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Posts tagged ‘raids’

12
Aug

Behavior in raids – bullying and verbal abuse

Bullying seems to be all too common among gamers today as well as all sorts of verbal abuse. Anonymity is like a motivator to release all kinds of venom in gaming chat channels and it feels like it has gotten steadily worse and worse. Luckily the majority of gamers prefer to avoid this kind of behavior, and I often experience that players will also speak up against this kind of abuse.

Now I can see many reasons for why people have all kinds of emotional outbursts while playing, but what I do not get is what they hope to achieve by verbally attacking someone for one reason or the other. It makes no sense to me to call someone a ‘retard’ in the hopes that they will perform better or act in a way more suitable for my personal game play experience. Considering my post regarding ‘raid rules’ this behavior just adds up and I have yet to see it be constructive or productive. In short it seems like complaining about the stupidity and ‘retardity’ of others is in itself just as stupid.

On the opposite side when looking at the more focused groups that have a high level of progress you will find these rules change somewhat. It is a commonly used management style to run a strict team with a very present level of verbal abuse in the form on direct micro-management not unlike what one might see/experience as part of military training. Making use of such a management style is no guarantee for success as it also holds a fine balance for when its productive and when it is absolutely not. But when it works it seems fair to say that it does so quite brilliantly.

In a different context this kind of behavior might be a part of the humorous tone of social interactions in a raid group, and in this case it is important to be aware of unwritten rules of how these joke and puns are thrown around. Knowing with whom you can joke, what jokes are ok and have a positive effect on the mood of the raid is something that is part of the initiation rites of most groups. This social interaction in between the focused boss fights is an important part of a raid experience and helps keep the game entertaining, fun and social.

12
Aug

Behavior in raids – leadership

Becoming a raid leader is not role one can just ‘take’, its a role that first requires you to conform. Just like the players will conform to their roles and their personality type the leader must first find his place in the group to be able to lead.

In a LFR the time needed to ‘hold’ a leading role is short, but for a guild raid group a leader will need time to be able to have the group work together as a team. The difference primarily based on the level of ‘facerolling’ (lack of complexity) that is possible in a LFR where mistakes are much easily ‘forgiven’ and the boss mechanics can be ‘ignored’ by some and have the raid still come out victorious. From the next level and onward such mistakes have much ‘deadlier’ consequences, and when you reach the Heroic level you also face additional mechanics that do not exist in the other levels and where there is no room for ‘mistakes’.

Even if the basic mechanics of an encounter is more or less the same for all, it becomes unique for each combination of players that take it on. And its up to the raid leader to ‘mold’ his team into a team that is ready and able to succeed. Overcoming these challenges is not just a combination of individual efforts, it is just as much how they are able to work as a team and counter any flaws or assist in enhancing positive abilities that each individual player might display during different challenges. Where each player must understand both the game mechanics for the encounter as well as those for their characters role, its the leaders role to puzzle all of this together on both a game and social level and bring the victory home.

So make sure you groom your aspiring leaders – they are a rare breed, and the good ones even more so. At the same time it seems that good leaders always bring with them a set of flaws. So the question becomes this; does the raids successes outweigh the flaws of the leader?

15
Jul

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.