Categorized | Gaming

Playing with others, a rebuttal to The Waiting Game

Posted on 08 January 2008

Without others you cannot win!

Playing with others, a rebuttal to The Waiting Game.

While I share all Gaxer’s joy in the clearly excellent writing talents of Elliott (and wish that I had some Absinthe left) I cant help but feel that he has totally missed the obvious answer to his questions.

What is the point of MMO’s? What are the designers trying to do?

The answer is that they are trying to give you a social space to play with your friends.

Friends in RL

Friends in game

Nowhere in Elliott’s post does he mention the primary aspect to all MMO’s; grouping. Grouping is so fundamental that without it any MMO will eventually become stale and frustrating. Now, before you reach for the comments button to go on about solo content, let me make my argument clear.

Social interaction is the most fundamental aspect to having fun, whether it is with your dog and some videoshop mannequins as in “I am Legend” or being a part of a brotherhood of pillocks like in “American Pie” people cannot live without it.

What’s the point of a pose this awesome unless a friend has a camera?

What do you think was what made MMO’s evolve in their current form in the first place? The first MMO was probably multiplayer Muds and Trek back in the days of mega UNIX systems abounding in Universities. They haven’t stopped growing since. This endless expansion is because people want to play with their friends. More than that; people want to make new friends and be alongside them.

This is the core of humanity since the days of fighting Mammoths.

Also like that distant past people need each other. Look at the fundamental class balancing in an MMO such as EQ1. In this game the Warrior class couldn’t even solo something 5 levels below the player. Why? because the Warrior needs a healer. The healer needs a Warrior. And just like a team of men fighting a mammoth, clad only in furs and wielding only spears, they need to work together to achieve the big kill.

Team attack, I friggin’ hate spiders!

This is the behavior that game designers are putting in MMO’s.

Take EQ1 again. I used to be the raid master for a EQ1 guild back in the day when Lord Nagafen was the top mob.

Big, red and mean!

Naggy could rip me a new asshole in ten seconds flat. The only thing that kept me alive was my friends; my guild. And how did I meet them? I met one man, Rodrick, and grouped with him over a few days play in the lower levels. It didn’t matter that he lived on the other side of the planet and I never met nor saw a photo of him in real life. In the game, at the agreed time, we would team up together and we would accomplish much more and have much more fun than on our own. He introduced me to the guild and my natural tendency eventually led to me becoming guild scribe and running lowbie events to recruit talent. The master of the this guild was a genius with people and we all grouped up everynight on hunts. Eventually, after many battles together, we learned each others play and how the other reacted. No longer would we need to shout or order. It was natural. We were ready. We met up at the zoe line and all bowed as one to each other. Then with typed “woots!”, as this was all before TeamSpeak, we zoned in to nagafens lair and I pulled the Big Red Bastard(tm). Like clockwork we moved all as one, I stood in front of him and waved my Short Swords of the Ykesha, he roared and I took to repeatedly hacking into his toenails, which was all I could see. Healers kept me alive, Wizards nuked carefully and our leader, a mighty bard, danced a blue jig of battle. We fought that red bastard many times and the best moments was always just as he fell. The relief, the collective sigh, then the zone echoed with the shouting. Those times were wonderful.

Or, on my own, I could have killed boars.

This is now such a well known dynamic in MMO’s that most include team related bonus’s. Take EQ2, where careful watching of the events and timing special moves can lead to the team pulling off bonus damage or all sorts of events. In fact in EQ2 certain mobs are clearly marked for groups and will hand you your ass alone. This boring button mashing becomes a symphony when done in a tight group. Like Rock Band; you all play in tune. Each doing a part of the music that adds up to a cacophony of damage. The simplicity is multiplied and becomes complexity.

You cant solo this big bastard.

The enjoyment comes from achieving together what you couldn’t alone.

After I left EQ1, I quit MMO’s cold turkey for over a year and pretty much left my guild. I returned when SWG came out in the UK. I tracked down the guild’s new website and learned what server they were on. I then created a toon and logged in. I immediately made my way to the guild player-city of Mos Nevah. I hadn’t had contact with any of these people in over a year and they had no idea I was coming. Many of the officers were still the same people from EQ1 and of course the leader was still there. The city looked empty so I walked into the tavern and came across a very strange sight: 20 people were all dancing and being clapped on by another 20. I had walked in right after they had just had a hunt and they were regenerating their energy. I made a “ahem” noise. Many looked around. There was a long pause as the dancers stopped. Then someone reconised me and stepped forwards, “BASHO!” he cried.

I was home again.

They gave me a house, a speeder, a really nice sword and a shit ton of money. I then was set aside for special treatment in our groups so that I could catch up with their levels.

Soon I was raid leading again and fighting the Force Witches of Dathomir.

Nothing had changed because even though:

1. I had never spoken to these people with my true voice

2. Never met them in the flesh

3. Lived on the other side of the planet

4. Been missing for over a year

…they were still my friends.

Or, on my own, I could have hunted Chubas.

So why did I leave SWG? Soloing. I eventually became so powerful a swordsman that PVE, the core of being a swordsman, was too simple.

I could slaughter half the planet with one set of doctor buffs.

Playing with others meant PVP, which the swordsman is not best at. I tried and spent a few very interesting battles waiting for the enemy to breach our control point and therefore be in swords reach. However, when I was nuked by riflemen and beaten by TKM’s I couldn’t go on. PVE meant nothing alone and so I left.

I know games like WOW have made soloing to higher levels possible, but it is only by the shere size of the game that this is palatable. Eventually you need others to keep having fun.

If I want to solo, I will play Morrowind.

So, the crux of my argument is that I don’t think the designers of MMO’s are lost at all. They know what they want to do. They want to give us a framework where we make our own fun together with others. The whole Raid dynamic, the dancing emotes, the guild ladders. This is all very carefully made to give the space to interact with others.

Of course the MMO has miles to go. Vanguard was a drug fueled washout, the coming games look like nothing new, but as long as I can play with friends I will be eventually coming back to this genre.

Playing with others. That is living the MMO game, anything else is playing with yourself and if you are sitting in at a computer playing with yourself on the Internet then have to ask if you are merely masturbating.

Basho