Although WoW doesn't, other MMOs have mechanisms in place to make both outside-dungeon and inside-dungeon content adapt to the number of people in group, from 1 (solo) to whatever the game's max is. For outside-dungeon content, the number of monsters that spawn or join can be limited based on the number of players. Wizard 101, for example, has battles where a maximum of 4 players and 4 monsters can participate. If one player starts a fight with a random monster, a second monster will join, but no more. If two players start/join a fight, a third monster will join. And if three or more players start/join, monsters will fill all four slots. Perfect World among other games has instanced dungeons which spawn a different number of monsters and different difficulty of boss depending on the number of players entering the dungeon.

[quote name='sunandshadow' timestamp='1321998034' post='4886681']
It's NOT an MMO designer's job to try to force people to get to know each other. A game should let players do what they find fun and not do what they don't find fun, or it's failing at the most essential part of being a game.

Well some MMO designers disagree with you. Some argue that it is entirely their job to get people playing together because that is the whole point of an MMO.[/quote]
Well, they'd be wrong. Actually I have no problem with games that are entirely muliplayer content; those are for other people who like them, it doesn't bother me to just not play those. But that's definitely not the "essence" of the whole MMO genre. There are a lot of people who prefer to solo most of the time who love the feeling of playing near/in the same world as friends or other people. This has both a social side, for people who want to chat a bit and occasionally show of their achievements to each other, and a competitive side for people who like to play the game's economy to find a way to get rich off other players via crafting or speculating or trading. That just isn't achievable in a single player RPG. What annoys the crap out of me are games which seem solo-friendly, or even majority solo content, then after I've advanced a few levels happily soloing or casually pugging, mandatory group content pops up to bite me in the ass. And the words "force" and "punishments" are a big problem; that's what truly goes against the essence of games in general - requiring players to do stuff that isn't fun for them, when you could be providing something equally challenging and time consuming that was fun.

Thinking about it I feel that the reason the current LFG tool in WoW is so detrimental to the quality of group play, aside from those comments already made, is what you point out micro. WoW was always more solo friendly than its predecessors (not that hard when you look back on the likes of EQ) but it has defiantly become more so as time has gone by. This has reduced the demand for group activities, like those outlined by micro, even further.

Pre 3.3 the primary group activity was dungeons and raids. Post 3.3 that activity is still there but can now be conducted very easily without the player interacting with others, and thus provide a sub-par grouping experience. They have even gone as far as letting the player conduct raids using the same system.

Now at this point, with the already reduced need for group interaction inherent in WoW, what is there for a player to do that requires group play now? The only content, that isn't PvP, I can think of is exactly the same but with marginally better rewards for substantially more effort on the players part. So currently there is no longer a need for the majority of players to go to the effort of interacting with others, this not only provides a sub par experience for the player but will inevitably cause a higher attrition rate as player no longer have social interaction as a reason for them to stay.

There will still be players that prefer conducting raids outside of the LFG system but I suspect this is and will continue to be a minority. Especially now that the benefits of doing LFG content go a long way to outweigh the benefits you get from conducting the content as a preformed group.

Above is how I level in the clearly competitive environment promoted by Mean Motherfuckers Online - also known as "MMO".

@ Stangler:

But why would a LFG system be needed for this to happen. Players have in the past, and still can, make groups and interact on their own. The LFG can make the whole process easier but it can also do a lot of harm to the social aspects of the game. On a server with a healthy population you don't even require such a system to be in place for players to be able to get fast groups. There are less automated version (pre 3.3 if you want examples) that provided an easier way to find groups while not removing the social interaction between players.

You can also look at Skyrims fast travel system to get a very good idea of what instant transportation to a location does to a games world.

Group instancing is also not done primarily to avoid zerging (there are other ways around that), it is done to stop other players outside of your group having a negative effect on your content. it also allows multiple groups to do the same event as any one time. The important thing to remember is that group instancing adds a lot to the experience while not removing the player from the MMO experience.

Solo [font="Arial"]instancing on the other hand does, SWTOR h[/font][font="Arial"]as gone some way to balance to t[/font][font="Arial"]wo but even then it is far from perfect and unless you have that much money to create a similar experience it will only detract from the game. [/font]

[font="Arial"]Having the player have specialisations apart from their actual level is fine; in fact I'm all for games putting more emphasis on the players roll other than a talent tree. I'm pretty sure it has been done before in some ways and a similar system was speculated for WoWs "hero classes" pre TBC. In the latter's case the idea was to be a level 60 mage but a level 10 archmage. Does such a system require instance content for the player? No not really, you can get a similar experience through class specific quests out in the world. [/font]

[font="Arial"]@ Sun:[/font]

[font="Arial"]I love the idea that some games use of having dungeons that meaningful adapt to a player and I should have really pointed that out in my previous posts. What I don't enjoy is the simple act of moving a slider from easy to medium and having nothing more than the mobs HP/damage increase with little to no change made to the dungeon itself. I prefer having is instances that are easier at lower levels but harder at high levels – essentially the game training me to get better at is as I level up. I am completely fine with having lower levels change, even having their story advance, so tha[/font][font="Arial"]t when I enter at a high level the experience I get it different from the one I previously had. [/font]

[font="Arial"]The ability for me to then create a slightly harder experience myself for better rewards can also be introduced, but doing so should change the dynamics of the fight. I also prefer if a system like that is somehow built into the boss fight itself rather than a menu option. [/font]

Although WoW doesn't, other MMOs have mechanisms in place to make both outside-dungeon and inside-dungeon content adapt to the number of people in group, from 1 (solo) to whatever the game's max is. For outside-dungeon content, the number of monsters that spawn or join can be limited based on the number of players. Wizard 101, for example, has battles where a maximum of 4 players and 4 monsters can participate. If one player starts a fight with a random monster, a second monster will join, but no more. If two players start/join a fight, a third monster will join. And if three or more players start/join, monsters will fill all four slots. Perfect World among other games has instanced dungeons which spawn a different number of monsters and different difficulty of boss depending on the number of players entering the dungeon.

Good point. I kept meaning to talk about this but forgot. Scaling instanced content is a no brainer IMO and there are a lot of ways to do that. WOW has regular and hardcore but there are a lot of options there.

I have no played Wizard 101 but a system that has mobs bring a friend based on the party size makes sense and can help make a lot of world content be for both groups and solo. World content can be used to provide a lot more group based content than WOW does while not completely getting rid of solo content.

One presumption I think that is worth getting away from is the idea that a lfg tool like that in WOW is for instancing only. IF you are going to make all of this content in the world then one of the biggest hurdles to players exploring this content is travel times. In DAOC many times players would group where it was convenient. They would then camp mobs for hours while ignoring a lot of the world's content. Time is progression in MMOs. Wasted time is wasted progression.

Another way to overcome this issue is to offer different types of progression so that time isn't such a major factor.

Thinking about it I feel that the reason the current LFG tool in WoW is so detrimental to the quality of group play, aside from those comments already made, is what you point out micro. WoW was always more solo friendly than its predecessors (not that hard when you look back on the likes of EQ) but it has defiantly become more so as time has gone by. This has reduced the demand for group activities, like those outlined by micro, even further.

Pre 3.3 the primary group activity was dungeons and raids. Post 3.3 that activity is still there but can now be conducted very easily without the player interacting with others, and thus provide a sub-par grouping experience. They have even gone as far as letting the player conduct raids using the same system.

Now at this point, with the already reduced need for group interaction inherent in WoW, what is there for a player to do that requires group play now? The only content, that isn't PvP, I can think of is exactly the same but with marginally better rewards for substantially more effort on the players part. So currently there is no longer a need for the majority of players to go to the effort of interacting with others, this not only provides a sub par experience for the player but will inevitably cause a higher attrition rate as player no longer have social interaction as a reason for them to stay.

There will still be players that prefer conducting raids outside of the LFG system but I suspect this is and will continue to be a minority. Especially now that the benefits of doing LFG content go a long way to outweigh the benefits you get from conducting the content as a preformed group.

The most important concept to understand when looking at the transition from EQ to WOW is the value of time. In essence time is what the player trades in for value. The player trade 2 hours of time for a level or a +2 sword or whatever. This is what drives the behavior of the group even if the individuals have a demand to be social.

If you really want to change the equation then you have to change the incentives. If the primary incentive is to get better gear then players(as a group) will do the thing that gets them the better gear the fasted.

Even if you have 20 friends playing a game you may often find yourself playing alone because they play at different times or are not the right level or whatever. It is very important to look at the barriers to social play. This is why I have mentioned level numerous times already. A sidekick system and a dungeon that adjusts to the players level helps address those issues.

You can also have group based objectives. For example controlling territory in the game world.

This is really where understanding the power of economics in an MMO really helps. WOW does very little in this regard (although there is a lot of potential there).

@ Stangler:

But why would a LFG system be needed for this to happen. Players have in the past, and still can, make groups and interact on their own. The LFG can make the whole process easier but it can also do a lot of harm to the social aspects of the game. On a server with a healthy population you don't even require such a system to be in place for players to be able to get fast groups. There are less automated version (pre 3.3 if you want examples) that provided an easier way to find groups while not removing the social interaction between players.

You can also look at Skyrims fast travel system to get a very good idea of what instant transportation to a location does to a games world.

Group instancing is also not done primarily to avoid zerging (there are other ways around that), it is done to stop other players outside of your group having a negative effect on your content. it also allows multiple groups to do the same event as any one time. The important thing to remember is that group instancing adds a lot to the experience while not removing the player from the MMO experience.

Solo [font="Arial"]instancing on the other hand does, SWTOR h[/font][font="Arial"]as gone some way to balance to t[/font][font="Arial"]wo but even then it is far from perfect and unless you have that much money to create a similar experience it will only detract from the game. [/font]

[font="Arial"]Having the player have specialisations apart from their actual level is fine; in fact I'm all for games putting more emphasis on the players roll other than a talent tree. I'm pretty sure it has been done before in some ways and a similar system was speculated for WoWs "hero classes" pre TBC. In the latter's case the idea was to be a level 60 mage but a level 10 archmage. Does such a system require instance content for the player? No not really, you can get a similar experience through class specific quests out in the world. [/font]

[font="Arial"]@ Sun:[/font]

[font="Arial"]I love the idea that some games use of having dungeons that meaningful adapt to a player and I should have really pointed that out in my previous posts. What I don't enjoy is the simple act of moving a slider from easy to medium and having nothing more than the mobs HP/damage increase with little to no change made to the dungeon itself. I prefer having is instances that are easier at lower levels but harder at high levels – essentially the game training me to get better at is as I level up. I am completely fine with having lower levels change, even having their story advance, so tha[/font][font="Arial"]t when I enter at a high level the experience I get it different from the one I previously had. [/font]

[font="Arial"]The ability for me to then create a slightly harder experience myself for better rewards can also be introduced, but doing so should change the dynamics of the fight. I also prefer if a system like that is somehow built into the boss fight itself rather than a menu option. [/font]

As I pointed out, the lfg system in WOW has changed how people level. IT drastically reduces the time it takes to find a group while making grouping the fastest way to level. It becomes the go to way to level while before the go to way to level was solo questing. Forced grouping games are dead IMO.

Instancing is most definitely done to prevent zerging and to balance content. It is also done to prevent people from negatively impacting you but it is primarily done to prevent zerging. If you want to make content for 5 players then allowing 10o players into the fight makes the content imbalanced.

No you can't get similar experiences out in the world for class quests because of the impact of levels and balancing content. Remember there are multiple specialziations so the content can be done when the player is low level or max level.

I think one thing that is kind of getting lost is just how much WOW changed the way MMOs are designed and played by creating massive amounts of solo quest content. If you look at how MMORPGS are designed these days it is clear that they are basing the design on WOW’s model of large amounts of solo quest content and it seemed like this is just the way MMOs are made now.

As much as this defined the genre it has been undone by a rather simple dungeon finder program. The players have stopped using those thousands of solo quests and are now grinding the same dungeons over and over. Even in a game that was clearly not designed for players to level up using a dungeon finder, that is exactly what they are doing.

Whether you like this shift in gamer behavior is really beside the point. Player behavior has changed and the WOW way of creating a world is dead. Ironically enough the game that killed WOW’s own design model was WOW.

@ Strangler,

In your reply to Sun you earmark travel time as a "hurdle" that the player must overcome. That is not exactly true, traveling can easily be a positive experience, this is especially true for players who are levelling and not traveling to a specific location by a known rout. MMORPGs are partially about wasting the players time in an attempt to trick the player into feeling that they are putting time and effort into a world not just a game. Removing those smaller elements will do a couple of things from a design point of view, players don't spend too much time playing and as a result the designer must rely on much more obvious, and boring, techniques such as the systems currently being used in WoW in conjunction with the LFG tool.

You seem to be saying that the rewards must act as the insensitive to get the players to group together and do content. That is true, I touched upon the fact that players aren't rewarded enough for what they are now required to do. The point of that post was to say that WoW no longer had many gameplay elements that required the player to create ties with other players (especially while levelling). WoW could offer more substantial rewards to act as incentives but then you run into other issues, including but not limited to item level "bloat", devaluation of cosmetic items and reuse of content. Those issues will probably arise in other theme-park MMORPGs.

I have already touched on my reservations for level independent content and sidekick systems. There's a couple of reasons for that, the first being that "barriers" to social play can be overcome by the player themselves very easily and the second being that is can negatively impact on the whole level system by devaluing it. If you wish not to have said social barriers that are inherent in the level system then use something like the skill system found in EvE. In that a newbie can still fill a valued role in a group, but a different one to those players with a higher skill set.

WoW did have territory control, it failed miserably when it was based in the open world and even the tol-barad/wintergrasp content was despised by many. Was this because of bad implementation? Yes. Could it have been done better? Yes. Is it a replacement good replacement for the dungeons which used to provide this sort of interaction? No.

Has it really changed how people level? You have yet to prove it has and from my own personal experience, and those I have played with, the LFG has only made leveling via dungeons even more boring and painful. It there has indeed been a dramatic change then I suspect it has negatively impacted on the quality of play of those players. The wait times in the majority of cases are still long (ranging from 10-30min at peak time), it is still close to impossible to find a group at unsociable hours. Even before 3.3 peoples still leveled through dungeons (I was one of them) and the time it took to create a group was often no longer than using the new LFG system, the main difference being the amount of effort required to make/join a group was slightly more before 3.3. If getting and joining a group before 3.3 was substantially harder than after then the problem was server population which this system doesn't solve but mask.

You may think "Forced grouping games are dead" but they most certainly are not. The phrase itself is ambiguous and could be taken to mean any MMORPG or only a select through but either way it is wrong. Take a look at the player numbers of EvE, a game where you have to be part of a group/corporation to do most things. You can't compared everything to WoWs success, doing so makes any MMORPG look like a failure.

Instancing was not done to primarily prevent zerging; there are other ways to prevent that. Such as boss abilities that kill players over a certain number or make having to many players a hindrance, require groups so large that the numbers required to "zerg" are close to impossible to reach and not having the kill count for those either outside the raid or if you were in a raid not a party.

You could provide a similar experience in the "world" by using mobs that scale to the player/s attacking them, having players summon mobs that match their level or even having quests that don't involve player vs mob interaction. There are probably other ways to overcome that as well, depending on game in question of course.

The MMORPGs you talk about are only Theme-park based ones; there are plenty of MMORPGs that don't conform to the theme-park layout. It is worth noting that MMORPGs that follow WoWs layout have traditionally not been as successful as ones that have not.

This use of questing to mask the "grind" that used to be present in MMORPGs, along with providing a way to tell the player a story, has not been "undone" by the LFG tool. I'm not entirely sure how you can make such an assertion. At its most basic the LFG tool is nothing more than an automated LFG chat. Outside of it being a dungeon finder it is often underused, most people will still spam a channel to find people for a group quest. Not to mention the fact all this was still possible, especially on a high population server. The primary reason behind the LFG tool is not even as a leveling tool, but as something to be used with other gameplay features in an attempted to keep them playing.

I don't like the way Blizzard implemented the LFG tool in WoW and the behavioural changes it has brought. It servers only to cause unsociable and lazy behaviour in its player, something I was guilty of them I played, while providing a small level of convenience and how anyone can see that as a positive thing is beyond me. The only reason that Blizzard puts up with the negatives is that it's become part of a primary way to keep players playing the game long after they should. At that point you have to ask whether, as a designer, your job is to make the game easier in an attempt to get higher subs or to create an enjoyable experience for your players.

WoWs approach to world design is certainly not dead and LFG would have little to do with it if this was indeed the case. It is after all only an automated LFG channel and a poorly implemented on at that; anything you could do now could have been done before with the LFG system. Its implementation in RIFT shows how it is only a tool that provides a minor amount of convenience to the players and has next to no effect on how said games world was designed. Anything you could do with a LFG tool you can also do through a LFG channel, again it is only a tool that provides a small amount of convenience to a player, but has the ability to cause a massive amount of damage to the social structure of the game if implemented incorrectly.