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[Column] General: Subreddits, Twitch Channels, and Multi-Game Guilds
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Is FFXIV more fun than Warlords of Draenor? Are subreddits a good replacement for official forums? Is there anything for MMO players to watch on Twitch right now? We’ll learn what the blogosphere has to say on the topic of these questions and more!
Read more of Jessica Cook's Tales from the Neighborhood: Subreddits, Twitch Channels, and Multi-Game Guilds.
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It is their own fault for those guildies that feel left behind because they want to stick with a game after they joined a multi-game guild. That is one of the major selling points of them. Where they are at fault is they passed the buck on letting someone else do the recruiting for that specific team. It is every specific member's responsibility to recruit and find the players they like to play with. They want to pass the buck on the mundane part of the game, no fault but their own for what they get out of it. Let me guess, I'm a casual gamer, I don't have time to take responsibility for my gaming experience? pfft
Maybe if game devs made sticky games, maybe more folks would want to stick with them? Yes, I'm going to stick with this cash cow clone, because I enjoy playing the same reskinned crap over and over. Monopoly anyone? I have a new version that we can play forever!
Something about a "gaming community" has never really appealed to me. I can't speak from experience, but I think unless I was a founder or an officer or something, I would feel like just another fish in the pond. I've heard stories from others about how they joined a guild in a game that happened to be part of a gaming community, and that unless you stick around for a long period of time it's less likely you'll get help with much or get integrated into their raids and other activities.
As far as subreddits go, Final Fantasy XIV has a pretty active one, and apart from a few posts it is generally helpful, unlike the overly elitist official forums mostly comprised of vets from the original game that keep lamenting about a game they can't have. I used to mostly hang out on the official forums (I have over 3k posts there) but since ARR launched I've found myself on Reddit more.
I agree with the one blogger that I don't really see the value of Twitch, at least as far as livestreaming goes. If I own a game someone is streaming, I'd much rather play it myself than watch someone else do it. I will occasionally reference boss strategies and stuff, but I really don't want to watch someone doing quests or just riding through the world. I think streaming is a nice reference for people who are interested in a game and are on the fence about it, but who am I to judge how people find entertainment? I just know for me personally it doesn't do much for me.
I'm with you there on Twitch. I like streaming and interacting with folks, but I don't watch streams unless they're on a game I want to know more about, or have the devs previewing their game or content. I suppose that's the best part of Twitch, really.
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Multi-gaming Guilds became a necessity when developers began to take the community aspects (those things that require players to interact with one another) out of their games and relied on Guilds to provide that atmosphere for their membership. Not sure how long you have been gaming, but in the older MMOs the games actually forced some sort of player interaction which led to strong in game communities.
A true multi-gaming community doesn't forsake one game for another, it lets its members play whatever game that they wish. Take Grievance for example. Grievance has large communities in multiple MMOs and many other gaming genres. Each community has it's own individual leadership. If the game itself doesn't fail (insert recent MMO 101 here) then chances are that particular community will be around for quite awhile and grow. Our EverQuest II Guild still raids and even downed a new raid boss last night.
Another benefit of multi-gaming Guilds which many may think a con is the ability to actually play multiple games within the same community. This aspect actually helps the player and the community as a whole. Let's face it, games now days aren't what they used to be. Used to be that a player's "journey" in a game took place from character inception to end level rather than in the form of dailies at end game. Now days players rush to end level in the span of a month (two if they take their time) and then get burned out. Multi-gaming Guilds give them the ability to take a break for a bit, then return when new content is added.
Anyway, i could go on and on about the benefits of Multi-gaming communites. If you're curious to learn more about how they actually work, function, and benefit their membership, then i invite you to please feel free to message me either on this site or email me at steelheart@grievanceguild.com .
Looking for a family that you can game with for life? Check out Grievance at https://www.grievancegaming.org !
As a member and officer of a long-standing multi-game guild, I can attest that there are both pros and cons. We have many who are multi-gamers and others who stick to one game. Is it difficult sometimes? Sure. But a multi-game guild can offer exactly what this article seems to say is their weakness - the cushion that a gamer may need when his/her game goes belly-up or when he/she becomes tired of that game. There's no need to find another community of friends just because you don't play that particular game anymore.
And because we're a well established guild, we aren't focused on the latest flavor of the day games
. Sure, we go into them, check them out, and if we have the player interest, we support. But we also have players in older games enjoying themselves tremendously without the need to go find another guild.
As for Daybreak Games and Reddit - that's a whole different conversation, and from a player perspective, not pretty.
About the multi-game guilds, I think they will become a necessity, as regular guilds were in the early MMO days. Very very few games today (mostly niche market games as Path of Exile or Wakfu) offer the complexity and depth that I've got used to (take different viable paths, be allowed to fail etc). I think I'm becoming a different kind of gamer, a gamer who plays multiple MMO's at the same time. I find myself lately doing this more and more often: I log into GW2 and do the daily, then later I run 2-3 rifts in Diablo 3, maybe if I've got time I grind a level in Tera etc. This works better for me instead of just picking New Game X, playing it for one month, get burned out. I'm more and more interested in finding a good multi-game guild.