Over at Ramblings, JoBildo remarks on unaccustomed behavior he is experiencing which is PVPing so early and so often. In WoW, unless you were a pimped-out twink, there really was no good reason to PVP so much prior to max level. All you were accomplishing by doing so was delaying progress towards end-level and meaningful PVP. The same goes with grouping and even joining guilds. The end-game was such a big draw in WoW and soloing so efficient that many people would engage in atypical antisocial behavior for a MMO and not think anything of it. But you can't argue with success and 10 million subscribers mean that Blizzard must be doing something right with its formula.
Enter Mythic and their wacky ideas about getting people to enjoy grouping and interacting with other people...in a MMO. Almost every detail of the game design rewards and nudges you gently in that direction. One of the reasons I'm trying to find a guild so early in my character's life (aside from the obvious social reasons) is that I can't help but feel like the XP I'm using to level could also be used to raise up a guild's level. One of the design details of this game are Living Guilds that will level up with portions of its member XP. You have to give Mythic kudos for not just ripping off what made WoW so successful but also looking for ways to improve upon the player experience.
We need to remember that the guild level mechanic is nothing new.
ReplyDeleteEQ2 did it first.
And it shows how effective it is. The constant need to group to get the massive Guild XP through Heroic Quests was phenomenal.
It makes sense, and more games should do it.
I must admit to being ignorant of that fact as I never played either EQ or EQ2. But yes, it does make more sense and more games really do need to include this feature.
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