This.

This is full of WIN! *cheers fullofWIN*

This is exactly why I play with friends *or* random PUGs in GW, when I feel like being sociable.

When I want to do what you said in that paragraph above (which I do often want to do), I used Heroes + Henches (and now just Heroes). But you have defined what for me is the basis of good, social gameplay within a genre involving squishing lots of imaginary things with pretty lights, for fun. XD

Fun.

Not gear. Not progression. Not loot. Not status. Not Achievements.

Fun.

YAAAAAAAAY SPINKZ!

This competitive spirit isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the glorification and making it the most important thing in the MMOs is, I think. The mere thought that the end game is where the game begins is strange to me, perhaps due to the fact that I’m from the old pen and paper roleplaying era, seeing the group content as more of a social fun rather than besting others.

As long as there is the possibility to measure performance, as long as there are leaderboards, as long as there is the glorification of any sort of activity, this disparity will be around the corner.

So far I’ve been enjoying Rift exactly for this reason (among other things): no measurable successes except the downing of the boss, closing the rift or fending off the invasion.

I hope it stays like this for a long time.

C out

In DAoC there was this notion that 8 vs 8 RVR was the “best” way of playing the game and “zerging” (or fighting as part of your realm’s army, depending on your point of view) was inherently inferior. A lot of players strove to form 8-man RvR guilds and adopted leeter-than-thou attitudes. Is this the same thiing manifesting differently?

This happens to me all the time in StarCraft 2. I’ll be playing in a group with friends and one person may be pretty bad and the rest of us are good, but we all end up having fun together anyway.

We are playing the game to have fun as a group, not with the intention of getting to raid boss x. Not having to worry about the progress we make helps us just enjoy the time together.

I think, in addition to raiding, Cata itself created difficulties in playing with friends. Since the zones are so linear, if one person gets a head or late start, it becomes difficult for a group of people to level together. I’ve been experiencing this recently.

As to your question “Why is progression important / or have people convinced themselves that it is?” I think there’s at least two (this is off the top of my head so there may well be many more) ways to get to that belief. One is, as your previous commenter put, the belief that your social standing in the game matters: you want to be the best. The second, and I fall into this category, is the idea of completion. I want to complete the content; it doesn’t matter so much to me how long it takes or hard it is, but I want to be able to look back and say, “We did it. We finished that.”

I think the second mindset is harder to deal with; the people who just want to be the best are easily going to make sacrifices to do so. The people in the second group, though, has to make choices about what they value in the game, and making a trade-off like that can hurt a gamer’s relationship to the game.

This was a really excellent topic and has given me a lot to think (and potentially post) about. Thanks!

Several things could be done to balance this out:

1. Bonus loot only drops in pure 10 man runs (orbs, legendary parts, etc.)
2. Hard modes could only be done in pure 10s.
3. Limit the number of valor points (boss only drops 500, split between all members) or split valor and justice (each extra member converts 10 valor into justice).
4. Of course, any competitive standings would be based off 10 man kills only.

25s could be adjusted the same way.

I think this would be extremely fun, and allow groups that want to be competitive to remain so, and those that prefer casual fun can do so without having to turn it into work.

Being caught in the nasty decision of progress vs friends is a unpleasant place to be in. Wouldn’t it be lovely if guilds could be categorized, and we could belong to one guild in each category?