Comments on: How Players Are Affected By Solo Activities

By: Peter Clay

Peter Clay — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 11:31:53 +0000

EVE actively discourages PUGs by its mechanics and dog-eat-dog philosophy. They still happen occasionally, but generally as a result of bored older players helping a newer one with a mission.

By: Julian

Julian — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 07:19:10 +0000

Duoing is the new grouping. 5-mans, the new raiding. That’s how it is, until large group logistics are solved.

Fun fact: Alexander the Great was already having problems with large group logistics. It ain’t going away anytime soon.

I for one welcome the death of size 10+ groups.

By: Talyn

Talyn — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 00:22:29 +0000

I’ve also recently gone back to Guild Wars and I’ll add this:

Many of us aren’t being anti-social at all. But take a look at the general view of GW’s in-game “community” if it can even be called that. Trade spam and insult spam. One is definitely an after-effect of not designing the game with a form of auctioning or whatever. The other *may* be a result of the “no monthly fee” plan; maybe it isn’t. Regardless, the game gives us AI in the form of henchmen and heroes, and sadly they’re smarter and perform better than a lot of PUG players.

Now, having said that, I spent the majority of last week PUG-ing with my monk and only really had one negative experience. It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t memorable either.

On the other hand, I’m in a full guild with an alliance of five other guilds and we’re all chatting constantly and the alliance channel is active nearly 24/7. So we’re hardly being anti-social. We’re just picking and choosing who we’re social with, the same as we do in Real Life and the same as we do in every other MMO and online game.

I’m very glad you used the word “interacting” in your post though. So many players, especially the EQ vets who whine that “MMO’s are for grouping, we’re supposed to be grouping and playing together, yadda yadda…” No, we’re not. I don’t “group” with you in real life, do I? I probably don’t “play” with you either. But I more than likely interact with you in some way. We’re plenty accustomed to interacting with other players. The majority of GW players come from, if not currently play, a plethora of other MMO’s with open worlds. Just because GW instances our world doesn’t mean we shut everyone else out along with it.

By: harsh

harsh — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 22:59:13 +0000

I’ve only played a handful of MMOs, but the only ones I liked were ones where you could, or it was obvious how to, chat globally. To me this is useful so you can form PUGs, but also just to ask how to do things.

In DoAC I never spoke to anyone and gave up pretty quickly as I had little idea of what was going on. I enjoyed Ryzom, even though its starter area was small, because there were lots of PUGs and helpers. I like chatting in EVE but PUGs are (IME) very rare in EVE, but corporations (aka guilds) are very common.

I think EVE suffers a bit from the lack of PUGs since I find it a good way to meet new people whom you can befriend or block. I don’t find interesting an MMO that’s mostly/all solo - I’d rather play offline then.

And you’ve omitted, probably deliberately, the most obvious one: people’s personalities. Some of us are gregarious and some not, so different facilities/mission types suit us differently.