Playing with others, a rebuttal to The Waiting Game

This post was pub­lished over 700 days ago and there­fore may not rep­res­ent cur­rent Out­side Con­text think­ing or opin­ion. Please, do not let that detract from your enjoy­ment of it!

 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™.  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

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