DGN: Emergent Behaviors spawned from - Re: [MUD-Dev]SOC:Willcompany sanctioned cheating hurt theMMOcommunity?

[Amanda Walker]

On Jul 22, 2005, at 3:19 PM, Michael Hartman wrote:

> My friend, you just said a mouthful. This whole "raid" phenomenon
> that has infected MMOs since EQ has gotten completely out of
> control. [...] You can barely even talk to any friends that might
> be with you on the raid because the nature of such an activity
> causes it to be gogogogogo.

Raids are minigames (roughly speaking, a "Counterstrike in armor"
minigame in most MMORPGs).  Some people play MMOs only for raids--I
know of one guild that has gone from game to game (EQ to AC to DAOC
to WoW to wherever) specifically in search of PvP raids.  That
"gogogogogo" is exactly what they are looking for.  They use
teamspeak instead of ingame chat, they have a strictly hierarchical
"military squad" style of gameplay (many members are, in fact, ex
military), and all of the rest of any MMO is back story.  "Leveling
up" a new character is just an extension of the initial character
creation screen, and the whole guild cooperates to make it as swift
as possible so that the new character can be used for "real" game
play.

The issue, to my mind, is not raids per se.  Raids are clearly fun
for a large number of players (and the success of Counter-strike
supports this, I think).  Rather, when raids are the *only* type of
high end content, you end up selecting for only that subset that
likes raids, and some achievers who just have to collect every item
in the game.

Amanda Walker
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