Part 2 of 2: MMORPG – What makes a good a community?

Character Community
“It takes a community to raise a child,” saying frequently enters my mind when I’m running around ROM.  In EQ2 players felt like a community but not the game.  One of my strongest dislikes was the far flung questing hubs where there was nothing do to there but quest – clusters of mobs hanging around just waiting to be killed.  NPCs standing carefree in the middle of danger zones waiting to give and complete quests.  My character felt disconnected from the virtual community it was playing in and trying to help.  I never understood why should I care about these mobs all the way out in the middle of nowhere?  They aren’t bothering anyone, no one is around.  That type of content design doesn’t incite any level of urgency or need for me to be bothered with these creatures.  We, the players live and conduct commerce over HERE.  The majority of the questing takes place over THERE.  In my mind, this is a huge disconnect in motivation for running between HERE and THERE.  So while there was a great community of players, the game itself never felt like a community of characters, except for within the small confines of the guild structure.

One of the reasons I loved the early zones in WOW, especially the human starter zones is that the scene of the action and conflict is a community.  Northshire Abbey > Goldshire > Westfall > Darkshore > Lakeshire > Southshore were all community based conflicts.  There were towns and communities of NPCs living in and among the conflict.  My character lived there as well, taking up rooms at the local Inn.  There is a compelling connection and story between the quests and why I’m out completing the quests.  I harvest, live, quest and could depending on profession, craft there too.  My character was part of that virtual community.  Those are the zones I quested in so that I could be part of the story.  Booty Bay was another I enjoyed even with the STV ganking on a PVP server.  As for the rest, I didn’t quest, as much as I ran around killing at my own discretion – grinding mobs.  There wasn’t anything compelling enough to make to want to do the HERE to THERE routine when I could just roam that area and kill.  Every alt I had did the GS to SS quest trek regardless of racial zone.  Those are the levels where the game offered a character community.  After that, it’s just a killing machine to max level even though I enjoyed the various zones.  Where WOW lost the feeling of character community as you progressed, it fostered other hyper communities linked to content – raiders, 5-man instance runners, casuals, PVPers, Arena players, etc. that players used as associative communities.  I believe this replaced the other more preferable to me, character community but worked for many.  On this character I …raid, PVP, Arena, farm, craft, etc.  The content segminations became the character's alignment and community.

Warhammer quests won my heart right off the bat because the action is within your community.  Where your people come from, where you as a player conduct your business and “live”, have the enemy pounding at the gates.  It stretches the distance out in to the War camp metaphor which is still like a community and it keeps the scene of much activity within villages, towns and outposts.  It matters that these mobs are there and I’m there to defend my community.  Tier 3 didn’t live up to the same concentrated community design as the previous Tiers.  Tier 4 Empire did but was vacant and I didn’t get to enjoy something I’d been looking forward to completing.  I started an alt from the Empire side when I felt burned out in T4.  I enjoyed the zones again – same exact dang quests, as I had the first time.  It had the same appeal for me as the WOW human zones.

We come to Runes of Magic and thus far it’s the WOW GS to SS run.  You’re questing in and around a community.  There are little quest hubs but they are near and in between the communities you progress through as you level.  As an added bonus, you have player housing and as much as purists will hurl their lunch, via rune magic I can enter my house from any town.  In the beginning my home was in Logar which is the equivalent of Goldshire.  I lived, quested, harvested, crafted and conducted commerce from within that community.  Next my home was Varanas which is akin to Stormwind but more like leveling through Darkshire to Lakeshire.  Same compactness of activity in and around my community and since I can access my home from there, it’s like I moved there. 

The linkage of questing where you live and work, continues throughout the zones as you level.  As a result my character feels a part of the virtual community I’m questing in at the time.  I’m more emotionally invested in the needs and success of my neighbors – other players and my NPC neighbors, whose needs I fulfill and whose welfare I protect with my actions (quests).  I stop and help when someone needs it.  I heal as I'm running by.  I buff on my way to and fro.  These other players are my neighbors.  They're my level so I see them in town - outside our houses, in the bank, at the auction house and on the way to quests.  We are part of that virtual community of other characters at that level (our town).  I maybe crazy as hell, but I think it makes a difference in the way players act out their character roles and treat each other in game. I didn’t last long enough to know for sure, but I suspect that Lord of the Rings Online with its player housing and lore locations, many of which were communities to be protected, probably feels similar.

Being a part of the character’s virtual community is an important factor to me when playing MMORPGs.  I'm playing RPGs to act out fantasy.  The distinction of doing that in a solo RPG and MMORPG is the community, in and out of the game.  I'd appreciate a bit more effort in establishing the in-game character/community aspect of MMOs.  Clearly games can be successful only having one or the other, possibly neither if the content is that compelling.  However, I think that the content in a well designed game naturally fosters at least one of these communities, and a game won’t be wildly popular with out having been well designed. 

Oh my, this rambled much longer than I’d planned. In a nutshell, I hope that game designers are looking at and conscious of gaming mechanics that foster bad community behavior.   Poorly designed options like the loot roll in WAR that had everyone needing on everything, encourages negative behavior.  Designers shouldn’t have to be morality police but they should be cognizant of the type of behavior the game mechanics they design will foster. 

I’d also enjoy seeing more content zones constructed like early WOW, early WAR and ROM.  I suppose it takes more time and planning.  But as much as I see asset re-use in all these games, can it really be that hard to keep the conflict within cities and towns reflective of that virtual world?  If you can drop a quest hub, seems like you can take the time to just drop a town there instead. I just can’t be motivated by NPCs standing in the middle of nowhere wanting me to run around and do shit.  I also think that when players, as their characters, feel a part of the community inside the game, it fosters more courteous behavior and accountability for one’s actions.

Comments

[Letrange]

Then there's the EVE community. Obi-Wan's admonition to Luke Skywalker comes to mind. "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious." On the other hand few other games give the visceral feeling of being part of a true community than EVE. Whether you want to be part of that community or not. Part of it is that the in game politics have true meaning withing the context of the game. It's not just about who's got the best raiding guild. On one side you've got the system set up that when corp/alliance drama happens there is the potential for more than just emotional drama - corp/alliance theft on a grand scale can happen. But on the flip side the feeling of flying with a bunch of seriously good squadron mate and pulling a fight out of the fire thru superior tactics and knowledge of the enemy can be a serious high. http://letrangeeve.blogspot.com/2008/11/after-famine-feast.html comes to mind as a particularly good example of that. In this particular case we knew that the falcon pilot was a vulnerable point as our fleet tackled the falcon the enemy FC in the damnation was probably telling his fleet to ignore the loss and keep concentrated but nope the falcon pilot was higher up in the corp hierarchy and was probably screaming for help, and we ended up killing all the battleships that went to rescue her. The smart thing would have been to listen to the FC and stay near the carrier in a classic RRBS with carrier support formation. But we capitalized on the enemies stupid move. Knowing the personalities involved it was just icing on the cake. The thing is without knowing the people involved this encounter would have been "meh - well that was dumb but we'll take it". Knowing them it was "omg, she didn't call them all away from the carrier did she?... She did! oh man MG must be fuuuuuuming. He can see what's going to happen, we can see what's going to happen and nothing he can do about it...".

[Hudson]

Hey Saylah how are PUGS in Runes? I mean are groups being run all the time? Or do you rarely get to see the dungeons?

The only thing that keeps me in WoW is my guild and the amount of people playing it but I would game hop if something better came along. Just so far no one has managed to come even close to the polish of WoW with that size of a user base

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

@Hudson - Funny you should ask that question. I have a post coming up about that soon (not finished yet). There are instances already at my level. Two rather large ones but I've only attempted it twice. It's very much like AC2 instances where you need body count much more than particular classes. It does bring into stark contrast the difference between WOW style raid content (bring the class) versus more open style (bring the player) and what you give up for the latter less restrictive encounter.

@Letrange - Yes, I keep forgetting EVE which does feel like you are that character when you are playing. In my mind I looped through the fantasy games I've played. One of the reasons I go back to EVE is much more the atmosphere - I feel like who my character is supposed to be when I'm playing.

[Khan]

Great couple of posts about community, Saylah! One of the things I find interesting are the differences in the communities between games like CoH, WAR, EQ2, LotRO, and WoW - especially the last three since they cater to very similar markets.

Just from my own observations, community inter-reliance seems to be key. In WoW, no one player actually needs the other players for anything outside of raiding. Even in PUG pvp, players on the losing team still get a cookie for trying. In the other games, players need each other for groups, information, etc. The knowledge that you will need another player for something tends to take the edge off some of the bad aspects of MMOs.

[Murray]

I agree.

The further you progress ingame, the less you feel an overall sense of community.

This can obviously be that you start to get into guilds and regular groups, but it really is a game design thing.

A lot of the early zones in mmo's are great because it feels much more community oriented.

When I first started playing WoW, I was surprised that I actually had a hatred toward the Horde, just because there was an emphasis that there is a war going on, I was getting ganked, and I wanted to see the other side get stomped.

As the game progressed, it was less about player interaction and more about "leave me alone, I'm farming".

I really enjoyed SWG when it came out because I was a weaponsmith, and I felt like people actually appreciated the work I did. I would spend hours finding rare ore that only became available once in a great while, so that I could get that little extra edge on the competition. And then when I had went medic, I felt as if the community really welcomed me because I was providing such a good service.

Where one end of mmo's are massive, I almost miss the small amount of people that start playing an mmo during launch. You had a smaller group of people overall, so you began to know everyone by name and looks, but as it gains more players, you start going "who is that?"

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

@Kahn - Thanks. Even though I solo a lot, I really do enjoy atmosphere that we are citizens of that virtual community and play hicely in the sandbox.

Even though the theme doesn't interest me, I'm going to have to give COV/COH a trial. It keeps being given as an example of good things.

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

@Murray - I agree. It's partially game population but I think it's much more about the overall game's design. No matter how large the server, most WOW players know the enchanters with the rare enchants because they "need" them.