{"id":495,"date":"2006-02-09T13:01:28","date_gmt":"2006-02-09T18:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/?p=495"},"modified":"2006-02-09T16:07:43","modified_gmt":"2006-02-09T21:07:43","slug":"alone-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/?p=495","title":{"rendered":"Alone together."},"content":{"rendered":"

Czeltic Girl<\/a> pointed me toward this interesting article<\/a> that explains why “soloing” is so common in games specifically designed to be social, MMORPGs. <\/p>\n

Indeed, several of my friends have asked me why I bother to play the game if I’m not going to group up with other people. Particularly in City of Heroes, I was known as someone who *never* wanted to group, even with my friends. The reasons for that were clear to me, but not to my friends. When it comes down to it, the things I like about that game are not the things my friends like. It became a grind so quickly, without even thinly veiled character growth in the form of crafting, exploration or new gear. The goal in CoH is *always* just the next level.
\n
\nWorld of Warcraft is good at giving you sub-goals within sub-goals. I can spend an entire evening exploring (and gaining XP for) incredibly well-crafted environments, seeking out rare ingredients (and gaining XP for making my way there) for some enchantment spell, seeing little plays performed by the automaton NPCs of the game, watching the environment react to itself as bunnies are ravaged by leopards and gazelle herds graze together and are suddenly spooked into running.<\/p>\n

But I digress. I feel like WoW is a better overall game than CoH, but CoH has several major draws that I will not deny. Still, grouping in CoH may be due partially to boredom with the constant grind, partially due to difficulty, but for me it was never to be social.<\/p>\n

In CoH, I only played in groups with real-life friends, but found the exercise too disappointing. My only task on the team was to keep people alive, but when people were prone to just having fun being reckless, it felt like I wasn’t getting anything accomplished. They didn’t blame me, and I understood it wasn’t my fault or anything so dramatic, but my role was to keep people alive and they weren’t letting me essentially. It was just frustrating when it should have just been a giggle fest at all the silliness. (Plus, I hate the concept of Experience Debt, but that’s an aside all its own.)<\/p>\n

Groups in general are at once urgent and dull. Most of the time, groups are formed to take on difficult quests or instances. But either you end up sitting and waiting for the group to form properly before you can enter the instance, or you form the grroup on the fly right near the quest and then feel guilty when you aren’t constantly headed toward completion. So, I can’t stop to check out the Tauren Shaman and whether he will survive his battle against the three Kolkar that have mobbed him. I can’t help him out. Or, I’m just sitting, looking for more funny emotes while we wait from someone in the group to traverse what must be leagues of virtual space before we can even get started. To leave the area and take care of other things while waiting to get into an instance is considered extremely rude.<\/p>\n

Then, there is the very low rate of individuals who are tolerable. You have ninja looters (people who abuse the loot rules to screw other people out of rewards), bad sports, homophobes and racists, 1337-sP33|<3\u00aes, and just plain immature people. If the reward of dealing with good people comes at about a 10% rate while the asshole ratio is somewhere close to 50% with neutral filling the rest, then am I not better off enjoying my experience solo rather than getting pissed off?\n\nI know that part of the game is that other people are playing it, but I think the people-watching point made in the article provides the draw. World of Warcraft to me could easily be true role-playing. You are a hero, in a world wracked with danger and war where other people are constantly off doing their own thing and there is no *one quest* that ends your destiny. If an MMORPG could be truly immersive in language and player attitude like WoW can sometimes be on an RP server, I'm pleased as punch. But for now, I'll just group when I need to, read the General chat when it's tolerable, and enjoy the game on my own terms.\n\nAlone Together in the World of Warcraft?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Czeltic Girl pointed me toward this interesting article that explains why “soloing” is so common in games specifically designed to be social, MMORPGs. Indeed, several of my friends have asked me why I bother to play the game if I’m not going to group up with other people. Particularly in City of Heroes, I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p73iP8-7Z","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":516,"url":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/?p=516","url_meta":{"origin":495,"position":0},"title":"Mired.","date":"3\/1\/2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Sorry, folks. I am just not up to blogging proper this week. For those of you who are internet voyeurs or simply friends who like to keep up on my shit by reading this, here is a short list of what is going on in my head: I feel cursed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Self-service"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2795,"url":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/?p=2795","url_meta":{"origin":495,"position":1},"title":"Your Daily Digest: Geek the Geek","date":"12\/18\/2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I think they should take away my geek card. I don't give a shit about\u00c2\u00a0Hamilton or the new\u00c2\u00a0Star Wars except for their cultural significance (Oh my God! HowEVER did they make hip-hop relevant and accessible?). 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