Monday, September 22, 2008

Warhammer Online - Better Grouping = Dead Silence

Reading a post from MMOMENT of ZEN, there seems to be a minor chink in the "innovative" grouping mechanics of WAR.

Lars postulates..
"In WAR, people join randomly, do their own thing, and drop out when they feel like it. Of course, this varies from group to group: I've joined friendlier groups that did talk a little, but the majority of them are silent. Its worse than silence. Most of the groups were unorganized and everyone acted as individuals; even though we were "grouped" from the game mechanic's perspective, we were still playing on our own. Even if someone tried to talk the group into utilizing a strategy, maybe by helpfully suggesting that someone (not me) pull (because I'm a Bright Wizard and fall apart in one hit) and that we pull maybe at most one monster at a time and focus on it instead of everyone running around pulling all fifteen champions all at once which might be a bad idea because we have no freaking healers or if we do they haven't found the heal button yet , people went about things their own way with no reply and no acknowledgement that they had even the slightest understanding of basic English."

He goes on (I hope it is a he, seems I cannot tell a guys name from a ladies../embarrassed...ok, checked profile...it is a HE) to say..
"but Warhammer feels really, really quiet compared to other MMOs"

But, the game is suppose to be all about community and grouping and love fests and peace signs from billows of smoke from various funny looking cigarettes (oh wait...that was MY past..).

This proves to be an interesting issue.

More grouping means people can form parties without the need to communicate. Makes me wonder how this fits into the PuG mentality.

Of course, the preformed groups (Guilds) I am sure do not have to deal with this. Good ole vent or Teamspeak helps.
Yet, how is the communication in what guilds are available for players being played up.
Since no forums exists in the official sense, people have to count on others advertising within the scope of fan based forums.

Is WAR maybe the game for the anti-social player?

It seems...according to X-Fire .....that the average playtime for gamers is 5.6 hours at a sitting or a day.
Compare this to 3.9 to 4.5 for AoC or LOTRO (as a matter of fact EQ2 ALSO has a large average of hours played at 5.6 per player. But the number of players is so low on EQ2, all it takes are a few to skew this horribly...).

This sure does raise questions of why the game is so quiet. Especially with the highly touted social features. Not only that, but a ton of people are playing. There is no doubt of that.

But, what is the psychological makeup of the majority at this time?

Could it be THIS is why it is so quiet?

2 comments:

Melf_Himself said...

I've noticed this somewhat as well. There are the occasional few who actually speak (like me), but most don't. My friends and I end up inventing personalities for them to explain their somewhat retarded play style.

Do I care that much? Not really. Sure, I like to socialize in an MMO, but I really really detest having to spam LFG for longer periods of time than I actually spend playing in the group.

So if I have to choose one, give me a ghost town any day!

Bildo said...

I can't say I've noticed it, but that's because as you know I'm part of CoW which comes ready-made with 100+ members to chat with in-game and on Vent.

Come to think of it, could that be why? Most of the talking going on in guilds and those players left out of said guilds are not feeling the chat?

I have noticed that the "general" chat channels are not used much, and that's likely because they're not as easy to access as they are in WoW (/1) or elsewhere (/ooc for Conan).