And most of the time...that's just okay with me. I will say....I don't find myself HAVING to be so self-centered in other games OUTSIDE of WoW. Many times, I clear the mobs around the final quest encounter, or some treasure or mining node, only to have another player swoop in and benefit from my efforts. I think this is what taught me more than anything. If 90 percent of the game population are going to be complete and utter dicks....then I am pretty much determined that I'm not going to give a crap about them, nor let them ruin my fun. I pay the same fees they do, I'll be damned if they're going to jump in and ruin my fun. So, for me (in WoW) I had to become a bit of an ass hat. It was either be a dick....or let someone be a dick to ME instead.
I will say....I don't find this such a problem in EQ2 or Fallen Earth, but honestly....I think it's pretty obvious those games tend to attract (a) fewer people, so there are less jerks because there a less people, (b) what appears in both games to be a more mature, if not older even, player base, and (c) more people that are not playing their very FIRST MMO, and have perhaps learned some oniine cooperation and decency. Additionally, if you spend any time in the general chat channels (of WoW, in this case), any sense of brotherhood with your fellow gamers quickly evaporates. The inanity and rudeness prevalent there resulted in me playing under the premise: You are all idiots. And THIS ^^^ is what became one of my final straws in my departure from WoW altogether. This and the LFG tool, for multiple reasons, and the realization that WoW is probably never going to have less children (or adults that act like children) playing it any more. Sometimes you meet someone who can string together a sentence (this part is hard to find anymore) and displays signs of decency. That one may get on my friends list. I'm level 60 and my friends list has 4 people on it. I have multiple lvl 80s and countless lvl 70+ in WoW (spread across two server homes, one for Horde, one for Alliance) and until my recent departure, had been playing regularly for five years, since the release, if I don't count work on the beta as well. I am in a guild, on both servers, but my friends list proper has less than 20 people on each of those servers, MOST OF WHICH....no longer play. Therefore, I perhaps have 5 or 6 "friends" on each list, over the course of five years of active playing. Like what you said....that says a lot.
I'm not sure if it's due to ONLY a larger population, the game design and some of the mechanics themselves, or the generally younger age bracket....but whatever the reason....WoW, for me, has become an exercise in social irritation more than communication and cooperation. And these things render the game, for me...toxic for consumption. I'm old...I prefer not to waste my latter years in the hobby with people I don't ENJOY.
C'mon. I'm an old school EQ player. I started in 2000. You may remember those times in EQ, when people worked together and it was rare for someone to not be altruistic. The EQ I remember was hardly ever that way. It was very rare that someone kept a list.
Someone better equipped than I would show me the ropes? Are you talking old school raiders? The people who started the whole "I'm more elite than you, so you don't even exist."
EQ was just like any other MMO. People you knew were great, people you didn't know were viewed as competition ready to pounce on your rare.
Sorry, the EQ I played was not like a utopian hippy village. It was more like a slightly more civilzed WoW. People just don't want to admit that.
Obviously, there were some awesome people playing EQ. Just like I'm sure there are awesome people in WoW. Is WoW worse? Absolutely. I think WoW's instance world, and anonymous nature lend to that. People have no reason to be civil. In EQ you'd see a lot of the same people all the time, and there was no auction house. If you went around kill stealing and ninja looting you were quickly blacklisted.
Anonymity breeds douchebaggery. It is a way of life in online gaming. It always has been. This started with MUDs - try playing Medievia sometime. One of the deepest games you will ever, ever play. But there's no enforced RP, which means people are free to be douchebags. Guess how they act? No different than your average WoW player. There are literally hundreds of zones in the game that drop valuable loot. At any given time, every blessed one of them has its first, easily-accessible quest mob dead and waiting on its respawn timer (at least the soloable ones). Most of the time, the first respawn of a quest mob doesn't even contain the item needed to do the quest - it's only on initial load!
Hell, I'll quote your article: "......how to group up and pwn a carebear..." The mere fact that you use these words means you are hated by someone, somewhere. I will venture a guess that you've been, at some point in time, even if only once, a symptom of the problem you describe. Most of us have, if we've been playing for any length. There just comes a time where you want to do what you want to do, and to hell with anyone else. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that, once in a great while. It's the ones that make it a way of life that are the real problem.
This is why I prefer playing with RL friends or even guild friends over PUGs. I will quickly hand over items that I don't need if a buddy asks and even most of the time in PUGs, problem being, in PUGs you often have people rolling on what you need that they have no business rolling for.
Originally posted by SnarlingWolf There was never a golden age of MMO players working together and everyone sharing and helping. There was a day with smaller populations and more dedicated guilds which falsely made players think back and see how wonderful things were. There has and will always be griefing and selfishness, just as there will always be foolish players and those who pretend the game is real life. There will be those who play 10 hours a day and don't mind sitting around all day, and those who only have an hour to play and want action now.
Pretty much this. I played EQ starting in the second half of 1999 and continued on for several years and I don't have any rosey-hued memories of cooperation. In fact, I found the opposite to be true; EQ fed people's greed and willingness to screw others over for a virtual item. Long spawn times for quest item mobs, coupled with the fact that only one person could get the quest item, meant that people willingly screwed over real life friends just to get what was considered uber items at the time.
Add in the fact that dungeons were shared, anyone can loot mechanics, and people could drop a mob's aggro on your group and you had a recipe for making one of the most anti-social MMOs which ironically generally required you to group to accomplish most tasks. I watched far too many guilds break up and real life friendships end due to game induced greed to ever think EQ was somehow the epitome of positive social values.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
It's funny that I came across this article tonight, given what happened in LotRO just this afternoon. I was doing some questing in Mirkwood and needed to kill a bunch of orcs in one of the many stockades found there. As it happened, I entered the area at the same time as another person, who chose to shoot me an invite at the same time as I was typing to ask him if he needed the same thing I did.
Not only did we complete the quest very quickly and a lot more easily, but we wound up playing together for the next hour and a half. We practically tore through about 20 quests and had a great time.
A little courtesy really can make all the difference in the world. And you never know what might come of it.
Lots of people have different reasons for wanting to solo, it doesnt mean youre some anti-social introvert who should stick to playing single player games.
Amen! I telecommute for my job and there is a lot of down time. But when the phone rings I have to promptly take the call. So during work hours I do not like to group. I don't think it's fair to other players make them wait around if a customer calls and keeps me on the phone for 20 minutes. Or worse, for them to get killed because I had to go afk. If I'm solo, my death only inconveniences me. And even when I'm soloing I am still social with my guild in chat. It would get very lonely at my job if there was nobody around to talk to, so the MMO environment is a blessing for me even when I'm not grouped.
During other hours I do like to group. But the bottom line is that if I'm given a choice between a game that is group-only content or a game that has good amounts of group content and also a good amount of soloable content I'm going to take the latter every time.
It's very unfair to tell people to go play a single-player game if they're not going to group. There are a lot of valid reasons for not grouping at any given time, even among people who love to group. A game that only caters to groups is going to suffer because at best it's going to have a small base of niche players. This in turn means lower revenues, which leads to slower development and a game that can become pretty stale. By catering to a wider variety of playstyles, developers are acting in the best interests of their bottom lines AND of the players themselves.
Look at DDO. In the beginning it was aimed exclusively at group play. The developers quickly learned that they HAD to create a capability for soloing or they weren't going to be left with enough players to keep the servers running. Guild Wars is another example. Do you think it would be as popular as it is -- even with the no-subscription model that they use -- if there were no hirelings and so you had to find groups every time you wanted to step outside the gates?
I am currently playing Allods Online, and get invited to groups on a daily basis. Groups just seem to work in Allods. It could be because group bosses need at least 7 people to kill, or because dungeons are very small (can be done in less than half an hour with the right group). Maybe they've done it right - if fewer games had dungeons that were time-wasting mazes, people would have had more fun doing them together.
I generally agree with the article with one exception. Unsolicited group invites are one of the things that I use to fast track people to my ignore list. You said it best prior to that, though: Communication. Ask if someone wants to group before popping a window in their face unannouced. If they don't reply, you've done enough and they've given you their answer.
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
You know, I can't help thinking how FFA PvP with perma-death could potentially regulate jerk behaviour in that specific instance. Not much incentive to try KS a named mob when someone could just turn around and gank your ass for trying.
Not to say that FFA PvP and perma-death are ideal solutions, though. >.>
In my experience with world bosses in open PvP MMOs (specifically, Lineage 2) it often leads to some pretty exciting PvP - especially if it's a rare spawn and/or required for a quest. And considering PvP is the core of the MMO, it usually makes for some excitement even *before* the boss fight begins (part of why I think some who are adamantly against any PvE in a PvP MMO and consider it "carebear", have never played a PvP MMO with good PvE content in it... it helps, not hinders, good PvP... but I digress...). Sometimes the other group is looking for the same kill. Many times they're just trying to screw someone else up who is. But.... it being an open PvP MMO.... you expect and accept that, so it really isn't all that bad.
There's the flipside to that though which *can* get annoying after a time. Specifically, also in L2, the domination/monopolization of some of the major world bosses by the most powerful clans/allies on a given server. On the server I played on in L2, there was a group who pretty much controlled one boss named Baium. Now, Baium drops some pretty nice stuff which makes him a desired target to begin with. It so happens, though, that he's also required (or was up to a point) for a milestone quest in the game... you'd have to wake him up and then get the hell out of dodge before he stomped you. This group decided they were goin to control access to him by basically having anyone who wanted at him to pay up handsomely, turn away, or be PK'd on the spot (death in L2 has a sting). This carried on for a while, until the rest of the server - or a portion of it - got fed up and said "screw this". They grouped up and steamrolled the controlling group... and Baium was monopolized no more.
So... it actually *can* work with open PvP in a MMO with world bosses... because it already does and has for several years now in at least one such MMO.
That said...
Excellent article Jaime. Truly enjoyed reading that and it immediately brought me back to the earlier days of FFXI's North American release when us Westerners finally got access to places like "Sky" and it became chaos because groups were trying to compete for the same sky bosses. It ultimately ended up with something loosely called "Sky Pact" being put together... where each group agreed to a set evening to go into Sky and do their thing.. This way, everyone got what they needed and everyone was happy. Of course, a new group would come along and decide they weren't going to abide ('cause, really, they weren't obligated to) and the ruckus would start all over again.. then settle down.
I have also found that many people go into this "screw you I'm getting it first" mindset when they come to camp a named mob others are camping. Don't matter to them that others have been there a lot longer - perhaps hours - that makes the idea that they get it first all the better.. now they're not only getting what they want.. they're screwing over those who were already waiting and proving they are the better player... I know this because many make it a point of declaring all the above after doing so (what's the point of being a prick if you're the only one who knows that was your inention, I guess...). Some would show up who didn't even need the mob but would kill it just to be a prick and then laugh at everyone waiting.
I've seen his mentality in every MMO I've played... but I have to say - without hyperbole or cliche' - that it was, by far, the most prominent in WoW. And not only because of "more people playing it". I'd be waiting for a named mob in some otherwise under-populated area (like Teldrassil... few people seem to like hanging around there), and even be only one of two people waiting on the thing.. someone would come by see us camping it and decide to be a jerk by one-shotting it as soon as it spawned.
Same thing with quest mobs... players 20+ levels higher would sweep through quest areas killing all the mobs that drop items required for the quest, and then laugh at the "n00bs" trying to get it done. One quest in particular I remember it happening on more than once was the one where you need to transform that guy into a bear then kill him and release his spirit. That particular area seemed a magnet for a-holes.
I suspect a factionless, open PvP setting would have reduced that kind of behavior quite a lot. Fewer people are willing to be a prick when there's possible repercussions (as in, you don't know what friends this guy you're pissing off might have...)
While not everyone is like that, and there were certainly people like that prior to WoW, I've seen a far greater number of them - in all MMOs - since WoW.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Given that at one point in my gaming career (when I was in junior high and high school) I did enjoy ganking/griefing I can easily tell you that the people who remember the days gone by as peaceful and everyone shared are completly full of it.
Full of it you say?
I guess it hasn't occurred to you that others were, oh I don't know, playing different MMOs than you?
Not every MMO supports open ganking/griefing.
Even in FFXI where mob-training was possible... it was a rarity. By and large, most of the time you did game in peace.
Don't be so myopic.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
This article smacks of the misplaced notion that group effort somehow is the sum total of community. I've walked into plenty of those situations where a group is formed to accomplish a common objective. In every case, there was no real camaraderie between groupmates, only a fevered rush to get the task done and move on. In a group situation, I can also usually count on walking away with an inventory full of trash that no one else wanted and the objective updated in my quest log. People are all too satisfied with using others to get something done, then dumping them after raking in as much of the loot as they can.
Then you've been in some unfortunate groups. I've wound up with new people added to my friends list and many great conversations while in my groups. The problem is game design. Locking six random people in a room and telling them they can't get out until they learn to work together may work on TV, but reality yields a far different outcome. Pre-CU Star Wars Galaxies was the finest sense of community I've ever known and I didn't group for a single mission. Since then, I rarely group unless someone asks and then, only if the participants aren't offensive in some way. It's easier on my blood pressure if I just forget tasks that I can't accomplish alone.
Wrong. It does work. It has worked. It still works.
I've had *numerous* great experiences in FFXI grouping up with people I'd never met before.
The difference, I think, comes down to the kind of culture the game breeds. If it breeds a sense of comraderie, then people will be more likely to work together and not be jackasses. In FFXI, in particular, if you're a jackass to enough people, it eventually catches up with you and you find that *you're* the person no one wants to group with. I've seen the cause and effect of that many times.
It probably works that way in FFXI because for the most part you only have one main character which you can switch between jobs. So.. people know you as your character first, your current job second. Going the alt route is possible... but then that's a lot more work you have to do all over again. It's actually more effective to simply not be a prick.
In my experience, every MMO I've played where you could easily roll an alt, could complete a majority of the content solo and rarely ever had to interact with another player has seen the highest population of jerks such as you describe.
In MMOs like FFXI and Lineage 2 where group interaction is more necessary, your behavior earns you a reputation one way or the other, there are repercussions for your actions and acting like a prick all the time is only going to hurt you in the long run.
So again.. It seems to come back, at least partially, to which MMOs someone chooses to play.
There's also another factor that not many think about...
How do you (you meaning people in general) act towards others?
It's amazing to me how some people I've met will be all like "dude... people are a-holes. No one wants to help me out with this quest". To which I'll respond, "Well have you ever payed attention to the way you talk to people?" In one instance, the person was overly demanding - even of people he didn't know - he was bossy, irritable, impatient and pretty crude on top of that. Result? People didn't like being around him. Yet, to him... everyone *else* had a problem.
People seldom like to look in the mirror when looking for faults and no one likes to admit that *they're* the cause of their own problems... Sometimes, though, it's necessary.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Given that at one point in my gaming career (when I was in junior high and high school) I did enjoy ganking/griefing I can easily tell you that the people who remember the days gone by as peaceful and everyone shared are completly full of it.
I don't mean to pick on you but there was something else I had to say about this. Did it ever occur to you that people in those early games were unfriendly to you because you were behaving anti-socially?
I don't remember EQ as some kind of paradise but in the early days and especially prior to "end game" I do remember the community as being more friendly than hostile. There were always jerks around but usually people would be friendly to me as long as I wasn't being a jerk.
So I wonder...is it possible that people seemed less friendly to you because you admitedly acted like a jerk to them?
Edit: I just saw that WSIMike touched on this in the post just above.
I disagree here, you seem to lay all blame 100% on the gamer for acting selfishly and anti-socially in MMORPGs today. Where I agree the gamers that do it are of course responsible for their own actions I think you should've looked at the companys and how the design of MMORPGs are different than from 10 years ago.
10 years ago in EQ1 you had to group otherwise you'd be screwed, full stop, end of story. So everyone grouped up, not because it was in the best interest of others but it was in your own best interest.
Fast forward to today and look at how the design has changed from open world harsh death penalties and required grouping to advance to small worlds, heavily zoned, heavily instanced to the point of zones having multiple instances, quest chains that lead you by the hand to max level and every quest and most dungeons and 99% of mobs can be done solo.
Most AAA MMORPGs revolve around the single player experience and cater towards the solo player now. What do you expectwhen most of the gamers playing have come to expect this? When I was a kid playing on my old 8bit 64k comp that used a tape cassette to store information single player games were very hard to complete. Many I couldn't because by a certain level they became too tough. A few I did complete but it took a long time to do it, kids today would throw their Xboxs and PS3s out of the window in fruastration if games were that hard. Halo 1,2 and 3? Imagine if there was only one setting and that was legendary, that's what games were like.
Today you could sit down and in a weekend of casual play finished a brand new £40 game, most gamers expect this as the norm coming to MMORPGs and the cash grabbing companys are of course catering to their desire or expectations. So when you see a group of 15 people around a single quest mob spawn working indipendently of eachother and all trying to ninja the final blow is it really a suprise? They're to blame for sure but so are the companies that made the design decisions that lead to being able to solo to max level without being required to group up.
Personally I couldn't give a flying **** about this really as I refuse to play those mindless turds that get passed off as an MMORPG. As all the games like this are theme park MMORPGs and I don't play them, give me a sand box where unless you co operate and socialise you end up as a scrub. Which is why all the scrubs end up in theme parks as they can be uber sociopaths from day 1 without any consequences!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
Raiding, guilds, and by extension exclusivity. These are the things which brought early EQ to an end.
Absolutely true. Guilds created artificial, arbitrary fractures in the player base which wasn't a big deal at first but as raiding became more and more important that "us versus them" mentality grew as well and spilled over into every facet of the game. When progression is the only goal and progression is dependant entirely on guild based activities it's inevitable that the community will deteriorate from that just as surely as it will deteriorate in a solo-centric game in which nobody ever needs anybody. The only difference is that instead of being "me versus everyone" it's "my guild versus everyone".
It amazes me that some people still can't see this.
In my opinion the goal should be to create a game in which people need each other but not to the extreme that you need an entire guild to progress at any point. In fact, I'd be in favor of not even having mechanics to officially support guilds as all it accomplishes is to create artificial divisions among the players.
The guild vs the world mentality is one of the better community features a game can offer.
Given that at one point in my gaming career (when I was in junior high and high school) I did enjoy ganking/griefing I can easily tell you that the people who remember the days gone by as peaceful and everyone shared are completly full of it.
I don't mean to pick on you but there was something else I had to say about this. Did it ever occur to you that people in those early games were unfriendly to you because you were behaving anti-socially?
I don't remember EQ as some kind of paradise but in the early days and especially prior to "end game" I do remember the community as being more friendly than hostile. There were always jerks around but usually people would be friendly to me as long as I wasn't being a jerk.
So I wonder...is it possible that people seemed less friendly to you because you admitedly acted like a jerk to them?
Edit: I just saw that WSIMike touched on this in the post just above.
I never said people weren't friendly to me, I could get a group whenever I wanted or needed one.
I was pointing you how there wasn't a golden age of MMOs where everyone hugged and got along, and I myself knew from experience by being one of those who abused those early weak systems to do so.
But no I've never had an issue finding a friendly person either then, or now, when I needed one in game. Try not completely misreading the post though and you won't be as confused.
I remember EQ as being a game where I tried it and my first day I got pk'd for saying yes to someone offering me free items.
Saying that, in Lineage 2 people tended to be a lot more civil than in WoW. For one, because the crafting resources are drops that only you or your group can loot based on killing, and for two, because when I played it a pk death was the same as a regular death - meaning if you got pk'd you'd lose 7-12% of your total level. When L2 first came out anything past 20 took a long time to work on so... yeah. People in L2 in its prime were scared into cooperation, in my opinion, because I personally agree with you that humans in general are very selfish beings.
I went from L2 to WoW, and yeah... it's a different game. Gonna go back and try AoC again and see how it's come along. I think I've spent enough time in WoW.
I had some paragraphs diagnosing and explaining in greater depth the symptoms you explained, but you already said it so why should I repeat Thanks for posting the article.
Comments
hahahahaha!
*points to Jamie's article*
...share?
*group invite*
Absolutely true. Guilds created artificial, arbitrary fractures in the player base which wasn't a big deal at first but as raiding became more and more important that "us versus them" mentality grew as well and spilled over into every facet of the game. When progression is the only goal and progression is dependant entirely on guild based activities it's inevitable that the community will deteriorate from that just as surely as it will deteriorate in a solo-centric game in which nobody ever needs anybody. The only difference is that instead of being "me versus everyone" it's "my guild versus everyone".
It amazes me that some people still can't see this.
In my opinion the goal should be to create a game in which people need each other but not to the extreme that you need an entire guild to progress at any point. In fact, I'd be in favor of not even having mechanics to officially support guilds as all it accomplishes is to create artificial divisions among the players.
Misunderstanding stuff about my post
I played EQ for the first 2 months it was out, it was all I could take and I switched to Asheron's Call and never looked back. I had fun in UO (before the alignment color crap) and fun in AC but EQ wasn't a very exciting game. There were lines everywhere for everything in those first couple months. When they introduced the rvr pvp server it was good for a little while, I had a blast. But the people who prefered the EQ style of boring gaming seemed to also hate rvr pvp so the server pop died pretty quickly, luckily AC was around by then.
There's a difference between having a mob spawn the moment you show up, and not at all respecting the people waiting when it does spawn. It was interesting the day I got reported for it and an admin told me it was against the rules, it helped clue me in to how ridiculous EQ was when the rules included grabbing a mob when there were people standing there waiting for the mob. But it certainly didn't make me stop, the risk of admin action was not something that bothered me because I wasn't into the game.
Yes I did jump lines and no I couldn't care less if you believe this or not.
Now oddly enough the games that you think helped push the anti-social sentiments were the games I helped people more in. I didn't help people at all in The Realm, UO, or EQ. I helped my vassals in AC but that was it.
In newer games like WoW, LotRO, even the short amount of time I tried WAR I help people a lot. These are games where I can solo through the majority of stuff, don't really need a guild for what I want to do, and hardly ever need groups. But yet in these same games I help people a lot more then I ever did in those early games that forced you to deal with other players.
Whenever I am forced to do something, I don't like it and I am not likely to do it when I don't have to. When I'm not forced to do something, I am much more likely to do it.
I see, I did misunderstand a bit. Apparantly you meant you stole kills on common mobs. When you talked about people waiting 3 hours or all day for mobs which you jumped in and killed I naturally assumed you were talking about rare spawn mobs because they are the only ones which would spawn so..well, rarely.
So yeah, I can believe that you kill stole ordinary mobs. It's not impossible to do it on a rare spawn but it would be difficult to believe anyone made a successfull habit of that, which is why I questioned it when I thought that's what you meant.
I don't look for a group for quests any more than most of you, but when I'm out there and someone else shows up for the same quest mob, I toss them a group invite. It's just common sense.
It's funny you say that. I just went back to Vanguard simply for the fact that there is a lot of group leveling content. If anything with Vanguard there isn't enough solo leveling content. So in my spare time I run around doing diplomacy and constantly looking at /who and regularly posting in general chat for a group to such areas. MMOs have become stale for me simply because they are not MMOs anymore. They are RPGs with a chat box, least till endgame.
I am not sure MMOs will ever be the same for me because it seems unlikely at this point that a game centered around group content can succeed. Granted as I mentioned before, most of these games have you soloing to end game, and then demanding you have friends in order to kill the icons. The next logical step for MMOs is to either revert back to a lot more group content, or soloing the Lich King. Neither of which is a good solution, but just like casuals and raiders, sandboxers and themeparkers can't seem to get along .. the two can't seem to coexist very well. Unfortunately for me, more ppl enjoy being able to log on for 20 minutes and feel like they are king of the world because they can solo some content. Even 5 mans in wow these days are 1 step away from being soloable. I imagine I could run most of them with me and a healer at this point.
IDK what the answer is. I wish I did. I have been dreaming of making an MMO for years. So in the meantime I just continue to hope someone has the balls to create a solid multiplayer experience, and the MMO saavy to make it successful enough to not dissapear or require you to spend $50 a month in a cash shop. Hey, we can dream, right?
EDIT : Actually I have been thinking a lot about these kinds of things, and the sort of solution that I have spinning around is actually somewhat similar to WoW's instant instances .. at least if you are a tank ..
Imagine if you entered a zone, and the game automatically lumped you in with other people. Forget about +/- for group experience and anything like that, but at the south end of the zone is 1 dots mobs, and at the North end were a couple of 5 dot mobs in some kind of ramparts structure .. yadda yadda. So you zone in, and start farming easy mobs and the game sticks you in a group. You venture up to 2 dot mobs then 3 dot mobs and sooner or later the ppl in the group happen across each other (or they have to foresite to say, meet up at the 4 dot mobs) .. but anyway, the 2 solo ppl happen upon each other and one pulls a 3 dot mob. They kill it with a little effort and then emboldened by their success start mowing down 3 dots till 1 pulls a 4 dot, Hopefully by then they figure, "hey 3rd random person that joined the group, come help us kill 4 dots" ... etc etc
Now obviously there would need to be some smart group switching / handling mechanics .. not to mention loot options are always uninspired in these games. So you should be able to "switch groups" to another random group at any time .. or on a 10 min cooldown or w/e works. You should also be able to "form new group" which would also have a lengthy cooldown, and would give you about 5 minutes to fill the group before turning it into another random group.
Anyway, it's not perfectly thought out, but a mechanic like this seems obvious to me. The industry needs to innovate or it may get left behind via farmville, etc.
Though hey, left behind might actually be a good thing. Then we would be back to smaller populations and "tighter" communities. Maybe.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Original quote: "They may want to play the game in peace, not having to worry about what other people might do, say, or think - that is, it's their game and the rest of the world can just deal with it. Such attitudes, of course, leave a question about playing social games in the first place, but every solo-only MMO player has their own reasons."
And this is perhaps what confuses me most about the "I like to solo" crowd in MMOs. If you like to solo - great - but why not play one of dozens of games geared towards solo players so that you don't have to pollute my gaming world with your lone-wolf attitude? The entire purpose, to me, of an MMO world - as when I first played the original Everquest and later, the original DDO, is to meet people and interact with people in an online world that cannot exist in "real space" - I never, ever understood the "solo MMO player" - it's like the only reason they play the MMO in question is to a) avoid everyone else and b) show how uber they are by whatever accomplishments they can achieve alone. Fine, but... don't you have an X-Box 360 game to get back to or an achievement to achieve or... something?
From Everquest, originally, I met many, many people in the online world. I made new friends, in my early 20's (I'm 30 now) - some of whom I even met in real life! The WHOLE POINT of MMO gaming, for me, was basically a social construct - a way to bring my weekly D&D game to the world at large, and even have a chance to play in it. I met people through EQ - people were, by and large, helpful when you were trying to complete a quest. (Just compare this to, say, a rare drop in Aion. Have fun, Aion grinders.)
From DDO, I actually met several people in my own home city (Phoenix, AZ) where I was able to meet them for a beer and - lo and behold - we met four or five years ago over a beer and now we're close friends, even though none of us actually play DDO anymore. We met in game, GROUPED together in game, talked together - had fun together. Isn't that the point of team games?
At any rate, some of the DDO players I met became regular players in my weekly D&D game. I picked Sarlona, of course, the 'unofficial" RP server of DDO, at the time. Maybe this helped.
I would LOVE a group-oriented game to come out, like EQ. I play Fallen Earth right now, and I love the game, but one of my biggest complaints about the game is that there is next to no incentive to PvE grouping.
FORCE us to group, force us to socialize... then again, it seems odd that there would need to be any "force" involved considering, if you're playing an MMO and your goal is to avoid everyone else and solo the game... you probably shouldn't be playing an MMO. Go be an introvert somewhere else; like in your newspaper crossword puzzle, which you can do alone and nobody will bother you.
They like the freedom of soloing, but that doesn't mean that when the mood strikes them, that they don't enjoy group content as well. Which is why there should always be solo content.
One of the issues I run into a lot when looking for groups, is the anonimity, the .. strange separation between two people. They probably want the same or similar things, and contrary to what a lot of ppl in this thread think, they are probably nice enough people that would help others, and would even let you take a kill before them or group with you if asked.
The problem again I think is much more in the mechanics than it is in the people. There are both better ways to spawn mobs to avoid this problem, and better ways to "force" grouping (if that is the intent, which I don't even think it is, I think this all comes from lack of foresight or innovation).
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Lots of people have different reasons for wanting to solo, it doesnt mean youre some anti-social introvert who should stick to playing single player games. Personally, i tend to seek out other people with similar playstyles and thinking, which tends to be tough to find outside of a small circle of friends and my brother that ive played several games with, so when theyre not around or if i play a different game than them then yeah i tend to solo. The main reason i got into MMOs was for the PvP and the challenge of fighting other players rather than some scripted AI, and ive got real life friends, i dont need an MMO to be my social life. That doesnt mean i havent made friends, and i dont go out of my way to avoid people or anything, i usually just login and play without feeling the need to find a group to do anything. If you ask me to join up with you sure ill join so long as youre not hindering my progress or preventing me from finishing something i was in the middle of doing.
But even my soloing isnt 100% of the time, i also do help out people a lot, and if i see someone with questions, or someone struggling to complete a quest or something ill usually stop by for a few minutes to help out and then be on my way again. Its a pretty common misconception that just because someone likes to solo, that they dont want to be bothered at all. Theres lots of us who simply find it easier to do our own thing without having to wait for others, but we can still socialize a bit and help out if theres anything going on. I think the bigger problem is people who insist on grouping unde rthe pretext of wanting to socialize, but its really just for the sake of having someone to do most of the work for them, while offering nothing in return, even something as simple as being able to hold an interesting conversation for more than 2 minutes. Theres been plenty of times where ill party with random people just because they actually entertain me and have something fun & interesting to discuss, but if youre just riding on my work to level up and dont at least do me the favor of entertaining me with discussion, i might as well solo.
Anyway, the way i figure it is if youre capable of soloing and dont need the help of others, then whats wrong with it? Doesnt that leave more room in parties for those that do need help or just want to socialize? Shouldnt you be happy that we solo rather than joining with you and making things way too easy and boring for the rest of the group?
I'm not sure if it's due to ONLY a larger population, the game design and some of the mechanics themselves, or the generally younger age bracket....but whatever the reason....WoW, for me, has become an exercise in social irritation more than communication and cooperation. And these things render the game, for me...toxic for consumption. I'm old...I prefer not to waste my latter years in the hobby with people I don't ENJOY.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
C'mon. I'm an old school EQ player. I started in 2000. You may remember those times in EQ, when people worked together and it was rare for someone to not be altruistic. The EQ I remember was hardly ever that way. It was very rare that someone kept a list.
Someone better equipped than I would show me the ropes? Are you talking old school raiders? The people who started the whole "I'm more elite than you, so you don't even exist."
EQ was just like any other MMO. People you knew were great, people you didn't know were viewed as competition ready to pounce on your rare.
Sorry, the EQ I played was not like a utopian hippy village. It was more like a slightly more civilzed WoW. People just don't want to admit that.
Obviously, there were some awesome people playing EQ. Just like I'm sure there are awesome people in WoW. Is WoW worse? Absolutely. I think WoW's instance world, and anonymous nature lend to that. People have no reason to be civil. In EQ you'd see a lot of the same people all the time, and there was no auction house. If you went around kill stealing and ninja looting you were quickly blacklisted.
Anonymity breeds douchebaggery. It is a way of life in online gaming. It always has been. This started with MUDs - try playing Medievia sometime. One of the deepest games you will ever, ever play. But there's no enforced RP, which means people are free to be douchebags. Guess how they act? No different than your average WoW player. There are literally hundreds of zones in the game that drop valuable loot. At any given time, every blessed one of them has its first, easily-accessible quest mob dead and waiting on its respawn timer (at least the soloable ones). Most of the time, the first respawn of a quest mob doesn't even contain the item needed to do the quest - it's only on initial load!
Hell, I'll quote your article: "......how to group up and pwn a carebear..." The mere fact that you use these words means you are hated by someone, somewhere. I will venture a guess that you've been, at some point in time, even if only once, a symptom of the problem you describe. Most of us have, if we've been playing for any length. There just comes a time where you want to do what you want to do, and to hell with anyone else. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that, once in a great while. It's the ones that make it a way of life that are the real problem.
There's a sucker born every minute. - P.T. Barnum
This is why I prefer playing with RL friends or even guild friends over PUGs. I will quickly hand over items that I don't need if a buddy asks and even most of the time in PUGs, problem being, in PUGs you often have people rolling on what you need that they have no business rolling for.
Pretty much this. I played EQ starting in the second half of 1999 and continued on for several years and I don't have any rosey-hued memories of cooperation. In fact, I found the opposite to be true; EQ fed people's greed and willingness to screw others over for a virtual item. Long spawn times for quest item mobs, coupled with the fact that only one person could get the quest item, meant that people willingly screwed over real life friends just to get what was considered uber items at the time.
Add in the fact that dungeons were shared, anyone can loot mechanics, and people could drop a mob's aggro on your group and you had a recipe for making one of the most anti-social MMOs which ironically generally required you to group to accomplish most tasks. I watched far too many guilds break up and real life friendships end due to game induced greed to ever think EQ was somehow the epitome of positive social values.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
It's funny that I came across this article tonight, given what happened in LotRO just this afternoon. I was doing some questing in Mirkwood and needed to kill a bunch of orcs in one of the many stockades found there. As it happened, I entered the area at the same time as another person, who chose to shoot me an invite at the same time as I was typing to ask him if he needed the same thing I did.
Not only did we complete the quest very quickly and a lot more easily, but we wound up playing together for the next hour and a half. We practically tore through about 20 quests and had a great time.
A little courtesy really can make all the difference in the world. And you never know what might come of it.
Amen! I telecommute for my job and there is a lot of down time. But when the phone rings I have to promptly take the call. So during work hours I do not like to group. I don't think it's fair to other players make them wait around if a customer calls and keeps me on the phone for 20 minutes. Or worse, for them to get killed because I had to go afk. If I'm solo, my death only inconveniences me. And even when I'm soloing I am still social with my guild in chat. It would get very lonely at my job if there was nobody around to talk to, so the MMO environment is a blessing for me even when I'm not grouped.
During other hours I do like to group. But the bottom line is that if I'm given a choice between a game that is group-only content or a game that has good amounts of group content and also a good amount of soloable content I'm going to take the latter every time.
It's very unfair to tell people to go play a single-player game if they're not going to group. There are a lot of valid reasons for not grouping at any given time, even among people who love to group. A game that only caters to groups is going to suffer because at best it's going to have a small base of niche players. This in turn means lower revenues, which leads to slower development and a game that can become pretty stale. By catering to a wider variety of playstyles, developers are acting in the best interests of their bottom lines AND of the players themselves.
Look at DDO. In the beginning it was aimed exclusively at group play. The developers quickly learned that they HAD to create a capability for soloing or they weren't going to be left with enough players to keep the servers running. Guild Wars is another example. Do you think it would be as popular as it is -- even with the no-subscription model that they use -- if there were no hirelings and so you had to find groups every time you wanted to step outside the gates?
I am currently playing Allods Online, and get invited to groups on a daily basis. Groups just seem to work in Allods. It could be because group bosses need at least 7 people to kill, or because dungeons are very small (can be done in less than half an hour with the right group). Maybe they've done it right - if fewer games had dungeons that were time-wasting mazes, people would have had more fun doing them together.
I generally agree with the article with one exception. Unsolicited group invites are one of the things that I use to fast track people to my ignore list. You said it best prior to that, though: Communication. Ask if someone wants to group before popping a window in their face unannouced. If they don't reply, you've done enough and they've given you their answer.
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
In my experience with world bosses in open PvP MMOs (specifically, Lineage 2) it often leads to some pretty exciting PvP - especially if it's a rare spawn and/or required for a quest. And considering PvP is the core of the MMO, it usually makes for some excitement even *before* the boss fight begins (part of why I think some who are adamantly against any PvE in a PvP MMO and consider it "carebear", have never played a PvP MMO with good PvE content in it... it helps, not hinders, good PvP... but I digress...). Sometimes the other group is looking for the same kill. Many times they're just trying to screw someone else up who is. But.... it being an open PvP MMO.... you expect and accept that, so it really isn't all that bad.
There's the flipside to that though which *can* get annoying after a time. Specifically, also in L2, the domination/monopolization of some of the major world bosses by the most powerful clans/allies on a given server. On the server I played on in L2, there was a group who pretty much controlled one boss named Baium. Now, Baium drops some pretty nice stuff which makes him a desired target to begin with. It so happens, though, that he's also required (or was up to a point) for a milestone quest in the game... you'd have to wake him up and then get the hell out of dodge before he stomped you. This group decided they were goin to control access to him by basically having anyone who wanted at him to pay up handsomely, turn away, or be PK'd on the spot (death in L2 has a sting). This carried on for a while, until the rest of the server - or a portion of it - got fed up and said "screw this". They grouped up and steamrolled the controlling group... and Baium was monopolized no more.
So... it actually *can* work with open PvP in a MMO with world bosses... because it already does and has for several years now in at least one such MMO.
That said...
Excellent article Jaime. Truly enjoyed reading that and it immediately brought me back to the earlier days of FFXI's North American release when us Westerners finally got access to places like "Sky" and it became chaos because groups were trying to compete for the same sky bosses. It ultimately ended up with something loosely called "Sky Pact" being put together... where each group agreed to a set evening to go into Sky and do their thing.. This way, everyone got what they needed and everyone was happy. Of course, a new group would come along and decide they weren't going to abide ('cause, really, they weren't obligated to) and the ruckus would start all over again.. then settle down.
I have also found that many people go into this "screw you I'm getting it first" mindset when they come to camp a named mob others are camping. Don't matter to them that others have been there a lot longer - perhaps hours - that makes the idea that they get it first all the better.. now they're not only getting what they want.. they're screwing over those who were already waiting and proving they are the better player... I know this because many make it a point of declaring all the above after doing so (what's the point of being a prick if you're the only one who knows that was your inention, I guess...). Some would show up who didn't even need the mob but would kill it just to be a prick and then laugh at everyone waiting.
I've seen his mentality in every MMO I've played... but I have to say - without hyperbole or cliche' - that it was, by far, the most prominent in WoW. And not only because of "more people playing it". I'd be waiting for a named mob in some otherwise under-populated area (like Teldrassil... few people seem to like hanging around there), and even be only one of two people waiting on the thing.. someone would come by see us camping it and decide to be a jerk by one-shotting it as soon as it spawned.
Same thing with quest mobs... players 20+ levels higher would sweep through quest areas killing all the mobs that drop items required for the quest, and then laugh at the "n00bs" trying to get it done. One quest in particular I remember it happening on more than once was the one where you need to transform that guy into a bear then kill him and release his spirit. That particular area seemed a magnet for a-holes.
I suspect a factionless, open PvP setting would have reduced that kind of behavior quite a lot. Fewer people are willing to be a prick when there's possible repercussions (as in, you don't know what friends this guy you're pissing off might have...)
While not everyone is like that, and there were certainly people like that prior to WoW, I've seen a far greater number of them - in all MMOs - since WoW.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
I don't mean to pick on you but there was something else I had to say about this. Did it ever occur to you that people in those early games were unfriendly to you because you were behaving anti-socially?
I don't remember EQ as some kind of paradise but in the early days and especially prior to "end game" I do remember the community as being more friendly than hostile. There were always jerks around but usually people would be friendly to me as long as I wasn't being a jerk.
So I wonder...is it possible that people seemed less friendly to you because you admitedly acted like a jerk to them?
Edit: I just saw that WSIMike touched on this in the post just above.
I disagree here, you seem to lay all blame 100% on the gamer for acting selfishly and anti-socially in MMORPGs today. Where I agree the gamers that do it are of course responsible for their own actions I think you should've looked at the companys and how the design of MMORPGs are different than from 10 years ago.
10 years ago in EQ1 you had to group otherwise you'd be screwed, full stop, end of story. So everyone grouped up, not because it was in the best interest of others but it was in your own best interest.
Fast forward to today and look at how the design has changed from open world harsh death penalties and required grouping to advance to small worlds, heavily zoned, heavily instanced to the point of zones having multiple instances, quest chains that lead you by the hand to max level and every quest and most dungeons and 99% of mobs can be done solo.
Most AAA MMORPGs revolve around the single player experience and cater towards the solo player now. What do you expectwhen most of the gamers playing have come to expect this? When I was a kid playing on my old 8bit 64k comp that used a tape cassette to store information single player games were very hard to complete. Many I couldn't because by a certain level they became too tough. A few I did complete but it took a long time to do it, kids today would throw their Xboxs and PS3s out of the window in fruastration if games were that hard. Halo 1,2 and 3? Imagine if there was only one setting and that was legendary, that's what games were like.
Today you could sit down and in a weekend of casual play finished a brand new £40 game, most gamers expect this as the norm coming to MMORPGs and the cash grabbing companys are of course catering to their desire or expectations. So when you see a group of 15 people around a single quest mob spawn working indipendently of eachother and all trying to ninja the final blow is it really a suprise? They're to blame for sure but so are the companies that made the design decisions that lead to being able to solo to max level without being required to group up.
Personally I couldn't give a flying **** about this really as I refuse to play those mindless turds that get passed off as an MMORPG. As all the games like this are theme park MMORPGs and I don't play them, give me a sand box where unless you co operate and socialise you end up as a scrub. Which is why all the scrubs end up in theme parks as they can be uber sociopaths from day 1 without any consequences!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
Absolutely true. Guilds created artificial, arbitrary fractures in the player base which wasn't a big deal at first but as raiding became more and more important that "us versus them" mentality grew as well and spilled over into every facet of the game. When progression is the only goal and progression is dependant entirely on guild based activities it's inevitable that the community will deteriorate from that just as surely as it will deteriorate in a solo-centric game in which nobody ever needs anybody. The only difference is that instead of being "me versus everyone" it's "my guild versus everyone".
It amazes me that some people still can't see this.
In my opinion the goal should be to create a game in which people need each other but not to the extreme that you need an entire guild to progress at any point. In fact, I'd be in favor of not even having mechanics to officially support guilds as all it accomplishes is to create artificial divisions among the players.
The guild vs the world mentality is one of the better community features a game can offer.
I don't mean to pick on you but there was something else I had to say about this. Did it ever occur to you that people in those early games were unfriendly to you because you were behaving anti-socially?
I don't remember EQ as some kind of paradise but in the early days and especially prior to "end game" I do remember the community as being more friendly than hostile. There were always jerks around but usually people would be friendly to me as long as I wasn't being a jerk.
So I wonder...is it possible that people seemed less friendly to you because you admitedly acted like a jerk to them?
Edit: I just saw that WSIMike touched on this in the post just above.
I never said people weren't friendly to me, I could get a group whenever I wanted or needed one.
I was pointing you how there wasn't a golden age of MMOs where everyone hugged and got along, and I myself knew from experience by being one of those who abused those early weak systems to do so.
But no I've never had an issue finding a friendly person either then, or now, when I needed one in game. Try not completely misreading the post though and you won't be as confused.
I remember EQ as being a game where I tried it and my first day I got pk'd for saying yes to someone offering me free items.
Saying that, in Lineage 2 people tended to be a lot more civil than in WoW. For one, because the crafting resources are drops that only you or your group can loot based on killing, and for two, because when I played it a pk death was the same as a regular death - meaning if you got pk'd you'd lose 7-12% of your total level. When L2 first came out anything past 20 took a long time to work on so... yeah. People in L2 in its prime were scared into cooperation, in my opinion, because I personally agree with you that humans in general are very selfish beings.
I went from L2 to WoW, and yeah... it's a different game. Gonna go back and try AoC again and see how it's come along. I think I've spent enough time in WoW.
I had some paragraphs diagnosing and explaining in greater depth the symptoms you explained, but you already said it so why should I repeat
Thanks for posting the article.