The difficulty is that a product marketed in a way as to mimic a more mainstream MMO is relying heavily on some of the traditional social features of such. You NEED to be able to find your friends and communicate with them across worlds since the notions of group/social play and the notions of huge/open worlds are both key to the principals of the genre. The solution to this might be to expand the use of the ‘social’ features (friends lists, clans, etc) to actually alter the way that chat works. Make voice communication, party, and general chat ‘local’, but allow for transcontinental clan or ‘linked friend’ conversation – perhaps not in real time, but as a message system.
These ideas are just that. I dont have time to think them through in detail the noo, but worth coming back to.
Despite the fact that less than ten minutes ago I came acrsos this blog site I feel compelled to give my personal feedback on this topic (primarily addressing your article on Freakanomics) as I have spent many years under the oppressive thumb of MMO’s :DWhat a waste of game developers time… all this time spent picking over players who use vulgar language, kill steal, grief kill, ninja loot or otherwise generally have anti-social behavior is an epic waste of time. This is probably one of the many reasons why release dates are constantly pushed back. Aside from the obvious long standing work-arounds for these problems such as ignore features, language filters, looting rule sets, server wide rule sets, etc. Attempting to deter anti social behavior is simply a tightening of the already limited “sand box” feeling that all MMOs have. The key to an MMOs success is… ready… HUMAN INTERACTION. The only way to bolster human interaction is… FREEDOM!Looking to the past for a reference as to why a profitable, industry-leading MMO comes about as often as a presidential election you have to really understand that MMO’s content comes from the player not the developer. Sometimes player content isn’t just funny jokes and a band of warriors working together to defeat a common foe. Sometimes its competition, distrust, dislike and anger. Is it possible for players to band against more than just a giant enemy boss? What about a guild, crew or gang of players working together against another guild who has a reputation of ninja looting constantly? It’s about helping create a relationship between the teams’ members and in turn creating a network of teams, players that begin to bolster conceptual factors such as politics, economics and loyalty. Once these begin to form in an environment that was never coded for such components a game truly becomes an MMO.I understand that this wont apply to all MMOs’ as some are not as in-depth like most MMORPGs are but the general concept rings true through the entire genre.