MMOs vs SPGs and keeping MMOs focused

[Hoofhurr]

Rather than ask how many people solo I think we should ask *why* they solo, which is to say, why they are doing something in the game that nobody else is doing or helping them with in any way.

Can't we come up with some way where gamers play together over long periods of time but not necessarily in 8 hour chunks 7 days a week but rather 1 hours chunks a few days a week?

For me personally, these two comments are interwoven. I solo in an MMOG because I like the game and I occasionally have an abbreviated length of time to play the game. In a game where distance and time have value and can't be circumvented immediately this often makes joining friends prohibitive. If the game is only team oriented and I don't have much time to play then I would probably not even log in for an hour to clean a bank or farm some resources, sort of like POTBS.

Dustie: I'm not sure if there is a way or not. I haven't been able to come up with one. The difference in the math you have laid out is a 56 hour gaming week vs. a 7 or maybe 14 hour gaming week. If John is playing for 56 hours a week and those hours are during primetime, let's say 3pm to 11pm, that means that Chris playing a 14 hour gaming week during primetime has a 100% chance of finding John online whenever he logs on. If John plays for 14 hours a week, let's say 4pm-6pm (56 hours total) and Chris plays a 14 hour gaming week during primtime but that time period changes slightly everyday then Chris has a 14/56=40% chance of finding John online for a full two hour period.

By comparison, non-game communities like this forum for instance don't require us to be participating at any specific time in order to interact. I can leave a post at 4am on Tuesday morning and you can answer it at 7pm on Wednesday and that's how we interact. The geopolitical browser based game some of us were playing for a while where you played for the Irish or the Canadians, had a limited number of moves you could make everyday and it didn't matter what time of day you made them is probably the type of game that has the robustness to keep a time fractured community together.

If the One Rule means community and community is derived from interaction, then the first design hurdle you have to overcome is to find the medium through which people, that don't always have time to play together, can still interact.

I actually liked the NPC driven game for this reason. If John logs on and sets 20 NPCs into action and then logs off and then Chris logs on and sets 20 NPCs into action this would allow John and Chris to play together without actually playing at the same time. The potential pitfalls here though are if John plays for 56 hours and can make 56 hours worth of moves and Chris only makes 14 hours worth of moves, the addtional playtime available to John can't grant him too great of an advantage. Another pitfall is that if Chris logs in right after John logs off and sets his NPCs to move before Johns NPCs can complete their moves then Chris has the advantage.