The Streamlined Community (Febuary 2005)

A new WoW update with a feature used in some previous mmogs got me thinking about socializing and contrasting WoW against SWG. Something that really stands out to me is how streamlined socializing is in WoW. So much in fact, communities don't even really exist in towns, forts, or other physical(virtual) locations. They exist in chat channels. General, Guild, etc. That's it really. Face to face chatting just isn't common. Outside the major trade hub for each 'nation', it's downright rare.

Now in contrast to that, look at SWG (atleast when I played). There was technically chat channel support but no one ever really used them (blame a horrid UI among other things). So the vast majority of socializing was indeed done face to face. Communities actually existed in cities, and in cantinas and hostitals, rather than in just Zone General and so forth. Beyond that, when you met someone in the wilds (this was emphased even more by the massive size of the world), you often actually stopped to socialize: simply chat a bit, trade some rumors, get some news, etc. The world wasn't streamlined so if you wanted some socialization you wanted to stop and chit chat. Again in contrast, in WoW most people don't even acknowledge others when they see them. They're always connected via Zone General anyhow.

There are pros and cons to both. Obviously the lack of streamlined socializing and broad chat makes the real face to face socialization not only actual a major part of the game, but a lot better too. But then the downside is, it's certianly not very helpful to many casual gamers. They can't just ask for help in a broad chat or so forth.