Why Does AoC (and Other MMORPGs) Separate People?

erisco

Greetings,

It surprises me that MMORPGs of today, such as AoC, are designed to separate people. First they separate by region, then they separate by server, then they separate by player level. These finely diced divisions make playing with friends difficult. I think to my New World experience when my all my friends, both online and off, were scattered over a dozen severs. We could talk about the same game, but we could not experience it together. That seemed a shame.

There are many technical difficulties with bringing more and more players into the same game world. Yet, many games have shown that these barriers are surmountable, should the game design will it. I think back to games such as RuneScape where switching server was easy, and so therefore too was joining your friends in play.

What has become apparent to me is that not all MMORPGs have the will to bring every player together. AoC seems keen to devise isolated worlds which each develop to their own conclusion. Maybe this is a cost to pay for features such as player housing, territory control, and suchlike. To my feeling, the cost is too much.

I am perplexed. I wish to ask this audience: what are gamers enjoying about such a design?

ClintHardwood

Each AoC server is unique, for example what nodes have metropolises on them and which raids are active, meaning each server is its own unique community. The uniqueness of experience per server is a major selling point in this game.

Strevi

Creating alts is possible.
The economy of the server is important.
So character transfers with gold and gear should not be allowed in my opinion.

Arya_Yeshe

It's because the carebears, they want this sweet spot of grinding where they don't die a lot but they have this sense of progressing.

bloodprophet

It seems your whole view point is from lobby games.
RPG's have levels to give players a sense of progression. People like to have the sense they are growing and becoming better. Removing that creates what?
Each server is supposed to have it's own story of growth and strife. Should MMO maps be so small there is no room to move about? How else would you remove geographic separation?
If your friends are on a different server are they really friends?
EVE has a giant mega server where everyone is on the same server. But hen you still have geographic division.
Each node in AOC is supposed to have it's own economy, it's own story. Personally I am glad they made the choice to not have fast travel. To have travel times that matter. I don't want to play a lobby game like WoW or GW2.

To your last question.
Community. This used to mean something. Looking at current WoW you join a dungeon group, get teleported there from where ever. Nobody says anything and people are treated as disposable NPC's unless they (God forbid) don't know everything about the dungeon and ask a question or make a mistake then they are shat upon by said group or just removed and replaced.
VS old games where you had to get to know them a little bit. If a new player needs help you are then faced with a choice. Help them and go forward or go back to looking for a different player? Most groups would help the new or less experienced players and build them up. Sometimes that newer played would go on to be great at that roll because of it. This would then lead to relationships guilds and Holy Shit , community.

Other side of this is toxic player then also get shunned by the local community and are forced to correct bad behavior or find someplace else to be. If a server has 8-10k players that is a small pool. If player xNoobstomperx shows up people will know he is a jerk and not invite him to groups or PK him because they can. Again community. Your reputation on your server will matter. Are you helpful or a jerk? Are you good at PvP, raiding, crafting a certain weapon. Are you known as a good healer, tank or support?

All this and more vs what most MMO's of late are where they are just open world shared games filled with glorified NPC's.

Flashover451

If you wanted to play with certain people why wouldn’t you just make sure you all joined the same server?

Noaani

erisco wrote: »

I am perplexed. I wish to ask this audience: what are gamers enjoying about such a design?

In a word - community.

In a game like Runescape - or even WoW with its server transfers and cross server content - who you are, how good you are and what your reputation is like are meaningless. You are literally just one of the many faceless, nameless masses.

This is the same for lobby games - regardless of genre.

In an MMO with no or difficult server transfers, and with no or little cross server content, all of those things above actually start to matter. If you are a good player, you will have a reputation on that server as a good player. If you are a nice and/trustworthy person, you will have that reputation. If you are a bit of a dick, then that is the reputation you will have.

All three of the above will have an impact on how others on your server treat you.

George_Black

Plenty of mmos out there that dont require you and your friends to be the same Lv.

So if you cant get organized, dont worry. There are options.