MMO: Forced Friends

Humphrey the fun loving bear....LFG

I don't know if I'm grasping a trend out there where people say 'It doesn't feel like an MMO!'. They particularly say it if solo play is viable.

What is actually interesting about being in the company of other players all the time?

Is it like a cult thing? The more members your cult has, the more real or meaningful it is?

Otherwise, what's interesting about having other people hanging around? Beyond it being a chat room that happens to have monsters? That's a chat room, not about playing like groups of people get together to do in sports. Though semantically they will say it doesn't feel like a MMO and that doesn't actually contain the word player in the acronym, so maybe it isn't self contradictory. They just aren't interested in playing, they just want a massive chat room?

Though really I'd say it's just classic highschool (and beyond) need to be socially domineering "You play our way (Oh yeah, we'll pitch that not as 'our way' but 'The way the games meant to be played') or you can't play the game at all.......ah......*lights up cigarette*, oh yeah, pay off time...made my idiosyncratic perception a world standard...oh yeah! *puff puff*"

These are your mmorpg friends...

There's a thing in table top roleplay, where people will play together but then they spend absolutely no time doing anything else with each other - they don't see movies together, they don't hang out and drink coffee or beer and talk crap. They don't go camping together. They do nothing else.

Yet some people at these games will call them friends.

They aren't. They are not part of your real life, they are just part of your game life.

And over here we have someone who, in a mmorpg, thought someone was their friend - but really that person gets crossed in the game - and the game life is all that's important to them. They don't share your real life with you, they aren't your friend.

But everyone talks about how they make such good friends on mmorpgs. It's really social!

Bullshit.

Now if you manage to catch up with these people in real life, for other events (and sitting around drinking beer and talking crap qualifies as an event!), then cool...but see, it's not about the mmorpg anymore. It's bigger than that.

Suzina bought some wow gold.

Think about the stuff you've forgiven friends for in your life. I bet some of them have drunk all your beer, or maybe vomited in your car or something. Did you put them on ignore?

When you start putting the integrity of a frigging game ahead of a 'friendship', it either means you into that game like a cult, or it just wasn't a friendship.