Loading... Friends In Real Life

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Posted Wed, Dec 02, 2009 by Shayalyn

Welcome to the 1,220th edition of Loading...

Loading... is the premier daily MMORPG news, coverage, and commentary newsletter, only from Ten Ton Hammer.

Social networking--love it or hate it, it seems to be here to stay. But while social networking has advanced greatly over the past few years, community building in MMOGs has remained relatively stagnant. Could the MMOG industry learn a thing or two from the likes of Facebook and Twitter? We explore the social networking phenomenon in today's Loading...Friends in Real Life.

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The Pulse

You vote with what you view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the result is the Ten Ton Pulse (What is The Pulse?).

Here are today's top 5 Pulse results:

Biggest movers today:

Dragon Age Origins (Up 4 to #7)
Star Trek Online (Down 3 to #11)
Global Agenda (Up 3 to #18)

Recent Releases

9/22 - Fallen Earth (release date)
9/22 - Aion (release date)
10/8 - Cities XL (release date)
11/3 - Dragon Age: Origins (release date)
11/10 - Final Fantasy XI Ultimate Collection (release date)
12/1 - LotRO: Siege of Mirkwood (expansion)
12/1 - EVE Online: Dominion (expansion)

Upcoming Releases

12/2 - DOFUS 2.0 (release date)
12/15 - EverQuest: Underfoot (expansion)
2/2 - Star Trek Online (release date)
Early 2010 - APB
Feb. 2010 - EverQuest 2: Sentinel's Fate (expansion)

Loading... Daily

It's trendy to pick on social networking. We make fun of people who post innane comments about their daily lives ("Ate oatmeal with raisins for breakfast. Yum!" "I had to shave my cat." etc.) on Twitter and laugh that people on Facebook seem to have far more online friends than they could ever claim to have in the real, and much scarier, world. And yet most people, and many businesses, have Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. (In fact, you can follow Ten Ton Hammer on Facebook and Twitter, and we certainly hope you will.)

In an open letter to the community yesterday, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote, "It has been a great year for making the world more open and connected. Thanks to your help, more than 350 million people around the world are using Facebook to share their lives online."

I don't know about you, but I find that 350 million user landmark mind boggling. Now, I know it's true that some Facebook users have multiple or fake accounts (I'm friends with Zombi Man, for instance, and I'm pretty sure that's not his real name), but for the most part Facebook users seem to be the real deal, which means there are roughly 350 million unique individuals using the social networking site. Given that information, we're almost forced to conclude that social networking is here to stay.

It seems to me that people like to reach out online. Back when I played EverQuest, we often used the acronym IRL, for In Real Life, to refer to things in the physical world as opposed to the virtual one. "I'm a writer IRL," I would tell the people I became well acquainted with online. But I've notice this term used less and less over the past decade, and it makes me wonder if perhaps the real world and the virtual one are starting to become synonymous. It's gotten to the point where online friendships are no longer considered weird and high tech; they're standard fare. We no longer seem to question whether we can grow attached to the people we meet online and become close friends because it happens to so many of us. I don't know about you, but I don't separate the friends I see face-to-face and the ones I have online into categories, real and virtual; they're all real to me.

So the question now isn't whether connecting to one another online is a real and valuable thing; we're learning more and more that it is as people reach out through social networking sites, blogs, forum communities and many other mediums. The question now is how we'll continue to use this knowledge that community is king to grow and expand our global sense of connection.

Over the years, MMOGs have grown, alongside other socially-centered Internet phenomena like Usenet groups and bulletin boards, as a means for people to connect with other people online. But where things like bulletin boards have evolved into their current iterations as multi-functional and user-friendly forums, and the chat rooms of old have transitioned to Twitter tweets and Facebook status updates, MMOG communities have remained almost static. I say almost because they have evolved to some degree with features like active scoreboarding and character tracking (SOE's EQ2 Players is a great, and pioneering, example), and yet, in terms of content-rich social networking sites like Facebook, they seem to have a long way to go.

We've discussed over and over in Loading... and on Ten Ton Hammer in general how today's MMOGs lack the community of the MMOGs of old, which is ironic considering those older MMOGs lacked many of the tools, like LFG and guild functionality, that now make connecting and finding people in-game easier. I don't have the magic formula for community building in a MMOG. I wish I did, because I'd preach it from the mountain tops and become a gaming legend. But I do think MMOGs have a thing or two to learn from the success of Facebook and Twitter. People, MMOG players included, seem to need people and we long for an easy to navigate online community. We may not want to share what we had for breakfast or how we tormented our pets of the feline persuasion like some folks on Facebook or Twitter do, but we want to be connected nonetheless. Connection to other people is the reason we play MMOGs and not single-player games.

What can the MMOG industry learn from the social networking boom? How can developers facilitate the community players long for? Share your thoughts and ideas on the Loading... forum.

Shayalyn's Epic Thread of the Day

From our Articles, News and Events Discussion forum

Mythos is Reborn

Once upon a time there was a MMOG, in development by Flagship Studios, named Mythos. Its beta was promising, and Ten Ton Hammer's Danny "Ralsu" Gourley once chose it for his 2008 Best of F2P Awards as the best...game that failed. Because that's exactly what Mythos did. While in the midst of beta, Flagship halted production of Mythos and then eventually closed due to financial issues. But now Mythos is back under developer Redbana, and our forum community is talking about it. Get the scoop and discuss the game.

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Awesome Quotes from the Epic Thread

"Hell yeah, there we go! I was in the original closed beta for Mythos when flagship owned and I loved it. Now I'm hopefully going to be getting into this CB as well. This is the type of dungeon crawl I really enjoyed...."

- Khalus
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Have you spotted an Epic Thread on our forums? Tell us!

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