As some of you may know, I’ve been looking forward to the forthcoming “Star Wars: The Old Republic” MMO. I still like World of Warcraft, but after playing it for four years, I’ve grown a bit weary of its setting and jaded by some of its weaknesses, so I’m excited about the prospect of a new setting and new story elements. I was happy, therefore, to get a chance to try out The Old Republic during the beta test this past weekend. This post isn’t really about the game, per se, but instead some observations about the MM aspects of an MMO.
When you first sign in and create your character in SW:TOR, you’re treated to some lovely cinematics that set the stage for the conflict between the two factions, the Sith Empire and the Jedi Republic. All the good things you may have read about the quality of the voice-acting and the cinematics are true—they’re visually appealing and compelling, and of course that lovely familiar John Williams score never hurts. After that, you’re set down into the starting area, where you begin to learn the mechanics of moving, talking, looting, shooting, and quests, as you are taught the history and motivations of your class and faction. So far, so good.
Against this rich, immersive backdrop, however, is the jarring voice of the General chat channel. It’s there right from the beginning, and it’s everything you might expect. WoW veterans may remember some of the epic trolling from the General channel in the Barrens, back in the day, and if so the General channel in the Old Republic starting areas will neither shock nor surprise you. It didn’t shock or surprise me, either, but it did spoil my sense of immersion and connection to the story—and since few game companies can weave a story the way Bioware can, I really resented this. Probably the first thing I did to customize my user interface was to find the Chat settings and disable the General channel.
This got me thinking, though, about the experience for new players—those who, perhaps, have not spent the past four years playing WoW as if it were a part-time job. While it’s true that one of the great things about an MMO is that it’s a multi-player game, I believe there may be some virtue in the idea of fine-tuning the tools for social interaction within these multi-player online games: After all, without a sense of story, it’s not so much a game as it is a big, unstructured chat room with graphical avatars—Second Life never really appealed to me for that reason.
Diabolical Advocacy
With that in mind, here’s my thesis: There should not be any global chat channels.
Yes, I really mean none. No General chat, no Trade chat, no zone-wide instance channels. These channels do not promote the social aspect of the game—if anything, they work against it, to the extent that they promote unstructured social interaction without any connection whatsoever to the wider game. While there’s nothing morally wrong about this, it seems to obviate the purpose of the game as compared to, say, a global IRC channel or a busy Facebook wall. And, more importantly, I think you get better quality social interactions from opt-in relationships than you do from an opt-out broadcast medium.
Now, you’re probably thinking, “Lara, if you don’t like the trolling and juvenile behaviour in a global channel, just leave the channel.” And yes, that’s always an option—but the problem isn’t just about soothing my tender sensibilities (which are neither tender or nor especially sensible), it’s the effect of global chat on the whole social atmosphere of the game. Why do people stand around in Stormwind and Orgrimmar talking about politics while the rest of the world is empty? Simply put, because apart from dungeons—to which they can teleport—that’s the only place they can find other people to talk to. It’s a self-reinforcing problem, and it’s made possible (or at least worse) by the existence of the global channels.
But How Do I…
So, if we got rid of General and Trade, how would people find and communicate with each other? After all, not all uses of the General channel are bad. Remember running around in Stranglethorn Vale, trying to find the missing pages of The Green Hills of Stranglethorn? I wouldn’t blame you if you’d blocked out that painful memory—but calling out in General was a great way to arrange trades. Need help with a quest? Can’t find Mankrik’s wife? Seems like there’s real value in that channel, and an opportunity for some social interaction.
I’d argue, though, that we’d get better quality social results if, when you wanted help with something, you whispered a particular person or chatted them up in /say, rather than invoking the gods of zone-wide conversation. Even the existence of such a thing is a sharp blow to the illusion of the fourth wall—and MMO’s already have a pretty weak sense of story immersion, most of the time. What I’m really advocating, more than anything else, is a move back toward the game aspect of the MMO. A lot of the trolling and attention-seeking that goes on in those channels could be funneled into things like guild or raid group chats where it would at least be limited to a group of relevant people.
However, even with that, there’s some value in being able to call out, ”Hey, does anybody have an extra copy of Page 24? I have a 6 or a 10 to trade” to other players in the zone. Or to say, “Oh no, the Alliance are killing all the quest givers at the Crossroads again! Please help!” Or perhaps, “Forming a raid group to go kill that stinky pig Garrosh, whisper me if you want an invite.” These kinds of messages are well-suited to a broadcast medium. One way to preserve the ability to do this, without having a completely open channel, might be to have a “curated” channel, with a special UI for composing prefabricated requests. I could imagine a list of stock inquiries, like “Can someone please help with <list of running quests>” or “Forming a group for <list of quests or local dungeons>, whisper for invite”. A person could still “spam” the channel with these, and some probably would, but without the “reward” of incensed replies (“If this mob is invincible, how come I can see it?” “That’s invisible, you dolt!” “Trolololol…”) interest in doing that would probably pale quickly even for bored teen boys.
Clean Streets
Having said all that, I don’t actually expect Blizzard or Bioware or any other MMO publisher to get rid of global channels. At this point, it’s an institution, and given how much flak they get for changing the weighting of a stat by a tiny fraction of a percent, a big visible change like this would probably earn them a lynch mob. Still, there might be some real value in making the default experience for new characters to start with all those global channels disabled, and let players opt into them as they see fit. Even better, maybe make the global channels require an opt-in each time, so that leaving the zone for which the channel applies would reset your membership.
I think the important point here is that unstructured global communication should have some limits, because its effects on the sense of story, of community, and of immersion, are so pervasive. And while individuals can opt out of those channels, their very generality is what has the effect, and when people who don’t want to listen to ignorant diatribes and ungrammatical trolling leave, it only makes the atmosphere worse. Better, I think, is if the default experience is tuned for optative interactions, and the broadcast medium made secondary.
Some people say that if you don’t want to talk to other people at all, you should just play Skyrim. You should do that anyway—it’s an amazing game. But you don’t have to go to extremes; it’s perfectly possible to have a multi-player game in which the emphasis is on the game, rather than the players. Maybe it’s worth a shot.
I feel like there’d be a great value in something like the Robot 9000 system that XKCD introduced a while ago – and currently exists on a certain image board.
TL;DR, every reply has to be unique. simple short messages like “k” or “lol” go out because they degrade the quality of conversation – after they’ve been said once, they’re “off limits” and trying to repeat them results in a silencing; a short term mute rather than a ban.
Obviously, in an MMO where sometimes, you feel the need to GET SHIT DONE, “LF 1 ranged DPS for BWD” is a lot easier to type than “Hark and verily, we are in need of one who is proficient in the ways of combat at a distance; preferably of a proper spell caster school of the Kirin Tor!”
(aside: the second is great for getting a chuckle)
Communication in an MMO often boils down to “how can we say very difficult ideas and subjects without actually SAYING everything?” In general, I mean, not just chat channels. “Don’t stand in the bad” is a lot easier to say than anything.
To keep from digressing too much – I think chat channels work best when the people playing it are willing to moderate as well, to establish the norms? Maybe there needs to be an aggressive, “No, that’s not cool” stand from players, as well as from GMs moderating. I don’t know that there’s an easy way to solve the issues and problems with global/zone chat channels. I’m not sure it’s one that can be “solved” right now, at least without reinventing the wheel of gameplay in an MMO. Maybe a proximity based system, but then, why not just use /say or what have you?
This is a cool thing to think about though! I think the MMO genre is due a reinvention of the wheel, and how players talk to each other is the start of it!
I thought about the “no duplicates” rule, but didn’t mention it, because I don’t actually think there’s anything wrong with brief, topical postings like “LF2M tank/dps BH 10″. It still hurts immersion, but at least it’s short, sweet, and to the point.
Your point about moderation (self or otherwise) goes to the root of the matter — when you have a guild chat, for example, there’s a commitment to membership there, both on the part of the individual speaking, and the rest of the group who has to deal with them. There are consequences for acting outside the group norms, like the ability to be down-ranked or kicked out, and most importantly, the group itself gets to decide its own norms rather than being stuck with a kind of “world view” that descends to the greatest lower bound of socially tolerable behaviour. Party, raid, and guild channels are a great resource, and I wouldn’t ever want them to go away. It’s really only the global ones that stick in my craw.
Good points, thank you for replying!
I’d give it an option during the install: Do you want access to a global chat channel?
Oh, and when you join the TOR brigade, don’t close up the blog, k? Just simply expand it’s scope a bit.
I like the idea of having an option during install, assuming there are going to be global channels at all. I’d put it with a kind of “Surgeon General’s warning” like “many players find these channels detract from their experience of the story aspects of the game, but if you wish to have access to this option, check the box below.”
Regarding the blog…I don’t plan on closing it, it’s already quite neglected enough as it is.
I love the idea of no global chat channels. Give /whisper a range limit and keep public talk to /say and /yell (and no, you can’t /yell all day long). People looking for a PUG would congregate somewhere much like day-laborers hang out near the building supply stores. Trade skills might be advertised around the auction house. Different cities or parts of cities could have different cultures grow up. And if people are running at the mouth, you could walk away. What if the game didn’t need an /ignore feature?
People have proposed the idea of making it so that you have to fly to the entrance of a dungeon in order to queue for it, though I’m still torn as to how I feel about that. Part of me likes the idea, but I think it might be a little too far in the other direction.
Still, I agree that it’s appealing to imagine a society in game that forms around game-related principles instead of unstructured shouting in the public square.
We used to have this discussion at different times when I was an admin for a good-sized MUD, for many of the same reasons. I think you make a good point (though I’ve long since given up expecting immersion in an MMORPG) – it really would help with the story and it might – shock, horror! – make players interact according to who’s actually near them instead of who’s logged in. It’d be interesting to see if any smaller MMOs out there have taken this sort of more immersive route; I can’t imagine the giants doing it because so many of their playerbase would be more interested in lightsabers/dragons/spaceships than inhabiting their character to that degree.
When I first began playing WoW, I barely noticed chat (and whispers). I was really into the story, and just didn’t notice it. I didn’t use it, and I just was able to shut it out of my mind.
As I progressed along, I wasn’t questing as much, so the opportunity for expanding the story didn’t present itself as much. So, I discovered General/Trade. The problem is that it’s like someone pointing out something you never noticed, then you see it EVERYWHERE. After I noticed it, it was just there.
I love the idea of a “curated” channel. My approach has always been to answer a question directly to that person through tells. I sometimes feel bad for the person honestly confused about something, and their having to put up with 10 troll comments, when they really didn’t deserve it.
My wife plays WoW at times. There were times when someone would say something to her in gchat and she wouldn’t respond. I’d ask, “Aren’t you going to respond?” She didn’t even notice it. She’s told me many times that when she’s playing and questing, she’s into the game and she doesn’t look at chat.
I sometimes miss those days, and disable the general channels. I typically go, “Ahhh….” as I’m leaving trade or general (especially in raid zones).
Like you, I didn’t really notice the channels at first, probably because we started late in Burning Crusade and the starting zones were quite empty compared to what you see in the busy beta worlds of SW:TOR. But by the time we reached Darnassus, they were overwhelmingly and powerfully apparent, full of incomprehensible jargon, and of course the trolls were in full force. (A favourite game at the time was replacing a word in a movie or song title with “Murloc”, which is better than some other things you see there…).
As you say, once you notice it, it can’t be unseen. My issue isn’t so much the content, which I can just /leave to avoid, but the pernicious effect of that ongoing conversation on the outlooks and expectations of the population as a whole. Like you also, I tend to answer only briefly in channel if at all, preferring when possible to switch to whisper to help someone out.
I turned off the trade and general channels a long time ago. Since blizzard gives you the choice, I think we have the best of both. People who don’t like it can turn it off, people who enjoy it can leave it on.
On the one hand I can understand the complaints about all the big global problem-makers; on the other, someone else’s “immersion-spoiling widespread chats” are my “half the reason I enjoy this genre.” For whatever reasons, I find playing alongside other people exhausting, but chatting energizes me. My happy place is thus primarily solo endeavors in a great big MMO world while I keep an eye on five or ten or fifteen chat channels, talk to my far-flung friends in whispers, etc. The idea of an MMO where I’d have to choose between talking to my friends and pursuing my goal of the moment is, for me, horrifically off-putting.
I’m definitely intrigued by the idea of mixing up the basic chat system’s rules somehow, to improve things, and I bet I’ll be mulling this over for awhile yet– but just as a reflex, I don’t think a simple “less range” would dent the nuisances you identified, or at least not without some collateral damage. I do like the “fill out a form” idea for some common activities, but even there I wonder, why involve chats in that? I’d think some sort of virtual “bulletin board” where people could put up their filled-out “forms” (likely with some kind of expiration timer on them, to prevent indefinite clutter) that people could check would be more suitable. Or make it less virtual, make it an actual thing in the game, one per zone or so that people have to visit to read or add their notices to. Actually, that sounds rather appealing, what with producing a logical spot for people to hang out at while decluttering chats a bit. (In theory.)
Unrelated to the topic at hand: I hope that you keep blogging regardless of what game you’re playing at the moment. Your thoughts are interesting enough to be worth reading no matter what selection of acronyms you’re using.
So, while I don’t happen to share your love of the general chat, I can respect where you’re coming from here. I wonder, though, apart from the fact that it’s a source of people being logged in, does the game actually contribute to your enjoyment of the chatting, or would you get the same pleasure from, say, a large IRC channel or live chat room? Or, to turn it around, does the fun you have with the other parts of the game depend on the ability to chat, or is it fun in itself somehow?
(I’m not trying to hassle you by asking these questions — I feel it’s interesting to know what people think about topics like this)
For me, at least, much of the fun of playing comes from the game itself, and from sharing that with people I know and like (even if we only know each other from playing together). But maybe that is a less common view?