„MMOs Don't Give People the Tools to Build Community Anymore,” Says Everquest 2 Head

MMO games are currently going through a crisis of identity. This genre was originally supposed to be based on interactions with other players and creating network communities with them, but more and more often in such games we play alone or in small groups with random people. Kyle Vallee, who leads the team developing EverQuest II at Darkpaw Games studio, spoke about the problems with this at the Fippy Fest convention.

1. Due to his position, Kyle Vallee tries to play every major MMORPG on the market. He sadly notes that modern games of this type often don't provide players with tools to build communities. Currently, you can play alone in many of them almost as if they were single-player games.
2. Even activities that require cooperation are often carried out in such a way that we arrive at a location, use a tool for automatic companion search, and then perform the task practically without talking to them.
3. In Everquest II players must talk to each other. Only in this way will they find team members. The devs removed the option for automatic companion search in the game because they noticed it was harmful to the creation of virtual communities.

Functions that facilitate daily gameplay can therefore harm games in the long run. Even EverQuest II didn't avoid this, although to a lesser extent than many other large MMORPGs. However, some players miss the old, more challenging, but also more interesting times. This was well demonstrated by the successful launch last week of the Anashti Sul expansion, which allows you to play EQ2 with mechanics taken directly from 2006, when negotiating with other players was absolutely crucial, and the game lacked many modern conveniences.

EverQuest II

November 8, 2004

Rate It!

• Overview

• EverQuest (series)
• MMORPG