The social problem of MMO’s
A thing that has occurred to me. I play a number of MMO’s. I play them for two reasons. One, my career path requires a certain amount of keeping on top of things, and more importantly, I want to play with my friends. That is the point of an MMO, to me. MMO’s are rarely as much fun solo, as a good single player game. I want to play with other people, preferably with ones I know.
The problem is, it is often hard to get that going. Part of that is on the players. A lack of coordination in when and where to meet up is something that the players can work on their own, but part of it is also on the MMO’s.
So here is the thing that occurred to me. Whatever the next big MMO is, they need to work on making it easier to find your friends. It is a fine line to walk, trying to preserve your privacy, but also making information searchable enough to make you easy to connect with. Maybe they could on work integrating social networks or the like so when you look at your friends tab, you see people you potentially know, so you can connect with them. Maybe integrate a calender function, so I could invite my friends to a game night, online and they can respond or not. I recognize that those are not perfect suggestions, but they might be starting places.
Currently, if I don’t know your character name, I cant find you a in a lot of games. That means if I log on to go play with my friends, I have another hoop to jump through. If I spell it wrong, then I am still not seeing you. Make it easier on me. Allow me to share a button on line, and my friends can just click on it and when they log on, they have me listed on their friends list and vice versa. Allow me to share all my characters at once, so when I share with my friends, it doesn’t matter what I am logged in as, my friends know.
There are problems with getting something like that in place, and I understand that, but they are resolvable. One of the quickest ways for me to lose interest in an MMO is to find no one I know is playing. That is something that effects churn, and it is worth some time and effort to come up with a solution for it.
Just a thought.
