A long time ago, MMOs were text-based with no graphics whatsoever and were known as MUDs (multi user dungeons). During that time, forced socializing/grouping was the norm: almost everywhere require you to be in a group to survive, or to make any significant gains in gold or exp.

It was horrible.

It wasn't the social heaven that people thought it would be. You don't join the server and get lots of friendly people who are looking to group or socialize. Instead, the player population consists of closed groups of "elites" who already have their own group going and don't trust others, or clueless newbies. It takes forever to get anything done because you first need to find people to group with, then make sure those people know what they are doing or can follow instructions, and then make sure everyone has the time to complete the task. This would often fail, leaving you at square one with possibly hours of wasted time.

It greatly limited their audience.

If you can't find a group, and none of your friends are online - you can't play. If you're a new player, and none of your friends play, good luck trying to get anything done. Sometimes, you would get your friends to join the game, but because you had a head start, and because of all the barriers they put into the game, it is so hard to group with them. Good luck logging and playing for 15-20 minutes when you have the time - you'll probably need to spend 30+ minutes begging for people to group with before you can even start to play the game.

MMOs have evolved.

People realized that the smart thing to do is to instead give people the option of grouping/socializing. They realized that if people are grouping up simply because they want to gain gold or exp faster, then they are not really socializing or making friends. By giving people an option to go solo, they eliminated all the inefficiencies, inconvenience, and made sure that people who group are actually into grouping. Games like Everquest and WoW are famous for their huge, highly organized guild raids, and yet, one can finish the game solo without ever having to group. Many MMOs also realized that they need to give people the tools to be sociable: e.g. easy travel between location so you can meet up with friends, and removal of grouping restrictions so "old-bies" can group with newbies without penalty.

All in all, MMOs have come a long way from being closed elitist/snobbish communities that requires many hours of time commitment into a mass marketable genre.

Great post, I was hoping to get more responses like this that view the evolution in MMOs from another viewpoint. For me it's obvious the changes that have been made to MMOs but less obvious the motivation for making those changes. I remember exactly what you were talking about in Everquest. There were times that it was hard to find a group, especially when you were higher level. Usually though if you were a member of a guild it wasn't difficult at all to find a group. There were times where I waited 30 - 60 minutes waiting for a group but usually I would find something else to do.

For me questing is really boring. Specially the way they make it now a day with games like WoW. I spend all my time leveling looking at the map and running towards the area that is marked. I don't spend any time exploring or looking around i'm always being told where to go and what to kill and for how long. Maybe I'd like to sit down with a group and kill goblins at a game for a few hours. The auto-queuing for dungeons is even worse. I started playing another game recently called RIFT, very fun game, except i can't even tell you where the dungeon entrances are I don't even know what zone they're in unless I die. I played the whole game without even seeing 20% of the world because I could just teleport everywhere and spent the majority of my time in dungeons. The same applies to WoW, it's just boring and some of the new people don't even know half of the zones because they never had to go there.

Maybe the type of game I enjoy is more of the elitist/snobbish types but it feels much more like a grind when I have to run around doing quests. I never played the MUDs but I know in Everquest because the groups were very social, everyone but the person pulling the new mobs to kill was sitting around talking. You can hardly spend 2 seconds talking in modern day MMO dungeons or groups because they're so fast paced.

[quote name='Caldenfor' timestamp='1346900664' post='4977053']
Don't worry about sunandshadow, surely likes games, but socializing certainly isn't his thing lol. Yet he posts here quite often... I think he craves social interaction! Sunandshadow, you just need the right MMO!

Lol, I'm a she actually. No worries, I'm used to the assumption that gamedev members are male until proven otherwise; there are probably other female posters I mistakenly assume are male.

I like a little socialization - at a comfortable distance and times of my choosing. Like a messageboard or global chat channel built into a game where I can choose to participate only when the topic is relevant to my interest. Games that allow a player to be involved at a mild level in several interest-based guilds are great, especially if they also allow diceless roleplaying within a private forum or chat channel belonging to that guild. A global marketplace or other trading system within a game can also be a pleasant limited form of social interaction. I love games that let you admire/explore something another user has built/collected and leave a comment. I even occasionally enjoy a PvP arena system that will automatch me with an opponent (I'm much more likely to be interested if it is a turn-based sort of combat like tactical combat or a deck building card game). I just hate the in-my-face way many MMOs want to make basic activities within the game impossible or severely disadvantageous to not do in a group or as a social networking activity.

If an MMO wants me to play it a long time, the features it needs to have are solo achievements, minigames, collection and features for showing one's collections to others, sim gameplay such as crop growing and pet monster capturing and breeding, crafting customization such as being able to manufacture dyes and use them to recolor clothing or get tattooed, or building sculptures or quests/interactive stories for other players to admire. That is the kind of end-game (and mid-game) content I would love to see in an MMO. I think it's funny (in a pathetic way) that a lot of that is done better by the less serious game websites like NeoPets and Gaia Online than by real MMOs.

BTW I'm not arguing that a lot of MMO players are all about the socialization - I know they are. I know people who live for 40-man raids or team pvp or PUGging dungeons. I just feel like that demographic gets all the design attention. XP
[/quote]

Apologies none the less.

I was about to say, then I finished reading your post so you beat me to it; What if there were certain "mundane" activities, aka non-combat/immediate attention not required, that you could play offline through a browser on your mobile/home PC that updated portions of the MMO world.

Example: Use a separate program accessible through any web browser/app store/whatever(not up to date on all available options) that allows you partake in activities that affect you within your MMORPG desktop/laptop .exe game. For example; Your virtual "yard" in the game would be something that you maintain using this external program. You could actually play these mini-games outside of the actual game world to progress within the MMORPG world, but due to the easier and more consistent access via less system requirements to partake in and the more casual nature of the specific mini-game potentials, it can take longer than the average game as it would be a casual game experience from the start. The garden that you grow outside of the game could be updated within the game to show what you have been growing in your garden. -Bolded for emphasis-

[quote name='sunandshadow' timestamp='1346911965' post='4977085']
[quote name='Caldenfor' timestamp='1346900664' post='4977053']
Don't worry about sunandshadow, surely likes games, but socializing certainly isn't his thing lol. Yet he posts here quite often... I think he craves social interaction! Sunandshadow, you just need the right MMO!

Lol, I'm a she actually. No worries, I'm used to the assumption that gamedev members are male until proven otherwise; there are probably other female posters I mistakenly assume are male.

I like a little socialization - at a comfortable distance and times of my choosing. Like a messageboard or global chat channel built into a game where I can choose to participate only when the topic is relevant to my interest. Games that allow a player to be involved at a mild level in several interest-based guilds are great, especially if they also allow diceless roleplaying within a private forum or chat channel belonging to that guild. A global marketplace or other trading system within a game can also be a pleasant limited form of social interaction. I love games that let you admire/explore something another user has built/collected and leave a comment. I even occasionally enjoy a PvP arena system that will automatch me with an opponent (I'm much more likely to be interested if it is a turn-based sort of combat like tactical combat or a deck building card game). I just hate the in-my-face way many MMOs want to make basic activities within the game impossible or severely disadvantageous to not do in a group or as a social networking activity.

If an MMO wants me to play it a long time, the features it needs to have are solo achievements, minigames, collection and features for showing one's collections to others, sim gameplay such as crop growing and pet monster capturing and breeding, crafting customization such as being able to manufacture dyes and use them to recolor clothing or get tattooed, or building sculptures or quests/interactive stories for other players to admire. That is the kind of end-game (and mid-game) content I would love to see in an MMO. I think it's funny (in a pathetic way) that a lot of that is done better by the less serious game websites like NeoPets and Gaia Online than by real MMOs.

BTW I'm not arguing that a lot of MMO players are all about the socialization - I know they are. I know people who live for 40-man raids or team pvp or PUGging dungeons. I just feel like that demographic gets all the design attention. XP
[/quote]

Apologies none the less.

I was about to say, then I finished reading your post so you beat me to it; What if there were certain "mundane" activities, aka non-combat/immediate attention not required, that you could play offline through a browser on your mobile/home PC that updated portions of the MMO world.

Example: Use a separate program accessible through any web browser/app store/whatever(not up to date on all available options) that allows you partake in activities that affect you within your MMORPG desktop/laptop .exe game. For example; Your virtual "yard" in the game would be something that you maintain using this external program. You could actually play these mini-games outside of the actual game world to progress within the MMORPG world, but due to the easier and more consistent access via less system requirements to partake in and the more casual nature of the specific mini-game potentials, it can take longer than the average game as it would be a casual game experience from the start. The garden that you grow outside of the game could be updated within the game to show what you have been growing in your garden. -Bolded for emphasis-
[/quote]

Yeah I've thought the same thing before. No reason not to allow things like guild chat, auction house, tradeskills etc. Access to the bank and guild banks should be able to be done without logging into the game. I think you should be able to do lots of things like that. For example, if it takes 30 minutes to find a group why can't you look for a group offline and once there's a group created log into the game. I think the possibilities are endless and in this day in age having applications for Facebook / phones / twitter go a long way to market your game.

For example, if it takes 30 minutes to find a group why can't you look for a group offline and once there's a group created log into the game.

A game requiring players to spend 30 minutes offline trying to find a group has much bigger problems than marketing.

[quote name='Caldenfor' timestamp='1346980365' post='4977453']
Example: Use a separate program accessible through any web browser/app store/whatever(not up to date on all available options) that allows you partake in activities that affect you within your MMORPG desktop/laptop .exe game. For example; Your virtual "yard" in the game would be something that you maintain using this external program. You could actually play these mini-games outside of the actual game world to progress within the MMORPG world, but due to the easier and more consistent access via less system requirements to partake in and the more casual nature of the specific mini-game potentials, it can take longer than the average game as it would be a casual game experience from the start. The garden that you grow outside of the game could be updated within the game to show what you have been growing in your garden. -Bolded for emphasis-

That's such a great idea I would like to implement in my MMORPG construction kit, if you don't mind
[/quote]

It is the world's idea now.

[quote name='cronocr' timestamp='1347056071' post='4977834']
That's such a great idea I would like to implement in my MMORPG construction kit, if you don't mind

It is the world's idea now.
[/quote]

Guild Wars 2 already implemented something similar. So its not a new idea.

Personally, I would enjoy a MMO which practically requires mutualism, but is also a persistent world where structures are player-made. If you lived in a community, not only would you be hanging out with nearby people, which means that you aren't hooking up with random strangers, but you can also help them out. Moreso, it would be good if low-level people can also contribute to other people. There are things that high level people can do that low level people can't, but there are things that both high and low level people need to do.