It would appear that patch 3.3 has revolutionized World of Warcraft and ‘improved’ the game immensely, as everyone is discovering the amazing joy that is multiplayer in MMOs (Massively is still missing from the WoW equation, but one step at a time now) and previously abandoned instances are seeing (for now) new life. Although if Tobold’s post and comment section are any judge, it’s not the same type of multiplayer that has been the staple of the genre since 1997 (or before, but UO is an easy ‘starting point’). Rather than the pure enjoyment of simply doing something with others, 3.3 is being hailed as a great addition because the final hurdle for the solo-hero, group instances, has been conquered without compromising the solo-heroes greatest trait, the all-about-me attitude.
Finally all of the solo-heroes in WoW can rid themselves of the annoyance of a guild and go it alone, queue’ing up as easily for an instance as they have been for battlegrounds, reaping the benefits of showing up without the hassle of being concerned who else is there. It’s both an incredible leap forward in solo-hero gameplay and a sharp reminder that the WoW crowd is very different from the MMO crowd. It also makes you wonder how long such a benefit will last, or if eventually it’s a real benefit at all. While access to content is all well and good, once that very limited content has been absorbed, moving on will be a bit easier without any sort of social structure keeping you interested. At least in a guild-oriented environment, even if you are personally done with something, running it again (and again and again) with a guild group is common, and prolongs the need for something else. That ‘run it again’ approach is what has keep many subscribed while they wait for their 6 month update.
It’s somewhat interesting, from the outside looking in, that such a feature would be cheered in an MMO in the first place. Personally the social aspect has always been a huge draw for me, not just the aspect of playing with a set group, but also how that group’s progress and reputation is regarded among other groups and the virtual world as a whole. While personal glory is all well and good, being a part of something highly regarded or reviled is just another motivator to log in, work together towards something, and reap the rewards of some group-centric goal, a goal that is usually far grander than anything possible solo. It’s that same history of success and failure as a group that keeps people playing together, keeps certain rivalries going, and adds a layer of interest to whatever your group is doing. There is no better motivation to get something done as a guild than to know your main rival is also pushing for that very goal, be it raiding progress or PvP conquest.
Hardcore Casual 
Its the logical path really. In fact, I think the SWTOR model is actually leaping ahead of WoW in this regard. MMO has no useful meaning anymore, all it means is “a game people will consider paying monthly for.” Frankly, I think I’m just as well off considering games like Darkfall and EVE and games like WoW to be separate genres.
I really think this is the answer at this point. There are games like WoW et al, perhaps with something like Free Realms being a radical attempt at is, that I would just call “social” games at this point. While games like Darkfall, EVE, etc are closer to “simulators” that attempt to simulate a fantasy world, sci fi world, whatever.
It’s fascinating to watch.
My first thought was that the WoW Dungeon Finder model would be copied pretty swiftly by those games that have an instanced dungeon system already (EQ2 would be a prime candidate). New MMOs using instances would probably use it too, and it would become the standard for mass market, instanced MMOs.
On the other hand, it seems in direct contradiction to the way Cataclysm is being promoted as a sweeping change to non-instanced overland content. That makes me wonder whether Blizzard don’t have something else in mind as well. Can;t guess what, though.
If it does turn out that the Dungeon Finder reduces length of account retention and/or revenue, then I would expect to see it modified to prevent that. I’m not sure it will, though.
Looking at the overall MMO picture, however, it’s pretty clear that the traditional MMO structure that you refer to (the UO/EQ/AC/DAOC non-instanced, all in it together version) capped out at under half a million subscribers in NA/EU markets. That’s a large potential customer-base for a small, or even a medium sized developer, but WoW has demonstrated the potential to appeal outside that core traditional MMO market, and make a LOT more money.
We all are just going to have to come to terms with the fact that the first decade of the MMO genre is over and things are moving on. The new MMOs won;t necessarily look much like the old ones, though there will probably allways be a niche market for traditionalists (and a new niche for every successful or semi-successful variation that sprouts as we go along).
Personally iam not sold on the Dungeon Finder, but it’s still a novelty. Let’s see how it looks in 6 months.
Perhaps I’m strange, but I’ve always looked at the social aspect as distinct from the gameplay of an MMO. To explain, an MMO is an excuse for me to hang out and chat/goof-off with a bunch of people (my guild 99% of the time) in vent while I go about enjoying the game at my own pace. If other people are on at the same level range and doing the same things, that’s a bonus. But if most people are higher or lower level than me, or just off someplace else in the game, I’ll have fun playing the game and getting the socializing via chat and vent.
In other words, I’m content with an SRPG with random opportunity for an MMO to break out with some friends. I’m doing it right now in Fallen Earth, and I think SWTOR is going to be excellent for my mindset from what I’m hearing so far.
Debating genre tags is such an annoying and unproductive discussion. Even if we do establish some ontology it’ll be compromised in a few months anyway and force us to redo some of the work all over again.
Player bloggers have this odd zero-sum mentality when they think of solo and group players. What happens to benefit the solo player must be taking away from group players and vice versa. This attitude is nonsense. The new WoW feature gives players who otherwise would not be grouping (or grouping sparingly) a path towards grouping more often. How does this effect the group-lovers? Not at all! They can keep doing whatever they were doing and maybe even have more fun with the new PUG-accessibility.
Don’t act as if making grouping easier somehow prevents people from making friends with the people they now group with. Players are probably meeting up and developing friendships more often now than they did before because they’re exposed to more people via pugs.
Forcing people to guild up in order to do content is an extension of the debatable forced grouping practices in the early days. Now people can treat guilds as social organizations that exist for social reasons (or, in Syncaine’s case, as an entity that has reputation and standing) instead of conflating content grouping requirements with social or hierarchical concepts.
Discussions about the trajectory of group or solo play in MMOs end up being awful because everyone is superimposing how they feel games should be played over the reality of how games are played. The truth is that everyone SHOULDN’T play like you. Learn to live with the diversity of motivations and interests that make communities so rewarding instead of fighting against a trend towards allowing diverse playstyles to co-exist in the same game and perhaps the same community.
I enjoyed your comment untill the touchy feely diversity part.
Insecure? Or just so masculine that it cramps your style?
Nice double entendre.
My point was his started strong and poignant, then degraded into child’s introduction to diversity, “I’m OK, you’re OK, that’s fine.”
If you want to have 11 million people play your game, you cannot possible have a homogenous community. Diverse playstyles need to be engaged actively and and content needs to be more accessible. I don’t see how that’s a “child’s introduction to diversity.” It’s a reality.
Yes, lets implement artificial barriers, call it a game, then launch an educational class (fully accredited of course) to accompany it and charge an additional $60 monthly so when it finally succumbs to reality we can reflect on how the world is a cruel place that was just not ready for the championing of ideals like togetherness, or other nice sounding words that fit on a bumper sticker while on the off chance it does succeed long enough to be purchased by some sucker we make out like the antithesis of the very client base we sought to exploit.
And since you are asking, maybe I do not want 11 million people playing my game if that means I have to split my client base across enough servers to suggest I anticipate a revival of my decrepit golden goose in lieu of fixing fundamental flaws. After all, as long as I feed the mouth that complains the loudest I am an all-star parent: producing the best result in the completest sense of the phrase. Optimum revenue, community reception, and rage.
I will agree in the reality that a larger customer base degrades the overall quality of your product, but that does not mean everyone has to shut up and eat their McGarbage in complacence just because a few fresh ideas have not been added to the arsenal of the discontent.
* Join queue solo or with existing group.
* Ported to instance.
* At conclusion of instance, returned to starting point.
* Choice of random or specific, level appropriate instances.
WAR scenarios or WoW dungeon finder? :-)
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“It’s both an incredible leap forward in solo-hero gameplay and a sharp reminder that the WoW crowd is very different from the MMO crowd. ”
One of my least favorite quotes on the internet is when people like to exclude WoW players from MMO players. Who are the MMO players in your opinion? People who played MMOs 10 years ago when the genre was in its infancy? People who play any game other than WoW? Asian gamers who play their grindy MMOs?
I’m not sure what it is about MMO players who seem to be unable to grasp the concept that our favorite genre will grow, change, and evolve. The types of people who play them will also change. Why can’t we just accept the fact that what you specifically might want (and what you’re used to from games in the past) is not what the current MMO industry wants?
It’s like my mom complaining about new rock music and saying its not like the rock she used to listen to. Same rock genre, just new audience and evolved taste.
I generally consider someone is an MMO fan when they like Massive, Multiplayer, Online games. When you only (or predominantly) play a single player game with a chat room, it’s tough to consider you an MMO fan. This does not make you scum or sub-human, it just means games like WoW are going to be designed differently than games in the MMO genre, and that players tastes adjust accordingly.
The problem is not WoW being a pop sensation, good for Blizzard. The problem is people confusing that pop sensation and trying to attribute it to a niche genre in the gaming world, and the multitude of problems those tourists create for MMO games.
In other words, labeling WoW as something different helps him win arguments when people point to WoW as an example of success.
It’s a logical fallacy called “denying the correlative” in which he discounts WoW in order to postulate other alternatives.
I have to agree with Syncaine here. WoW is not, in my opinion, an MMORPG. I was already thinking it was more akin to a FPS over three years ago, when I stopped playing it and to me it has much more in common with an FPS or a single player RPG game these days than it does with what most of us think of as MMORPG’s.
What I find interesting is that in the world of online games, WoW isn’t the first game to geared towards the solo player. UO and AC were both very much more about solo PvEing than group PvEing. The difference though is that both UO and AC had other ways to bring people together for whatever reason and that’s what most traditional MMORPGers want/like.
Personally, I just resubbed to DFO because I was really tired of the themepark MMO’s we have been given. I can also honestly say, the best time I’ve had playing any MMORPG was back when I was playing DFO on the EU1 server. Honestly, there is nothing like getting a city or hamlet and spending your weekend working together with your clan/guild to build it up. Then hunting by it and defending it with the rest of your clan. It’s the best experience I’ve had with an MMORPG since DAoC and so I’m back playing it and again having a good time.
If WoW is not an MMO, neither is WAR, EQ2, Aion, AoC, LoTRO or any other themepark.
Argue it any way you like, it IS an MMO and has all the traits of an MMORPG.
The only people who don’t consider WoW an MMO are the people who don’t want MMOs to be like WoW.
Versus all the people that label anything that is not WoW as not success?
From a “player” perspective, I think the best way to measure success in an MMO is growth.
If it has more users tomorrow than it does today, then it’s hard to argue that product is not successful even if it has low revenue numbers.
Where I think total subscriber numbers is important is when discussing market position.
Now things get tricky if you want to extrapolate market position to market trends.
Market position doesn’t tell us WHY they are the leader or anything about user trends.
You can’t extrapolate that because the leader has X feature that people want X feature. That’s called false attribution.
It could just as easily be some other factor entirely that allows the market leader to retain it’s position.
In WoW’s case, these could easily be social pressures (my friends play) or some other type of personal investment (I worked so hard to get to where I am).
@Cuppycake
Don’t kid yourself… WoW isn’t rock and roll.
It’s Walmart.
For some reason, they decided not to apply the tool to raid encounters. So, for now, there’s still a use for guilds and “solo-heroes” still have to be social, to some degree.
I believe you’re right in your points, but, another thought to consider is how much quicker this will get players bored with the game. The main motivator for most WoW players is loot. Well, as it stands now, you can get more than 80 badges a day, if you got into ever heroic. Even if you only did, say, five in your few hours of gametime, that’s still almost 150 badges every week. You can totally gear out your character in 10-man raid gear in under two weeks.
All the sudden, the loot motivator is gone and all people have are social activities to get them by. I predict that, even though people love this system now, they get bored/run out of things to do, quicker than ever.
Some people see grouping as a pain but the truth, in my opinion, is that it’s a necessary speed bump in the game. How will those people feel when there’s no more carrot at the end of their stick?
Guilds are like coworkers. You are friends with some, and some you can’t stand. That is why I hate guilds. I would just rather play with friends, and not have to deal with all the people I find annoying, or can’t stand to listen to, or be around.
I miss the days of UO/AC/EQ when guilds were so much more than just coworkers. The good news is that there are still some games out there where this isn’t the case.
You are so right on that. I joke a lot that a guild is like a business. You have to apply, have references, have the right qualifications, follow a dress code, punch in on the clock, work your regular raiding shift, and get paid.
The old days were when the experience was new, like your first job would have been if you worked in a cool place. Glamour wears off quickly though.
No other element has a greater impact on each player’s individual MMO experience than the ‘social’ equation. The dynamics of what an individual can and can’t do based on their ability to group or not group can cause radically different player experiences. And even if grouped, the other players in that group greatly impact that experience.
That’s a simple fact. And yes, it’s unique to multiplayer games.
For whatever reason, people who don’t struggle with the social equation just seem to think of this in black and white. The most common response being the equivalent of “Screw you. What did you expect in a multiplayer game?” This narrow-minded inability to understand how social dynamics plague other people’s user experience is mind boggling.
It’s particularly mind boggling because outside of spamming a global channel or forum, most MMOs don’t even have a good way to facilitate player groupings (especially large groups like Clans and Guilds). And you know what? The large % of “players” in your “multiplayer” world struggle with this dynamic. But I guess if “I” don’t have a problem then no such problem exists.
The obvious solution is that developers should create tools that help facilitate grouping. Yes, that includes things like Dungeon Finder, but there also needs to be ways to rate players and share that detail with friends. I wrote an addon for that purpose in WAR and there is good one for WoW that I used called DoIKnowYou that allows Ebay style +/- ratings.
Most importantly, I think there needs to be better tools for finding Guilds/Clans in games. Because the point Syn is making is valid. An instanced world with a bunch of solo gamers grouped together detracts away from the potential these games offer. But that said, in light of shitty experiences for lots of players unable to group, any tool that helps to mitigate this problem is a good one – even something like the Dungeon Finder.
Because ultimately, people need to group and sometimes it just plain sucks when you can’t find anyone. Public Quests in WAR are a great example. How much more successful would these have been if a better tool had existed to facilitate the grouping? And I’m talking about something a little better than the Open Party system where you virtually had to stumble onto someone else doing the PQ.
Want people to play your MMO? Start with enabling people to network.
—Repost, my earlier one didn’t post. Must have got caught in your spam filter?
No other element has a greater impact on each player’s individual MMO experience than the ‘social’ equation. The dynamics of what an individual can and can’t do based on their ability to group or not group can cause radically different player experiences. And even if grouped, the other players in that group greatly impact that experience.
That’s a simple fact. And yes, it’s unique to multiplayer games.
For whatever reason, people who don’t struggle with the social equation just seem to think of this in black and white. The most common response being the equivalent of “Screw you. What did you expect in a multiplayer game?” This narrow-minded inability to understand how social dynamics plague other people’s user experience is mind boggling.
It’s particularly mind boggling because outside of spamming a global channel or forum, most MMOs don’t even have a good way to facilitate player groupings (especially large groups like Clans and Guilds). And you know what? The large % of “players” in your “multiplayer” world struggle with this dynamic. But I guess if “I” don’t have a problem then no such problem exists.
The obvious solution is that developers should create tools that help facilitate grouping. Yes, that includes things like Dungeon Finder, but there also needs to be ways to rate players and share that detail with friends. I wrote an addon for that purpose in WAR and there is good one for WoW that I used called DoIKnowYou that allows Ebay style +/- ratings.
Most importantly, I think there needs to be better tools for finding Guilds/Clans in games. Because the point Syn is making is valid. An instanced world with a bunch of solo gamers grouped together detracts away from the potential these games offer. But that said, in light of crappy experiences for lots of players unable to group, any tool that helps to mitigate this problem is a good one – even something like the Dungeon Finder.
Because ultimately, people need to group and sometimes it just plain sucks when you can’t find anyone. Public Quests in WAR are a great example. How much more successful would these have been if a better tool had existed to facilitate the grouping? And I’m talking about something a little better than the Open Party system where you virtually had to stumble onto someone else doing the PQ.
Want people to play your MMO? Start with enabling people to network.
—Repost: Last attempt – My earlier ones didn’t post.
Tools like the new WoW LFG are anti-MMO.
This tool teleports you directly into an -instance- (which is a bad failure in mmo design to begin with), completely bypassing the outdoor world and groups you with players that aren’t even on your server.
Each step in that failure chain are steps away from a persistent online world that you -share- with other people.
Those are horrible additions to the “mmo” and help to make WoW more and more difficult to call an mmo.
I’d rather have a more fun game than a more “MMO according to Adam” game. It’s pretty clear that this change made WoW more fun. I guess it’s up to you whether you’d prefer to play a fun game or a “pure” game.
See, here you are defining “fun” as “evizaer fun.” To me, part of the fun is the journey in the game. Granted, WoW effectively removed that a long time ago (probably sometime around the time Burning Crusade came out), so it isn’t a surprise that they are moving further in that direction.
Still though, my bigger point here is that I’m sick of “casual” gamers defining fun as “I want action now! Anything else is: Boring.” Thats great, fine, thats fun FOR YOU, but for some of us, we want something else in this style game. When I want immediate fun I load up Team Fortress 2 or Torchlight.
Stop trying to take the high ground by calling your style of gaming “fun” while implying the rest of us are some sort of sadomasochist that get off on causing ourselves gaming pain.
When I changed clans in Darkfall, I had to travel all the way across the world just to get my new Clan’s city. It took me all night, I did only a minor amount of fighting on the way. You know what? It was FUN for me to make my way there, it was slow going, and I was constantly wary of enemies (player and monster), but it was the adventure of it all, not knowing what exactly was going to happen.
So don’t give me this “fun” argument, I’m sick to hell of that.
The problem with your argument is that he’s talking about making things “MMOs”. He makes no assertion that he wants fun games, only that he wants games that appeal to some arbitrary definition he has invented for a genre tag. The purpose of games is not to appeal to a genre tag. Games are supposed to be fun, no matter how you define fun. I doubt a reliable definition of fun is “whatever this one person calls an MMO.”
I don’t play WoW and wouldn’t go back to it because I don’t find it fun. So I’m definitely not talking about “evizaer fun”, I’m talking about fun according to a consensus of bloggers whose voices I feel represent the average MMO player.
In your post, you’re talking about “Malakili fun”. Many fewer people find the fun you’re referring to than find better grouping options in WoW fun.
You’ve only succeeded in weakening your own argument.
Weakened my own argument? The only argument I was making is that its stupid to argue about “fun” because its subjective.
I have not plaid a lot of MMORPGs but I sure have read about them. One thing I am still confused on is why people actual spend all the time to gather these items and advance their character? Why don’t they just spend all that subscription money on a fully accomplished account with characters all epic’d out and be done with it. Wouldn’t that save a lot of time, money, and headache on the part of every fatass on a computer with an opinion?
I am enjoying it. The two MMOs I play now are just WoW and Darkfall. Both scratch different itches and I like both itches being scratched.
Im similar but Im playing Fallen Earth and WoW, both are great at what they do. WoWs my mindless fun and Fallen Earth is the game I can disappear into for hours on end :)
Syncaine, no offense but do you actually play with guilds? I mean, you seem to gloss over or ignore the very negative aspects that probably drove the solo-play system in the first place.
I’ve heard many horror stories about guilds. Just recently a friend in FFXI told me of how one of the top two guilds on our own server had its leader and his co leader fake quit, then server hop with the entire guild’s bank, breaking apart one that had lasted years, and totally wasting the years of hard work of many of the members waiting patiently for drops.
Even when it’s mundane, stories like this are common. A guild loses people as they leave for school or quit, and they can’t replace people, so it folds. Or it schisms-maybe the guild’s leader has his girlfriend start to play, and accusations of favortism start. Maybe the guild bank guy gets busted for rmt.
You don’t seem to understand that a lot of the solo-play has arisen from the very real problems of both grouping and guilding, and it’s not limited to WoW. FFXI has started doing pickup endgame raids, and a lot of people stay guildless and just merc the endgame events to merc shells. Yeah being part of something is important, when it works. The problem is that the current raid and grouping structure is starting to show signs of not working, and it’s not just WoW.
Heck, even in EVE people were making 1 man corporations and staying in NPC ones, because of a lot of the same issues and more that probably drove the creation of cross-server pugs in WoW. I think the problem is not simply WoW or WoW tourists, but a lot of people losing the enchantment of being in guilds when they get negative experience after negative experience.
Maybe I’m lucky but I’ve never really had terrible experiences with guilds, I mean, the type of terrible that makes me want to suddenly play alone only. In every MMO I play, I try to find a guild very quickly within my first month, because to me playing with people is the entire point of the game, and I’d prefer to make some friends and play consistently with the same group that group up with strangers all the time.
I’ve had guilds I’ve quit because they just weren’t my thing, but…I guess i’m just having trouble coming up with a situation that would make my swear off all guilds and not just the one I was currently in. If people are seriously having problems finding a decent group of players, they aren’t looking hard enough, or they are terrible judges of character to begin with is all I can come up with.
You only know people’s character from what they provide, and good people can just as easily descend into drama as bad. For me being able to socialize with people is important, playing not as much, because guilds having to form to satisfy group content tend to be like what I described above.
Then again I came from a very group-heavy guild-based game to start with, so my experiences are different from yours. It’s different when you are forced to rely on others as opposed to having the option.
I don’t have much experience, but I’d agree, to a degree with what you say.
However, I don’t think many people stay because of the repeated raid runs. At least not in the same sense.
If you want to see quick and similar MMO player types, I’d suggest looking at many F2P MMOs. I’ve played them for over 2 years and after this time. RoM forums are filled with people complaining and saying goodbye in the forums. Saying they are sick of running the same raid 200+ times.
The amazing thing to me, is that in less than one month, these players have run new raids 100+ times. They also are able to jump in and out of them easily, and quickly. But the social aspect is no different from WoW or any other game. There’s a percentage of players that raid, and could care less about anything social. They raid for purely selfish means. It’s okay to be a little selfish, that’s life and MMO gaming.
However, there still exists those players in any MMO that just do what’s required of them to get what they want. If they are required to wait and LFG, they will, but take that away and whammo, they will avoid socializing. There is no social structure that keeps them interested. At best there is only a social structure that forces them to LFG or talk to get what they want.
Forcing them to LFG really doesn’t have many positive outcomes.
After reading some comments, I’d add:
Blizzard already said they are making WoW more social. Scaling back raids, changing the way some raids are played entirely, and changing the world content are only, in one of the devs interviews: [only a small taste of what Cataclysm will bring], and he mentioned that this new “stuff” that’s supposedly going to be more than what they’ve already shown us, which is massive already, will be for low to mid level players. Whatever happens, Blizzard is dramatically changing their MMORPG.
There are quite a lot of players who just want to race to endcap, and raid for “awesome” loot, and it appears Blizzard is catering to that.
As far as bad moves for an MMO, I don’t think so. Are they taking away my options of talking? or socializing? All that’s up to the player anyway and they aren’t telling you “No”.
Any seemingly horrible change to socializing doesn’t exist. So now you won’t have as many people, you don’t want to talk to(because they just want to run instances and not socialize) to talk to? It’s all still very much in your hands, how you want to play.
You want like minded people and that is fine, but changing systems in an MMORPG doesn’t change people or how they socialize, at least not to the degree you’re referring to. You’ll still be able to find like minded people to socialize and play with.
I have stop playing WoW a long time ago but it looks like a wonderful addition as I remember long hours trying to get groups in < lvl 80 (or < lvl 70) instances while all my guild was already at level cap and raiding every night… I have pugged almost all instances in WoW, both in normal and heroic mode. Now there is a tool that enables people to find group quicker and to do instances that are almost never ran (even max level instances). I don’t think this LFG tool will change much in terms of social aspect or guilds. The hardcore or semi-hardcore will still need guilds to run raid contents and the casual will still need guild for the social aspect. As rightfully pointed out, playing WoW solo is very boring. The reason why people (even casuals) join guild is not primarily to run instances. It is more for the social interaction and for knowledge sharing.
The genre that Syncaine or Sid67 are promoting is a genre that needs a huge amount of time commitment. No everyone can afford to spend that much time playing online. I did when I was a student but nowadays it’s not really possible. Not everyone has the ability to play at fixed hours every day or in the same time zones as their guild everyday.
I agree whole-heartly with Adam on the teleport part thought. I think that players should be forced to the trip to the instance (or to the summoning stone) at least once before the instance can be unlocked.
I understand that if you are invested in WoW that your natural inclination is to view any smoothing of the gui and LFG system as just defacto good.
I think you should look at it with more of a critical eye.
While PUGs and guild groups are hard to organize… at least you had to have some basic level of socialization to achieve it.
Cultivating good players that you want to run with again. Maybe even trying a bit harder to make the grade with a guild or some randoms that you know are good players.
Now just queue and take a nap.
These features actively harm you and all the other players. During the time you do the new LFG you are actively NOT playing an MMO.
The other players on your server are not playing with you as you are not actually -in game- you are off in your private little hole with the other 4 baddies…
Bad system…bad vision…
Do not want to see the next generations of MMO emulating this trash game.
You are generalizing Adam. I was part of the top guild on my server (since launch in 2004) and I think the new LFG tool (which I have never experienced first hand because I don’t play WoW anymore thought) seems (1) useful for everyone and (2) not a game breaker. I would like to see such tool in other MMO to be honest…
When I recall my past experience, there has been numerous occasion when this would have been useful:
1. When I was playing “hardcore”, I was usually playing until 4 or 5am everyday. After 12am (end of raid time usually), it was not easy to find groups so I was usually getting bored, farming mats I didn’t really needed or idling in city
2. When RL priorities forced me to scale back and that I was not able to level at the same time as everyone else and that I was catching ip while trying to enjoy the content rather than rushing to cap. I was not easy to find group for instances, especially at maxlevel. The guild standing helped me a lot to get into groups and I also played with guild alts – but it was still not easy. When you have 4 hours to play in the afternoon, it’s very frustrating to spend 2 hours to find a group. Not everyone can articulate his/her life around WoW.
Everything is based on your ideals, and why many share them, they are still just ideals.
the new dungeon finder in now way takes away your choice of how/when/where you socialize with people.
And your ideas of what the game was like before are skewed based on your ideals.
No, before you did not have any socializing, that the new DF is taking away. It was never there to be taken away.
You are not having anything taken away from you.
It didn’t cultivate anything. If you and the people like you want to have cultivation and socializing in whatever form, you can still have it.
What again was good vs. bad about befoe? and now queue and take a nap? Yes for those that want it.
At it’s very heart, and the heart of this matter is all about choice and options. This is what the pivotal discussion is, are your options or choices or freedom to do what you want and play the game the way you want, being taken away?
The answer is NO.
If you think that the reduction of chat is taking away the people you wanted to socialize with in the first place, you are wrong.
Well, I don’t want to get nit picky about it, I’m starting to feel that horrible forum itch to write out a ten-page fanboy disclaimer to cover my tracks because I’m second guessing that that’s how people will come back at me.
I find it a bit ridiculous to say an MMO cannot be social if grouped content can be easily experienced with random people. They are still people, they are there, you can talk to them and you can arrange to group with them in the future. Well, right now the last part may be harder than it should be but I’m sure this is not the final state of the tool.
If being social only means that you have to fill out guild applications, be on a time schedule etc. then I think I’ll rather be antisocial (by your definition). It’s not like WoW guilds have been tightly-knit groups of friends before this change anyway because people have been guild-hopping to get to different tiers of raids. If anything, being able to PUG raids makes it possible to some people stay with a smaller social guild that happens to be unable to field a full raid group.
I think I know where syncaine’s WoW hate comes from. When I need to stop smoking weed for a month, for whatever reason, I have to start hating on weed and even hating on those who like it.
Yeah!
The most annoying thing to me about WoW, that isn’t really WoW’s fault, that much, is all the young douchetards. Not everyone in WoW is an annoying, living on the internet since high school, meme spewing, conflict causing, degenerate child. But it is very easy to associate those players with WoW, just like they were associated with CS back in it’s hay day. The thing is, it isn’t the games fault that it’s a game. Kids play games. When I was real young games were sports and shit, but today you don’t have to leave the house to feel like you’re being social, especially at a young age (cus you’re dumber).
I used to blame WoW for all of these annoying little fuckers that are permeating throughout the MMO genre. They’re everywhere, SWG, AoC, AO, Aion, everything. It isn’t WoW’s fault that kids play games, but it’s real easy to blame WoW for their existence.
Sigh, for years I’ve been telling my friends the future of WOW was no longer logging into the main game world, but rather logging in and picking which instance you wanted to start in.
I have mixed feelings. It is a great day for players who lack the time and energy to grind with a big guild, of which I am one. And it opens up a lot of content to them that they would otherwise not see.
On the other hand it creates further detachment from the core game world, and lessens the meaning of any accomplishment in the game itself. That being why my raider friends left WOW long ago. As one put it, “when I started I was a badass with my purples, now everyone gets a free purple and are almost as good as me”.
Take away the meaning and sense of accomplishment and it cuts the legs out from many of the players. Lets face it, most people play games to win, and to be better than others, make the game too fair, make people too equal and you have a problem. It’s an interesting direction to go.
For myself, I would very much like the que up instance method, but not for the best gear. I would prefer the instances be for decent gear, but more importantly to play the story. I would prefer the best items come from open world encounters, more random than planned. If Blizz had that kind of system, I might just click the renew button again, but we all know they have a weird phobia about people actually playing in there original game world! SS vs TM for the win.
I’ve recently read the new comments.
You’re a little harsh toward cuppy.
This whole post, if it had any legitimacy before, has just turned into a overheated opinion forum thread about who wants what, and how things should be labeled.
Not everyone feels it’s like walmart, not many even know what you mean. You are using lingo and connotation based off of your gaming roots and it shows. There’s nothing wrong with that, if all you are trying to do is speak to people you know will agree with you already.
All you did was circumvent cuppy’s intelligent comment, and try to throw a shame comment in her face.
One of my all time fave quotes comes from a comedian. “We Americans are slipping. We don’t have to be touchy feely. We don’t have to like each other, our neighbors. [Heck] we can even hate and loath each other, and that’s okay, but we need to respect each other. Lack of respect is what’s destroying this country”.
Maybe not entirely true for everyone, but it still says something worth thinking about.
Even after all your comments to new comments, you still give a very opinionated response based on what you yourself likes, and it’s still very likely that you are not the majority.
I’m not the majority either.
As for the dungeon finder, I am very much looking forward to seeing how it affects chat, especially in Stormwind city. Man, one thing about it is, I played F2P’s before WoW, and everyone was like “You’re going to love not having spam bots in chat.”
When I played, the frequency of spam was indeed lower, but it was still there. But utter spam from players rifled by so fast, it made most F2P chat look welcoming.
So, from a curious, almost psychological viewpoint, I’m really looking forward to this.
Discussion like this should never be allowed to stray so close to a fanboy war as it already has.
I find it ironic that EVE is brought up and yet the latest EVE expansion just launched a “Fleet Finder” that many players are touting as one of the best features to be added in quite some time.
Whereas before a player would have to ask in corp/alliance/militia chat for information on fleet locations, ship types and availability, now you can just click one button and see any fleet available to you with adverts set by the fleet commanders giving you all of the information you need.
Even EVE is making it easier to group up.
Too bad it either isn’t being used or is busted. I try fleetfinder frequently just to find other players to mine with, and get nothing.
It’s a good idea, but EVE is too paranoid a place for it to work. Pickup outside of militia is hard when every person can be a potential ganker.
The only thing this tool has done is cut through the bullshit. Pre-3.3, getting a group for the daily heroic daily went like this: Enter LFG in the old tool, shout into trade and LFG channels, and wait, repeating the shouts every now and then.
This tool not only has widened the pool of players I am able to group with, but it also has made the process of forming and getting into the group a more controlled process. The tool is supposed to compare level/gear/etc and group less experienced players with experienced players in the hopes that it will make for a balanced group. So far that has been what I have been seeing anyway.
As for the whole “but I wanna group with MY friends, not some random group!” Fine. You can still do that. Nothing in that respect has changed. If you want to argue that, “But all my friends will just get a random group because its easier!” well, then they are shitty MMO friends who would rather play with a stranger than with you. You can join a random dungeon group as a team and use it to just fill out the missing members.
As for marking progression with a team of set players/friends, thats raid content. This LFG tool is for smaller scale dungeon content, not raids. No one gives a hoot about progression through heroic dungeon content.
Off-Topic : IMHO on a pure typographic point of view Todbold’s Blog is easier to read, I don’t know if it’s the font, the size or what but your articles seems like a wall of text unpleasant to the eye. JMTC ;-)
I have characters in three WoW social guilds: one with about 10 active players, one with 400, and one with several thousand.
Between August and October, I leveled a character from 16 to 80. She first stepped into an instance around level 52 – not because I didn’t want the chance to, but because the opportunity to group with 5 people on a similar level simply wasn’t there. After that, you could usually get groups in HP (Hellfire Ramparts) and BT (Nexus) but not much else until you hit 80. Since the new LFG system has launched, I have done more instances than I can count on various alts. It has also given me a chance to learn tanking and healing roles on those classes in the 20s instead of having to just pick a DPS spec to level with.
I don’t see how spending 15 minutes in the Graveyard of Scarlet Monastery or Utgarde Keep with 4 people I just met damages my relationship with my guild at all. It simply makes one aspect of the game I was sad about (the fact that I missed the era where lots of people were leveling 1-60) a non-issue.