I don't subscribe to the theory that gamers are anti-social nerds who hide in their basements and have no real friends. Too many MMORPGs seem designed around that cliché, that we're loners who need new introductions in order to play a social game.

Leveling systems are used as motivation for players to push through content. But players of disparate levels don't mesh well together, so grouping with your existing friends is usually tossed aside in favour of constantly finding new ones. Grouping and guild tools operate as a social introduction system, trying to integrate you with others at the same level.

It was understandable a decade ago. Back when Everquest was released, it was unlikely that your real-life friends would be playing an online subscription game, so you needed mechanics that helped you group with strangers. But now this genre is mainstream and even if players aren't together with their local buddies, they're bound to have strong bonds from other games as they migrate to the newer MMOs. Cross-game guilds are becoming commonplace.

Some games even require a large diverse population for the content to work correctly. WAR is the biggest example so far: if players aren't active and working together in any given area, the content just doesn't work. Players are sorted into level tiers, realms and racial pairings, so new bonds are needed between players even more, if only temporarily for the task at hand. This is supposed to be 'epic'.

But I already have friends.

I'm okay with adding a few new friends now and then, but I don't need a pool of hundreds of them. I'd rather concentrate my time with a few close friends that I can relate to. The 'epic' crowds are more of a sideline interest, I like them there, but not at the expense of my primary enjoyment of simply playing together with my friends. Most of the group and guild tools aren't helping that.

The number one reason I enjoy Endgame is because eventually I end up on even strength as my friends and only then can we enjoy challenging game content together. Unfortunately, most Endgame content then shifts to even larger groups (raiding, warband sieges, etc.), presumably to reinforce the need for yet more new friends.

When Cryptic created their Sidekick / Mentoring system to allow players to pair up and balance their level differences, I thought it would be a paradigm shift for all MMORPGs. I was shocked that Blizzard didn't implement the feature for World of Warcraft's release. I was also disappointed that Age of Conan gave barely more than lip-service to mentoring, it was poorly implemented and quickly nerfed because it didn't match their content. WAR has similar features automated within tiers for Scenarios and RvR, but again it's a limited and half-assed implementation that doesn't come anywhere close to resolving the essential problem while leveling.

I have friends. I'd like to play with my friends, not just chat with my friends while I play.

No wonder Left 4 Dead has had phenomenal pre-order sales, it's a game focused on small groups of players cooperating together. Friends. It's a a shame the MMORPG genre hasn't learned from the popularity of small-team coop games.

MMORPGs should focus on content that allows players to get together in small groups of their own choosing.

Please give me more tools and content to play with my existing small group of friends.

Well Funcom is starting to get to me. It's not the bugs, it's not directly the lack of content, but it's related.

Removing experience from grey quests was a big warning sign, after much negative reaction to that, they're reversing it, but the situation is now clear: Funcom is starting to stretch content.

Now the big blow to myself and everyone within my guild: Apprenticeship has been reduced to just 20 levels. This makes it nearly useless, because they don't have a reverse counterbalance (like City of Heroes' Exemplar / Reverse-Sidekick), so most players of disparate levels can no longer group together in a meaningful way.

I accoladed the Apprentice (Sidekick) feature prior to release. Now they've just flushed it down. In one move, they've removed a large chunk of the fun factor out of the game for me. It's hugely disappointing, even moreso that it worked. Members of my guild had become well accustomed to it.

This game is already lacking a great deal of the features and content that many were expecting. Removing one for the sake of trying to slow people down in the leveling process, that's just mind-boggling to me. This game didn't need any steps backwards.

I sure hope they come to their senses and revert this in the next patch or two.

My guild has declared this an "Alt Weekend" as a way for some of to avoid outleveling the rest of our guild. The idea came from coincidental AFK vacations for several of our key guild members (happy fishing trip Nelg!), so the rest of us are either going to catch up to them, or play alts.

Mainly it's an effort to balance our guild's levels, although there's also some encouragement to just try other classes. Our melee players seem to be concentrating on the complete opposite: the supposedly 'pure casting' Demonologist, to the point that we've also referred to this as Demonologist Week.

Here's Ignatos, my Demo alt, throwing fire into the face of an enemy:

There are some inherent difficulties with AoC's Apprentice (Sidekick-like) feature. So far, Apprentice has been a bit buggy and Funcom has specifically limited the usefulness, they can't seem to decide if they want players of disparate levels to team up, or whether they want to force lower levels out of higher level content. For instance, an Apprenticed player still aggros as if they were their standard level, so taking them into Cistern / Main System is very messy.

It's still much better than most games for playing with your buddies, but it's not as easy to do as say-- City of Heroes.

As an aside, I'm finding it exceptionally easy and fast to level 1-20 now that I'm familiar with Tortage.

I woke up this morning with an urge to play a typical MMORPG encounter. Specifically, that moment of initial aggro with a monster as you approach it.

I haven't been playing any MMOs since December, but over the years I've logged a great deal of hours in these games, so it's bound to invade my dreaming subconscious now and then.

It is telling that the urge was for a solo PvE experience. I'm one of those rare people that others view with disdain on this particular point: I don't mind the "grind", or to clarify I think repetitive gameplay is good as long as it's entertaining. IE: Shooting baddies in an FPS (first person shooter) is repetitive, but it's also fun.

To further clarify, I dislike level disparity and other elements of The Vision, where grinding for advancement is forced in order to keep pace with your friends. IMHO this method of entrapment is why Blizzard didn't institute "Sidekick" style level mechanics or instant-advancements to endgame. Although I think Blizz will eventually shortcut players to capped levels as they move their grind further into dungeon raiding progress.

In other words, I don't mind grinding for some reward or another, or even for the pure sake of repetitive fun, but I'd also like to team up with my buddies without them having to grind equally to match me.

~Ahem~

--Back on the waking dream topic, I suppose I'm ready to jump into the fray again. I've been anticipating Age of Conan in a very relaxed way, not bothering to apply for betas (and taking a lax approach to updating our guild site, which I'll soon change gears). But I'm ready to play now, I just have to wait a few weeks.

I've met most of my current friends online, in one form or another (some as far back as the BBS days), so I think the cliché of the anti-social geek is a lie. In fact, the primary usage of any network is exactly that: networking. Socially, business and otherwise.

But the social value of different networks is not equal. For instance, I don't lend much credit to the so-called "social network" websites: The MySpace, Friendster, LiveJournal, Facebook, Orkut, etc.-- perhaps because there are too many of them, making it easy to be a tourist or transient. When the temporary visitors far outnumber the core citizens, social value can get drowned in a sea of nonsense. It all depends on how well the network handles the different kinds of traffic. Regardless, it's a place to interact and that's the core.

The same is true for online games.

Games are a more specific interest that can strengthen social value. When I recommended to my girlfriend that we start playing City of Heroes rather than just chat on MSN, she was wary. Soon enough though, she developed connections with my other friends that were playing, plus now she agrees that chatting while fighting evil villains is more fun than just chatting.

On the other hand, game activity as community has limitations, similar to the way Flickr brings together Photographers but is not likely to be used for other purposes. It works if most of your friends are Photogaphers / Gamers.

Social value also may not be the prime directive for a game developer, which can lead to conflicting results. We've been playing World of Warcraft for almost 3 years now and some social implications have become evident.

The downsides with WoW.

The first, most obvious social problem with WoW is how impossible it is for players of disparate levels to spend quality time together within the game. If I'm level 40 and my friend is level 65, the only way we can quest together is if he "powerlevels" in level 40 areas with me, making my quests trivial with his ease of completing them.

Even once the "Endgame" is reached at max level, WoW's content divides like a pyramid to the top tier of players. Content is restricted based on achieving goals of faction-reputations, quality of gear, attunements, etc.. Finally, the highest tier content is WoW's raiding system, which requires almost military-like adherence to schedules that just aren't realistic for many people.

Getting the most from WoW, then migrating.

Personally, I've tried very hard to make my social circle work within WoW's limitations. I've held back to let others catch up, helping where I can. Our group of guild leaders have attempted to stick to the Endgame content which keeps most of us at an even pace, but that also has the side effect that some players may feel like they are held back. Most of us have also given up on raiding content which we could enjoy if it were more reasonable to play with friends.

In the long run though, we've had friends (some which had played with us across many other games) leave WoW because of these exact problems. The core of our group has decided it's soon time to migrate to another MMO more likely to strengthen our social bonds again. City of Heroes had a "Sidekick" feature that made leveling characters much more positive as a group and that was a very big difference, but it had a lack of great content overall. Age of Conan reportedly has a similar feature (called Master / Apprentice), but that's just one reason we're looking at that game, it seems full of community-building features.

It's important to me that I'm able to keep up with my friends. Not just the hardcore gamer ones either, but the ones I see occasionally. I like to bump into them in real life, but it's even more likely that if we have a common online "home" we'll see each there too. And when we do, let's fight a few baddies.

. . .
(PS: Our guild has launched a new forums site to assist in our little migration from WoW to Age of Conan @ path.gameslate.com.)

I just learned that Age of Conan will have a Master / Apprentice feature, much like the Sidekick system from City of Heroes. To say that I'm enthusiastic about Sidekicking would be an understatement, it was the most innovative feature of City of Heroes.

From the City of Heroes manual:
Sidekicks are a special option that allows low-level Heroes to team up with Heroes of a much higher level. The lower-level Hero, the sidekick, gains a temporary boost in fighting ability that allows him or her to fight alongside the higher-level Hero.

So for example: If you are just level 11 and your friend has out-leveled you to level 40, you can quest with them and while grouped and sidekicked, you will fight as if you were level 39 or so. You aren't given a whole host of powers, but the ones that you do have will be boosted to that level.

Disparate levels in MMORPGs has always made it difficult to quest with your friends, something that I've only ever seen solved by City of Heroes. In most other games, differing levels have almost been used as a promotional tool to keep people playing, but I can note several friends who list this problem as the number one reason they've quit WoW.

Sidekicking added a ton of fun to City of Heroes, so it's very encouraging to hear that something similar will be included in Age of Conan.