Behavior in raids – group forming

As my Master thesis is about collaboration the behavior and success of raid activity in any given MMORPG is one of the success criteria I am trying to duplicate. The field of psychology was an interesting choice for analyzing this, and to just have an initial reference I found a simple web site describing ’10 Rules That Govern Groups’ as place to start. For game reference I have been tracking raid behavior in Word of Warcraft from 01.05.2014 to 01.07.2014.

Raids used to be events accessible only through belonging to a ‘guild’ or ‘raid community’, but at this point their creation is more diverse. The most loosely created raids at this time are a result of Word of Warcrafts ‘looking for raid’ tool that is part of the game. You sign up with a role and what raid event you want to partake in and then wait until enough players are signed up for the needed roles and then thrown into a largely random group of 25 players. Another option is for one or more individuals to gather up a group on their own by recruiting these in one of the game chat channels or some outside source (several of these exist today where OQueue and OpenRaid are good examples). Such groups are less random as the creators control the recruitment process. The groups can be generated on the fly with the goal of starting a raid even as soon as possible or they can be set up for a specific time and date, where Word of Warcraft also has a Calendar tool to help organizers set them up. And finally the old school ‘guilds’ and ‘communities’ that are preferred for facing the more challenging raiding content, and that work with the fixed team setups of 10 or 25 players.

In addition to this ‘established’ group setup I continually experience the development of smaller groups within a raid. As mentioned in an earlier post the leadership represents such a group. Roles also tend to group up (tanks, dps and healers). Finally there are situational and social groups. Situational groups are usually a result of events occurring during the raid and social groups can randomly appear and disappear as players socialize in the raid chat channel. And groups can arise from any existence of common identity.

I found that becoming part of one or more of the groups that appear during a raid event both makes the event more engaging as well as secures my position as part of the team. Due to the socially volatile behaviors certain players have it is wise to make sure you have some friends around when the rage hits the fan.

To be able to face the more difficult challenges you are wise to establish contact with more permanent groups that will often require to interact in social channels outside the game interface such as online forums, web applications and audio chat software such as Ventrilo or TeamSpeak. Most such permanent raid teams require you to submit an application for their evaluation before accepting you. This brings up the topic of ‘initiation rites’ which is the topic of my next diary post.