JoBildo reposted a summary of a talk given by Gordon Watson, co-director of Bioware, at GDC Austin. Work blocks Gamasutra, so I couldn’t get this from the source. Watson’s talk was about the lessons learned from the World of Warcraft.
There’s no denying WoW is popular, the most popular Western MMORPG ever made. They did do a lot of things right, a lot of things very appealing to the new or casual player. Where I believe they went wrong is their emphasis on solo play. Playing by yourself in an MMO? It’s hard for me to see the point.
Here’s where he talks about that particular innovation:
“[the] truth is that people soloed every game to the best they could and when they couldn’t anymore, they quit. Embracing solo play that was a true innovation for WOW.”
… until WoW players start raiding after having been trained for 70 levels to think that everything they do, they do to benefit themselves alone. Which is definitely what raiding in WoW was like. People with highly detailed and convincing arguments why they should get their epic set first, because the set bonuses would be better for them… and the inevitable departures of those same people once they did get their sets… The official forums were filled with smack talk and obscenities…
I spent a year in WoW (and three months in beta), and in that time I found maybe a dozen people I could call friends, but without any sort of community, there was no stability. Almost everyone had come from other servers, and almost everyone eventually left for other servers after Kirin Tor degenerated from a roleplay server with a struggling community (and a good server forum) to the same sort of whining cocksmanship present everywhere else. I, too, tried other servers, but it was always more of the same.
What would an emphasis on grouping — combined with WoW’s undisputed strengths in polish, system requirements, story and art — have produced?
Here’s hoping Bioware rethinks its blind sidelines cheerleading for WoW’s solo game, and comes out with ways to support strong, thriving communities.
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Encouraging solo play is the only way we’re going to get anyone else in the games to play with, if you follow me.
I’m sure by now you’ve heard the phrase “playing alone together” in reference to the modern batch of MMOs. It’s very true. While I love grouping, I also have times where I just don’t want to deal with people — just as in real life. My schedule doesn’t allow me to play with my real friends so I either wind up PUG-ing or hopefully grouping with guildies, whom I don’t know for real, so they’re essentially PUG players with the same family name. Soloers can still be social in general or guild chat. They might even PvP, because that’s a whole different group dynamic than the dungeon/raid groups.
Take a look at all the threads complaining about LOTRO’s fellowship quests. People don’t want to be forced to group. Perhaps more to the point, people don’t want to be *forced* to do anything, they’d rather choose to do it. Which is an interesting bit of psychology since they want to have choices, provided they’re guided along paths to make those choices… (referencing another comment Walton made in his keynote)
Here’s my personal observation and opinion: primarily, the people complaining about soloers in an MMO are hypocrits. They come from the old school days of EQ, AC, or UO where often, especially in the case of EQ, there just wasn’t anything else to do. You pretty much had to group and stay in that group and go out farming (hunting, if you prefer) mobs all day. Now the games actually have quests, and just like in real life, sometimes you need a group to complete a task, others you can complete on your own.
These same people who complain about soloers being the bane of MMO existence — it’s an MMO, you should be part of the community, group, blahblah; if you want a single player game get a console — are the exact same people who would rather roll alts and do everything themselves when it comes to other, non-violent aspects of the genre such as crafting. Again, I’ll pick LOTRO since its crafting system is inter-dependent right from the get-go. So, are you guys wheeling and dealing with other players, trading your items for theirs or purchasing their stuff from the AH so you can make new stuff? No, you’re rolling alts and soloing the crafting game.
If you *truly* want these MMORPG to feel like a so-called virtual world, then you have to allow for individualism just like we have in the real world. Some people are introverts, some are extroverts. Some like country music, some like classical. There needs to be stuff for everyone to do, not force people down a narrow path.
I solo a lot, too. My point wasn’t so much that people shouldn’t be allowed to solo, it was that by marginalizing groups, the bonds of community could not form.
I am an old-school EQ1 player, and I HATED LFG with a passion. It drove me right to WoW. But the poor community and general boredom drove me right back out again. Groups are the glue that holds community together.
And anyway, I maintain people would like to group if the process of getting a decent group weren’t such a chore. Groups can be organic, with people coming and going and not being tied down for hours, but it takes a good group leader to do this — knowing when people have to leave, seeing to replacements ahead of time, so you can have the kind of groups in old EQ where people would come for fifteen minutes or an hour, and there was even a lingo that you could use to describe the details of your group (how loot was assigned, who was doing the various jobs including what your role would be, if there was a list for a rare item, where you would be on it) — all in seconds.
It was very organized because that’s what people did in EQ — they found a place they wanted to go, they went there, and they got in touch with the groups already there and took part in the zone conversation until they got a group. It was all very active. Raid zones, dungeons and newbie zones were intermingled so you’d always be seeing people with the good stuff to spur you on. The player-run markets in GFay, EC and FV let the traders have their chances to shine as well.
In EQ1, I made a mage and a necro for the times when I just wanted to go off by myself and solo, and had my rogue and cleric for grouping.
It’s all about building the bonds that build a strong community.
Oh, you absolutely pegged me as a crafter — I make alts so I can do everything myself. It makes sense to me. Crafting is what I do when I WANT to play by myself, or am going to be distracted. Adventuring is for when I want to be with other people.
I’ll gladly concede that the LFG process in most games sucks. Painfully. DDO has the simplest system I’ve seen so far, and works well, though I’d love to see some refinement of the UI. DDO also comes the closest to the old style EQ groups where maybe you initially join for whatever quest was listed in LFG but then everyone sticks together for “ok, what shall we do now?” or someone leaves and a new person joins in, and you might stay grouped for hours on end doing various adventures.
Here’s a concept: how about in addition to our intentional /invite style of groups, and raid groups, how about public groups? The database knows who’s on what quest and could easily auto-group people who are in close proximity to each other. Perhaps it would only flag if both characters are “hunting” the same mobs or resources, regardless if they’re on the same quest or not. Everyone shares equal xp, everyone gets a shot at a resource node, if a quest item drops everyone gets their copy. There’s no group leader, simply leaving proximity drops you, and any new character coming in range auto-joins. Again, perhaps depending on specific parameters, but you can follow the general idea I’m getting at.
I don’t think grouping in and of itself has much impact on community. Some of the best groupers in the world might be completely turned off by participating in the “community” of the game. Some of the most hardcore solo-only players might be the ones most social in chat and most active and helpful on forums. In that very example, which I’ve experienced quite a bit, you see that the grouper is the one being more selfish. Make no bones about it, even in the old EQ days where maybe you’d be in a rotating personnel group for hours or days on end, when push comes to shove, you were doing it selfishly — to survive in an unsoloable environment and to get what you wanted, either xp, loot, whatever. It has nothing to do with some misconceived and romanticized notion that the old school MMO players were mature and social.
By grouping, you become part of the community. It isn’t something you can choose to participate in. If you’re a crappy tank with cardboard armor and the hitpoints of an anemic flee, you’re going to find grouping hard. If you’re a solid brick wall and nothing gets past you that is easy to heal, you’re going to find clerics sticking with you like superglue. Either way, you’re part of the community and your reputation will follow you in it. In WoW or EQ2, I knew nothing about anyone outside guild I would group with — is this someone’s Nth alt? Someone who just started a month ago? A server transfer looking for easier loot? No rep made me reluctant to join pickup groups, pushing me back to soloing.
Sure, there were crappy groups in EQ1. And definitely greedy players, beggars, cheats and what have you! But word got around. You couldn’t just join an uber guild, grab loot and leave, either — it could take months to get in, and you can bet the recruiter would find out everything about you from all your previous guilds, check message boards, everything — that’s what we did in Crimson Eternity.
I like your idea for proximity grouping, in general. If you could flag yourself as open to that sort of group, it could work. You definitely need a way to NOT have to group with people you don’t like.
It’s not grouping I’m against, it’s forced grouping. One of the things I think WAR and PotBS are doing right is allowing solo-ing but encouraging grouping.
No need to group in their PvE content, but you’ll benefit if you do, like with WAR’s public quests, or PotBS’ enchanced xp for groups.
The reason a lot of people prefer to solo their PVE these days Tipa is because it comes without the hassles that groups bring, like arguments, people not wanting to do what you want to do, snot-nosed kids and mouthy adults, and so on and so forth.
I totally agree that community needs to be encouraged, and I hope you agree that grouping shouldn’t be forced… it just needs to be discovered how to harness both at the same time, for maximum effect.
Soloing comes without the hassles that grouping brings, but also comes without the benefits. And “highly encouraged” grouping forces there (first) to be a community and (second) to use the power of community to promote good group play.
EQ1 wasn’t the only group-encouraged game I played. DAoC was the same way, and FFXI Online even *more* so. Both games had strong, vibrant communities.
I wasn’t excited about WoW because it had no community. Everything came and went so quickly — characters, guilds — it reinvented itself all the time.
Groups shouldn’t be mandatory. EvE Online has a community and grouping is far from required. Having just one game world jump-starts community in a powerful way. And it’s obvious that the first time someone feels that not having a group is preventing them from having fun, they’ll begin to look at other games.
It’s a tough nut. Maybe groups don’t hold the answers. But something has to exist to create a community. If not groups, than what?
A rep system of some sort?
eBay has its famous scores. Good sellers and good buyers have high scores, are more trusted. Perhaps good players could get voted up or down by the people they group with?
I’m going to disagree that simply grouping involves you in the community. Maybe back in the day, but that day has come and gone.
Especially given that a lot of people rank their guilds first and foremost when it comes to grouping. Good reason for that, mind you, but still… do we actually know these people? No, they’re all strangers and we only share a family (guild) name. They could flat-out suck at their class yet they’re in the guild.
Unless you’re a very vocal (good or bad) player, simply being good at your class doesn’t get a reputation anymore beyond the boundaries of your guilds. Best case scenario, maybe guild leaders might share their Who’s Who list for guild alliances.
An in-game rep system could be useful but it needs checks and balances. Xbox Live has a rep system that does work, but only contains negatives, not positives and I don’t know if there’s a way to repair a damaged reputation if some player just wants to be a prick and have his friends trash your rep.
Forcing players to group makes them part of the community? Have you played Everquest or any other game that forces grouping? If you have, then you are fully aware of how anti-community forced grouping is.
Forced grouping splinters communities! Instead of one coehesive unit, you have black listing, back stabbing, and “my group” attitudes.
The phrase “playing alone together” is a perfect description of what works. People love to play together, but that doesn’t mean they want to be forced to do it.
Also WoW has the “easy to learn, hard to master” mantra. Solo gameplay is easier to get players into the game, but by the end, Blizzard fully expects players to pick up the slack and become better to participate in raids. The problem has always been the night and day comparison of raids to leveling. Blizzard has failed at the step-up content to bring the average player into the end-game. They have done better with things such as ZG, Kara, and Heroics. A lot of people may not agree with that, but the numbers support it.
In the end, a community built of individuals works better than a community built of groups. As an individual you are part of the WoW community. If you tried to be an individual in Everquest, you were not part of the community.