Comments on: [MMOs] A Little Less Conversation – A Little More Action Please

By: Pewter

Pewter — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 13:36:36 +0000

That’s a very good point, with regards to the time investment. I got thinking about conversations again because of the 22can production – Curiosity. Players there do communicate and encounter each other, but ONLY through the impact they make on the world, so even though there are thousands of people playing together, there is no direct communication.

By: Ophelie

Ophelie — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 23:43:22 +0000

About Journey – I felt a strong silent solidarity to the players I met. They didn’t feel like NPCs at all, and I did communicate with them, just not through words. However, the difference between Journey and a game like GW2 is that a Journey playthrough only takes about 2 hours. If I were playing Journey as much as an MMO, the lack of verbal exchange would get really old really fast!

By: Pewter

Pewter — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 15:52:44 +0000

@Siha I had a similar problem, I mean it’s not like I didn’t have the usual accutrements of ‘social interaction’ that I have in any MMO, and yet I chat to people a hell of a lot less in GW2, or even in Rift and WoW, than I did during 2007-2009 in WoW.

By: Siha

Siha — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 23:23:55 +0000

Yes, absolutely! Thankyou for putting this so well — when I was first writing my response posts to GW2, I tried to articulate this same feeling, and was just met with a wave of “lol you can still talk, I can talk to people in GW2 all the time” from those defending the game, and I couldn’t work out how to explain that they’d missed my point.

By: Pewter

Pewter — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 21:12:35 +0000

@Doone Awww, thank you.

I didn’t feel comfortable making claims about the social apparatus’ effect on the initial/growing popularity of WoW in the early years because I’m not familiar with the social features that other games had at the time. I do think it was down to a combination of community driven factors – but the existence of these external and internal conversations is certainly both the reason for, and a symptom of, the enduring popularity of the game.

By: Doone

Doone — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 04:08:32 +0000

I don’t think I ever realized this. I think this is a profound insight, one that’s clearly very easy for us to miss and overlook. The value of simple conversation to an MMO. I’d actually only disagree about how much part of the WoW’s early success this was. The social factor, in my opinion, was a huge factor in why it became so popular and thus successful. Delicious food for thought here. Great write up.