I'm not doing anything again. If everyone wants to pine for the good ole days and talk about their feelings that's great. I'll step away because I don't need to relive the days of the internet in 1999. What I'm attempting to is to discuss how to create a game, if it's possible, that creates a more social environment. The more people are tied to your game, the more successful it's going to be. However I'm not hearing anything other than philosphy and abstract ideas and not concrete game design ideas that are fun to play around with.
Less platitudes, more ideas.
I agree with you that EQ was more than a game. It was your whole social sphere and I get that. When people flippantly say it was a 3D chat box with a game inside of it, they are kinda right. Now here is the challenge: When you have shit like Facebook, Skype/Vent/Mumble, Multimonitor setups, Forums, Youtube and other shit, how do you make a game that keeps your attention away from all of that? Since you don't like twitch games apparently, you are then talking about some sort of game design that gives you 5-10(?) minutes of down time or at least a combat system (assuming you have combat) that is not action intensive so that your actions per minute, on average, allow you to chat during it.
How are you building that game? What's the combat like? What's the downtime like? Why is there downtime? What's happening during it?
What does meaningful interaction mean? Is that not putting in an AH so people have to engage in trade individually to sell stuff? If this is the case, is gear not as accessible as it is in modern MMOs? Are you not creating any Public, or Automated grouping systems so players have to actively reach out to a list of players? I would like to discuss how you go about doing this rather than just saying "less twitch, more meaningful interaction". Because that ultimately means nothing.
Oh come on, trying to backhand belittle me by stating it was my whole "social sphere" implies that you think you are above us mere mortals. And it also makes assumptions about me and my life that you have no knowledge of. Knock it off.
And, it isn't about pining for the good old days. It's about reintroducing game elements that have been thrown out for the fast and simple drive through mentality of todays' games. I'll back hand you back. You seem to only want McDonalds. While there are many of us who also enjoy steak. You have stated many times that all you want to do is punch a button and mindlessly play your game. Well you have that game... it's WoW. You don't really want anything else, in spite of your protestations otherwise.
Yes, EQ was a 3D chat box. Most mmos are if done right. WoW even has that element with Barrens chat. Barrens chat in it's own way represents WoW's community in more ways than one. It is puerile and vapid, but it is a community. The difference with EQ was that much of the playerbase was older, more mature, experienced and more comfortable with interacting with people in ways that young people haven't developed the skills for yet.
... most of the people who did play EQ back in the day are what? 10-15 years older now? No longer carefree teenagers or early 20'ers who can spend all night sock-pooping spawns and what not, but grown adults with full time work and other commitments.
Now I never played EQ,.... etc.
You are wrong and you even stated why. Yes we were younger but many of us were already adults with established real lives and real life "social spheres" when we played EQ. I remember one of our best healers was a grandmother, with a bazillion grandchildren. She loved EQ and was very good at it, but she also had a real life. Many of us did, we didn't have to poopsock to be good at EQ, or to be in the best guilds. All while still maintaing our real lives and real life friendships.
And I met a lot of older people while leveling up. EQ was welcome to all generations. WoW and most of it's clones are built strictly for the teen set. WoW has very little attraction to people who have grown up and out of saturday morning cartoons. Poop socking is the preferred strategy of children, as you grow up you have learn how to succeed without losing your real life.
There are mmos that have healthier communities. Lotro has some very fine players. The RP server Laurelin (sp?) is amazing for it's depth of community and maturity. And it is one of the most popular servers. One of the reasons it has maintained such a high standard is the RP rule set is much stricter than usual. It was a EU server so when Turbine took it back over, they kept the rule set the euros had in place. The NA RP server isn't so strict.
So there are easy ways to create community but one of the first things you have to do is not specialize for children. Children are not capable of interacting in any other way than with fart and Chuck Norris jokes. When your game caters to children then it is no wonder that the people who like the type of interactions EQ fostered, don't play.