Making a MMRPG community that's friendly

Life in the world of warcraft

Published on March 19, 2004 By Draginol In PC Gaming

During the alpha of World of Warcraft one thing everyone noticed: Nearly all the players were nice people.

I don't mean just friendly, but really nice. Will this be something that continues into the beta and beyond? I don't have my hopes up too high but I hope so. What are some of the rules of netiquette in the world of warcraft?

Don't "kill steal". The first person to attack a creature gets that creature. Don't come in and start attacking it unless they ask for help OR if it looks like that other player is about to die.
If you want to help someone, see if you can heal them. Better to heal a player (like if you're a preist or Paladin) than to risk kill stealing.
If two people come up on an ore deposit at roughly the same time, share it. Take one hit on it and then offer the other person a turn to mine the ore. And then take turns.
Don't be too quick to join a guild. Find out if the people in it are the kinds of people you want to be associated with.
Share with your party members. This may seem tough but it pays off in the long term.
Add people to your friends list that you like. This seems obvious but early on people don't think about this and regret it later. Another reason to follow #5 btw.
DON'T be abusive to other people. Give other people the benefit of the doubt.
WHEN you are under attack and over your head, DON'T run away from the creature and into other people. It's okay to run away but don't run towards other people.

Any others? Feel free to comment and add your own. I'll update this over time.

Comments

mittens

on Mar 19, 2004

I experienced the same thing when I was beta-testing the Warcraft III: Frozen Throne expansion pack. The beta-testers are, as a rule, VERY nice people. Then the second the game went gold, and eventually was released in stores, there came a huge flood of assholes. It's a nice hope that the WoW community will stay as friendly as I've seen it so far (I've been watching a friend play all night), but these are beta-testers. These aren't guys interested in power-leveling and being the best; these are guys that are interested in helping Blizzard make a great game, and to meet friends along the way.

Shame so many players won't share the same philosophy when the actual game is released.

Zoomba

on Mar 19, 2004

This holds true for the very early testing phases for any MMORPG when there is a small group of people involved. I was in the first beta phase for Star Wars Galaxies, and though there were in theory 500 testers by the end of the first phase, there were perhaps 25-50 of us who were in-game for every test session. The reason for this is typically the kiddies and griefers don't really have the patience for an early alpha/beta version of a game, they can't really play it, and that's all they wanted out of a beta anyway, a free game. The other influencing factor is that since there is such a small number of people, and the devs to player ratio is rather high, those that do stick around to test get to know the programmers, server admins and designers fairly well, so establishing those relationships with the devs and your fellow early testers usually preempts grief playing. I mean, how many grief players grief their friends?

The key in moving on from beta into retail of any MMO is to gather up a good group of friends you tested/played with, and form a guild with them and pretty much stick with them for the rest of your time in game. I have a group of friends I made throughout all the phases of beta and we play together all the time (sometimes we still get members from the dev team dropping by and playing with us for a bit).

I'll add to the "rules" once I get accepted in and can experience the game for myself

-Z

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