Crowfall aka Play2Crush aka Shadowbane II aka Nostalgia Online

[Tmon]

It was when you "meditated", yes, which was the primary way to regenerate mana. WoW innovated tracking whether the player was "in combat", allowing for different regeneration rates. This is one of its more important improvements to the genre which many people don't recognize, actually. It's what allows you to run around and kill monsters without waiting for extended periods between kills.

If I remember right, the devs said that without this 'downtime' no one would socialize which would be contrary to the 'vision'.  All I remember for sure is that when I tried WoW I felt like someone had taken my personal list of EQ peeves and created a game that addressed about 90% of them.  Of course new peeves grew to replace them and I moved on from WoW 6 or 7 years ago.

[sam, an eggplant]

You misspelled Vision(tm).

The original EQ developers attributed many design foibles to the Vision(tm), but the truth was they didn't really know what secret sauce made the game so popular and were downright terrified of accidentally killing the golden-egg laying goose.

[HaemishM]

They were also intransigent fuckheads.

I'm not saying we should bring back camping, but there was definitely something that made camping bearable - the socializing aspect with out groupmates. That's gone now and WoW did kill it by removing the idiotic reliance on downtime as a leveling gate. None of the designs that have come along the way since have offered much of a reason or opportunity to socialize whil doing your thing.

[Tmon]

I think a lot of socializing moved to guild chat, voice coms and whatever 3rd party apps people use to chat with friends.  That there's not much time or incentive to socialize with strangers just adds to that.

[Malakili]

None of the designs that have come along the way since have offered much of a reason or opportunity to socialize whil doing your thing.

Sure they have, they've just been criticized for "forced grouping."

[sam, an eggplant]

I don't think any non-asian MMOs have forced grouping just to level like EQ did. Everybody at least supports solo leveling.

[Falconeer]

Back to the OP, you can now sign up for the beta of thisgame, which is called CROWFALL.

http://crowfall.com/

WELCOME TO CROWFALL.
If you’re here, it’s because you’re looking for something.

Something deeper than a virtual amusement park. More impactful than a virtual sandbox. More immersive. More real. A game where decisions matter.

We are, too. We’ve been looking for years, and we still haven’t found it…. because it doesn’t exist. Yet.

OVER THE NEXT TWO MONTHS, WE'RE GOING TO BE PLAYING A GAME.
It’s not THE game; the name of THIS game is “rampant speculation.” Every few days, we’re going to be dropping hints and teasers for our upcoming new game title. We invite you to jump into our forums and challenge us. Ask questions. Debate our ideas. Make bold pronouncements about what the game might or might not be. By the end, you’ll have an idea what we’re up to… but we’re willing to bet that you’ll still be surprised, once you see it laid out in detail.

(…and if this doesn’t sound interesting to you, no problem. Check back once that timer expires, and all will be revealed with our official product announcement.)

WHO ARE YOU GUYS, AGAIN?
Our company is new, but our team has been doing this for a very long time.

J. Todd Coleman was the Creative Director of Shadowbane, Wizard101 and Pirate101.

Gordon Walton was the Executive Producer of Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and Star Wars: the Old Republic.

…and that’s just the Founders. The group we’ve brought together includes key members of practically every MMO that you’ve ever played and loved. We know how to build MMOs. Now we want to build something new. Something that’s never been done before.

We started this endeavor for you. Help us make it a (virtual) reality.

Sincerely,

J. Todd Coleman - Gordon Walton

[Rendakor]

I think a lot of socializing moved to guild chat, voice coms and whatever 3rd party apps people use to chat with friends.  That there's not much time or incentive to socialize with strangers just adds to that.

A lot of the twitchy games prevent even that, as you often don't have a free finger to even key a voice chat program while in combat much less try to type to guild chat.

[Tmon]

Well I see there are already guilds forming so that's a good sign.  I suspect that the best part of the game for me and really the only part I will ever experience will happen in this thread.  I don't think I want anything this game is promising to deliver.

[Threash]

Where did you see that?

[Tmon]

Go to the link Falconeer posted and click on community.  There's a guild sub forum that already had 9 posts in it when I looked earlier.

[Hutch]

Back to the OP, you can now sign up for the beta of thisgame, which is called CROWFALL.

http://crowfall.com/

OVER THE NEXT TWO MONTHS, WE'RE GOING TO BE PLAYING A GAME.

What a strange game, Professor Falken.

[Triforcer]

In other news, Crazy Quilt, Condiment King, and King Tut's diabolical new scheme is sure to destroy Batman.  

[Kageru]

WoW changed levelling to be convenient and solo, so it got rid of the boring and the need to socialize at the same time.

To my mind City of Heroes and GW2 showed the path to a solution with content that is solo when you are but scales when you are part of a group (formally or not) and makes that scaling beneficial to all involved but not required. Though that brings it's own problems with the encounters and tactics having less identity due to the need to scale.

I'm happy to see a new MMO to follow, but I'm expecting "Vanguard", "Copernicus" or even more likely failed kick-starter when dreams and reality intersect.

[Gimfain]

Modern MMO's have optional socializing, the problem is that socializing doesn't happen organically like it once did. Most of the time you have to step outside the game to find others to socialize with. Part of the blame should also be on the behalf of the gaming community, many guilds are extremely insular and almost exclusively recruit through forums instead of meeting people within the game.

That's not to say that its only because of the game and the gaming community, but we old-timers tend to forget how much time it took to create social bonds within games and are very quick to blame it on the game and modern gaming community. The solution to the problem lies within ourselves, and with some effort you will find ways to socialize within most games.

[Paelos]

Modern MMO's have optional socializing, the problem is that socializing doesn't happen organically like it once did. Most of the time you have to step outside the game to find others to socialize with. Part of the blame should also be on the behalf of the gaming community, many guilds are extremely insular and almost exclusively recruit through forums instead of meeting people within the game.

That's not to say that its only because of the game and the gaming community, but we old-timers tend to forget how much time it took to create social bonds within games and are very quick to blame it on the game and modern gaming community. The solution to the problem lies within ourselves, and with some effort you will find ways to socialize within most games.

Good first post. NOW EVERYONE POKE THE NEW KID!

[Malakili]

The solution to the problem lies within ourselves, and with some effort you will find ways to socialize within most games.

I don't like this line of argument when it comes to games in general.  Good design will encourage the behavior you want.  The only conclusion is that developers simply don't value social interaction in the way they used to.  They want to give you the tools to play with the people you already know, but don't care nearly as much about whether or not the game encourages you to meet and interact with new people as a normal course of play.

So, while I definitely encourage people to play the way they want, designers and developers have to bear a good deal of the responsibility too.

[Draegan]

Modern MMO's have optional socializing, the problem is that socializing doesn't happen organically like it once did. Most of the time you have to step outside the game to find others to socialize with. Part of the blame should also be on the behalf of the gaming community, many guilds are extremely insular and almost exclusively recruit through forums instead of meeting people within the game.

That's not to say that its only because of the game and the gaming community, but we old-timers tend to forget how much time it took to create social bonds within games and are very quick to blame it on the game and modern gaming community. The solution to the problem lies within ourselves, and with some effort you will find ways to socialize within most games.

While that is part of the problem, a lot of games don't promote social situations. MMOs need to take a page out of Google/Facebook's book and put the same players in front of you more often. Imagine a game like WOW that doesn't have servers. As population increases, it creates new shards of the same zone and puts people in them. I think WOW does something like this a little bit now right? In any case, instead of just lumping people together randomly as they log in, these systems need to put people together with some kind of purpose.

When you enter a shard of a zone, players should be paired with others with some kind of hierarchy of conditions.
1. In your own guild.
2. On your friends list.
3. Recently in a Group with.
4. Recently interacted with (Trade/Whisper/AH)
5. Recently shared experience with (targeted same mob, did damage in the same area with)

You get the idea. The more often you see the same person, the more you are familiar with your surroundings the more likely you're going to say hello to them a second time. It's the whole big city/small town phenomenon. I'm not going to make friends with a random person in New York City. However I might make friends with a random person eventually if I see them often enough in the same coffee shop or bar that I go to.

The tricky part is finding the sweet spot on max shard population and player interaction. Because right now, technically, that's basically a "server" right now. You need to use a "collection of servers" so you can population balance across different zones and activities which is what WOW kind does now right?

[sam, an eggplant]

WoW does do that, yes, as does Guild Wars 2.

Shroud of the Avatar promises to do something a bit more evolved, where it not only puts you in the same world as your friends and guildmates but tries to put the same people together even with no formal relationships/interactions to promote mini communities.

[Malakili]

Is there a reason to go through all this trouble when... servers... already do this?  I guess to prevent the problem of dead/dying servers not having the necessary critical mass of people playing. In any event it doesn't seem like some brilliant design that is going to move use forward, it's just a clever solution to the problem of crappy servers. Which, while related to the issue of social interactions, doesn't seem like one of the core issues more recent MMOs have had regarding the kind of interaction we have been talking about the last couple of pages in this thread.

[Gimfain]

Lots of responses, but will try to make a general response....First of all, I was a MUD-addict in ages past, but instead of making the jump to evercrack I simply stopped playing. Later on I ended up as a WoW-addict, and nowadays I mostly just spend way too much time on forums.

In WoW, rift and Swtor I became part of gaming community just by playing the game and trying to find others and also did bit raiding with those people. The only thing I did was spend a lot of time socializing with people I grouped with. My big problem with modern themeparks isn't about being social, its that I already played them and find them boring.

As I read the responses I notice that a lot of people feel like game developers should plan ahead to promote socializing but the issue is that you don't know how people will play your game until its there. You can't even be sure about it during beta, because there is a huge difference between the community during beta and the one at release. Game developers constantly try to improve their game, but they have no idea what will happen until after they did the change. Just look at UO with trammel, SWG with holocubes or WoW with dungeon finder. They tried to change their games for the better, and ended up changing gaming communities forever.

In the end what's important is interesting gameplay since that's what makes you play the initial months. While social tools help the most important thing is that you make people work together for a common goal. Once you have common goals its quite easy to find 4-5 others to make a group, and 20-30 to make a raid. Once you got a serious guild of 20-30 its not going to be that hard to cooperate with other guilds.

[Draegan]

Is there a reason to go through all this trouble when... servers... already do this?  I guess to prevent the problem of dead/dying servers not having the necessary critical mass of people playing. In any event it doesn't seem like some brilliant design that is going to move use forward, it's just a clever solution to the problem of crappy servers. Which, while related to the issue of social interactions, doesn't seem like one of the core issues more recent MMOs have had regarding the kind of interaction we have been talking about the last couple of pages in this thread.

Servers kind of do that. But a server has a static population. You're constantly choosing from the same pool of people. Dead servers, shitty servers, dead factions all effect this. However when you constantly refresh your "shard" or whatever with new people, it gives you an ever increasing chance to meet someone you might befriend.

Also dynamic populated shards allow you to play around with population caps so you can also avoid over population to some degree.

[Draegan]

Lots of responses, but will try to make a general response....First of all, I was a MUD-addict in ages past, but instead of making the jump to evercrack I simply stopped playing. Later on I ended up as a WoW-addict, and nowadays I mostly just spend way too much time on forums.

In WoW, rift and Swtor I became part of gaming community just by playing the game and trying to find others and also did bit raiding with those people. The only thing I did was spend a lot of time socializing with people I grouped with. My big problem with modern themeparks isn't about being social, its that I already played them and find them boring.

As I read the responses I notice that a lot of people feel like game developers should plan ahead to promote socializing but the issue is that you don't know how people will play your game until its there. You can't even be sure about it during beta, because there is a huge difference between the community during beta and the one at release. Game developers constantly try to improve their game, but they have no idea what will happen until after they did the change. Just look at UO with trammel, SWG with holocubes or WoW with dungeon finder. They tried to change their games for the better, and ended up changing gaming communities forever.

In the end what's important is interesting gameplay since that's what makes you play the initial months. While social tools help the most important thing is that you make people work together for a common goal. Once you have common goals its quite easy to find 4-5 others to make a group, and 20-30 to make a raid. Once you got a serious guild of 20-30 its not going to be that hard to cooperate with other guilds.

That's an obvious statement. If a game is good it will transcend the need to have good social tools because they will develop outside the game. Social entanglement increases retention rate. Creating better social tools or dynamics just gives your game a better chance of succeeding.

As far as your statement of 4-5 others and serious guilds etc, it's all depends on your game, and if it's good. Serious raiding is dead. The majority of raiding is done in LFR/Pickup groups in WOW these days anyway from what I understand (correct me if I'm wrong). Games need better "common goals".

[Rendakor]

The cross server dungeon finder (as well as cross server BGs and presumably LFR) hurt community building a lot in WoW because you never saw the same person twice because the pool is so big. Even if you did meet someone cool who you'd like to invite to your guild (or find a guild you want to join) that's going to cost them cash to server transfer. The devs decided instant action was better than socialization.

[WayAbvPar]

How about and extra 'social' page on your character sheet that details every interaction you have with another player? Make it sortable, searchable, only display chosen parameters, etc. All that data exists. Give it to the players in a usable form and let them track their interactions and do with that information what they will.

[Gimfain]

...

That's an obvious statement. If a game is good it will transcend the need to have good social tools because they will develop outside the game. Social entanglement increases retention rate. Creating better social tools or dynamics just gives your game a better chance of succeeding.

As far as your statement of 4-5 others and serious guilds etc, it's all depends on your game, and if it's good. Serious raiding is dead. The majority of raiding is done in LFR/Pickup groups in WOW these days anyway from what I understand (correct me if I'm wrong). Games need better "common goals".

Its an error of perception. What changed is that pug-raiding became LFR and far more common than it ever was before, so that far more people enter "raids". When it comes to the hardest mode of raiding, it really just changed names. Instead of being naxx and sunwell, it became heroic mode and in latest expansion it was renamed mythic mode raiding, and its still the same small percentage that play that content just like it was back in the days. In many ways the raid situation was improved in WoW after the introduction of flex-raiding for "normal" and "heroic" raiding which made it easier for casual and semi-hardcore guilds to conduct raiding.

While wildstar raiding completely backfired, it was because they wanted to recreate the raiding of 2005-2006 instead of making a modern game. 40-man raiding and lots of barriers won't get more people to do raiding, it will make them turn away from the game, especially since the rest of the game was underdeveloped.

However, I completely agree that games needs new common goals since solo->group->raid centric-games has been done to death and it only fits one type of gamer and that gamer already plays WoW.

[Ingmar]

The cross server dungeon finder (as well as cross server BGs and presumably LFR) hurt community building a lot in WoW because you never saw the same person twice because the pool is so big. Even if you did meet someone cool who you'd like to invite to your guild (or find a guild you want to join) that's going to cost them cash to server transfer. The devs decided instant action was better than socialization.

I hear this all the time but I don't really buy it. I think I met as many new people from my server before and after cross-server dungeon finder; it was fewer people *per run* but the massive improvement in queue times meant you were getting more dungeons per day in so it kind of evened out.

[Salamok]

I hope they're burning their own money on this.

Why?  Coleman basically launched his career with a fantastic failure and parlayed what he learned into an overwhelming success and as a by product helped create wolfpack studios which I was under the impression was a studio held in pretty high regard.  Now I'm hoping it isn't just some sort of string of luck and the next thing continues this progression and something even better is about to be born.  The only reason I hope they are using their own money is that hopefully it results in the founding of a more permanent studio that doesn't burn bright and fast only to sell out in 4 years.  I am however a complete ignorant on all these matters and my opinion is based mostly on what I imagine the facts to be as opposed to actual real facts.

[Rendakor]

The cross server dungeon finder (as well as cross server BGs and presumably LFR) hurt community building a lot in WoW because you never saw the same person twice because the pool is so big. Even if you did meet someone cool who you'd like to invite to your guild (or find a guild you want to join) that's going to cost them cash to server transfer. The devs decided instant action was better than socialization.

I hear this all the time but I don't really buy it. I think I met as many new people from my server before and after cross-server dungeon finder; it was fewer people *per run* but the massive improvement in queue times meant you were getting more dungeons per day in so it kind of evened out.

I was on a very low pop server in a battlegroup with several high pops, so I saw someone from my server maybe once a week. As a tank, queue times didn't really change and it made it harder to recruit new players for the guild. We recruited solely people we had played with (as oppose to forums, website or chat spam) and the dungeon finder really hurt us.

[Draegan]

The cross server dungeon finder (as well as cross server BGs and presumably LFR) hurt community building a lot in WoW because you never saw the same person twice because the pool is so big. Even if you did meet someone cool who you'd like to invite to your guild (or find a guild you want to join) that's going to cost them cash to server transfer. The devs decided instant action was better than socialization.

How about and extra 'social' page on your character sheet that details every interaction you have with another player? Make it sortable, searchable, only display chosen parameters, etc. All that data exists. Give it to the players in a usable form and let them track their interactions and do with that information what they will.

You need to be proactive in populating your shards. If you group with someone in your xserver LFD group, then you should see that person in your shard. So when the next time you fill out your LFD group, it should prioritize people that you know in that group more than random people. The game really has to put those people in front of you more often.

[Zetor]

Also, you can group cross-server for pretty much everything nowadays in WOW (mythic raids are the one exception). While it's true that most of the pugs are pretty much "4 robots killing/healing/tanking stuff, only saying anything if someone fucks up", I've had some amusing conversations in random cross-server groups. It's also not uncommon for (at least some people) to stick together after a good run and queue again... or even add people to their friends list.

[Merusk]

The cross server dungeon finder (as well as cross server BGs and presumably LFR) hurt community building a lot in WoW because you never saw the same person twice because the pool is so big. Even if you did meet someone cool who you'd like to invite to your guild (or find a guild you want to join) that's going to cost them cash to server transfer. The devs decided instant action was better than socialization.

How about and extra 'social' page on your character sheet that details every interaction you have with another player? Make it sortable, searchable, only display chosen parameters, etc. All that data exists. Give it to the players in a usable form and let them track their interactions and do with that information what they will.

You need to be proactive in populating your shards. If you group with someone in your xserver LFD group, then you should see that person in your shard. So when the next time you fill out your LFD group, it should prioritize people that you know in that group more than random people. The game really has to put those people in front of you more often.

DiabloIII learned this leson and does this.  You guys need to be looking beyond WoW, which has a 10-year-old approach based on separate servers that's been patched for 10 years towards the new paradigm.

Blizzard COULD conceivably do away with all shards tomorrow in WOW but doesn't for many, many reasons.  The first being the outcry from players who identify with an unimportant server name/ identity first.  (Login to any of the merged servers and you'll see tons of conflict and tribalism based on this alone.)

[Kageru]

If the social vehicle of the game is guilds and raiding it's no accident you get lots of closed little groups.

[Draegan]

If the social vehicle of the game is guilds and raiding it's no accident you get lots of closed little groups.

Closed little groups are a good thing though. The more tight knit your group, the more you likely you're going to keep playing after you get bored.

[KallDrexx]

WoW changed levelling to be convenient and solo, so it got rid of the boring and the need to socialize at the same time.

To my mind City of Heroes and GW2 showed the path to a solution with content that is solo when you are but scales when you are part of a group (formally or not) and makes that scaling beneficial to all involved but not required. Though that brings it's own problems with the encounters and tactics having less identity due to the need to scale.

I'm happy to see a new MMO to follow, but I'm expecting "Vanguard", "Copernicus" or even more likely failed kick-starter when dreams and reality intersect.

GW2's model is extremely flawed though, as I never felt compelled to interact with anyone I did dynamic quests with because, well there was no real reason to work together.  This might be different very recently, since I hear the world bosses actually require real coordination (people doing different things in different parts of the map, thus requiring some communication) but literally everything for the for 6 months gave me zero desire to communicate with anyone doing the same dynamic quest as me. 

You need scaling combat but there is also something to be said for the actual formation of a physical group (whether manual or automated through LFG), and I feel like GW2 suffers because of that. 

GW2 also makes the mistake of only making you group for hard content, which discouraged me from ever doing it because I didn't want to deal with bad pugs (or be the bad pugger who never did the content before), which meant I never even cared to attempt it, meaning I never even tried to find a formalized group of people to play with.