Virtual friends

Wolfgang has a post up about playing WoW (insert MMO of choice here) and how the friends we make online can bring us back to a game, or breath new life into it.

When I first began playing WoW I played it as a single-player game in a world populated by characters controlled by real people. I rarely grouped, and often attempted to complete quests beyond my level, on my own, simply because I didn't know any better. Eventually I responded to a Guild Recruitment message just because I liked the Guild's name, joined, and found the Guild consisted pretty much of four real life friend, and a few other players. Eventually the four friends moved on and all but one of them stopped playing WoW, although he still quit our guild and joined another.

The guy who received leadership of the Guild from the original leader recruited a few of his RL friends and it was these players who formed the basis of a fairly successful casual Guild which completed content normally conquerable only by hardcore guilds. Most of those people are still in the Guild today, meaning I've known most of them now for almost two & a half years. In my downtime, when I'm not spending time with my RL family, I'm spending time with my virtual friends.

When we went back to Australia for mum's wedding last year I actually stopped playing a week or so before we left, and when I got back I found other things to do than log in. When I finally logged back in I just sat there staring at the character selection screen...wondering what I was going to do. Finally I selected my "main" character and entered the game, and as soon as the game loaded I saw Guild Chat light up with people virtually screaming my name.

It's hard to explain to people who don't play MMOs exactly what the attraction is. What makes you log into a game, only to sit on a dock somewhere and catch fish for several hours, just to level up your fishing skill. Why would you steer your avatar around an area, killing & skinning hundreds of Mobs over the space of several hours? Does all that gold really mean anything? Do you really need a faster Gryphon? Why would you spend several hours with four (or more) other people, in a coordinated assault on a dungeon, just for the chance (not a guarantee, mind you) to score some virtual loot that will make your avatar just a little bit stronger?

And why do you keep logging back in, time and time and time again, only to do the same old thing, time and time and time again?

It's the people. It's your virtual friends. In most cases, they make logging in all worth while. You may never meet them IRL. You may only ever communicate with them in-game, or via a headset, but over time you've gotten to know these people as intimately as any other close friend. You've journeyed with them, put your faith in them to heal you and keep you alive (in-game of course), or trusted them to hold the attention of a virtual dragon while you fired arrow after arrow into it.

MMOs are all about the people.