The last two days I befriended someone in my guild by helping them via professions and questing. We talked quite a bit and I came to the realization that by being proactive, I was able to create a friendly environment that garnered me respect. He credited being in my current guild compared to his previous hardcore raiding guild. Truthfully though, it was my attitude towards the situation at hand that helped things along.
However, I realized that that the game in itself, despite being several years old, has gradually been losing its social environment. Some mechanics like LFG and LFR provide convenient tools for the casual player so that they don’t really need the basics of a guild for doing end game content. Many players reminisce fondly over Vanilla, but I suspect their memories are more for the community involvement rather than the mechanics of the game itself.
As the game evolves, the one thing I feel strongly about that requires improvement is the community aspect. World of Warcraft has a lot of potential to be an excellent platform to create positive communities within the game. However, as it stands, you don’t see enough focus on that aspect. Blizzard’s twisted vision of creating community is through things like Challenge Modes. But I feel that, while well intentioned, still is limited towards only the upper echelon players.
The truth is that players come and go. Many of my friends have left just because they realize the game is just a grind fest. Without having many friends to play with anymore, my motivation slowly sinks as I’m certain other players may feel. World of Warcraft no longer is the shiny bauble everyone has to look at and touch. The engine is old to the point where players no longer are compelled to just kill, pick up and talk to people. That’s why you need other mechanisms to get players back into the game.
New raiding content, arenas, etc. and game mechanics surrounding those aspects, imo, are not the answer neither. Certainly, the top end players will always be around, but Blizzard again is missing the point in catering to a small crowd. What’s needed are the social incentives that made the game great in the first place.
First, the game really needs to start dividing up the player base even more. I think the dichotomy of players currently just is centered around the types of play (PVE, PVP, RP PVE, RP PVP) and geography. This is simply not enough for a game of this size. Take for instance how it’s been said World of Warcraft engenders more successful relationships than dating sites. How can Blizzard completely ignore this aspect in terms of gaming conventions?
Because of the massive player base inside of WoW, what’s really needed is a dating-like match making service. I’ve called for it for a while now but there’s little inside the game to provide something like that. Sure, you have guild finder, but I don’t see how that’s really effective. By the time, I discover someone is in the recruiting tab, it’s too late.
The idea is that you really want guilds to be composed of like-minded people. I feel that there’s not enough in game tools to provide people a way to find and manage guilds. Everything is just too broad and there’s not enough available in terms of fine grained searching features.
The other thing I would like to see is something that helps improve the quality of people in the game. I feel that there’s just too many rude, obnoxious and immature people. The game really sinks to new lows at all times with the terrible attitudes of people. And Blizzard seems perfectly fine just allowing this to be. I think when you have a game like this, there should be some level of social responsibility on behalf of a company like Blizzard to improve the way people interact. It’s really sad to think that you have more nerd ragers being created daily than people who can be of use to society.
I mean, let’s take an example of my own actions tonight. I helped my guildie, we created a bond. While that is great in itself, wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were more incentives like that? For instance, group questing bonus experience and/or loot. Or acts of charity where you provide other guild members items like glyphs, etc. Not just provide meaningless achievements, but some sort of reward to help encourage more acts of generosity in the game.
Also, the way guilds work these days the idea of guild levels is pretty much meaningless once a guild reaches 25. What other incentives are there within a guild outside of just achievements in terms of doing things together? Sure, you get some guild perks, but again that’s upon the guild hitting level 25. Or certain achievements entitle the guild to a few benefits. But let’s face it: those benefits suck on average. And once you hit that achievement, what other incentives are there to continue to encourage people to participate in activities?
Obviously, some guilds are better managed than others. Those guilds probably have great leaders with a vision. But not all guilds are built equally and many just don’t last that long. So this to me is a major issue in the game.
What about doing things like adding social points and leaderboards within the guild. For instance, you get XXX number of points based on various social activities such as guild chat, creating events, doing raids, etc. These points in turn can be used to help the guild. Perhaps, provide bonus damage in a fight, increased valor points, or gear. At any rate, these aren’t that hard to come up with and it’s surprising to me that Blizzard hasn’t come up with something that doesn’t sound cheap.
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