It's dead, Jim

First of all, I'm not dead. Nor is this blog. It's this.


Yes, I'm participating and I'm already couple of thousand words short of the aim I'm supposed to be at.

I think it's WoW that is dead for me. I got somewhat pepped up last week when we had the ongoing Three Stooges evening with our second team (paladin, shaman, rogue) and logged in with my - little played - Unholy Deathknight, tender at level 82. Ran some idle quests while queuing for a random and got into the Vortex Pinnacle.

I fully agree that I'm not up to the gear nor anything, but I also must state that I was the only one not stacked with heirlooms and top enchants. I am still running around with my lowbie quest gear, with one or two blues in the mix. And due to this, I was severely lacking in the dps I may have been supposed to deliver. Considering this, I wasn't the one standing in the fire. I was not the one disconnecting repeatedly. I was not the one constantly pulling unnecessary aggro and definitely not the one pulling stuff off from the pally-tank. I even mentioned this and got mentioned for being ok in these regards.

Still I was kicked before the wind dragon boss. The only thing I saw was a note from the warlock who was repeatedly disconnecting and stalling our progress stating "Just kick him" before I was ushered back to the world.

No mention of doing something differently. No mention of getting better or asking if I knew things.

Not. A. Thing.

Sure, where the others were stacking incredible 11k dps at that level (heck, Förgelös barely can make that on a good day on our lv85 trio!!!), I was doing 'merely' 3.5k. Maybe that was the reason, not the overall performance.

So WoW is dead for me except for the Brotherly Thursdays. The community and the players currently suck and are obnoxiously stupid.

I rather spend my time in Rift or Champions Online. At least I'm not judged by an arbitrary number in either, yet, but by my performance and behaviour.

You get what you give

Social contacts require effort from both sides of the fence. As mentioned yesterday, we are prone to form our own microcommunities within the game with the people who think similar, who have same kind - if not same - goals in the game, thus sharing similar - if not same - values. As Wolfshead explained in his excellent, though lengthy post, the MMOs are still viewed as shared social experiences. Where as the earlier games, like EQ, were so hard that you had to co-operate and thus you formed friendships through the must, the game design now relies on the activity and willingness of the participants to form those connections. If there are no measures to check the values or aims of other people, there is no way to know if the possible contact is a match or not.

Now I can hear comments on this that there are no such things in real life either. I must disagree: we connect with the people within the same context. You do not go to a bar in which you feel yourself uncomfortable, nor do you attend to a hobby you don't like. You select with precision the context in which you want to meet people and form new contacts.

One might think that the context in MMOs is already there: everyone is a player of the game, everyone wants to play against the big bad boss, everyone wants to have the shiniest leet gear.

But it isn't so.

Even though in MMOs everyone aspires to be the hero, there are none. In its base, a MMO is a virtual simulation, and within the context of the game design, game mechanics and the game setting the simulation is pretty much open for interpretation by the user, player. Thus there are several different ways to use and enjoy this simulation. For certain, a roleplayer wouldn't enjoy the company of a raiding guild, or the hardcore AH goblin the company of a slow leveller without money. All of them would try their best to find the subgroup they fit the best.

As Larísa mentioned in her post, you get what you give and if you are socially active in the game, you get social group around you. From my experience in WoW and the servers I've been actively in (granted, not at level cap in any except my main), this doesn't hold true. It can't be like it was mentioned in Wolfshead's post, that the social game enables the end game raiding, and that the social game starts when you reach the cap.

Then again, yes it can. But my humble opinion in this is that in this case the game has failed. It's the same as the newcomer playing a dps because its fun and fast to level reaches the level cap only to learn that s/he should play as a tank. Or that the new character levels up fast, only questing, only to learn that he should learn how to play in groups (and learn to use more than the three-four skills he has used so far).

The game design has failed the player in that case. And the effort required from the players part at this point is more than required for having fun.

I can take Gnomore as an example: he's the social me. In every turn I encounter people in my adventures, I toss a buff on them, maybe greet them and every time I see people needing assistance, I help them. Like yesterday, when I did the cooking daily in Stormwind: there were four characters standing besides the cook in an Inn, waiting for the Confectionary Sugar to materialize. What they didn't notice was the fact that the bag of sugar appeared at the cellar in that particular Inn. So I went, picked it up and as I came up I said to them that go down, sugar is there. Result:
* One said "thnx"
* Three just rushed by
and that was it.

Of the several buffs I've tossed around, the only thanks came from a level 85 night elf priest, whom Gnomore met boarding the ship to Stormwind. Which was kind of amazing.

But the overall results, even when Gnomore tries to discuss with others is very much in vain.

It is useless to say in this context that you get what you give: the community itself is already shut inside their own little micro communities, tribes within tribes, shunning anyone outside their own. The game design lacks the meeting places and reasons for people to mix and match, to find new contacts and the opportunities to make your mind about other players.

Then again, for the majority of the players this is no brainer: why bother because I'm content with the guild I'm in. It is the perfect case of "Someone Else's Problem". At the same time players are telling their stories how they - as a guild, raid or group - have overcome this and that, done miraculous feats in the game and came out of anything as a group attract new players to the game, who are faced with the one simple guiding line.

You get what you give.

Now where is the support or route for these players to get where the established players who have been in the game for years are now? Where are the tools and possibilities to match the similar thinking, already established players in the game?

What are the options of the new player - or the one outside the social groups - to find one most suitable for her/him?

Now there is something to think about, outside your own box and comfort zone.

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Deeper into the community

I've been reading about work place cultures lately and formation of different types of cultures. The fact is, these theories and studies, when done and written properly, are more or less transferable to any group of people involved with similar interests.

Thus I've been making some connections with the stuff I've been learning for work and with the Metropolitan Players post I made a while ago. In that post I compared the current state of WoW population being that of a population of a metropolitan city: busting with action and no interest or concern over what the passerby is doing, thinking or planning. In the worst case this goes as far as the random dungeon experience, where you easily treat the other player characters as moderately working AI characters.

As in all societies or groups of people, there are bound to form structures. Call them tribes, creeds or guilds. The stuff that drives these groups forward is the motivation to work for a common cause. In special circumstances these groups of people will exceed the individual level of expertise of its members, but usually it is the lowest nominator which states the achievable results.

In MMOs - and in WoW particular for being so huge - the problem is to show the values of the guild to form a tightly knit group of individuals willing and motivated to work together to the fullest. Usually the guilds are advertising with the general terms like "nice social levelling and raiding guild", "good mature guild" or "mature group willing to raid later on". Very seldom - if ever - you will actually see something stating about the values or aims of the group in question.

Due to this and lack of general social tools in game, it is neigh impossible for a player outside of a group they feel their own in spirit to find one. There are no actual meeting places to find like minded people save the dreaded guild hopping from one to another till something clicks. The LFD tool took the last bit of server reputation off of your shoulders and at the same time took away the only spot where you could have made those connections with people on the same server, which might have given you any sort of direction to look for a group with same thoughts about the content or life in general.

WoW community, which is so much discussed everywhere every now and then is in fact an infantile community. It revolves around the Me, Myself and I in the elitism and respect, with certain aspects from This Game Sucks and My Game Sucks. For well performing guilds, which are not driven only for the individual gain of the GM or an elite officer group, it may go to the common good ground of We Are Good.

For the lonely soldier in the levelling trenches, to find that group in which one can state that We Are Good is a part time job alone. For it is not enough to feel that I Am Good, when the ones you are bound to be compared are already raiding at highest level with their own special group.

Especially when there are no connecting points in the community to introduce yourself, your personality, your skills and your abilities to the groups desperately seeking a team player.

The groups seeking a specialist are in another pit: they can get the specialist, but what might be the personality and how will that fit into the group?

And will it be determined fast enough to avoid any damage?

MMOs at the moment are enjoyable group endeavors to those who travel within their own social contact group. They are a massive single player game to those who are not in any existing group, and there are less and less possibilities to find people with similar mindset in the typical DIKU mud due to the achievement oriented power levelling culture which is present in the games. Like the destination is more important than the journey, the way it IMO should be.

It is not the destination that determines the hero, but the journey during which his integrity is put on test.

Maybe public quest types can be of some remedy to this?

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