Massively Multi Player Online Games

Shey

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a great MMORPG  3D MMORPG 

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Create your own characters Race

Class druid, priest, warrior, rogue, mage, hunter, paladin, shaman, warlock 5

Play in a quest Goal: slaying the traitorous Edwin VanCleef 

Reward: experience points, equipment, ingame money or items 6

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World of Warcraft provides several means of structured collaboration where much play takes place. Players may play with players they don’t know, with friends and family from offline-life, or with in-game friends.

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Party (2-5 players) – Short-dterm A party, composed of 2-5 players, has its own chat channel. Party members may or may not know one another. For example, a party may set out at half-strength with players who know each other. They begin a quest and then add new members as needed as they meet other players doing the same quest. If party members enjoy playing together they may share their other quests. 

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Raid(8 Parties) – Short-term For bigger challenges than can be handled by parties, raids are formed. A raid is a group of up to eight(five) parties. Each party within the raid has its own chat channel and a raid channel connects the members of the entire raid. 

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Guild – Long-term Guilds are long-term groups which range in size from a small handful to a couple hundred players. There is a guild chat channel and you can chat with other guild members. An organization for players - Community How to form a guild*

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Collected a variety of group structure Based on the paper: The Life and Death of Online Gaming Communities: A Look at Guilds in World of Warcraft - Class balance ratio (28.135) 

More balanced guilds survive better than others (priests are in short supply) -

Guild size (24.481) as expected, bigger guilds are more likely to survive. 12

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Level standard deviation (23.283)

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Maximum subgraph size (15.845)

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Time in instances (15.481)

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Density (15.339)

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Small is beautiful – Dunbar suggested that there is a cognitive limit for people to form groups around 150 – Allen argued that for online groups to be creative and efficient, the number should be smaller 45 – The authors claim the optimal guild in WOW is 35 

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Tragedy of commons “nothing prevents players from leaving a guild as soon as their personal objectives are accomplished. To be sure, high‐level players who behave selfishly will tarnish their reputation and news travels fast on a WoW server, decreasing their chances of finding a new group. Still, no mechanisms are in place to build up a player’s attachment to his/her guild, which probably encourages churn.” 

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Teamwork

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In-game market : auction house  Out-game trade gold, card, characters, training* 

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How to attract people?

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Can you think of examples in real life communities or other games where the same things happen?

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