Come help save mud history

[Fordel]

I'd argue small town 1950 never fucking existed to begin with, but whatever. Damn old people! 

[Ratman_tf]

I have often analogized to a village green, the gazebo in the small town's park, that sort of thing. If you are regular there you do get to know people, and end up joining a guild or whatever over time.

I am not at all antiguild. I used to be a guild leader, back in the day. :) I just enjoy more of an ambience.

By contrast, when I played WoW, i went six hours without anyone even saying hello. And nobody I said hello to stopped running to talk. Everyone had somewhere to go.

I agree with the city vs small town analogy, it has a lot of that feel to it.

The problem with stopping to socialize in online gaming and heck, in general.

[UnSub]

I have often analogized to a village green, the gazebo in the small town's park, that sort of thing. If you are regular there you do get to know people, and end up joining a guild or whatever over time.

I am not at all antiguild. I used to be a guild leader, back in the day. :) I just enjoy more of an ambience.

By contrast, when I played WoW, i went six hours without anyone even saying hello. And nobody I said hello to stopped running to talk. Everyone had somewhere to go.

I agree with the city vs small town analogy, it has a lot of that feel to it.

The funny thing about human behaviour is that the more of us that are around, the less we want to talk to each other. Put 3 people (MUDS) in a room and they'll probably start to chat. Put 25 (MMOs) in a room and they'll generally stand around being awkward.

Also, I feel fine about games encouraging socialisation, but a large ignore list requirement is also a prerequisite. Also, sandbox vs. game changes the social dynamics.

[DLRiley]

Good game design assumes players don't want fuck to do with each 90% of the time. Once you start from there THEN you can design for socialization. Good luck with that though 

[Raph]

I don't talk to folks athe village green, the town gazebo or anything else, either.  I've got shit to do and if I'm there, i'm meeting folks or I'm with my family.  If I want to meet people I'll go to parties or join a club.

Um, that is what the game IS. :)

Maybe that's the gap. I play these games for the other people. You (generic you) play these games for the game? What a weird concept. The games all suck. ;)

Seriously though. There's plenty of single player games that are far more engaging AS GAMES. Without that social element, it's not worth my time, and NEVER has been, including on the muds.

I also do not think I am alone, or else "not having a friend" or "not having met someone in the first five minutes" would not be the #1 determinant of subscriber loss in MMOs.

If folks say "hi" to me, I'll say "hi" or "how's it going" back and continue on my way.  Hell this even happens at work, too.  In the break room while waiting on the microwave - the epitome of downtime in reality - there aren't spontaneous conversations breaking out unless there's 2 people from the same work social circle there.

What a sad world...

 People don't talk or socialize in that fashion anymore.

I disbelieve. Kind of a blanket statement? And i see it disproven in ordinary life every freakin' day. Leaving aside the fact that it's outright not healthy... my mind boggles.

You're coming at things from a completely different social process than exists on the 'net or in reality today.  You're thinking small-town 1950, this is big-city 2009. If you're not there to help me you're irrelevant.  Unless fate throws people together and ONE of them makes the effort - and there's a lot of effort required - they don't socialize.  

Yeah, bowling alone, etc etc. Again, unhealthy, lonely, depressing. In fact, all those things you say are the norm are WHY we have chat on the Internet. You can't find it in RL so you come to this forum instead. :)

[Jain Zar]

^^  Yeah, but some places are more anonymous for talk, and it also depends on the person.

At work some of my coworkers expressed surprise when I said something one day since I usually spend break times with my nose stuck in a portable game.  The few people I actively talk to are ones I happened to find having similar interests.  Which is a VERY small number since I am a nerd and could give a damn about popping out children or sports, or gambling.  (In fact, fuck sports.  Its the SWG of the TV world.  45 minutes or so of action spread to 4 fucking hours.  YAY.  And gambling is utterly retarded to begin with IMHO.)

Plus when one grows up being told by everyone one is shite, one learns to not be the most outgoing person on the planet.  Not everyone is a WILLLD AND CARAAZZY GUY!! 

Some of us are just naturally quiet and that's how we do things, especially when we are uncomfortable in new situations.  Or we just think surrounding people are dicks.  Or we are there hanging out with our existing social circle. 

Not everyone wants to make new friends.  These people are kind of douchey, but its their choice really.  Maybe they had situations like mine growing up, or other bad experiences that make HAAAY YOU GUYYYYS!! not their idea of fun.

Games can't force people to hang out.  And the ones that try (like SWG and FF11) don't usually do very well in the long run.  (At least the FF11 dev team admits they fucked up.)

You can never force folks to socialize.  Give them compelling things to do and it will happen naturally like it did the first time I LARPed.  The first 20-30 minutes I was ready to bolt for the door as we were left to our devices to introduce ourselves in character.  Which was kinda stupid.  Some folks did go up and talk and all, but it felt silly, and my 2 friends that asked me to give it a shot were even having looks like "Why are we here?" and I was wondering exactly why I dropped out of the 40K tourney for.

Then the storyteller came in and got a plot moving.  It then began kicking ass as we DID STUFF.  Socialization HAPPENED.  Because we wanted it to and thus it did.  We had a cool purpose and decided to work as a team and do rad shit.

We could have ignored the plot and continued sitting in corners.  We could have done things as individuals as one chick mostly did (and everyone mostly rolled their eyes at her), but we decided independently to do our adventure-y things together.

That's how you get people to socialize.  You let THEM choose to do it.  People do not like to be forced to do things, especially leisure activities.  Put some cool toys in the sandbox and some folks will start playing and others will then break out of their shells and join the spearhead of players, and then more will.

Yelling at the kids to PLAY WITH THESE TOYS LIKE THIS NOW does not work.  Because nobody will want to play with the trucks and cars then.

And that's where SWG failed.  All your ideas to make people hang out and talk were boring, unfun, stupid, forced activities and most people could tell they were.  You forced us to hang out and we all resented it. 
When there were finally some cool toys to play with, they were all designed for multiple people and made folks bitter they couldn't play ON THEIR TERMS.

WoW has a good 80% of its content soloable.  We can play it alone if we like, or with friends if we want to, and the cool 20% bit nudges us to make friends in or out of game to play in it, you know, if you really want to.  But its optional. 

And the cool down BS you mentioned is done by having lots of things to do.  Travel, do quests, craft stuff, go shopping where a good variety of things don't require other players, or an economy designed for the top tier catasses and nobody else.

This is what City of Heroes fails to do because there is really only one thing to do for 50 levels.  Beat up stuff for the most part.  They added in other things to do a little late in the game, but even such a 1 track mind game shows it understands what folks might want.

Raph you do seem like a nice guy, but you don't seem to understand people are complicated, and few fit whatever ideals you have.  Your ideas sound good on paper, but whenever put into practice (UO and SWG) they fall on their faces horribly.

At its simplest, 10% of the audience should not be able to dictate what the other 90% does.  Your designs both ended up falling into this trap.  Which lead to GTA Brittania and a rich Republican's wet dream in SWG.  (And basically proved Ron Paul to be full of shit too, but that's going more political really..)

[UnSub]

That's how you get people to socialize.  You let THEM choose to do it.  People do not like to be forced to do things, especially leisure activities.  Put some cool toys in the sandbox and some folks will start playing and others will then break out of their shells and join the spearhead of players, and then more will.

It doesn't work like that, even in your own LARP story.

[Matt]

I never saw much RP in MUDs that I played, but I never played LP-Muds, MOOs or MUSHs either.  MUDs may be different because everything is imaginary and I think more immersive than a 3d rendered world.  MUDs also didn't require you to have a hand on your mouse and fingers on WASD either so it lent to a more relaxed atmosphere.  Plus everyone macroed everything anyway.

A codebase doesn't make for roleplaying for the most part. The service provided along with it does. RP flows from the top in some sense. If the admins aren't setting the example, it's probably not going to work.

--matt

[Matt]

Maybe that's the gap. I play these games for the other people. You (generic you) play these games for the game? What a weird concept. The games all suck. ;)

QFT.

--matt

[Triforcer]

Really?  Just because you want to game alone doesn't always mean you want to game alone by yourself.  I think that's the point ye old rednamers are missing-you can still want people around you without wanting to socialize with them. 

[Fordel]

It's like going to the park, or the hockey game.

[Ratman_tf]

It's like going to the park, or the hockey game.

My fave analogy is softball. But in any case, yeah. Just because I'm online doesn't mean I want to meet and get to know every single person on my WoW server. Hell, listening to barrens chat, I don't think I want to meet very many of them, much less play the game with them.
But it's cool to know that the community, warts and all, is out there. Without that game aspect, I wouldn't have found my current guild.

[Musashi]

Maybe that's the gap. I play these games for the other people. You (generic you) play these games for the game? What a weird concept. The games all suck. ;)

At this point it seems like you guys are just opining for the good ol' days.  And that's cool.  It's a somewhat fagged up MUD thread.  Opine away.  I used to opine for EQ all the time when I first started playing WoW.  But like... then I got over myself and had fun anyway.  I don't really miss EQ anymore.  Just sayin'.

[Wasted]

As communities have gotten bigger, just the very fact that you are playing the same game, especially a huge game like WoW is no longer the only context you need to invade another players personal space.  The point of importance in the village green vs city analogy is that the residents of the small town feel ownership of the green and thus feel they have the authority and context to engage newcomers.  Just like the host of the party, or boss or whatever other authority figure is normally the ice breaker for people and introduces them to others, so too in games you need those figures.

All but the most dedicated soloers want some forms of human interaction within the game, they just don't want inapproriate interaction.  The guy running around saying hi to everyone expecting people to contribute conversation to their unsolicited introduction are showing a lack of social skills, not the opposite.

WAR had all the tools in the world to get players together, Public Quests, Open Parties, large RVR potential.  It was socially among the most barren online game I have played for a long time.  I think many people resent developer 'tricks' to get people together, especially with forced pve combat grouping.  You put in the effort you need to get the people around you that you need to complete your goal and then you are done with them.  All down-time like waiting for a PQ to reset was, a chance to turn in some quests or a quick afk for a drink, not a chance to ask what people think of their local sports team.

I would like that games offer more icebreaker opportunites and add more out of combat experiences to facilitate more socialisation, but I don't play these games with the hopes that I will instantly and easily find new friends all the time.

[UnSub]

Just to throw this out there: in CoH/V, the old version of the Hamidon raid that let more than 100 heroes into the zone (iirc) was seen as a great social environment, with players chatting between rounds of knocking the Hamidon down. With the strategies being used, that many heroes were redundant, but it meant a lot could perform small tasks within the scope of the fight and still have time to chat (or just chat and leech off the rest of the team's hard work.

The revamped Hami raid limits the number of heroes to 50 and makes players work a lot harder to get the job done, thus eliminating the social element. There are players who resent the change in the removal of this social element in making something more challenging. But again, there are others who hated the leeching social element too.

[Nyght]

Maybe that's the gap. I play these games for the other people. You (generic you) play these games for the game? What a weird concept. The games all suck. ;)

QFT.

--matt

All the information you need for successful design is in the thread. MMO players are far from a homogeneous  group. Some play for the white knuckle challange, the 'game', but many do not. Some play to be entertained by game type distractions in social environment, much like playing a portable video game at the mall, but many do not. Some play for an active social environment to chat and make friends, like going to a party, but many do not.

So rule number must be; Design for your audience, and they are not likely to be like you.

[Mrbloodworth]

Isn't F13 one big downtime for all of us, where it doesn't help us level (well, except for those in the game design section, learning C) and we sit around (yes f13 has sitting!!) and socialize? 

[Raph]

All the information you need for successful design is in the thread. MMO players are far from a homogeneous  group. Some play for the white knuckle challange, the 'game', but many do not. Some play to be entertained by game type distractions in social environment, much like playing a portable video game at the mall, but many do not. Some play for an active social environment to chat and make friends, like going to a party, but many do not.

So rule number must be; Design for your audience, and they are not likely to be like you.

<rant>

That observation is not only old, it's in the Laws of Online World Design, and I put it there because all the Diku-based muds were forcing only one playstyle. :P

But honestly, it's much older than that, of course. Those of you arguing with us about this are not saying anything new, but you're also not saying anything subtle. For example, you say "give everyone choice!" AND say "the world's not like that anymore"; you say "different people like to play different ways" and "you're doing it wrong."

The fact is that by and large players play the way the design tells them to. To the point where you can write a bot that acts like the average player get pretty much the same overall patterns. We don't get to ignore shaping socialization, as designers. If we put a building in the wrong spot, the whole freakin' zone doesn't work, and you just say "it sux," but you'll also say in the same breath "designers shouldn't force socialization." Well guess what, we build the world, we build the rules, we are either forcing it or inhibiting it, and we don't get to ignore the question. When it works, you don't notice. When we don't pay attention, random shit happens and players complain. WoW is architected to make you keep running around. They did it on purpose, and you are doing it because they tell you to.

The reason this thread started is because I said "we and you will enjoy this hobby better if we save some of the history so we can look at mistakes made and good ideas that panned out but that never got to an audience." In response, we get, uh,... I am not even sure. "who cares? it's all irrelevant." (Except when you throw specific mistakes back as arguments to make a point). Well, you get the games you deserve, is the answer.

Musashi, every answer you have given has boiled down to "it works the way it is." I am telling you, it does not work for me. That isn't "designing for me." It's generalizable. Otherwise, EVE wouldn't have users at all and everyone would be in WoW.

Nyght, "Do everything" is not a viable answer. Musashi's way precludes mine, for example.

Triforcer, *everyone* gets "ambient noise is neat." We're not stupid. It just doesn't answer the above two points.

</rant>

Not that you hardcore freaks matter anyway. Everyone knows the future is in simpler games that won't appeal to you. That's what most people want. ;)

[Yegolev]

It will just take some scholarship.

Rose-colored, indeed.

[Merusk]

Not that you hardcore freaks matter anyway. Everyone knows the future is in simpler games that won't appeal to you. That's what most people want. ;)

Your sarcasm aside, you're right, it is.  I don't have a problem with that, either.  The more people a game engages, the more fun I have.  I'm a people watcher, which is why I play MMOs in the first place.  I have a distrust and dislike of small communities as they're insular, predictable and fall into patterns way too easily.

Yes, I see the irony posting that here.

Your comment about the games being "too easy" or "sucking" compared to single player games is amusing, however.  A HUGE percentage of players cheat single player games or use cheat books, and would willingly cheat in MMOs if there were codes.  Hell, it might almost be the majority of people at this point.  Folks are looking for fun, not a challenge. We're in the mass market days, not geeks-who-think days of 198*.  Deciding that things have to be hard, complicated or obscured is focusing on a specific mindset and userbase.  Fine if you want a niche, but you have to accept that it IS a niche, first.

[Yegolev]

I could only get to Page 3.  Sorry.  I'm just going to make some comments without quoting shit from two pages back.

Most people use Vent these days.  On every multiplayer game.  Could be a lot of people using voice in UNO on XboxLive, I don't know but I would not be surprised.  I don't, as a rule, and the executive summary is because I'm 36 years old.  Underlying bits consist of "I can't yell at people while my wife/son are sleeping" and "PTT disrupts my buttonmashing, yo" and "fucking 360 mic is shitty" but YMMV.  Effect is, if I may, that socialization can occur more frequently during traditionally non-social activity such as raiding, although in a different form.  I personally don't think you need to force socialization, but new players should be informed how to get it.

I have thought for some time now that a "good" MOG community would arise if you restrict a world population to under 150 players.  Monkeysphere.  Believe it.  The anecdotes of just saying "hi" at most, and usually only when the other guy says it first, is due to the fact that these people are at best on the fringe of someone's monkeysphere.  Hell, I don't even nod at the Indians in the hallway because their expressions are a mystery and they don't act social in the first place.  People I work with, I chat with them at various times... downtime, I guess... but I sure as hell don't know everyone in the IT dept because there are a hell of a lot more than 150 of them.

Of course, there's a lot to be said about people-watching.  I am a huge people-watcher in real life.  MOG avatars, however, are generally not interesting to watch.

But honestly, it's much older than that, of course. Those of you arguing with us about this are not saying anything new, but you're also not saying anything subtle.

Welcome to F13.

I wrote some more garbage but it was stupid and I deleted it.  On to page 5!

[Slyfeind]

Really?  Just because you want to game alone doesn't always mean you want to game alone by yourself.  I think that's the point ye old rednamers are missing-you can still want people around you without wanting to socialize with them. 

This is something a lot of people miss when they say "If you want to solo, play a single-player game." Playing online doesn't mean you should always be forced to do things you hate, with people you hate, all the time, for HOURS AND HOURS. Being a part of an online community, even if I'm minimalistically interacting with it, is worth $15 a month to me. I play EQ two or three months a year and do just that. I'm paying to watch other people chat while I do my own thing. I suspect it has something to do with the human desire to belong. Nowadays, we don't have to work our way into social circles. We can just pay 50 cents a day and belong to an 11-million member exclusive online club.

[Slyfeind]

The reason this thread started is because I said "we and you will enjoy this hobby better if we save some of the history so we can look at mistakes made and good ideas that panned out but that never got to an audience." In response, we get, uh,... I am not even sure. "who cares? it's all irrelevant." (Except when you throw specific mistakes back as arguments to make a point). Well, you get the games you deserve, is the answer.

Honestly I think this thread is much more interesting now. ^_^ It's the same old shit, but it bears repeating!

[Musashi]

Musashi, every answer you have given has boiled down to "it works the way it is." I am telling you, it does not work for me. That isn't "designing for me." It's generalizable. Otherwise, EVE wouldn't have users at all and everyone would be in WoW.

Nyght, "Do everything" is not a viable answer. Musashi's way precludes mine, for example.

Yea we get the games we deserve, and eleven million of us loved every minute of it.  It's YOU who came into the game with preconceptions and got sandy vag when he couldn't find a buddy in the fucking Barrens.  THAT's why it's not fun for you?  Really? 

And my way precludes yours?  What the fuck?  Are you serious?  The whole point here is that it wouldn't preclude your way if your way wasn't obscured with nostalgic MUD flavored bullshit.  Look, nobody's saying that MUD history doesn't matter.  But be fair.  We have seen adherence to MUD dogma ruin one or two games.  You seem to be here in this thread trying to figure out why that is.   I'm just trying to help.

I understand that you don't get to overlook engineering socialization.  And I'm fine with that.  But just don't overdo it.  That's pretty much it.  Interesting that you used EVE as an example, because I'm pretty sure Ventrillo plays a huge part in social aspects of that game too.

And finally, I read your shit all the time, dude.  I think you're a really smart guy, and I appreciate your insight on a lot of game stuff.  But you're just not looking for the social gaming villiages in the right places.  They just moved is all.

[Ingmar]

WoW is architected to make you keep running around. They did it on purpose, and you are doing it because they tell you to.

And the fact that many more millions of us are doing it, by far, than any predecessor game, should give us an important lesson about how much players, in general, want or care about downtime socialization I think. The games may force us one way or the other, but people are overwhelmingly voting with their wallets to go in THAT direction, and not in the other.

[Nebu]

Any capital in WoW has many MANY people just hanging out.  WoW runs you around when you want to run around and gives you enough trinkets to "hang out" when you wish to do that as well. 

WoW is successful because there always appears to be something to do when you wish to do it.  The downtime aspect is a choice rather than an imposition. That's the lesson.  Today's gamer wants instant gratification.  Delayed gratification (such as was commonplace in EQ etc) is achieved in a more immediate, stepwise fashion.  Each small step is given more emphasis than anything in the past. 

[Merusk]

Any capital in WoW has many MANY people just hanging out.  WoW runs you around when you want to run around and gives you enough trinkets to "hang out" when you wish to do that as well. 

WoW is successful because there always appears to be something to do when you wish to do it.  The downtime aspect is a choice rather than an imposition. That's the lesson.  Today's gamer wants instant gratification.  Delayed gratification (such as was commonplace in EQ etc) is achieved in a more immediate, stepwise fashion.  Each small step is given more emphasis than anything in the past. 

It's not just today's gamer, it's modern American socieity. Oddly this is something I came to think on when I got a call from a research group yesterday.  They were asking questions about implementing casino slots and video lottery at horse tracks in Kentucky.  They want to do this because the Kentucky horse racing industry is feeling a lot of pressure from Indiana and West Virginia casinoes.  The experiences are completly different, but the casinos are getting a lot more revenue than horse tracks these days.  I started to wonder about why that is, and decided it's because of the nature of the two industries and American culture today.

Casinos: you go to at any time and have the same experience.  You know what the video machines will do, and they're always there.  You always know what you're going to get when you show up.  It's a near brainless ritual with the only variance being the payout or lack thereof.  You can almost go to the point of calling it predictable.

Horse racing:  Only happens at your local track for a 2-5 week window 2-3 times a year.  You're limited in your ability to take part. The experience is much deeper.  It's more interactive, involves more factors (is it raining/ cold, how's that horse look. Are the on the dope that day. Who's riding them?) It's also more visceral since you can see the horses. (Unless you're willing to bet on remote tracks, but that's an even more different experience. ) As such it's never the same, but it's also DELAYED.  It doesn't happen right now, when you want it, and it involves a deeper level of knowledge and intuition.  There's uncertainty and variables galore.. which scares people off. 

[Ratman_tf]

Ugh. I play on an RP server, and talking about stopping to socalize just reminds me of the (thankfully few) times I'd run across some players in town, usually dudes with female characters, Arr Peeing about how her frosty skin is the curse of her mad uncle and how she's the lost princess of FarFarAway.

For every intersting conversation to be had, theres 99 people out there masturbating in public over their mental issues. And that stuff just creeps me right the fuck out.

I guess my observation there is that I'm glad there's plenty to do. Like softball or book clubs (even in real life our socaliztiion usually has a context) it gives us a reason to be there, and a shared experience to relate to.

[Raph]

Any capital in WoW has many MANY people just hanging out.  WoW runs you around when you want to run around and gives you enough trinkets to "hang out" when you wish to do that as well. 

WoW is successful because there always appears to be something to do when you wish to do it.  The downtime aspect is a choice rather than an imposition. That's the lesson.  Today's gamer wants instant gratification.  Delayed gratification (such as was commonplace in EQ etc) is achieved in a more immediate, stepwise fashion.  Each small step is given more emphasis than anything in the past. 

See, this is interesting, And yes, it is probably because I am simply not in the audience anymore.

WoW did NOT offer me instant gratification when i started. Not even close. It ran me around slaying wolves and kobolds for two hours. I wanted to craft or "use trinkets." I wasn't allowed to. I wanted to explore. I wasn't allowed to (the game actively killed me when I tried). In fact, I also never made it to a capital, because running slaying wolves and kobolds was a prerequisite. Saying that I can get into the social scene after however many days of levelling is not instant gratification to me.

The fact that 11m people had fun doing doesn't mean anything in terms of my personal play experience. Those people needed to run around and kill stuff for two hours, and perhaps that was even the reason they were there in the first place. Now, i am a bitter, jaded, oldschool player bored to tears with killing wolves. Would I have stuck more if I had happened to go in with friends? Almost certainly. But I didn't. And in fact, I generally don't. And I get outlevelled anyway, so...

I have had to play WoW many times -- I play it some every year. But no, I don't play it for fun, for these reasons. I can appreciate it, I think it is brilliantly designed. But it isn't for me *as a player*. It did not have a way for me as a newbie to walk in, meet someone, chat a bit, go kill when i wanted to, explore a wondrous fantasy world, choose to run some risks... it was simply not designed to do that.

I am not attacking WoW for being this way. More power to 'em. I also do not believe it is the ne plus ultra template for all MMO design from now until the heat death of the universe. If it were, then there wouldn't be so many (possibly more?) US players hanging out over in Gaia or Habbo than in WoW. Gaia and Habbo offer completely different experiences equally not for me. But jeez, if i comment "Gaia lacks sufficient directed game mechanics" I don't think you guys jump all over me. :)

And my way precludes yours?  What the fuck?  Are you serious?  The whole point here is that it wouldn't preclude your way if your way wasn't obscured with nostalgic MUD flavored bullshit.

Heh. And in a nutshell... you're just saying "you can't have the games you like, fuck off. The kind of games you like are invalid!" Come on... you know better than that.

FWIW, there were plenty of muds which had the same gogogogo quality that WoW does. Far less slick, but totally addicting, never pausing to chat sort of vibe. I didn't like them either.

Here's the closest analogy I can give you. If WoW is techno music going at 200bpm, and you tell me "hey, you can always a) get a private booth where the music is muffled" or "hey, you can always leave the club... we're all here to dance." There's lots of other kinds of clubs, and other kinds of music, and kinds of people. Nobody would make the claim all music and all clubs have changed, it's just the way the world is now.

[Ratman_tf]

I am not attacking WoW for being this way. More power to 'em. I also do not believe it is the ne plus ultra template for all MMO design from now until the heat death of the universe. If it were, then there wouldn't be so many (possibly more?) US players hanging out over in Gaia or Habbo than in WoW. Gaia and Habbo offer completely different experiences equally not for me. But jeez, if i comment "Gaia lacks sufficient directed game mechanics" I don't think you guys jump all over me. :)

Gaia and Habbo (AFAIK) aren't as much games as places to hang out and include some gamey aspects. We don't expect them to have directed game mechanics much like we expect directed game mechanics from games like WoW.

Which you already know. I think there's a lot of talking past each other going on here. I also think there's not a small amount of designing past gamers expectations in this thread. 

[Slyfeind]

Any capital in WoW has many MANY people just hanging out.  WoW runs you around when you want to run around and gives you enough trinkets to "hang out" when you wish to do that as well.

I can think of no reason to use any city as a social hub, except the Trade channel which is only accessible from the capitols. All other attempts to do anything besides questing, raiding, or PvP are cockblocked.

[Xuri]

Not that you hardcore freaks matter anyway. Everyone knows the future is in simpler games that won't appeal to you. That's what most people want. ;)

Oi! Didn't you get the memo? White is the new green.

[Musashi]

And my way precludes yours?  What the fuck?  Are you serious?  The whole point here is that it wouldn't preclude your way if your way wasn't obscured with nostalgic MUD flavored bullshit.

Heh. And in a nutshell... you're just saying "you can't have the games you like, fuck off. The kind of games you like are invalid!" Come on... you know better than that.

FWIW, there were plenty of muds which had the same gogogogo quality that WoW does. Far less slick, but totally addicting, never pausing to chat sort of vibe. I didn't like them either.

Here's the closest analogy I can give you. If WoW is techno music going at 200bpm, and you tell me "hey, you can always a) get a private booth where the music is muffled" or "hey, you can always leave the club... we're all here to dance." There's lots of other kinds of clubs, and other kinds of music, and kinds of people. Nobody would make the claim all music and all clubs have changed, it's just the way the world is now.

OMG DUDE I'M SO NOT SAYING YOUR PLAY STYLE IS INVALID.  Oy.  I give up.

Here.  If it will make you happy, I'd admit it probably wouldn't bother me if WoW encouraged a little more grouping earlier in the game, so long as it wasn't foisted on people.  But the fact is that earlier in the game's evolution they actually didn't include any sort of LFG system, and were reluctant to include it for that very reason.  They wanted the zone in for dungeons to be little hubs for people to congregate around.  Then when facing outcry for a more robust way to find people who were LFG without the annoyance of actually having to speak to someone, they did what they thought was a compromise.  They enabled a decent LFG UI that would only pop up at a Meeting Stone right outside of the instance.  But nobody used them pretty much ever.  Why?  #1 We're all in vent trying to get our groups.  #2 Nobody wanted to risk running all the way out to an instance to bring up a silly UI only to find out that nobody else was using it.  So they finally enabled the UI for use anywhere in the world and made the stones summon people in your group right to the front of the instance, and even then people only sort of use it.  They mostly just use it for the summoning.  It also made starting raids on time WAY less retarded.

[Ingmar]

Heh. And in a nutshell... you're just saying "you can't have the games you like, fuck off. The kind of games you like are invalid!" Come on... you know better than that.

Invalid, no. Increasingly niche and unlikely to give a ROI on the massive amount of cash it would take to really do it right on a large scale? That is getting more plausible.

[IainC]

Raph, I think you're arguing past people. As I see it, you're talking about games you like to play, other people are trying to engage you as a designer on what games you think others would like to play. As you already stated you don't design games for yourself, your personal preference isn't really relevant beyond some autobiographical context.