Reading Nicolas Ducheneaut [http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2006/02/alone_together_.html] piece in Terra Nova [http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/], I was struck by the similarities in Nicolas’ research and my own experience in the game.
“It is only at level 56 and above that players spend the majority of their time in groups (probably raiding high-end instances). Moreover, players favor "soloable" classes (warriors, hunters) that, by design, survive mob encounters better in solo play - the more social classes (e.g. priests) that require a group to work well are among the least favored.”
My experience was to group seldom even back in Blackhand. I either ran with Hallgrima, or on my own. I interacted more with NPCs than with PCs. It wasn’t for an anti-social bent on my part, but for a lack of well developed or sophisticated social tools within the game.
Nicolas asks, “Does this mean that, to reach WoW's scale and attract gamers as-yet unfamiliar with the genre, future MMOs should focus less on collaborative questing and other traditional techniques to encourage interactions, favoring instead "looser," more indirect forms of social experience?”
For me the issue that leads to the stats that they are sifting is not the character’s preference, but the pragmatics of dealing with poor communication and community tools. When we speak of WOW we are also now inferring Thotbott and Allakhazamas well as Ventrio and TeamSpeak as well as forums and scattered goggled web spaces.
A guild is little more than a self-populating [and often un-populating] friends list. Communication is little more then text with occasional colors. Physical movement is generally used for amusement as opposed to tactics. A friends list is little more than just a collection of folks who you have once upon a time had the pleasure to run something there or there.
Where are the social tools for community building in a game now bragging eight million? AND . . . what would they be?
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