MMORPG’s have become pretty standard in today’s world. The idea of thousands of people playing the same game together on a single server, and being able to communicate with each other at will was once a concept only dreamed about. Now that the novelty has worn off of this phenomenon for many, has our desire to build or contribute to a true community been lost along with the novelty?
World of Warcraft is an interesting case, as it reached critical mass a number of years ago. It has in fact become a phenomenon in itself. Many arguably unfairly blame it for attracting the people that are oh-so-despised among the hardcore, known as casual players. The game has countless sites dedicated to it on the internet where people come together to share their rants about it. Television shows both mock and praise it, celebrities sneakily admit to it being their dirty little past time and millions upon millions of people fork over their hard-earned cash month after month in exchange for getting their little slice of the pie.
Truth be told, now that World of Warcraft has become commonplace – something accessible to every Tom, Dick and Harry and his dog – the idea behind it has been lost. Critical mass results in a number of events taking place. One that may not be seen as detrimental to most is the “piggyback” players. You know – those who play it because their friends play it. They feel no true sense of dedication to WoW, but partake in it because the people they already know do.
If you’ve been playing MMO’s for many years, you may have an idea of what the implications of this are. Back in the day – which in all honesty was not very long ago at all – people played MMO’s because they were fascinated by them. Dedicating hours upon hours of one’s life to a mere game was still seen as unusual by most, and best of all, the playerbase truly felt a sense of dedication to the games in question. The majority of WoW’s players of today simply don’t have any of the above.
World of Warcraft in fact far from personifies the good connotations associated with the concept of a community. A large number of people may technically be a community, but when these people hardly interact with each other one has to question the validity of it.
One feature of WoW that has salvaged most of what is now for the large part lost is the guild feature. Were it not for guilds, one can only but wonder what state WoW would be in today. Guilds encourage players to work together and befriend each other – both elements of a good community. One can therefore think of them as communities within a community. Think about the people you’re closest to in WoW…are they not your guild mates? The idiots and oracles whose chatting you listen to day after day?
So how do we regain that largescale sense of community that many feel has been lost in World of Warcraft? One has to wonder whether it is even possible that the IP as a whole will ever have that die-hard playerbase intent on making it the best game it can be. You know – the type of game where you don’t bring real world friends into a virtual world, but make new friends in a virtual world and grow close to them in real life. Whilst the potential for WoW has grown with each new player, the connections players have with each other have conversely shrunk.
Perhaps one day in many years to come World of Wacraft will become the game that many will have forgotten, and few will still know and love. Possibly then will the players it has left experience what a true online game should be – a kinship.
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