Why have MMO's lost the MM part?

[zenyatta]

Attitude.
"Tank, go faster!"
"Healer you suck, why'd I die?"
"Dps you're awful, that fight took way too long."
"Oh, you were camping that rare? Too bad!"

[RoninaThorstone]

I've read the whole thread. Maybe you shouldn't have quoted a post that was specifically referring to WoW forum posters and not WoW players.

Sorry, I figured you could read between the lines.

[Belloc]

Sorry, I figured you could read between the lines.

*sigh* There was no "between the lines." You quoted someone and replied with something that didn't apply within the context of the quote. Don't try to turn this around -- this is your forum failure.

[RoninaThorstone]

*sigh* There was no "between the lines." You quoted someone and replied with something that didn't apply within the context of the quote. Don't try to turn this around -- this is your forum failure.

Scroll up like, 2 post. You just didn't follow the thread closely and made an assumption. Get over it.

[Collegeguy]

Flying mounts and LFG instances is what killed the MM part of MMO for me. There really is no difference between a Halo multiplayer game and a LFG one. Also, flying mounts inadvertently makes the world completely decadent and deserted except for a few cities where people will gather.

[Fencers]

How can you really comment on the affect of grouping tools in MMOs if you don't play the biggest one out there?

"I don't play World of Warcraft" does not mean, "I have never played World of Warcraft". Nor does it indicate when or how long I have played World of Warcraft.

Also, many games have grouping tools. What relevance does WoW's population density have to my statement as quoted?

The only bearing population has on the discussion is as a before & after qualifier. Which [if you read carefully] I specifically said, "Comparatively". So my statement would include pre- & post- auto grouping tools in WoW just the same as it includes pre/post such tools in Aion, Rift or SWTOR.

Auto grouping tools don't remove the ability to chat. If you want to talk about the new Taylor Swift single or your aunt Millie's pecan pie during a dungeon run- you are free to do so no matter how the group was formed.

[Kraenen]

because I want it NOW.
and I'm unsocial!

[Ashnazg]

Ultimately, MMOs are not a "forced" social experience anymore, like early EQ was.

You couldn't do anything without a group, you had to be social. This is no longer the case - you can now pick if you want to be social or not. There is nothing stopping you from friending people in your LFG run that you liked, reaching out to them later, and establishing longer-lasting lines of communication.

[Deleted]

Some pretty crazy advice from me:

Download Star Wars: The Old Republic, and give that a go, F2P, to like... level 15 or something. The levelling in this game is genuinely pretty good. You have a main, class specific story, which (like all quests) is fully voice acted, and you get dialogue options and all sorts. This, to me, enriches what is otherwise a very boring solitary levelling experience that you see in most so called MMO's nowadays.

I genuinely tried and got bored to death after like, 20 minutes.

[PenguinChan]

The general person is not social. Even back in Classic people weren't social, it's just the way it is online. I don't know why either, but unless you find like-minded people it will be a dead game to the player. If you want a prime example of this just go play RIFT, where it does have a lot of people in zones. Even in Instant Adventures and Dungeons. They aren't social, don't speak as much, and just go and be silent. Of course there is an INCREASE of it when you have much harder content than the typical low level dungeon or zone, but that stems from helping the group out.

People will and have always ignored chat, and refuse to be social. This is not always the case, as people like to watch TV / Videos when they relax and participate in casual activities. So they naturally have less tendencies to look at the chat and be friendly to someone.


I will agree that World of Warcraft is much emptier and less contiguous with the player connection. Flying mounts obliterate a lot of seeing players travel around, while at the same time making it so you never see them even in the air. Even with Cross-Realm Zones (This is being fixed with Virtual Realms), you just met people you had the off chance of interacting with and adding to your friends list to chat with. Otherwise you couldn't do any of the basic functions outside of grouping (Correct me if I'm wrong).

[Deleted]

I play WoW and have regular social interactions. I don't know if you're playing it the wrong way or something.

[Collegeguy]

because I want it NOW.
and I'm unsocial!

Ultimately, MMOs are not a "forced" social experience anymore, like early EQ was.

You couldn't do anything without a group, you had to be social. This is no longer the case - you can now pick if you want to be social or not.

This is an interesting coincidence.

[Fencers]

Ultimately, MMOs are not a "forced" social experience anymore, like early EQ was.

You couldn't do anything without a group, you had to be social. This is no longer the case - you can now pick if you want to be social or not. There is nothing stopping you from friending people in your LFG run that you liked, reaching out to them later, and establishing longer-lasting lines of communication.

I agree with this to a degree.

If there is a deterioration in MMO socializing [I am not convinced it is so] it is the result of players now having a lot of interdependency. Where as before there was a direct consequence to behaving poorly or not having the social grace to make friends and help each other. As one could not progress [the goal of the game] in the older MMOs unless you sought the aid of other players.

Now, each MMO player is his own island.

It is is a strange thing from my skewed "old school MMO" point of view.

[Lethey Alexandros]

For me wow is still social, what bugs me about it is queing for everything except my guild raid.

Dungeons still have portal entrences but everyone just ques for them becuse you are actually rewarded better for useing the queing system than forming a group and running to the dungeon.

Looking for raid difficulty can only be accessed through a Que same as Scenarios.

PvP is the same way, the reward and payoff is more for useing the battleground queing system rather than going out to the Battleground portals which only exist for AV, AB, and WSG. From BC onward they removed battle ground portals.

While wow is still social in some reguard I feel it should be renamed into World of Quecraft.

[Kelimbror]

Talking to people doesn't make a game massive or multiplayer. Cultures change. You either deal with it or you deal with it.

MMOs gained a large base during a time when social networking as a whole was exploding. If people can't see the correlation there, then they are missing a huge shift in our world culture. Ironically enough, we overexposed ourselves (both literally and figuratively) and now we are rebounding from that excess. I was just listening to a talk on NPR today about how teens are using Facebook less and less in favor of newer social media sites that allow a greater level of anonymity.

This is a direct example of people still wanting an aspect of socialization without the personal space invasion. MMOs are following a very similar trend, though we don't recognize it because of the other systems at play within the game. Additionally, the age of people who began popularizing these MMOs has moved into different life status categories. Most people naturally lose the desire and need to socialize to the extent they did when they were younger.

I could write a doctoral thesis for you on these things, but I don't think it's needed. The moral of the story is that we're going to ride a social roller coaster for many years, going through fluctuations of extremely social and antisocial based on a number of factors. Games, as works of entertainment art, will naturally mimic these changes.

[PenguinChan]

If there is a deterioration in MMO socializing [I am not convinced it is so] it is the result of players now having a lot of interdependency. Where as before there was a direct consequence to behaving poorly or not having the social grace to make friends and help each other. As one could not progress [the goal of the game] in the older MMOs unless you sought the aid of other players.

Now, each MMO player is his own island.

I think that's where a lot of people fail to explain this exact true social interaction people had back in older MMO's. Many people weren't forced to group with others no more than they are now, but the blockade was a much slower process or none at all. So you had to go and try and group with a few guild mates, people from a chat channel. Or more importantly, ringing up your friends on your friends list and inviting them to get a group going relatively quicker than the other two options. Otherwise you were pretty much pigeon holed into many of the basic MMO features. Crafting, Leveling (Sometimes slow without groups), PvP if it had it (Which still required PvE gear to get better most of the time), and trading / Auction House equivalents.

[Srg56]

I am a casual player since mid-Cata and I only care about HC raid fights and other high end game stuff and I rather not be able to kil la boss than doing it because it's nerfed.


So please, stop pointing out "casual" players as a problem. Casual can perfectly be hard core, it only means that you play LESS TIME.

Bad players are another thing, and that's what you actually are talking about.

I think that by "casual" he means you're online less time than a hardcore player would be. I'm more hardcore than some players i know that have killed ra-den. They are casual in the sense that they only log in for the raids and for AH sharking for gold.

The point here is that you cannot have a true MMO without the players if they aren't in the world and more importantly if little content truly requires players banding together to achieve goals. And by that i mean, to achieve anything in the game. The trend blizzard has gone with is making their MMORPG playable for the people who feel more at home with something like Skyrim or Borderlands, which are singleplayer experiences. Yes, the game is more accessible and the hard, challenging content is still there, but the world isn't. Removal of world elites, of elite zones of questing which could only be cleared with a group of leveling players, the long instances, the long leveling time, the mechanics of the game which required more people and more diversity of roles, have been changed. Now you can get all buffs with 5 players for example, all classes being very homogenous compared to vanilla, and be ready to take on the content the game throws at you, while back then, you would struggle with the same number of players and by overcoming adversity over longer periods of time you would form bonds with different people.

They wanted more money, and they got it, but destroyed the world they created because keeping to the values which created the world would have meant keeping the casual crowd out, and thus having less money. By casual i mean less than 7-8 hours per week here.

The last point i want to make: MMORPGs are games that were made for a certain demographic. And it's not the casuals. At their inception, they were extremely time consuming and this has been a trait that blizzard has so painstakingly tried to eliminate in their quest for more money, only to get hit in the face in cataclysm with the realization that it is the base on which this type of game is built on. They've been hemorrhaging ever since.

[Dilbon]

Blame instanced content.

[Fencers]

Cultures change. You either deal with it or you deal with it.

Heh. Know that I enjoyed this part of your opening paragraph. Lots.

[Kelimbror]

Heh. Know that I enjoyed this part of your opening paragraph. Lots.

I've had allegy medicine and caffeine today. I can only speak the truth right now.