Thoughts on playing together

[Ronin Storm]

I'm sure we're all familiar with the stories of two people who start playing an MMORPG together. They play together for maybe twenty levels, carefully helping each other out so that they stay in step. Then comes a point where one of them needs to take a break -- maybe work steps in, or they go on holiday, or have some assignment to do. The other person, though, still wants to play and so carries on just intending to do "a little bit more". The break goes on for a week, maybe two, and that "little bit" turns in "a whole lot". Suddenly there's an eight level gap (or more) and the two who started out playing together can no longer do so without a massive amount of catch-up play. I've rarely seen that ever recover.

It's a familiar tale. Penny arcade did an amusing strip on it back in 2004. It'd be good if we could come up with a plan to avoid the worst of this... (surely?!)

So, here's my thoughts on what we can do.

There are two main situations that are likely to occur. One is that a small number of us play more or level harder than the rest and so starting pushing ahead of the rest of us. The other is that one or two get caught up with things in the real world and don't get as much opportunity to play as the rest of us, so fall behind.

For the minority out-levelling the majority, I see two easy solutions. First, the people who are forging ahead can make alts and play those as well. They get plenty of chance to play, still, without pushing their main characters too far ahead. Second, most of us have alts (mains?) on other servers -- a bouncing around never hurt.

For the minority lagging behind the solution is harder to see, but something we should be considering because our play group is not fixed. New people are welcome to join THN at any time and, accordingly, join the THN WoW group at any time. Unless, coincidentally, they've already got a character on Scarshield Legion, they'll be starting from scratch and it'll take them a while to catch up, especially if we're all off in mid level 30...!

Only two thoughts strike me for the new joiners and those who fall behind -- we can spend some play sessions really working on helping them catch up, or we can deliberately start seeding lower level characters from time to time so that we can, when we want, play across various different levels with various different people. I understand that, for Battlegrounds, having a bunch of different character classes each can be pretty useful if you fancy a change from doing whatever it is you usually do...

These ideas will only work if people are happy to run with them and actually work on keeping the THN group in a state where we can, generally, find a group to play with without too much pain. That is very much up to us all.

All this seem reasonable? Any other thoughts?

 

[Haven]

Personally as we've done with guild wars I've no problem helping lower level characters catch up and also with kit to help them progress. I'm hoping that higher level characters will also return the favour. We're not going to be able to avoid potentially large differences in levels so I'd rather that we show plenty of good will in helping each other regardless of level and grouping as and when we can.

 

[Rojaws]

As I understand it, there is an intention to form a THN guild in WoW on the Scarshield Legion server. As there is currently an insufficient number of THN players to even form a guild, 'outside' recruitment seems necessary and inevitable. But not just necessary and inevitable, but also desirable. Desirable because this an opportunity to encourage others to come and enjoy the many benefits of this community -and- to assist with pressing issue of server funds! Guild recruitment policy is probably a discussion for another time and place but would suggest the possibility for a varied influx of levels on an ongoing basis. If it is agreed that the THN guild will be a relatively unrestricted group then this may help to ensure that there is always someone to play with, regardless of level - mundane or otherwise!

On a more personal note, I have found that the more I explore WoW the more there is to find out. I will probably go creating more new characters to explore the other races and classes I haven't played yet and so will be willing and able to help people out ...

 

[Ronin Storm]

As you say, I believe we do have an (as yet undiscussed) wish to form a Guild. I was going to tackle this a little later when more of us were active.

However, I agree with much of what you say. THN is an open community and as such we can both recruit people from WoW into THN and from THN into WoW. My very vague thoughts for dealing with a WoW Guild were to recommend that people who join the Guild from WoW become members here, but not make this mandatory. However, the discussions aren't going to be going substantially elsewhere so WoW members who aren't THN Games members are going to be missing out in some ways.

-and- to assist with pressing issue of server funds!

Unfortunately I think that this avenue is unlikely to help overly with our server funding, as WoW is unreliant on our server and additionally the players of WoW are already paying a subscription to Blizzard. Still, we can hope that we get some cross-seeding (a WoW player who also, perhaps, plays Alien Swarm or BF2 or whatever) and then the chances for donations hopefully increase.

If it is agreed that the THN guild will be a relatively unrestricted group then this may help to ensure that there is always someone to play with, regardless of level

My belief is that to reach that sort of critical mass we will need a lot more players in a WoW Guild than we have possible sight of at the moment.

From experience in EQ2, recruiting is an utter bastard -- you don't really want everyone you see joining your Guild (totally open policies can lead to a high proportion of players no other Guilds will take / have kicked out / etc), but similarly really picky recruitment takes forever and usually people have better things to do (both recruiters and recruitees).

I figure we can take a Haven-policy on this one -- give people a try and kick 'em out if they're persistently not suitable for some reason.

All that said, EQ2 was a much smaller game in comparison, in terms of player numbers... maybe a lot of this will be easier in a game replete with players?