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Socialization and MMOs

The Dopamine Cleric

Prospernaut
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I don't think that will happen. Sand is silicon oxide, diamonds are carbon. Sand can never become a diamond.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand

Composition

Sand from Pismo Beach, California. Components are primarily quartz, chert, igneous rock and shell fragments.
In terms of particle size as used by geologists, sand particles range in diameter from 0.0625 mm (or 1⁄16 mm) to 2 mm. An individual particle in this range size is termed a sand grain. Sand grains are between gravel (with particles ranging from 2 mm up to 64 mm) and silt (particles smaller than 0.0625 mm down to 0.004 mm). The size specification between sand and gravel has remained constant for more than a century, but particle diameters as small as 0.02 mm were considered sand under the Albert Atterberg standard in use during the early 20th century. A 1953 engineering standard published by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials set the minimum sand size at 0.074 mm. A 1938 specification of the United States Department of Agriculture was 0.05 mm.[2] Sand feels gritty when rubbed between the fingers (silt, by comparison, feels like flour).

ISO 14688 grades sands as fine, medium and coarse with ranges 0.063 mm to 0.2 mm to 0.63 mm to 2.0 mm. In the United States, sand is commonly divided into five sub-categories based on size: very fine sand (1⁄16 – 1⁄8 mm diameter), fine sand (1⁄8 mm – 1⁄4 mm), medium sand (1⁄4 mm – 1⁄2 mm), coarse sand (1⁄2 mm – 1 mm), and very coarse sand (1 mm – 2 mm). These sizes are based on the Krumbein phi scale, where size in Φ = -log2D; D being the particle size in mm. On this scale, for sand the value of Φ varies from −1 to +4, with the divisions between sub-categories at whole numbers.

Close up of black volcanic sand from Perissa, in Santorini, Greece
The most common constituent of sand, in inland continental settings and non-tropical coastal settings, is silica (silicon dioxide, or SiO2), usually in the form of quartz, which, because of its chemical inertness and considerable hardness, is the most common mineral resistant to weathering.

The composition of mineral sand is highly variable, depending on the local rock sources and conditions. The bright white sands found in tropical and subtropical coastal settings are eroded limestone and may contain coral and shell fragments in addition to other organic or organically derived fragmental material, suggesting sand formation depends on living organisms, too.[3] The gypsum sand dunes of the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico are famous for their bright, white color. Arkose is a sand or sandstonewith considerable feldspar content, derived from weathering and erosion of a (usually nearby) granitic rock outcrop. Some sands contain magnetite, chlorite, glauconite orgypsum. Sands rich in magnetite are dark to black in color, as are sands derived from volcanic basalts and obsidian. Chlorite-glauconite bearing sands are typically green in color, as are sands derived from basaltic (lava) with a high olivine content. Many sands, especially those found extensively in Southern Europe, have iron impurities within the quartz crystals of the sand, giving a deep yellow color. Sand deposits in some areas contain garnets and other resistant minerals, including some small gemstones.
 

Norfleet

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I'm impressed. You really went all out with this one. What you're metaphorically hoping for is still not going to HAPPEN, but points for effort.
 

Dawkinsfan69

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This has effected online gaming in a few ways.

1. All games that are made by companies that require a profit to maintain the existence of said company are blurring the lines in all genres "Which prevents refinement in each genre and concept, and promotes mediocrity"

2. All social applications are politicized into populist politics "Which prevents unique sub-cultures and individuality from evolving in the space which at a time actually encouraged growth and experimentation"

3. All games requiring social/online gaming are designed to be used by the lowest common denominator "All internet based gaming that is developed by a profit based company must conform to a demographic large enough to be competitive in the market, which increases the risk of developing new ideas that are not subsidized by large corporations."

Companies do require profits to continue making games and because of our graphics whore culture massive amounts of resources are put into special effects and pretty pixels leaving companies with no resources to put towards anything else. If you're going to design a game that has "next-next-next-next-next-gen" graphic quality then you MUST to appeal to the lowest common denominator because you cannot exclude them if you want to sell enough copies to even have a chance of breaking even.

This means:

*Game is solo-able because finding people to group with is too much hard work
*GMs chat ban anybody who hurts my feelings or says something that I don't agree with
*I need to be SUPER POWERFUL and EPIC at all times and if someone beats me in PVP or out DPS me in raid it's because they're OP and need NERF!
*Please add memes and pop culture references because my brain is a sewer

and other such community destroying qualities.

Good thing is that more and more graphical resources are constantly becoming available and it's getting a lot cheaper to design 3D games that look alright so there's a bunch of smaller MMO companies that are able to try new things with a smaller budget. I'm thinking that in a few years many smaller MMOs will be coming out with the ability to support themselves without requiring half a million playerbase.
 

Jadeite

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Thanks guys. I had been online since '94 (10 years old) to 2010 (26 years old, when WoW: Cataclysm was released, which brought an end to the last "old-school" part of WoW). I could not figure out whether my memories of the old Internet were just nostalgia and youth or if it definitely was different then. The comments by many here, some of who I assume are older, have vindicated me.

I have watched the change from the BBS days when I met most of my friends around ten years old and played Doom and Warcraft over modems (after calling them on the phone to arrange it) to the Telnet days when kids at middle school talked about MUDs at the lunch table, America Online in the '90s with all the intense role-playing chatrooms with the flowery language, and the rise of serious online games in the late '90s and early 2000's, with no match-making systems or any of the nonsense today. It was already bad by WoW, as I remember. In the last days of classic, I remember players buying gold with real money and admitting to it was no big deal (this was shocking in Everquest, as I remember), people were running bots and guild leaders did not care about it or about the "reputation" of their guild, or if they behaved badly, either. I had left for WoW from EQ because I saw what they were doing with Planes of Power. Then I left WoW again when TBC was announced (max. raid size cut in half, arenas, resilience, etc.). The Vanguard game that I went to from WoW and then left would look like a paradise compared to today's games (I'm guessing). That was in 2007. In 2008 Wrath of the Lich King had just enough remaining to still enjoy myself with low level characters and the old world. Then in 2010 they killed everything. I amused myself with League of Legends for a while until that went south. As you said, the "fight for the middle" and conformity. Girls play that game. Every person you never thought would play online games does. It changed. Used to be the game was an unpredictable, challenging and thought-provoking exercise where every game was different and you never knew who would be in a lane. Now it is pure formula that is boring and predictable. They had to force roles and structure on the game.

You are right, it all happened with the social media. I remember when I came back to The Burning Crusade in 2007 it felt like a completely different game. People I never thought to hear on voice chat (and voice chat itself was already an oddity that people insisted on it, coming from EQ where that vibe of seriousness and immersion-breaking was not prevalent). The "must have 3 cc" of pick-up groups, and the ultra inanity of "daily quests". Already the formula was being found. I remember all the silly ostentation of WotLK with huge flying mounts and titles that everyone else had (coming off of classic, where being a high warlord or grand marshall made you the envy of a server). Then people started leaving groups without a word after a single wipe. "Pick-up raids" became possible, impossible in classic. Badges, daily quests, farming farming farming. That's another thing--I had the time of my life in classic saving for my "epic mount". I would travel all of the world searching through treasure chests, batting the alliance and exploring new areas. By TBC treasure chests were gone, the game told you how to earn money, it was a formula. Cataclysm was the complete end of an era, though.

Now that I'm 31 I question other aspects of MMORPGs--why are they all about fighting? Why do we need to kill so many creatures to play the game? Why is there no attempt at plot? The poster was right when he said that old people want to "relive" their youth in these games, often against all logic. Someone mentioned Second Life in this thread. That is another game I watched decline. I started in 2007. It was diverse, interesting and thought-provoking (or so I thought). There were thriving role-playing groups. Those groups have now disappeared almost entirely. The areas and players all conform to the appearance of others. Seeing unusual, interesting people in sims used to be the norm. Men often had carefree, simple looks. Now men are all muscle shapes with "six-packs", etc. Everyone has dark skin and dressed in black. It looks like the most boring "virtual world" anyone can ever imagine. And it is. Just like with WoW, most people don't devote serious time to Second Life any more. Just when things get interesting, "RL calls", "gotta go" (sometimes a blatant lie), or vanishing without a word. It's not a personal complaint, it just tallies with the general themes I have watched over the years. My entire 20s was all light college work and endless gaming. I have watched it all, from server first max level guardian in EQ2 to 20 hour days for several weeks getting high warlord in WoW. I am glad to know it is not just nostalgia or naivety on my part. I am not usually susceptible to those things.

As for the future, I often read Wolfshead Online's blog. He comments on these things in well-written language. Sadly the older I get the more my tastes diverge even from my so-called "social outcast" peers. I could design an MMORPG that would blow people's minds, but I often think we are not being realistic here. Gaming had already gotten unwieldy by the '90s. Even back in '82 it was outrageous, with over a thousand games released a year. How can they sell all those in stores? Video game crash of '83, anyone? Here are some facts I collected about budgets in the early '90s:
"In the early 90s, video game budgets were around $100,000 — when Doom was released in 1993 it had cost $200,000 and was touted as one of the most expensive games at the time.
Wing Commander III (1994) - $4,000,000
Wing Commander IV (1995) - $12,000,000
Ultima VII: The Black Gate (1992) – $US1 million"

Games were taking years to make in the late '90s even for huge operations like Origin (then bought out by Electronic Arts) , New World Computing (bought out by 3DO), Nintendo, and Sierra. Might and Magic Online was cancelled because of costs in the late '90s. EQ was almost cancelled. Given that, why should we expect much today? As people said and must have been apparent to older folks then, the glut of MMOs that followed EQ was going to bring the industry crashing down. MMORPGs and online games in general were doomed to ruin once all the corporate machines turned their then 3000-games-a-year mentality towards a pasttime where a high turnover rate of games is just offensive and irrelevant. Online games are not single player games. Good ones last years and years. Unfortunately corporations do not like this and would not see to it. A new generation of gamers was courted, related or not. The old ways are gone. The message once again flashes on the screen--3D games are incredibly expensive to make. $12 million dollar budget, 1995--that was when the Playstation and Saturn were released in NA, when Meridian 59 first came out. Online games are buried in a sea of their excess and redundancy. The instant that machine set its eyes on online games rather than single player (which would have been the early 2000s) it was over. Online games have been ruined by their sheer bulk. They have been driven to meaninglessness, irrelevance, and also the rise of digital downloads along with this has contributed to a lost of truth and faith by consumers like me. Again, this all relates to corporations setting their sights on online games as the next frontier. Everquest, UO and some of their successors were not like this, but once the picture became clear, they all changed. Ever wonder why? Why all these incredibly expensive 3-D games suddenly played follow the leader with WoW, even long-standing ones?

As someone else said, simplicity is best--focusing on one game at a time, savoring and enjoying it. For a while, I think, the online gaming industry was this. I remember Age of Empires II, Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament, Everquest, Diablo II--games that seemed they would last forever, and with strong communities behind them. There was not much competition then. The Internet was smaller. Is this nostalgia, or am I right again? But look into the sea of single player games in the late '90s, and how much of that stuff was worth a thing? Just tons of millions plunged into an industry long grown discredible and excessive--a natural development of games, nevertheless, and nothing to be sorry about. The real tragedy is that that wave would soon hit online games, where some of us thought we had set our stakes up for good. At 31 I cannot bring myself to search among all these new games. Saying the old ones should suffice is as obvious as saying that they've changed beyond recognition. So-called niche games like "Tale in the Desert" give hints of "fighting for the middle", having none of that passion and challenge that early online games still maintained, despite all odds and trends in single player games at the time, and all seems lost. Like the arcades, online games seem to have come and gone. Unfortunately there is a very big difference between the two.
 

adrix89

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I have no patience for the nostalgia of the past. Not because they weren't worthy games but because its environment is long gone and buried. Those who look for games similar to the past exercise futility.

What I want is to thrive in the present and this might surprise but there are a few factors that are slowly(very slowly) aligning into place.
One is that MMORPGs do not exist in a void. All games slowly shift the perspectives. The reason why we had such slump in games was because of some very bad games being popular because of the consoles, now that is changing.
Games like survival games, moba, roguelikes are thriving in the Indie scene and big granddaddy of them all Minecraft already inspired a MMO project Everquest: Next and more will follow to a greater or lesser extent.
As games spread into the very fabric of culture other mediums are inspired by them and can imagine possibilities unconstrained by limits. We already had a few anime like SAO and the much better Log Horizon and there is strong current brewing beneath it with the niche but strong LitRPG genre that will inevitably paint anime in a few years.
We also have a much better idea on what is going on with a large body of knowledge and regardless how much you would hate YouTube critics they have been hammering the stale MMO design. We also have some great designers with people like Raph Koster being a great source of design for MMOs going forward and already behind a pretty interesting project, Crawfall.

All of this and others are aligning slowly to create what I like to call the World Simulation MMO or the "Sandox MMO". But unlike in the past where it was unrestricted it would be the opposite. It will be very much more structure but design in a way to increase possibilities, socialization and drama. The thinking that a unrestricted sandbox is the best way to generate a world is a myth. Literature has rules you have to follow if you want drama and conflict, the same is the case with players, players are shit doing whatever their whim, so they should be beat into their proper place as a gear that power the world, forget heroes they are all but gears no matter how hard they try. Only then you will see the True MMO.
 
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*snip*
Except that once everyone is lobotimised to the point where humans have no flaws, they will have no qualities either.
Wow, nice > OP (Yldr). You hit on a lot of truth.

EDIT: Hmm. I was going to write how maybe the loss of communication freedom migrated to VoIP (voice-chat), but then I noticed you said GW2 didn't have that. What about Ventrillo or Teamspeak? Still, seems like a fair point.

I was just reading in a WoW forum about a similar topic. It had to do with whether socialization needs to be engineered (encouraged) or simply happens on its own. The poster I was agreeing with made the argument it had to be encouraged. Another words, I agree if players don't need to interact to progress then socializing happens less. The other poster was disagreeing, believing players will socialize even if the game doesn't force them to. S/he was advocating a hands off approach.

And you make a good point about how the tools we use to communicate need to be good ones. A bad chat means people developed strategies to avoid using it. And yet it doesn't exist alone either. This phenomena is generally a move away from groups to soloing. It's somethign commonly talked about in forums everywhere > about how MMORPGs are increasingly solo-based. Essentially it's all the same thing. Bare in mind I'm doing a lot of hand waving because even soloers will chat or interact with others on ocassion. Very generally, if every1 is soloing then does the chat really matter? I argue not much. People may still communite using external programs, but when they play the MMO it's not about chatting. And because nobody cares about the chat, the developers neglect it. They're following the laws of nature. You don't spend resources on things which're unimportant.
 
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*snip*
All of this and others are aligning slowly to create what I like to call the World Simulation MMO or the "Sandox MMO". But unlike in the past where it was unrestricted it would be the opposite. It will be very much more structure but design in a way to increase possibilities, socialization and drama. The thinking that a unrestricted sandbox is the best way to generate a world is a myth. Literature has rules you have to follow if you want drama and conflict, the same is the case with players, players are shit doing whatever their whim, so they should be beat into their proper place as a gear that power the world, forget heroes they are all but gears no matter how hard they try. Only then you will see the True MMO.
What you're referring to is a mainstream sandbox. You're makign teh same mistake many others make when they assume WoW is the best ultimate supermega perfect MMORPG. You ASSUME every1 should prefer it. That's not the case. Like it or not, some people don't want to play WoW. For the same reason, some players wnat a more unrestricted sandbox.

I've played many MMO's over the years which were dismissed and ridiculed for existing because they were were not the perfect ultramega model of excellence. I imagine you'd fit right with those I argued with. We should just live and let live. If someone wants a more regulated sandbox I'm ok with that. If I want a more unrestricted sandbox just leave us alone. But that's too much to ask. For better or worse, it's human nature for us to argue and grab at each other's throats and attack at every opportunity. In a better world, if you don't like it, you go somewhere else. But not this one. In this one, if you don't like it,you scream and shout in the forums and the chats about how it needs to change. And you do that even if 95 of every 100 MMO's is more to your liking. Even if it's just 1 isolated MMO and already down, you'll kick it vengefully.

And that's why so many MMO's are just clones of each other, with the biggest ones having the most clones.

EDIT: I'm not saying a restricted sandbox is a bad idea. It's exactly what I'd do if I was a businessman. I've seen almost every form of deceit and disorder in MMO's. I've been killed too many times to count. I've lost items and homes. People kiled me in unfair and asinine ways. It literally can tear people apart. And yet that's its magic. Yet it's a hard pill to swallow. For that reason, as a businessman, I'd steer clear of it long before I can see it on the horizon. However, being a player or a man of pure passion, I'll do what -I- want. For that, only the more unrestricted sandboxes grab my soul. Not because I want to cause mayhem, but because the magic they make is raw and--while sometimes deadly--uncomparable. I might not advise anybody to do it. I find it hard even to recommend to someone who wants it. I almost tell them NO. That's why I don't make a good spokesperson for these MMO's. I can only tell the truth. It's painful. I'm not going to add sugar and lie like some do.

Remember there're amounts of restriction. Doesn't have to be all or nothing.
 
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adrix89

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What you're referring to is a mainstream sandbox. You're makign teh same mistake many others make when they assume WoW is the best ultimate supermega perfect MMORPG. You ASSUME every1 should prefer it. That's not the case. Like it or not, some people don't want to play WoW. For the same reason, some players wnat a more unrestricted sandbox.
I have no idea how you come up with that idea. It has nothing to do with WoW. WoW isn't even close to a Sandbox.
What I am talking about Is EVE, SWG,UO and any other Sandbox MMOs that was.
You can't even begin to imagine what I mean by a structured sandbox. It's not about being a hugbox if that is what you are asking. It's just that every person needs to have a role and a function that has been carefully designed, you don't let them organize by themselves and create the frameworks from the start. With this you can balance things and assure there are more viable options.

MMORPGs have some real problems that has to be resolved if you want a working world. Player veterancy and big faction stagnation is a big problem the comes from unrestricted sandbox. What you need is to have structures designed with advantages and weakness instead of the unrestricted kind. What you need is to carefully control their power and implement destabilizing factors. What you need is more ways to betray and destroy a faction from internal conflicts and that can happen only if there are conditions and inheritance systems where they can lose control.

What is needed is a structure for politics, drama, betrayal, despair, vengeance, greed and honor. If things are too efficient and controlled all you get is stagnation.
 
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What you're referring to is a mainstream sandbox. You're makign teh same mistake many others make when they assume WoW is the best ultimate supermega perfect MMORPG. You ASSUME every1 should prefer it. That's not the case. Like it or not, some people don't want to play WoW. For the same reason, some players wnat a more unrestricted sandbox.
I have no idea how you come up with that idea. It has nothing to do with WoW. WoW isn't even close to a Sandbox.
What I am talking about Is EVE, SWG,UO and any other Sandbox MMOs that was.
You can't even begin to imagine what I mean by a structured sandbox. It's not about being a hugbox if that is what you are asking. It's just that every person needs to have a role and a function that has been carefully designed, you don't let them organize by themselves and create the frameworks from the start. With this you can balance things and assure there are more viable options.

MMORPGs have some real problems that has to be resolved if you want a working world. Player veterancy and big faction stagnation is a big problem the comes from unrestricted sandbox. What you need is to have structures designed with advantages and weakness instead of the unrestricted kind. What you need is to carefully control their power and implement destabilizing factors. What you need is more ways to betray and destroy a faction from internal conflicts and that can happen only if there are conditions and inheritance systems where they can lose control.

What is needed is a structure for politics, drama, betrayal, despair, vengeance, greed and honor. If things are too efficient and controlled all you get is stagnation.
YOu use frequently words like "structure" and "carefully designed" and "rules" and "proper place" and "gears". Rails anyone?

It's a good idea for a lot of people. That's right. It's not however the single answer for everyone.
 
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I think this came down to one major thing. Time.

In the 90's and 00's, we didn't care, this was all we did, and we put all sorts of time into it. Player base was maybe a hundred thousand.

Then everyone else started internetting, and the internet became "cool". But these people a) weren't very smart and b) had social lives. Gaming companies realized they could get them to play, increase their player base 50 fold, make assloads more money, if they made the games so they could fit into this new demographic.

It started with wow, and bled into everything else. What's better for them, even, is that they make more money, but don't really have increased hardware costs, because these new player shelling out $10-13/mo are not playing 16 hours a day, they're hopping on for a bit, then going out side. Again, net benefit for manufacturers. They literally don't lose at all. The people that lose are those who want to spend 12hr at a time playing a game. but modern games don't offer that much content even. Everything is instant gratification.

This is hte whole reason i made my move to recreate ffxi in it's older glory. Players are like electricity, they will always take the path of least resistance, even if it's to their own detriment. Forcing them to work together is the only way it's going to happen. When they have to work together, they have to socialize. I have had 75k lines of player chat a day on average from just 500 players. If I were to make the game soloable, I guarantee I could get many more players, but that chat count would drop considerably.

The point is, the players don't know what they want. It's up to the companies to decide what's most important, the bottom line, or the player experience. If you can sacrifice one to boost the other, the bottom line will always win.
I agree. I love what you did (http://nasomi.com/) with your ffxi work. It reminds me of Project 1999. I think one of the strong reasons your work and Project 1999 exist is because $$$ wasn't the primary driving force. $$$ is a strong influencer on decisions. It's like attaching an amplifier to our social and fear instincts. Soon as a game maker is on unstable terrain, they start seeking a middleground. This of course leads to a lot of clones. It happens to the best of them, no matter their background. If I were in their position, I'd do the same.

But I don't think there's a single answer for everyone. Project 1999--for example--only does it for a small population of gamers. That's just how reality is. I'm glad all these things exist, including WoW and whatever will come down the road. Terming MMO's "clones" doesn't do them justice, even if that's what I think. If I don't like caramel icecream, I might call it horse poo. Accurate descriptor? No. Subjective. For the vast majority of gamers, unpopular MMO's cloning gameplay from the more popular MMO's is desirable. Imagine in your mind a WoW player trying a different MMO and wondering why it doesn't have cross-server grouping or a dungoen finder? This is why MMO's clone gameplay. Whne a game maker starts to feel anxious about the future of their game or MMO, they start bending to the wind and inserting cloned features.

And btw this linked article covers the same topic. He/she thinks survival naturally pressures us into groups:
http://www.gameskinny.com/9ltw7/mmos-are-not-games-where-mmo-s-go-wrong
"...staying alive is a personal quest for any animal. It is personal survival that allows it to continue its genetic line...However, an animal doesn't necessarily have to survive on its own. Another aspect of personal survival is the forming of social groups within a species. When staying alive is not just the responsibility of the individual, but other members of the species help the individual to survive, and vice versa, all members' chances are enhanced...Social groups come in all levels, from couples to herds, from two to thousands. The purpose of a social group and the level it takes is often dictated by how well it serves to promote the survival of the members."

Survival is the Key

Those early games, in all their brutal punishment and so-called 'abuse' of the players actually gave the players something that instinctively motivated them to form the foundation of a strong societal framework within the confines of the game world. In layman's terms: those rats handing you your ass just outside the Freeport city gates actually made you actively seek out other players for protection. You would form groups for adventuring because the world was just to tough without them, and the cost of death was too high.
 
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Norfleet

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Then everyone else started internetting, and the internet became "cool". But these people a) weren't very smart and b) had social lives.
Herein lies the problem. I'm an oldschool player, I remember those days of clans and the like. But I increasingly find myself repelled by group content, because of THIS. EVERYONE ELSE IS A RETARD. Have you actually TRIED to form a competent group anymore? These people are mouthbreathing retards. It's excrutiatingly painful to the point where I'd rather multibox the entire team myself than deal with this human garbage.

Even on the offchance you DO find a group of halfway intelligent people to hang out with, they're still members of Generation ADHD, with an attention span to match. Things like "concentrating on something for 36 hours at a time" are simply beyond their limited attention spans, which makes coordinating anything hellish.
 

Bester

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Meh, I remember playing vanilla WoW and lots and lots and lots of players had WRONG BUILDS and then mid instance they'd say stuff like "sorry, supper time, gtg". WHAT? We just spent 40 minutes going through hell to get to that third boss and now it's "supper time"? What the fuck kiddo?

You don't have the same recollections? It's always been full of retards and kids.
 

Norfleet

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Oh, you kids and your GRAPHICS. This wasn't the case back when in the GOOD OLD DAYS before you kids and your newfangled GRAPHICS. I'm talking about the OLD days, when all we had was TEXT, and you couldn't even get to PLAY anything unless you could figure out how to work a telnet. When it was considered to be normal to travel 6 hours through an environment consisting entirely of text and numbers, just to shoot up the enemy base. You couldn't be a random idiot back then and live for long, you had to know at least a few things about rocket science. Otherwise you mostly just crashed into your own home planet and died.
 

Bester

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If we go all the way back, then sure. I played MUDs before WoW, too. Most people who could afford to play were
a) adults
b) who had the money and the skill to operate a computer and pay for the internet

So yeah, back THEN, there was an IQ barrier for sure. But those times are long gone...
 

Norfleet

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And this is why grouping has become hell. The decline had already before WoW, and nowadays it's basically nigh impossible to pull a group together without resorting to multiboxing. These days, forming a group is about being your own one-man army, because good luck putting together a group with the Internet dominated by Generation ADHD.
 

SerratedBiz

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Ironically, I feel like the greatest drawback to socialization in MMOs is having to deal with autists who think that I have nothing better to do than spend 6 straight hours watching shit fly by in a neverending quest for that 2000th token you need to increase your damage output by 1.2%.
 

Norfleet

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Ironically, I feel like the greatest drawback to socialization in MMOs is having to deal with autists who think that I have nothing better to do than spend 6 straight hours watching shit fly by in a neverending quest for that 2000th token you need to increase your damage output by 1.2%.
I find those to be the best people, although their attention spans are still abominably short as a result of being Generation ADHD.
 

Humanophage

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Dec 20, 2005
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One problem I do not see being highlighted too often is that there are simply too many MMOs, so that people are encouraged to jump between them, which undermines the incentive to invest any effort into building anything lasting in the game. My biggest reason for acquiring the internet as a teen was to play UO - there was an ongoing story in a local magazine about the editor playing it, and I wanted to be part of that community. I was quite perplexed when, after a year of playing UO and just as I purchased it, the author moved on to EQ, and then again to DAOC. How can you build any lasting communities and - importantly - encourage people to join them if everyone keeps moving all the time?

I observed this issue with another genre, that of Russian text-based combat games like Combats.ru. It was the only prominent game of its kind in 2002-2004, and hence acquired a huge community, in spite of having truly pathetic gameplay. Once clones and alternatives started proliferating, the game promptly collapsed as everyone started moving about in different directions. The alternatives did have better gameplay per se, but the communities were small and fragmented, and people increasingly understood the dramatic impermanence of the things into which they were investing so much effort - including social ties. It also happened with Cybernations, which was quite popular in 2006-2009, but then waned as more browser-based strategies appeared. In particular, there was an incentive for large guilds to move to new games to establish dominance, yet it would mean that active people would move away from the old game. I understand that one of the reasons EVE Online remained so uncommonly popular, tightly knit, and social was because it was the only option in its niche.

Incidentally, I wouldn't say that the cognitive abilities of people playing MMOs have declined that dramatically. Most UO players in 2001 were pretty dense, couldn't type well enough, used 1337 language all the time, and were all around profoundly unimpressive.
 
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Mangoose

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Ironically, I feel like the greatest drawback to socialization in MMOs is having to deal with autists who think that I have nothing better to do than spend 6 straight hours watching shit fly by in a neverending quest for that 2000th token you need to increase your damage output by 1.2%.
I find those to be the best people, although their attention spans are still abominably short as a result of being Generation ADHD.
Perhaps I was lucky, but the best people in MMO was when I was in a social guild (but closely-knit, like they were close friends IRL and I joined the MMO with close friends anyway) and we ran around as a group ganking people.

Socialization in PVE MMOs is shit if you're following the formula(e) the developer gave you. Fucking shit as a group is fun socialization (almost wrote "socialism" lol). Okay, I was seriously lucky because we had a ventrilo server and joking insulted each other all day, like a group of IRL manchildren buddies.

I guess socialization works when the game is designed so that a large number of people have to interact with each other. Key word "interact" because interaction means way more than working together for a raid. Incidentally, typically people would farm shit on their own or with random groups that never talk to each other again. I'm usually the one trying to inject some sort of socialization by making jokes and shit in chat when I'm randomly matched for a dungeon.

Edit: I guess everything I mentioned is basically the same IRL lol. Co-workers don't necessarily socialize unless it's instigated for one reason or another. And friendship doesn't exist unless for some reason it was formed. Even families don't necessarily (or often don't) socialize (cough personal experience).
 
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Scruffy

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Ironically, I feel like the greatest drawback to socialization in MMOs is having to deal with autists who think that I have nothing better to do than spend 6 straight hours watching shit fly by in a neverending quest for that 2000th token you need to increase your damage output by 1.2%.
I find those to be the best people, although their attention spans are still abominably short as a result of being Generation ADHD.
Perhaps I was lucky, but the best people in MMO was when I was in a social guild (but closely-knit, like they were close friends IRL and I joined the MMO with close friends anyway) and we ran around as a group ganking people.

Socialization in PVE MMOs is shit if you're following the formula(e) the developer gave you. Fucking shit as a group is fun socialization (almost wrote "socialism" lol). Okay, I was seriously lucky because we had a ventrilo server and joking insulted each other all day, like a group of IRL manchildren buddies.

I guess socialization works when the game is designed so that a large number of people have to interact with each other. Key word "interact" because interaction means way more than working together for a raid. Incidentally, typically people would farm shit on their own or with random groups that never talk to each other again. I'm usually the one trying to inject some sort of socialization by making jokes and shit in chat when I'm randomly matched for a dungeon.

Edit: I guess everything I mentioned is basically the same IRL lol. Co-workers don't necessarily socialize unless it's instigated for one reason or another. And friendship doesn't exist unless for some reason it was formed. Even families don't necessarily (or often don't) socialize (cough personal experience).


my idea is that when it used to be stuff for nerds, like minded people were meeting. Now that everyone and their grandparents play, it's mostly retarded kids
and russians and brazilians, who ruin everything
 

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