Decoding Dragons

[GW2] Guilds, friendlists, and social media – social apparatus in MMOs

When I talk about social apparatus, I mean the functions within games that we use to communicate, coordinate, and structure our social interactions. I think this is an area that is often under-developed in newly launched MMOs, and is sadly stunted in established games due to the complexity of improving legacy systems. This is not about social engineering, or telling players how they should interact with each other, but about giving players the tools to organize and communicate effectively.

This is a long-standing bug-bear of mine, ever since the Real ID debacle in World of Warcraft, but has been brought to the front of my mind by the rudimentary systems available in Guild Wars 2.  The game has only just launched, and the design teams will be focused on fixing all of those bugs, rather than building new features. I fully do not expect any MMO to launch with perfect social apparatus, but it still astounds me that the social apparatus so often seems like an afterthought.

Always online, always connected

ArenaNet have  implemented a BattleTag style account wide friendlist. This is a step in the right direction – keeping friendships and guild linkages at the account level instead of on the player level removes a lot of redundancy and adds much convenience. Players will also post on the official forums under their tag, meaning that their contribution to the wider community will be much more visible. This unified friendlist is mostly awesome, except that the ability to hide from guildies and friends on an alt is completely missing. That said – is the ability to hide relevant in this day and age of being always connected to social networks, email and IMs via Smartphones? ArenaNET has avoided most of the Real ID weaknesses – the service is global, has statuses, and does not use your real name.

Just as Blizzard wised up and made remote guild chat an integral service rather than a premium extra, the ArenaNet team announced prior to launch that they plan to bring GW2 to smartphones and tablets. Rift still has the gold standard in mobile apps, but the more MMOs give their customers useful mobile apps, the better it is for you and me. ArenaNet has always been about removing the barriers that stop people playing together, and other MMOs are falling in line with this reasonings. By enabling players to be connected even when not at their computer, and centralizing identity via the Tag system, MMOs are finally catching up with the way that people actually play their games and connect with their gaming friends outside of games.

Reaching out – Social Media and MMOs

ArenaNet shows a lot of social media savey in general, and this is very obvious from the way in which the CMs quickly stepped up to the plate on Twitter and Facebook in response to the headstart problems that Guild Wars 2 faces.  Their zero tolerance policy may or may not yield results in the long run, but the attempt makes me want them to succeed (I have similar ~feels~ about the Trion team.) During development, the CMs kept the game in focus through engaging with GW2 bloggers and tweeters, and generally supporting community, so it was something of a surprise to me that the game did not launch with something similar to RIFTconnect. Players in Rift are able to tweet, facebook or tumblr from the game with a simple inline command – and can even send screenshots straight to any of these social services. This feature was initially very successful for raising awareness of all the cool stuff in Rift, and allows players to communicate with their twitter friends seamlessly from the game.

The feature isn’t without it’s downsides. If you follow a lot of people, then twitter easily drowns out in-game chat in the chat window. If you forget to adjust your defaults, you run the risk of spamming your twitter/facebook/tumblr followers with achievements and discoveries.

I think a lot of GW and WoW players may well respond that they don’t WANT social media in their game. I know many MMO players who are openly disdainful of social media, so I can understand the lack of motivation to spend development resources on such a feature. I’m also hoping that they’re the sort of thing that ArenaNet will add in later, once launch wrinkles are finally gone.

Multiple guilds – not so multiple

The idea of belonging to multiple-guilds does not live up to what I was hoping for. I understand that it is not fair to allow players to garner benefits from all guilds they are a member of, and that it would be unbalanced for a character to contribute influence to multiple guilds at once. I do. I just wish that the communication/social functions of guilds were not tied to the ‘Represent’ toggle.

Currently, Guild membership is held at the account level, but active participation in a guild is controlled by the player at character level. This means that choosing to Represent your PvP guild while you arse around in the Mists results in cutting off your access to the guild chat of your RP or PvE guild. It’s fantastic that a player can treat their guild choice as a kind of running buffet, while removing the administration for guild leaders. It’s fantastic that I can ‘be in’ multiple guilds, but frustrating that it creates a social barrier.

I’ve seen a few other bloggers criticising ArenaNet for going so far with a great feature, but not carrying it on to the next step – mainly in regards to the Bank/Collections system and crafting. The guild interface and multiple guilds is another example of that. Perfectly functional, but it could have been just that bit more often. Just as you can view multiple guild rosters at once, I think you should be able to access multiple guild chats.

There are some minor interface tweaks that could be done as well, currently I find the interface doesn’t really make that much intuitive sense. Plus you get guild management functions popping up in bizarre places like the party interface. Hopefully the UX team will be taking a look at that in due course.

Social cues

Guild Wars 2 is also missing a few other things which are odd. Things I didn’t even realise I would miss. Things like guild/officer notes that help guilds sort out just who is who in this brave new GW2 world. As I throw a mix of new guildies together from a variety of sources, it would help if I could add identifying marks on the guild roster.

For me, what made Guild Wars 2 feel a bit lonely with regards to connecting with friends, was that the ‘always online’ nature of the account-guild relationship means that player presence is not telegraphed to any of the people they might be connected to. Think about things like guild achievement spam, the ‘welcome to the guild’ wall of text that often greets new recruits, or even the simple act of saying ‘hello’ to someone when they come online. There is none of that. There’s no sign of these social connections unless you’re looking at the guild or friend pane every five minutes.

Couple that with a simple thing like targeted emotes not doing anything, and the complete lack of /hello, /bye /thank, and GW2 is missing both some basic opportunities that prompt players into talking to each other, and the apparatus to encourage micro-interactions out in the field. What GW2 lacks is not co-operative gameplay opportunities, but the framework for conversations created by guild and social activity information. ‘Person X has come online’ is not a requirement for talking to a friend, but it’s the sort of nudge that has made Facebook successful, and World of Warcraft into the critical mass of players that it is.

(Please note that I understand it is early days yet for Guild Wars 2, and I’m loving a lot about the game in general)

 

[GW2] Guilds, friendlists, and social media – social apparatus in MMOs was published on August 31st, 2012, with the tags , , , , , , , , , , , , under the Analysis, Game Development, Games, Guild Wars 1/2 category. There are currently 6 comments on this article so far.

Mass Disconnects: Killing your raid faster since 3.3.3

This might just be an EU problem, but Sunday’s raid was a flop. As one person logged back in after a d/c, another person in the raid would d/c. Sometimes two. Sometimes more. The evening wore on as we waited, and it was never the same 2 or 3 people so they simply couldn’t be replaced. For once we didn’t even have a huge amount of backups either. We had endured a similar issue on our last raid night (Thursday) and we’d put it down to simple post-patch blues.

Whatever 3.3.3a did, it just made the d/c issue WORSE on the EU realms. Even if you aren’t the one disconnecting (and gravity bombing the raid in the process) sitting there for 20 minutes waiting for 3 people to login is no fun. If you are one of the people on the d/c merry-go-round, then those 20 minutes are even worse. We survived on Thursday, but after two Ulduar hardmodes for the weekly the raid leader sensibly called it a night. After the buff to Elemental, I feel rather let down and despondent. I was expecting to have a week of fun raiding, trying out the new Glyphs (currently using FtW) and trying to tighten up my spellcasting with the new hasted dot and t10 4pc.

In the end the most fun I had was in resto spec. I have a bad habit of not healing for months and months and the having to pick up in a raid environment. It was the most fun I’d had in a long time, although I still relished the chance to go Elemental on Saurfang, and I’ve decided that I’m going to heal in 10 mans to help out the group that is there to ‘gear up’ newer or more casual additions to the 25 man team. Mostly I am using my DPS gear, and am just switching in a few mp5 bits and pieces and some t9 to help catch up.

Mass Disconnects: Killing your raid faster since 3.3.3 was published on March 29th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , , , , , , , under the Warcraft category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

Knowing your limits

As some of you may be aware, the title of this blog has a double meaning. It is my guild’s pet name for Elemental Shamans, and it is a direct reference to ‘mental health’. Now I’m not going to get down and dirty on my problems here, nor am I going to use it as an excuse for my behaviour (in-game, on blogs, on chat rooms.) I am still a normal human being, and like any human being I have my doldrums and my good days, my minor annoyances and my soul-destroy despair. Having to deal with my mental health does not make me in any way special or unique. There are hundreds of thousands of people who are at the very least experiencing severe depression.

According to the Mental Health Foundation, 1 in 6 adults are experiencing a diagnosable condition at any one time. In a guild of about 100 adults (like my own, for example) there is a possibility that at least 15 of us with a mental health condition (disease? Illness?) at anyone time. In my time as an officer I have had to deal with guild members with extreme problems, and as I have had to deal with an increasingly ‘adult’ life, I’ve had to learn to deal with and manage my stress. As a family member of someone with a severe bipolar disorder, I’ve had to deal with the real life stigma all my life. I will post more on this topic, but I want to start out by posting a reminder to guild masters and guild agony aunts:

Other people’s problems are not your responsibility

A common internet phenomena (at least I’ve observed it frequently, it may well not be that common) the use of online communities as support networks. In some cases this is no surprise, many forums and internet groups are set up specifically as a support network for people undergoing similar experiences to each other. However many people, intentionally or not, will use other communities for this purpose – fandoms, creative writing, and WoW. For a lot of raiding guilds, which will approach the game on the basis of consistent performance, the mental health of an applicant isn’t an issue until it make that person an unreliable raider. However in a social or casual guild, the mental health of guild members can play a huge role in the dynamics of a guild.

And the trap an officer/guild agony aunt/guild master will fall into is trying to help everybody. It is natural, especially if the guild culture is based on mutual trust and respect. After being in the same guild as someone for 2 years, it is common to see guild members as another ‘sort of’ friend. Couple that with the normal people-managing and conflict-resolving responsibilities of a GM, and it is very easy to end up in a counselling role for someone with extreme mental health difficulties. I did it myself, in fact, because I am human and I empathise.

Right. Rambling again. I do have a point, I promise.

It is very easy to get wrapped up in the personal problems of a guild member. Try to remember this: You are not a professional counsellor, you are not a psychiatrist or a psychologist or a psychoanalyst, and even if you are; WoW is not the right place to try to conduct therapy (and the professionals I do know, do know better and gave me this exact advise.) As a guild member and a guild officer, or a GM, your responsibility is to the guild as a community. As a whole, not to ‘save’ an individual. You are not responsible for an individual’s self-destructive actions, but you are responsible for not letting it disrupt the peace of the community in general more than the other members are comfortable with.

But what about understanding?

Mental Health concerns are widely misunderstood and stigmatised. A great example is how mental illness is used to dehumanise characters in films, something discussed by Glenn Close. There is the risk for anyone with a disorder that they will be treated differently by their guild members if they ‘come out’. Perhaps guildies will end up watching them closely, and see any sign of irritation or grumpy as a signal that a person is about to ‘snap’. Perhaps guild members end up cutting that person so much slack that it ends up being an accepted excuse for imposing on guild members with anti-social behaviour.

What you can do, as a concerned acquaintance, is go away and educate yourself.  Learn about insensitive, ableist language. If you run an RP guild (or community), have a think about how players in your guild represent mental illness in their roleplay. Do they trivialize or glamorize disorders? This is not to say you need to stamp down on every person who wants to roleplay a character with a disability, but that you need to learn to be aware of the nuances of these things. Understanding mental illness certainly does not mean shutting down every attempt at exploration or discussion of such.

Sometimes all the sensitivity in the world will not stop a long valued guild member from turning around and lashing out at their fellow guildies for what seems like the most petty thing. It happens. There is no way you or they can control every variable that has an impact on their control or mood, and sometimes there is no way to prevent a conflict. Sometimes you just have to accept that you cannot help everyone, no matter how educated or sensitive you are, or how good the relationship generally is.

What is the way forward?

I have no easy answer. If a guild member has a long-standing mental illness, perhaps guild culture (and you) have already learned to adjust, and to accept the difficulties without judgement.  I can’t even begin to get into the minefield that is ‘Warcraft Addiction as a Mental Illness’ in this post, nor the difficulties of ableist language in a multi-lingual environment.

I am still learning my way around the language of mental health, the correct/incorrect terms to use on the internet. It is not something I discuss widely in my everyday life, except with my family. I am still in the process of learning the issues surrounding mental health and online communication, so if you have resources you would like to point me at, please feel free. I am intending to write about my personal experiences, and be as candid as I can.

Knowing your limits was published on March 16th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , , , , , under the Meta-blog category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.