I love game design, expecially MMORPG game design. Is so awesome to study and try to understand why the designers of a game like Wow made some choices and how these choices changed the population behavior. A game like Wow Classic is a perfect field to experiment with social interaction and to see how people react to events when put in a group.

A must-read for anybody interested in the topic is for sure Hearts, Clubs, Diamond, Spades: players who suits MUDS (MUDS are in some way the predecessors of MMORPG games). In this article Richard Bartle (creator of the first MUD and considered the best author on the topic) diveds the population of players in basically 4 categories:

• Achievers (diamonds) are the players who enjoy the game when they reach objectives (getting the best loot, earning achivements, clearing raids etc.) and they are proud of showing those "earnings" to the rest of the population;
• Explorer (spades) prefer to interact with the world instead of acting on it, so they love to explore remote part of it, test the physic of it (wall jumping, glitching in unreachable areas) and in general knowing all they can about the world itself (what is the quickest way from point A to B? Which enemy drop that particular kind of leather?);
• Killers (clubs) are the people that like to act OVER other players (PVPers in general) and the usually like to show dominance over them using all the tools the game put at their use;
• Socializers (hearts), finally, are the ones who love to interact with other players. The ylove to chit-chat, group up together just for the sake of passing time with other people/helping them etc.

The article then proceed greatly describing the interaction between this 4 categories: it's very interesting but I don't want to digress. Read it if you are interested, but the main point is that a MMORP/MUD needs a balance between all these 4 categories. If one group starts to not feel comfortable in the world the developer created and begin to bleed-out, other groups will do the same.

I think Wow Classic was the best version of Wow because it had something for every of these 4 groups.

All this wall of text to say: if you had to choose just 1 of these four categories (keeping in mind that, of course, you could feel to belong to more than one) which would it be?

For me it's for sure explorer: even if I really like chatting with other people and grouping in general, the exploration of the world is what capture me the most in Wow Classic :-)

This is a great read thank you!

Tinyhoof wrote: ↑

5 years ago

This is a great read thank you!

I completely agree. If you are interested in some further material this book is a must-read on the argument

fendor wrote: ↑

5 years ago

For me it's for sure explorer: even if I really like chatting with other people and grouping in general, the exploration of the world is what capture me the most in Wow Classic :-)

I was going to say that you definitely are an explorer with all your remote trainer location knowledge but you said it already!

Same for me I think - I love finding little easter eggs and small details like that. My strongest wow memory was going under Stormwind for the first time.

Wow, this is interesting. I knew without reading the post that I would be a killer, but reading the post confirmed it. What surprises me is that I honestly thought the majority of people polled would be picking the same thing as me. Guess that just goes to show how much innate bias is a thing.

Telvaine wrote: ↑

5 years ago

What surprises me is that I honestly thought the majority of people polled would be picking the same thing as me.

I think it really depends on the game. A game like Wow is probably not as focused in PvP as other MMORPGS

Always thought that definition was a little bit too "academical"/theoretical because, as you mentioned, most people are a mix of two if not all them.

For example I am the kind of person who likes to do everything inside an MMO and so I feel I belong to every category, since I really like to get the "full experience" of living in a virtual world with its rules, interactions (with the world and with the players) and things to do.

BUT, if I really have to choose one I'll go with explorer since if there is no depth to the world then it may not be the kind of MMO I would like to play.

EDIT: typo

Felneth wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Always thought that definition was a little bit too "academical"/theoretical because, as you mentioned, most people are a mix of two if not all them.

Yes, it's of course a semplification. I identify myself as a mix of explorer/socializer for example. In the book he wrote he amplify this schema adding two more axes to his graph. Still I think it's a good way when you develop a MMORPG to think if you are planning the game considering the necessity of all 4 categories

fendor wrote: ↑

5 years ago

If you are interested in some further material this book is a must-read on the argument

Thank you for the recommendation I will be checking it out! I find this topic fascinating.

Tinyhoof wrote: ↑

5 years ago

fendor wrote: ↑

5 years ago

If you are interested in some further material this book is a must-read on the argument

Thank you for the recommendation I will be checking it out! I find this topic fascinating.

I find it very fascinating too. There's really a world of material on the topic, technical and non technical. Another book that really helped me grasping a lot of interesting concept is Synthetic Worlds, again more on the phylosophycal side. I'm not an expert at all on the topic, but I read quite a bunch of material. If you need any information you can PM me whenever you want :-)

I should be working on my uni project but damn these books just look too interesting