[MUD-Dev] Re: MMO Communities

[Freeman, Jeff]

From: HRose
> Jeff Freeman:

>> I play with the one or two other people that I came to play with,
>> and if the game forces me to play alone or with people other than
>> those, then I quit.

> Ha, yes. But let's say that those two other peoples decide to stay
> in a game you don't really like, what you'll do?

In my case, that just doesn't happen.  There's really one other
person that I play MMO's with, and in any particular game we might
or might not pick up a third.  But the two of us just don't really
play without one another.  Inconceivable.

> Here we are considering the subscriptions numbers at an high
> level. Not many peoples play with one or two friends.

Seems fairly common, to me.  Even larger guilds tend to look like
collections of partners and couples (partners that won't play
without each other, that is, regardless what other more ephemeral
sorts of groups form and disband on a daily basis from the cloud of
friends and acquaintances).

> Everyone is generally part of bigger groups even if then you can
> define sub-groups inside big guilds. These groups always work as
> magnets because they really make or break the game. A good guild
> is able to mantain alive the interest of each member, the guild
> itself becomes more important than the patch notes of the game.

Oh, there are definitely wider groups of people we know that we play
with occassionally.  But there aren't too many MMO's we could go to
and NOT find a subset of this sort of game-spanning meta-guild.
That wider circle of friends and acquaintances doesn't keep us in
any one particular game, because we can change games without leaving
the circle.  Talking about people we've known in UO, EQ, DAOC, SWG,
AC, AC2, E&B and now COH (we even played NWN, Diablo, Serious Sam,
Dungeon Seige and so on without leaving "the guild"), that we mostly
keep in touch with via webboards.

So how does that 'guild membership' (so to speak) serve to keep me
tied to any particular game?

Well, rhetorical question that, because in my case it definitely
doesn't.  But you look at other web/forum game communities and it
seems obvious those folks are also playing lots of different games
and migrating from one to another as the spirit moves them - without
ever leaving their circle of friends.

> In this case your guild is simply based on two other peoples.

My 'partnership' consists of two people, but my 'guild' is pretty
massive (using the term 'guild' pretty loosely here: All the people
I know and play with from time to time, let's say).

Brings up a slightly related point: We are a little hesitant (but
only a little) to go play a game that none of our friends our
playing.  So the guild thing can discourage us from trying Lineage
II, for example (because I don't think I know anyone playing that),
but it doesn't keep us tied to any of the plethora of games that we
do have friends playing.

I think we've wandered pretty far away from the topic of "forced
grouping increases retention", though.
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