Category Archives: Society

Calling on the Old Crowd; Musings on MMO friendships

One of the saddest things about being a long-term MMO player, is the falling apart of communities and guilds when the game is “ending”. And end it does for anybody, at some point. Friendships of many years fade into oblivion, close comrades and brothers in arms disappear as time is taking its toll like it does on all things. Nevermind the promises, the good intentions – the truth is most of us lose their mates and social bonds after leaving the game. The daily guild and ventrilo chats are simply missing. The common purpose is gone. Suddenly, you realize that maybe your lives are different after all or geographical distance prevents finding new channels of interaction. There are emails of course and Skype, but soon you feel oddly out of topics. As the silence grows longer, you are starting to lose heart. Maybe the others have already moved on. Maybe they really don’t look to keep in touch.

This is the story that happens to a majority of MMO players. It’s the story of countless WoW veterans. I’ve always wondered at the strange schizophrenia that is part of online interaction. How it can be different to chat with somebody for years and then actually meeting them in person (not always but often). How fast heart-warming, dramatic proclamations of friendship and fellowship are forgotten once that credit card is no longer on duty. Are MMO players really such an unfaithful lot?

I’ve always been bothered by this systematic. I’ve always wondered about how most people can leave and never look back; especially those that I thought I knew better. I’ve always been a bit vexed that it would be me taking initiatives to counter this development – me reaching out, me writing emails, me letting old mates know what MMOs I am currently playing and on what server I might be found. I’ve done it several times since I quit WoW. A part of this lies in my nature and I have accepted it; it’s why I end up in leading teams, it’s why I am good at organization and communication. I’m not a shy person in real life either and I’m often the maker there too, the one that has to take the first step. Yet – it can be tiring sometimes. Very tiring. Discouraging even. It would be nice to be at the more receiving end every now and then, letting others drive the ship.

…Alas, fuck that. I know for a fact how countless people spend their lives inside their homes, alone by themselves, just sitting there waiting for something good to happen and never reaching out to anybody. It’s particular to our western society methinks, people living side by side rather than together. People being stupid and full of imagined fears (“I might be rejected, better not try at all!”), choosing isolation when all it takes is a knock on someone else’s door (hell, use SMS if you have to). More often than not, the person on the other side was just as lonely as you. I don’t have time for this – my life is too short to be spent waiting! So, I’ll do this if I have to. I’d do it for you too.

A while back Liore wrote about her progress on gaining leadership zen and how her WoW guild is still keeping in touch on forums while people are occupied with different games. By the looks, they managed to survive the post-WoW era untarnished and chances are high they will meet again here and there in new worlds, taking up arms together once more. I can only express my complete and utter envy for this situation! There is no forum anymore that gets frequented by the people I used to call guildmate, co-healer or fellow officer. In fact, there’s not even a webpage where ours used to be. And before you raise your eye-brow at my strange sentimentality: I know not all online bonds are meant to last. I know many players are maybe more carefree and frivolous about their MMO relationships. But I have spent most of my 6 years of WoW among the exact same few people, maybe eight in total. Until the very end I raided side by side with friends I knew since vanilla WoW or early TBC, some of which had followed me around. If that’s no basis for lasting contact through an MMO, what is?

Calling on the old crowd – Today

The funny thing is, that same day I read Liore’s article feeling rather gloomy, an email popped into my mailbox. A cheer-up note from my good old friend and guild-mate Grumpy (who used to co-author on this blog), my trusted WoW tank of many years. He is one of maybe three people I still keep regular contact with of my old guild. One of a precious few who actually cared not to let everything die; I am very happy to know he is out there. We send each other wonderful WoTs every few weeks and keep up-to-date on what’s happening in our lives, real and virtual. We haven’t played the same MMOs for a while, we both played Skyrim on Steam though and now that Guild Wars 2 is on the horizon, I am very excited we’ll be joining the same server, possibly with a few more folk. Moreover, another ex-guildie has contacted me since, asking about what the general plans are for GW2 and where to head to (what do we actually know about the servers at this point – anyone?).

And I wonder, like so many currently do, if Guild Wars 2 might be that game; that raising star, that upcoming MMO title that will sweep us off our feet once more. That MMO big enough to unite friends and guildmates of old – to reforge fragile bonds and create new memories. To finally put an end to the homesickness. It is a big opportunity none can deny, a big promise thanks to such wide appeal. An opportunity we should make use of to call on the old crowd! And so, I ask you –

Today, take heart and reach out to some old online friend or guildmate. Today, choose to be the one who takes initiative, never mind how long it’s been quiet. If there’s anybody at all that you haven’t heard from in ages and think back to fondly every now and then, nostalgic for good times shared, grab your keyboard (or phone, or pen) and contact them! To say hello, to ask “how do you do?”, to maybe arrange meeting up in another game or upcoming MMO.

If you want your online friendships to mean something, put in as much effort as you wish others put in – and maybe sometimes a little more. If you want close bonds to last, reach out and break the silence!

Break the silence.

Enjoy your Vorfreude while you can

In late 2004 when I was running my very first blog on the interwebz, which was not at all about games but all the “dear diary” type of trivial things happening in my life at the time (everyone had one of those even if people won’t admit it), I published the following entry:

This is going to rule so so much!!!

A screenshot of beta Syl and me all hyped out about World of Warcraft, a game I highly anticipated for over a year. I had no idea if WoW was really going to be all that – but gawd, did it look friggin’ fabulous and now I even had an idea of how it played! Which led to me being even more hyped and making sure everyone on my message board knew, notorious killjoys included. Looking forward to WoW was almost as good as WoW. And everything that followed after its actual launch was well, more than worthy.

That’s not the point though. Sometimes games we really look forward to and get excited about will deliver, in very rare cases more than in our wildest dreams. More often they will not though and it doesn’t matter one bit. I’ve talked about the term “Vorfreude” before and I’ll repeat myself on what a great feeling it is. Sure, hypey people are annoyingly pink-glassed at times; they just want/need something to be great, so they choose to focus on (or talk about) the good aspects more than bad ones. Sounds pretty okay to me. Maybe they also have a gut feeling, the way I had 8 years ago about an upcoming MMO by Blizzard Entertainment.

Either way, anyone should be able to appreciate (or at least tolerate) a little hype by his fellow geek. Take it with a pinch of salt maybe. And if you can’t, well…..you’re a cynical grump that needs to remember how to feel excited and euphoric about something well in advance, no matter the risks – you know, it’s called hope. If things go pear-shaped, you’ll be disappointed either way and you know it. Let yourself catch some euphoria sometime – it’s healthy.

Where I’m going with this is that nobody should have to justify himself for hyping a game he is looking forward to, just like nobody needs to excuse himself for being too critical on his blog. God knows, we’ve been through a drought in the MMORPG corner – and if you’re waiting on GW2 there’s still some way to go. In the meantime, what else are people supposed to do and write about, if not about all the good (they hope for) or all the bad (they dread)? We might as well all close our blogs during times such as these (ignoring you happy SWTOR people), if we’re not allowed to theorize and occasionally nag, panic or hype about upcoming titles.

We don’t know how GW2 is going to turn out. Admittedly, things are looking damn fine at the moment, but still – we simply don’t know! So, our Vorfreude might be the best thing about GW2; we are safe and well here in the land of assumption where everything is still possible. Our Vorfreude might be all we get.

…And we might as well enjoy that.

P.S. “Hyping / hypey” is used synonymously to “being excited or euphoric about something” in this post for the term has no negative meaning to me personally.

P.S.2: Expect a lot more GW2 hyping (and a little griping too) on this blog here over the coming weeks – “there is one (more) hyper yet in the blogosphere who still draws breath!”

P.S.3: To all the apathetic and grumpy: */cookie*

P.S.4: Happy weekend – all ye past, present and future hypers!

Precious Time-outs

Ironyca has published another fascinating chapter in her series on social interaction and dynamics in MMOs few days ago. If you haven’t come across her blog until now, I strongly recommend you step by sometime for some great and insightful reads.

One core argument against realID and in favor of invisible alts, is of course that social interaction cannot be forced on people the way Blizzard seem to think. Or as Ironyca puts it in her article: “I think this is social engineering gone wrong, the leash is too tight.” If you want people to form social bonds, you need to allow for that to happen naturally. Players need to be able to choose their own time of when to get closer or withdraw from one another. Good relationships are about free will.

Now, I am the first person to criticize MMOs that allow “too much” player self-sufficiency and soloplay; because there are plenty of examples in both real and virtual worlds of how cooperation fades as soon as individualism and independence increase. Human beings might be social creatures, or as the saying goes “no man is an island”, but I have always been a little skeptical of that (or rather, I see it the utilitarian way). Personally, I think there is a lot more truth in another phrase: “in times of need, we are all brothers”. The way western society has gone with increasing wealth and how it takes traumatic catastrophes to bring people closer together nowadays, is proof of that. Therefore, I want MMOs to enforce cooperation by means of need – need for grouping in order to advance.

Still, there is no way I’d ever support an MMO that disallows privacy: the privacy to roll another character, to break lose from an existing social bond or guild. It is not a developers business to dictate who you roll with or that you shouldn’t get some peace and space from others when you require it. Sometimes you need to unwind alone from the day – that’s what MMOs are there for, too. And it can be awkward getting haunted by guild tells, asking you to switch over because they’ve just lost a guy or nosing about. You should be able to decide when you want to engage in the cooperative part of the game and when you don’t. It doesn’t help your relationships if you are guilt-tripped into switching characters or pressured to tell somebody ‘No‘ – even if that’s something you have every right to do. Yet, sometimes we are just not up for questions, justifications and potential misunderstandings.

Why disappearing benefits relationships

Being able to withdraw from social circles isn’t only important because of free will and quality interaction though; there is a beneficial and invigorating aspect in taking time off – which is why it is such a shame that it should be such a difficult thing to admit and ask for.

A few years ago, a close friend of mine got married and became a father twice, soon after. We used to see each other almost weekly and our friendship has always been of a rare and precious nature. We are also geeks of an uncanny kind. It was something we cherished and missed dearly once he got sucked into family and work life so completely (plus I moved further away). It got very quiet between us for several years; not a good time for either. I respected the life-altering changes and new responsibilities on his side but at the same time I worried too, not simply for selfish reasons. From the little I still heard, he was often sick, increasingly worn out and weary. He had no place of his own, no space to recharge his batteries. I’m very sure that such thoughts alone made him feel guilty – after all he was a father now and provider of a family. He was the guild leader.

It took several years of just being there, waiting (nagging) ever so quietly in the background, hoping for his return. Making sure he always knew that door was still open. It also finally took one hefty argument on the phone, which I still recall perfectly, when my patience finally broke and I shouted at him (and my shouts are pretty frightening, I hear) that he needed to allow himself something of his own sometime. He had become a shadow of his former self (with a serious health condition developing).

And so gradually, things started to improve. We arranged for regular meet-ups again that would not be postponed or changed for anything. The time together, away from everyday life, became an established island that he would grant himself, a break-out from routine. He realized that it was something he needed – not just for himself, but for his family too. Getting away just for a day or two, having something for himself, infused him with energy that would in return benefit his loved ones. He’d get home fresh and inspired, longing to see his kids. He’d be a less tired, more attentive, happier dad and husband. More whole a person. He found his healthy balance and things have changed a great deal ever since, for which I am very thankful.

We need to allow ourselves these spaces; we need to allow ourselves to go invisible. Not just because we need to escape, but because it actually makes our most important relationships in life better, not worse. There’s nothing wrong in wanting to catch your breath for a while, to put things in perspective and return with a vengeance. Withdrawing does not always mean we want to get away from somebody, for good. All it means is that we need to withdraw for our own sake, for a while. It’s not a proof of broken relationships.

This is something we need to learn claim for ourselves without guilt, and learn to tell others if required. It’s also why realID or no secret alts in MMOs are frankly bogus, creating issues for no good reason.

A good weekend to all of you out there – the visible and invisible! I am off to disappear myself for the next few days, as I am finally leaving these shores and transferring my existence some 150 kilometers down southwest. It just so happens that my aforementioned friend is going to be my “neighbor” two days from now! I will be back as soon as internet is up and running again. Toodles!

On difficulty in WoW and social control in MMOs

The following article is a follow-up to this topic by Klepsacovic. For full context, please head there first (including comments). I would like to second his clarifications on using (relative and problematic) terms such as ‘good/top’ or ‘bad/sub-par’ players for the second half of this argument. No player is always just good or bad and good players always benefit from the presence of someone a little weaker.

Difficulty in WoW for the average player, lvls 1-80

On social control in MMORPGs

Admittedly, I have omitted one more lesson of WoW’s current “difficulty syllabus” in the above picture: heroics. If we look at the stark discrepancy between WoW’s leveling game from 1-84 vs. the huge step-up of entering a serious raiding scene, we must give credit to the implemented bridge between the two. In theory, WoW players are supposed to stick to this schedule:

5-man dungeons and heroics are the “gate-keeper” to raiding; or at least that’s how it’s intended. At the very latest, this is when a new player is introduced to cooperative group-play. Here he is pushed to learning his class and role, here he is questioned, here he is geared up for the challenges ahead. Here he understands the importance of strategy and communication before class is dismissed.…If only!

No matter how Blizzard have tried to hard-tune their raid-entry dungeons in Cataclysm, heroics do not fulfill their assigned role as necessary stepping stone between noobland and the unforgiving reality of many raid encounters. Getting into a raid is relatively easy, but many are ill prepared for the individual challenge and pressure that awaits. For guilds and recruitment this means a big crowd of potential candidates with the barest pre-selection.

For one thing, there are too many ways in which players can avoid challenging and maybe stressful/frustrating 5-man runs (for example by gearing up in other ways). More importantly though: in an MMO with cross-server LFG no reliable means of player selection or preparation exist. The purpose of the training phase is undermined in a game of anonymity. Here’s why:

Let’s have another look at yes – vanilla WoW. Back then, we had 5-mans too at lvl 60 and hard ones they were (hello Stratholme 1.0 & Co.). We didn’t have heroics, normal modes were bad enough. Gear was important and there were no ways around acquiring your starter raid-gear (8-piece sets on random drop!) from in there. Then, there were also attunements and resistance gear which kept sending you back in frequently, not just for yourself but those you were trying to help out.For the MC raidguild looking at a potential, ready-looking candidate at the time, this meant the following: not only had this person leveled from 1-60, he had also jumped all hoops in order to gain entry and had made it through all essential lvl 60 dungeons (many times) to gather his gear sets. More so, he had succeeded in finding/organizing and finishing runs with groups of your own server continuously. If you hadn’t heard of said player in negative terms up to that point, if he wasn’t on any spoken or unspoken blacklist by that time, there was a pretty good chance that this was your guy! Even if not quite that – at the very least, there was full confirmation of this player being incredibly motivated and experienced enough to raid.

There are no similar pre-raiding hoops in today’s WoW and heroic gear tells us very little about a player. Maybe he is a complete fail who only ever made it by jumping from one LFG group to the next while being an anonymous ass, ninja-looter, rage-quitter. Who knows – you certainly don’t! Who can say how somebody behaves in a cross-server group? Who can judge how well a player truly performed in order to gain his gear? Even if he let himself carry (or cooked his dinner during runs), he certainly didn’t need worry about not being re-invited to a next group (as tank/healer within the next 5 minutes). No social pressure – no social control.

We need the concept of social control for functional communities. We need the dynamic of reputation. We need small enough server communities for social interaction to become meaningful and transparent. We need consequences. The last thing we need is anything cross-server or bigger. Guilds and smaller groups don’t benefit from quantity, they benefit from quality.And so does the individual player, by the way; black sheep aside, it’s not exactly fun to be the “weak link” in a raid guild. It’s not a nice awakening to realize you are ill prepared. It’s disappointing and stressful to end up in a place too early. In a game of unforgiving raid mechanics (which is the situation I base this argument on), you want and need proper hoops early.

How I became a different person
I used to be the raider who loved vanilla raids for being 40man; the scale, the epic kills and also the hilarious chaos (and challenge to order the same). I loved being part of a mixed crowd and running raidguilds that had colorful characters in them. I liked having merry minstrels and jokers along for the ride, to share good moments and laughs on our way.I liked being able to afford “clowns” in our raids.I was never a l33t player and I don’t consider myself “hardcore”, despite having always been a core member and healing coordinator in dedicated top guilds. Fame, loot and kills are all nice and dandy, but I want to share them with good folks and have fun together. I want both, the close-knit team and serious raids. If this means I need to cut back on the first and heroic kills in order to have that – fine in my books (as long as I still experience most of the content). I don’t seek the affirmation that comes from being nummero uno on a ladder, nice as it may be. I frankly also never wanted more than three raid nights.The guilds I ended up in (founded in vanilla & early TBC), were therefore more or less always composed the same way:

20% top players & figureheads / 60% average & good players (wide spectrum) / 20% players you’d carry more frequently, but who’d in return bring other qualities and talents to the table. I’m fine with such a guild and for myself, ideally I want all three groups present.

You need the top players; you need them to pull and push the group. You need them to be your guides, guild leaders, coordinators and analysts. You need them too because very often, they’re simply the consistent show-ups with the most time available (which is why they make great guides or leaders).
You need the solid good players who are dedicated but down to earth; You need them for a healthy, balanced guild culture that is neither too casual, nor too hardcore. You need them to be the pendulum that swings in between. They are your main executive force.
You need the sub-par players; You need them for social qualities, for wisdom and humor that may be indispensable and unique. You need them so your top players get their occasional extra challenge and feel needed. You also need them because somebody always needs to be the weakest link – it’s better to know yours than to constantly look for a new one.

I don’t wish to be in a guild where every person is exactly like me (despite a healthy narcissism, that’s just boring). Nor do I mind slower learners or players who simply fail at the odd mechanic, and those who might fall behind a little due irregular playtime – as long as you can compensate for them somehow during specific encounters. (Assuming of course that they’re otherwise awesome).

Only, this gradually stopped being the case in WoW after the 40man era. Encounters became highly technical, focused on individual performance and unforgiving in ways that wouldn’t let us make up for lower bracket players – there was suddenly a hard line that wasn’t summary. We could only stand by and watch with increasing frustration as they went through the motions, again and again. We became helpless spectators of our guildmates’ ordeals, despite all guidance given. Worse: they started to become the “enemy”. If 100+ wipes into a boss, the same few people are still stuck at beginner mistakes, it’s human to start feeling resentful.I never wanted to become that other person or find myself in that well-known dilemma of so, so many raidguilds out there. But if I am pushed into the corner of choosing between keeping the bad player and not seeing larger parts of the game’s content in time (which was my motivation to play WoW at all) – then yes, I want the bad players out! I even want established people out who I used to appreciate and tried to support for as long as possible (my guilds have always tried longer than many would). I will make the unhappy choice if forced to; I won’t see an entire raidguild fall apart because the other 80% (and especially top 20%) will start looking elsewhere some time into the stagnation. Hesitating forever is not an option. If you’ve tried all you feel you could and if you intend to stick to the established raiding pace, you must make the choice as a leading team.

It’s no wonder so many good leaderships crack under the pressure of this decision; it sucks beyond comparison (add the issue of recruitment). It will always be one of the big sores for me when looking back on an otherwise great raiding run in WoW. It cured me of being too judgmental about how some guild leaders will act, too (“wear my shoes and see”).Sometimes raidguids change their original philosophy because they are catching the “success bug”; it’s a dangerous place to find yourself in, the upwards spiral of success that many fall for, becoming something else, someone else, forgetting how they started off and with whom. I fully acknowledge this problem. But what we experienced like so many others from the 25man era on, was not of our making; it’s nothing you choose, only what you roll with as good as you can.

To this day, I am deeply resentful; resentful of Blizzard, of the game’s later raid designs that presented my own guild with such a reality. I resent them for putting the focus on the weaker players, without any chance for the rest to step in and make a difference. I resent them for cornering us – for making us choose like this, again and again as the game took its course. Most of all, I resent them for making me that different person. A person with less and less tolerance for team diversity.

What is fairness?

Addendum

Much in this argument is relative, depending on your own personal approach to an MMO like WoW. Maybe you’re the type of raider who wants to be in zero-tolerance guilds and who has always managed to keep clear of such problems. Maybe you’re not even interested in raids. However, for a big number of “mid-bracket raiders” that form the majority in WoW’s endgame and who are in constant competition for recruits, the missing pre-selection mechanisms and highly unforgiving raid mechanics on individual level, are presenting a real struggle and dilemma. There is also the added pressure of the ever-looming next content patch.

The game did not start off like this; raid teams had more leeway, partly due to the nature of bigger 40man raids, partly due to different encounter design. And while many asked for a more even share of responsibility and target focus after WoW 1.0., I don’t believe that Cataclysm raiders benefit from today’s very different situation – no matter what player group they belong to in their own guild. It’s the broken overall streamlining of difficulty combined with a lack of social control that impact negatively on everybody. They present today’s raidguilds with greater struggles than ever, logistically as much as socially and emotionally.

A call for MMO missionaries. Or not.

There’s a particular breed of people I am very weary of. Not scared in a jumping-ship kind of way, but more like “Uh oh…” as I see them approach or worse, join conversation in a social circle I happen to find myself in. Call me biased; but to be completely free of pre-judice is to never learn from experience.

Whenever a sporty person approaches, I am on guard. You can usually tell from the way they are dressed in forceful business casual, their ever-glossy forehead or intolerably energized gait. Not to mention the well-trained shoulders and legs, of course. But before you get the wrong idea – I am all for physical exercise. Indeed, I am making conscious, well-loathed but conscious efforts to stay fit as I am growing older. I am also dreaming of the day that VR helmet and fullbody motion-sensor suit finally arrive, so I can plug them to my PC and play MMOs while having to go through mindbogglingly boring workout routines. If anyone ever tells you they enjoy their workout: be weary. Be very weary.

I am not talking fit people here, but sporty sporty. The ones that will always inevitably steer the conversation to their favorite subject. The ones who have “seen the light” and really think you should too as you receive their well-meant, unasked for dieting tips. You don’t want to be around them, you don’t want them in your clique – they’ll make you walk instead of taking the bus to the bar or bring raw carrots to a movies night. No, I don’t think we mix particularly well, MMO players and sporty people. And I’m not in any way suggesting the ‘overweight, asocial slob’-image here some media are eager to spread about video-gamers. But err….we invented the WoW treadmill, okay? You get my point.

So anyway, there is that 37ish co-worker of mine who fits the profile perfectly. She’s recently been pregnant and ever since (1 year ago now) she’s been talking about her workout, losing baby-fat and how it took her nine months to lose the dreaded last four pounds. She is also thin as a stick, but now she finally radiates inner peace (and cravings for mars bars). Fortunately, she is rarely in the office when I am and I am rarely joining the “lunch faction” that meets up around the kitchen table every day at 13.00.

Only last Friday…I did. It started out innocently, with a chat between myself and my British co-worker who usually works in London and is the only other person with a sense of humor (figures) in the entire company. I was just having a coffee with her, when sporty person came in to join us. Too late to plan for a quick escape route. Rats.

It took exactly 5 minutes for our conversation to go from holiday plans to running shoes. I have since been trying to reproduce the exact order of events but have failed miserably, twice. I don’t know how she worked “so, what brand of sports shoes are you using for running?” into our talk on bed&breakfasts and English cuisine, but I found myself in the lucky position to be asked that exact question. “Ummm….I don’t know”, I answered. “You do have running shoes, right?”, she persisted. Helplessly, I looked down on my two feet. I was wearing my black work shoes, a pair of semi-high heeled, no-name boots which is what I wear half of the year. I guess, I could run with those. For the rest of the time, I wear my comfy five-year old Adidas sneakers. That’s one myth about shoes and handbags dispelled for you.

“I have some shoes….sneakers.” I added. – “What type?”, says she – “The comfy one”, says I. The spotlight beaming at me from the interrogation lamp started to flicker. I could tell she was giving up, but I somewhat saved the situation by mentioning Adidas. At least I was not completely ignorant – too bad that didn’t stop her from educating us both on suitable sports shoes for city jogging for another 15 minutes. Just when I recovered my will to live and was about to mention how utterly moronic and counter-productive running on concrete in the middle of city traffic is for your health, the phone rang for her and she left. Annoying people always get the quick exits handed to them.

Where are the MMO missionaries?

That whole experience got me thinking on my way home later (when highly philosophical, mental monologue frequently occurs). I was trying to remember one single time in my life where somebody tried convincing me to play video games. Or for that matter, any situation where someone, a co-worker or other acquaintance might have picked up the topic in conversation, trying to engage others. Why are there no MMO missionaries? Besides the most obvious answer, that missionaries of any kind are in fact insufferable folk, really – but, where are the video game enthusiasts? Why are they nowhere to be heard, talking about their hobby, infusing others with their interest to the point of truculence?

It’s not a mainstream hobby, I get it. It’s not srs enough for boring work conversation. It’s still a little geeky. But really, how is the world ever going to be a better place without any of us talking about gaming? Do you want a planet ruled by business casual city-joggers?

DO YOU???

So, I’m making this official: from this day on, every week, I will at least once bring up the topic of video games outside this blog, to non-gamers. I will share my positive experiences and encourage others to give it a go sometime. If the topic isn’t going my way, I will make it. I will say things like “…our conference call line? Wait, ever heard about ventrilo? It’s a great, free voice comm tool for PC, people actually use it to play online games together. You know, WoW and stuff right? No? Well, let me tell you…”.

Easy. One recruit a week and soon enough, when I log on to the game in the evening, to unwind and recharge my batteries, I will be surrounded by co-workers. The excel-specialist that never shuts up, the guy with the golfball keyring……the city-jogger….

GAWD.

…I think I just remembered why we want no MMO missionaries!

“Keep it secret – keep it safe!”

Happy Monday to all of you out there, enjoying the peace of united geekdom at their PCs.

The Future is Panty-free

Yeah, it’s an old story – and you don’t wanna hear it anymore. I don’t want to either, heck for most of the time I act as if the topic was water under the bridge. We’re way past that, the genre is, videogames are. This is almost 2012 after all!

You wish.

I get it: panties are exciting! To a few men, mind not many grown-up men but a few, seeing virtual panty (Japanese; pantsu) in a videogame is a bit like omg-christmas, outrageous and cheeky and *tehee* *blush* *chuckle* – add your random IRC emote…I guess we all have to accept that. I don’t even want to ask the reasons why, although I have a sound theory or two, about being stuck in infantile phases of boyhood, of over-sexed media or for the opposite case, cultures where social corset and conformity are so strict that everyone must turn into drooling lechers in front of their PCs at night, to restore at least some balance and mental sanity.

I don’t know. You dwell on that.

This is the important part: In MMOs I do not care to see panties. Let’s repeat this: In MMOs I do not care to see panties. I don’t think they do anything much for a female character’s credibility. Or for a “heroine” battling vicious fiends, for that matter. Still, they are out there and never quite out of fashion: plate bikinis, swinging hips, breasts the size of a small country. It’s not just the omni-present fake portrayal of the female form; nothing feels quite as unimmersive as having to play a combat class that looks as if she was on her way to a lolita dress-up party. Any player, male or female, looking for serious consistency in setting and atmosphere in their MMOs want to see proper armor in sync with their class and the world they are playing it in.

Yet, they keep coming. Lineage and TERA are my all-time favorite examples, but the bare midriffs can be found in plenty of more recent places, even in a perfect world. How cynical.

And I wonder: can we get over this yet? How many female online players worldwide will it take until a Blizzcon panel deems a large portion of their player base worthy of more than a flippant answer? Worse yet, if a company with a few million female players won’t care – who will?

I guess Dwism had it right all along:

Whatever you think of their response to this (and mine is in the comments on both posts), there is one thing painfully obvious for me, about these panel talks.

Every single employee with anything worth saying at Blizzard, is: 35+, white, a little overweight (some more than a little), balding and likes metal. And they only ever talk to other people like that.

It’s not about players, male or female. It’s about the men who make these games. If nothing changes up there, nothing will change down here. For now, enough devs don’t seem to care, not even for the underlying message of their indifference, which can only ever inevitably bring me to the following two conclusions:

A) MMO(RPG) developers are emotionally immature lechers in desperate need to get laid.
-or-
B) MMO(RPG) developers consider the majority of their male playerbase emotionally immature lechers in desperate need to get laid.

I don’t know about you, but as a male player I’d feel offended.

P.S. With all that in mind, I am officially and exclusively launching MMO Gypsy’s “No-Panties MMO seal of quality”, for a better and hopefully more serious online gaming future! You may spread and copy at will!

How videogames make you sick

I happen to be one of the lucky people who spend 60+ minutes per day (which is an alltime low too, so pity me) in public transportation to get to work, five days a week of buses and trams. After so many years of commuting I have come to loathe it with a passion, being crammed into tiny spaces with lots of smelly people I never chose to meet in the first place, breathing down my neck or smashing their bagpack into my face as they pass my seat; preferably a single one, if I can help it. And it strikes me: PT is a little bit like the “massively multi-player” promise – lots of people, no real cooperation. Everyone is ever eager to catch an empty compartment before having to share one with somebody else.

I am the last one to complain about that, though. I consider it a twisted joke of fate that I should be so dependent on PT, truth be told I am a misanthrope on most days which is why I play MMOs and run an internet blog to reach out to the world behind the veil of blessed anonimity. Right.
Anyway, there I am sitting tired and wet in the tram (gotta love the rain) at 6PM on my way home, when I am joined by a 40-something mother and her little son. I usually stare out of the window, avoiding all eye contact, but I couldn’t help noticing the weird hairdo of the woman – the sort that makes you think somebody put a chamber pot over his head and then cut along the edges. The thing that cracked me up was that the kid had the exact same hair as she did, which made the pair appear like the freakish twins of some monks order on planet Zork or something. Hillarious.

Contemplating fashion trends in far-away galaxies, I was not ready for the conversation which ensued between the 5-ish years old kid and his mother. It was, you guessed right, about videogames and made me wonder fairly soon whether I had not indeed blundered into some fucking parallel universe without me noticing. But this was still the real world, I did check on my smartphone and the internet never lies.

So, the little boy started asking mommy if he’d be allowed to play “the game” tonight. Sadly, I never got enough info out of the conversation to guess at what game it might have been, Kirby’s Wonderland or Call of Duty 3 (which I doubt considering the mother’s hairdo). He kept nagging her about it, you could tell he was really into it. Mom not so. When ignoring him and the continuous repetition of “no, you won’t tonight” didn’t show desired effect, she started explaining: “No, you can’t play honey, these games will make you horribly sick again.” Instantly I did wonder: had this kid maybe played Wii-Sports at zero degree temperature in the backyard? Had he accidentally swallowed a button from his XBOX pad?

“Yes you will honey, they make children horribly sick”, she continued. “You remember the nightmares you got after that evening at Samuel’s house? That’s what the games do. You get really bad dreams and you can’t sleep anymore”. So, there you got it – only it didn’t end there. She went on explaining how games really spread this mysterious sickness and how it had befallen most of his friends in pre-school, that it was horribly contagious. And I could see it before my waking eye: the evil cyber-virus, spread by Koopa Troopas and piranha plants shooting out of green pipes. Beware the contagion!

All the while, mirrored in the window glass, I watched the little boy’s face. You could tell that he bought his mother’s shit and that it was really her humbug tale more than anything that started to scare him. I wondered how I would’ve felt if somebody had tried to convince me that Pacman and Wonderboy were out to get me at the age of five; how it would’ve poisoned one of the few places in my life that were safe – an untouched shelter, an island of my own. I wondered too, briefly, if I might get away with smacking someone straight in the face in the middle of a crowded tram, but scratch that.

I hate people like that; people who think to protect others is to scare them. People who scare others because they are scared and ignorant themselves. Parents who won’t give their children the chance to deal with the reality of the times they are born into, so they can be outcasts among their peers. People who don’t think or choose the lazy way. People cruel enough to cut their son’s hair like Matthew Broderick in friggin’ Ladyhawke.

I wonder what wild tales she is going to tell him when he starts asking to watch TV. Or play rock music, uh-oh. I hope Samuel invites him back real soon and that he has the sense to tell his mother he’s off to play football.

The Member of the First Hour

While writing a reply to Azuriel’s post on whining whiners, I was overcome by a rush of grief. I do not disagree with the overall sentiment; we all know that time means change and that the story of the new generation replacing the old is as ancient as mankind itself. We all know too, or should know, that MMOs are business and part of a capitalist machinery. Indeed, I have written on it myself before.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting online games fashioned after yourself, it would be odd for it not to be so. Most of us are reasonable enough too, to be able to understand other viewpoints while wanting what we want and even to sympathize with the other side, different as it may be.
Yet, there is an insight I believe newcomers of the MMO genre are often missing in these discussions. Be it that they simply lack empathy like that, or the knowledge of history, or the care for either. However, if you were trying to understand and look deeper into the veteran rants, you would discover something else there; something that goes beyond the whining that is particular to anyone just disagreeing with a status quo or trend. There is disappointment for one thing and something a little sadder, too. A melancholy maybe that no newcomer can ever share.

So, I do not ask of anyone to understand who cannot or won’t; but I can assure you that it’s there and it makes a difference. And it’s not a personal thing aimed at the new kids on the block, no – in fact it’s not about you at all. That would be flattering yourself too much.

Since at this point all my chances at a frivolous and merry Friday post on Raging Monkey’s (with apostrophe) have passed, I decided to copy-paste my comment here once more. I actually think this matters.

While I absolutely agree that we should be blaming developers, rather than players and that tastes differ (lol how I hate that one), I think there’s a fundamental difference in ‘whining’ here among both groups which you fail to see. whining both may be, motivations however are usually the interesting part.

you see, there’s something very… well….let’s call it saddening about belonging to the “members of the first hour”. it’s a phenomenon known in many branches mind, not just the gaming industry. it’s the hard core of people who by dedicated support make a brand/industry what it is – sometimes for years on end that little circle of ‘geeks’ are the only audience to keep that business from dying. nobody else cares for it, the mainstream in fact mocks it, but that core remains faithful and makes survival possible for that industry.

then…usually after a couple of years, that business gains some more attention. slowly but surely popularity grows and with it, money too. from there it’s always the same dynamic: popularity = more money, more money = changes/investments to become more popular.
the die-hard circle? well, not needed anymore. of course, that’s capitalism. but there are companies who never forget where they came from, few as they may be, and who always remember the faithfulness of the member of the first hour. many do not.

and you might not understand that, because your entitlement springs from something entirely different. I’d say in both cases entitlement is wrong – but if we have to choose, then the first group has a LOT more reason to feel entitled than the second. and we should always try and understand reasons.

and indeed, this goes into what Oestrus said above too; maybe one day when the faithful have departed for good, you (*ed. the devs) will ask yourself if that was really the right call. but alas, it is greed that will be the end of us all, so much is for certain.

And with that and more gloominess than usual (for which I do apologize), I leave you all for the weekend; I wish you the best you can possibly have.

F2Ps are more social?

Related topics: Tesh, Nils, Tobold, Syp.

Many of the current free-to-play arguments are based on assumptions; on certain player mindsets, on certain items up for sale that then can, will, could, should,might affect somebody somehow sometime. Or not. I’ve a bit of a problem with that in general because I believe MMO players are grown-ups and if they are not, they shouldn’t be handling credit cards. Either way, it’s not for me to tell somebody how to live his life, real or virtual or how to spend his own money, in “right” or “wrong” ways. Down that road there are only double standards wherever you turn.

That aside, common misconceptions about the F2P payment model are “players will buy items because they have to” or “if a player buys nothing, it’s clearly because he couldn’t afford it”. My favorite is the classist fallacy where really poor players are apparently excluded from F2P, but not from sub-games. I hope you perceive just how many hypothetical assumptions are needed for this to be true.

Instead, let me elaborate on why I actually believe that F2Ps might be the more “social” games like that, social in the sense of caring for more people than yourself. For argument’s sake, let’s assume too that there is such a thing as a poor MMO player in desperate, existential need to optimize his money, rather than players who are simply unwilling to shift around priorities (for whatever reason):

1) F2Ps are open to everybody. Unlike a sub-based game that already pre-selects the player base from the beginning and excludes players who might not be able to afford subs, F2Ps actually let everybody partake. In some MMOs this means almost a full access, few extras excluded (such as endgame relevant boosts) that a more casual player might not even care for. In other MMOs, the item shop matters more but either way everyone gets to play the game first and a casual player can still hang out with his more dedicated friends. No money doesn’t mean not your party!

2) In F2Ps, some players pay for others. Realistically the percentage of players spending any or much money is (currently still) low, compared to the mass of “freeloaders”. Since the game can be played for free by definition, some players will finance a system others benefit from without same contribution. Now that might vex you, if you belong to the big spenders. OR you could look at it this way: Those who have more and/or want to spend more, fund those who will not and/or cannot afford the same. This would be called the principle of solidarity in a social state. You can’t afford to play an MMO? Well, I can and I’m happy to take you along! (This is very European!)

3) By offering you to buy that backpack rather than to grind for it, F2Ps make it easier to include players with less time. Time is a currency; in fact it is the currency in MMOs; if you have more time to play, you have more time to progress and more time/opportunity to make money – potentially. The player who works a lot more or simply has more on his plate of real-life “duties”, is at a disadvantage. The item shop allows him (if he so chooses) to turn some of his real money into a time gain, by buying a useful item straight away, avoiding a grind someone else might enjoy. While I’m no fan of short-cuts in MMOs, there are “grinds and grinds” and there are good and bad types of short-cuts. Here, it’s an added choice that caters to different players and makes for happier co-existence.

Still think sub-games are fairer in handling players, when our circumstances are not equal by nature and never can be?

Three popular counter arguments

A) One popular counter-argument in this context is the question of meritocracy; players should earn their achievements without any “assistance from real money” in the game.
This type of reasoning is based on the assumption that MMO players aren’t already affected by real money or time to begin with. I’m not sure how I “earned” that access to the sub-based game other than with real money. I’d also argue that purchased items like backpacks or cosmetics don’t equal a heroic reward or actual ingame accomplishment. Items are not the same as achievements, although that is a common mistake as they usually correlate in MMOs (certainly do in WoW). You can rest assured nobody will confuse them so easily in a game where everyone knows which items are shop exclusive (if this exists) and which are raid epics for example. Anyway, meritocracy is no social concept to begin with.

B) There is a particularly cynical argument, that goes something like “an item shop is disingenuous to the players who can’t afford it”. – So much more generous to exclude the person right away, assuming subscriptions are the alternative? If we assume a “poor player” like that, we should assume he can either afford a sub OR some ingame items. There’s no reason to suggest an F2P is forcing players to spend any or more money than that, in fact I wonder if you’d even get up to those 140 Euros / year which are roughly what you would pay for 12 months of WoW subs plus half an expansion. If you do, it’s likely that you were “tempted” by extra shinies in which case you don’t qualify as a poor player. Case dismissed.

C) “F2P will disadvantage the less liquid player at later stages / endgame”. Still assuming this was a pro-subscription argument: if an F2P is designed to require (and that in itself remains questionable) micro-transactions in order to be competitive in endgame, we might as well assume the same player would never get to see end-game in a sub-based MMO to begin with. We established that he was already turned down at the door. If however we agree this awfully poor player doesn’t exist, B) applies once more: the player would only be excluded at endgame if the item costs greatly surpass what he’d otherwise pay for subscriptions. For such an F2P we could actually say a player gets everything for free but endgame, whereas in WoW he gets everything for free, full stop. Only that in WoW’s case there is no choice to skip paying for an endgame he might not care for.

Now, Nils would tell me how this last line is faulty; while you might pay for everything by default in WoW, it actually means you get everything. I’ll explain:

The F2P player might choose what he wants to pay for more consciously – but that also means he has to pay for it. If you skip endgame, you will spend that money elsewhere because the game offers the best RP items in the shop too, or the best PvP items. The WoW player on the other hand can play just as selectively, but he never gets asked to pay more or less anywhere. If he wants to have it all, it costs the same as if he only chose to RP. From this point of view, paying a sub wins IF –

the player gravitates towards many play styles and has generally lots of time for the game
the player plays in that same way consistently
the total costs of required or interesting items for his purposes are higher than the subs

In this case, a subscription is the best deal for you. If you’re however part of a wider player base who has restricted time, exclusive interests, changing schedules, then F2P might suit you better. Not surprisingly, this gets more popular with an aging audience. It can create choices where a subscription cannot. Which is why both models have their up and downside, or rather their target audience.

On Matchmaking in MMOs (and Bartle)

Once upon a time, in February 2004, I embarked on a journey into the vast world of Azeroth, knowing little about just how long my stay there would last. I did not start this adventure alone, no – I brought my trusted tank with me, so he would be my shield on the battlefield. You know, it’s such jolly good fun to play the game with your RL friends and family. Such an advantage too for leveling up together.

Yeah, riiiiiight!

Let me tell you that none of this is true. I’ve been there done that and while I still love them all (most of the time, anyway) “playing with teh friends&family” is vastly overrated. What’s saying that what clicks in most areas, needs to work for all? Sometimes it’s better NOT to share every hobby together!

Now, my partner and I have hugely different gamer profiles to begin with and a completely different history when it comes to genre. Playing WoW as long as he did (vanilla raiding) was a bit of a freak accident as far as his FPS and RTS heart is concerned. When he nicked my beta account though, I figured he needed a key of his own – and why should we not play together? Truth be told, we had some epic laughs in those first weeks and months when the game was very young. However, we also realized rather quickly that we were erm….not meant to do much questing together. Or anything much outside a raid really. Some ideas only work on paper – and some I gladly let go of in favor of a peaceful relationship.

I’m exaggerating of course, but not by much. There’s such a thing as opposing playstyles and oh, we haz them! Although you’d think a holypriest and furywarrior are the perfect leveling match (and we really looked great on paper), our adventures together would develop like this within a few minutes:

B: Where did you wander off to, now?? I am still fighting here!
Syl: I was just gonna talk to that NPC!
B: Great, now I’m dying!
Syl: Why do you always have to pull everything? We don’t need to clear everything here!
B: It’s faster, it’s money, it’s loot, it’s EXP!
Syl: We get more EXP and gold from actually pursuing the questline!
B: AAuGgh…..&%!*”!/%ç – Can you rez me?!
Syl: No I can’t! There are respawns here now and I just took a boat to check out the other side of the river!
B: I hate this shit!
Syl: …..did you loot the staff at least?
B: What staff??
Syl: ……………………
Syl: You were supposed to pick up the staff from the boss we killed. For the quest!
B: I hate this shit!
Syl: *SIGH*

….From there the bickering would continue, an equally frustrating experience for both sides. Some people claim that what happens ingame stays ingame (lol), but I’m sure that many of you who have played together with a partner or person they live with, will know how quickly a foul mood can spread from the screen into the living room……..(Right?) As silly as such arguments might be, they can wear you down when you were supposed to wind down. No thanks, not worth it. You can still play the game together without playing it together.

Why good matchmaking changes everything

What this little anecdote shows in vivid colors is that gamer profiles matter. You can bring your best person to the game and it might still not work out in terms of cooperation. Now imagine this with strangers you’ve never met before and care about little: are you even surprised if a group falls apart?

We know how much good matchmaking can increase our fun in playing – to an extent where the boundaries between “people you like for themselves” and “people you like because it’s fun to play with them” become very fluid. Personally, I need both to wanna teamplay with somebody long-term. I strongly suspect too that I am not the only one out there who will only ever befriend a stranger in MMOs when my “basic playstyle check” is positive. After all, I’m not just here to socialize; I’m here to vanquish and conquer, arrr!
Funny enough, it works the other way around too: our tolerance to do “boring content” will increase if we’re doing it with or for certain people. As long as it’s not all the time, mind; our profiles don’t have to be a 100% match, but they need to be similar enough.

One logic answer to the matchmaking dilemma in MMOs are guilds. The guy who only wants to “roleplay” in Deeprun Tram, the gal who wants to clear every raidboss on hardmode – they can find a suitable place for themselves as long as they aren’t hoping to stay together. The more transparent a guild will make its goals and requirements, the better. Not to say that everyone in a guild always gets along brilliantly on a personal level heh, but you have a few fundamental hurdles out of the way, at least.

Still, a lot of cooperation fails in MMOs, inside guilds and outside. Blizzard reacted to grouping issues by implementing meeting stones and later the dungeon finder, by cross-server grouping and arena rank matchmaking. Oh yes, and such joy did people find in LFG….We’re provided with groups fast now maybe, but in terms of quality, or rather matching our intents and purposes, WoW has not solved any issues, no matter how tanks are getting bribed. Even the arena matchmaking is poor (and there you’d think it’s relatively easy).

What to do here? MMOs are all about cooperation, so this is a big deal. Considering where things are going in this genre, there will only be more MMO players in the future and many more people playing solo and casual, therefore relying on spontaneous grouping.
It was Tesh who called my attention to this issue in recent design debates: what if many current player grievances are not so much about a lack of variety and dynamic content etc., but a lack of matchmaking tools first and foremost?

The challenge that is matchmaking

I’ve thought about possible ways to create matchmaking on a “quality level” in MMOs and frankly I find it difficult. How do you make good intentions work in practice where so many individual and conflicting factors coincide? For a moment, I had this image in my mind of a person filling out ten tedious pages of personal questionnaire at a dating agency, just so the likelihood of meeting the right partner increases by 1%.

Luckily, finding the perfect MMO “date” is not quite as complex. We’re not looking to find prince or princess charming to get married with kids after all. However, there are various external and intrinsic factors determining every player’s outlook, goals and preferences and while the game can do little about external circumstances, it can try and bring people together who have the same purpose and playstyle for a specific activity. Chances are, if you end up in a group a little more tailored to yourself, you will add one of them to your friendlist rather than your ignorelist.

One obvious solution could be to add more search parameters to LFG tools. In addition to asking for roles and dungeon mode, offer check boxes for things like “speed run”, “achievement run”, “casual/fun run” and so forth. Maybe even allow players to create their own criteria. But then, how do you avoid misunderstandings? How do you prevent a casual run from translating into a lol-fail run for somebody? Does a speed run include content skipping? So, I wonder how much this really solves; and how many questions does the average player want to go through in order to join a group, anyway? How do you prevent freeloaders? It also raises a question about how restrictive parameters should be – would you like to see “GGG?” among them?

Another option might actually be a detailed personal profile you must fill out at the character / menu screen, maybe even per toon. Have the game store this intel towards any future matchmaking, similar to how some MMOs will ask for individual history or attributes when creating your character. Maybe run a refined version of the Bartle test even? I think you could do worse.

No matter what you come up with, there’s still the issue of numbers: how do you handle profiles that won’t correspond with enough available players? This strikes me as the biggest dilemma. If the system cannot find a match, it will go for the next best or random match. Before you know it, you’re back with GOGOGO-guy, the rogue looking for a particular achievement and the two mages who only came in to look at the tapestry. True story. /doom

I clearly lack imagination in this area, so please help me out: How could future MMOs implement a smart way of player matchmaking, without doing more harm than good? Any suggestions? Also: would you even want features as the above mentioned – or should we rather go back to good old, simple general chat grouping? Maybe I am over-thinking this.

To finish, two fun links

I am convinced that there is a lot of untapped potential for matchmaking in MMOs; not just on a grouping level, but content in general. Far too often do we mistake general design issues or errors with an actual lack of matchmaking / successful grouping opportunities. The discussion leaves a lot of questions though and at this point I cannot quite conjure up enough ideas that might stand the test of time and practice. To be fair, if it was such an easy undertaking, somebody would have succeeded by now. At the end of the day, no matter how intelligent the system is, a lot still comes down to social skills and communication between individuals.

Matchmaking, I look forward to see more of you! I am sure you can provide much in terms of more enjoyable, individual experiences but also cooperation in MMOs. Some oddly hilarious encounters too maybe, once the system “fails”(?)

Unfortunately you won’t be able to solve my initial, most pressing issue here: what can we do if our playstyle and our partner’s simply won’t match? Oh, well – some frustrating or silly experiences still make for fun memories in retrospective. Maybe even the best (yes, that’s us in that video!). A little disaster here and there lets us remember and appreciate the really smooth runs. And also how much it matters to have good company with you, nevermind how bad things are going.