World of Warcraft

Yes, if you haven’t figured it out by now one of my favorite online games is World of Warcraft. But not for the reasons you may think, nor am I addicted.

When you first start out in WoW, as its called by its rabidly loyal fan base (probably should write another post on that…), you begin at level one. Currently the maximum level you can reach is 80. You start out with quests which range from anything to having to hunt down and kill a thief to finding a stupid chicken that is running away from you while little fishies jump out of the water and bite you. The quests get harder and harder as time goes on, but at this point you are starting to catch on with the technicalities in how to do certain things. You are gradually leveling up, yet haven’t met anyone. Don’t worry, some of the quests become so hard that you cannot finish them without a guild or calling on friends you run across in game. Just like life eh?

Well, that’s not even the end of it. You’ve officially just started. Soon you may join a guild, think of your friend group in real life, befriend someone and become good friends, and start venturing into other things. Now you are starting out with responsibilities. Guild rules, friends, quests, better gear, and so the list starts to grow. Just like real life eh? (PS, the guys who built this game were pure geniuses are they not?)

I was reading in a fairly old back issue of Games for Windows last night,and it brought up the idea that close-knit guilds in online games were a thing of the past.Their point was that with item-based progression and 25/40-person raid content, gamers no longer flock together because of like-mindedness or establishing a community; they flock together for more personal gains—phat lewtz—and merely tolerate those with whom they associate rather than revel in their company. It is almost as though there were two ways to look at those with whom one raided: they were either social friends or coworkers, with whom raiding was a shared job.

I am borderline on this.Yes, my old Ultima Online guilds were based entirely around protecting ourselves from PKs and/or being PKs and griefing others.We were there for one sort of camaraderie or another, and the idea of killing raid bosses was absurd.The game wasn’t built that way, so we couldn’t think that way.We banded together because, one way or another, we liked each other’s company.

The same was true of my Star Wars Galaxies player association (read: guild).We were mostly members of the SWG Stratics forum community, and we played the game together because we liked each other.We went hunting Force Crystal Hunters and Krayt Dragons not for phat lewtz, but because we wanted to have a funny story to tell later on.We started a couple of cities, and we pooled resources to have the best crafting stations and architecture around.

Some MMO players may recall a time when instancing pretty much didn’t exist. If you wanted to go after a raid mob you had to compete in the cut throat world of high end gaming. Sometimes you’d have to wait for a new expansion to get the last expansion’s top loot. It was a frustrating situation to say the least. Despite that, however, I don’t think competition in PvE is a negative thing. In fact I think it should become a necessity in modern MMOs.

In EverQuest II, after a few content patches, you had a healthy mix of contested raid and non-contested instanced targets. The best rewards were usually found on the mobs you had to compete for. Instance raids, however, still offered a good degree of gear progression. As time went on, however, the focus shifted. Instances began to drop better items and competition declined.

Why is competition important? As a guild leader it forced my members to focus more and play better. It wasn’t really us against the mob. It was us against the world. Every failure on a target meant someone else could take a finite resource from us. That was not something we wanted. I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, the more instances that EQ2 got the rustier my raiders became. When there were only a few instances we were at our finest. I can also say that competition keeps members more active. Once we had totally defeated our competitors on a raid and the "new mob shine" wore off interest began to wane.

I believe it was Scott Jennings who said the quickest way to get three digit comments was to write an article about PvP. I’m not sure if that will hold true on Epic Slant but I’m going to ignore his solid advice and do just that! Today I want to discuss my issues with “open PvP” and some of the myths that go along with it. Just so we’re all clear about this beforehand, (and I know some folks will ignore this disclaimer), I’m only talking about involuntary PvP. I’m not slandering RvR lakes, battlegrounds, arenas or any place where a player will knowingly go to battle others.

It continues to amaze me that more and more PvP focused games are being released. I recognize that many of these began their development cycle when everyone believed that this play style was the wave of the future but lets be honest, there are a lot of “me too” games out there for this. With the release of Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, Darkfall, and PvP MMO 12 Bravo, it has become clear that the market isn’t as big as imagined. Most of the games are niche titles with the exception of Warhammer Online. War is doing average for an MMO but it certainly isn’t the “million account” RvR powerhouse that everyone anticipated and I’m willing to bet a decent amount of players remain there for the generally well done PvE portion of the game. Why don’t these games gain on WoW then?

Lately I’ve been immersing myself in the discussions going on regarding the struggle between the pro-solo and pro-group camps of MMO players. The newest bouts of debate have spilled into a few forum discussions and the comments and related articles by Wolfshead. With such a provocative topic I’ve been inspired to write on many different topics. The one I settled on, to begin with, is how this issue affects guilds. It is my contention that by focusing MMOs so heavily on solo content we are producing players ill-equipped to deal with guilds and, ultimately, weakening the need for such organizations.

The concept of player organizations is not a new one. They have existed for many years but, in my eyes, truly grew to a new height with the advent of the raid guild. These organizations are not unlike real world businesses in the fact that they monitor their member’s “hours” and pay them for that labor (DKP). They also have elaborate hierarchies and stringent policies by which someone is hired. This was sometimes taken to an insane degree and these organizations wielded massive amounts of control in EverQuest when it came to what content a player could experience.