Any MMO relies heavily on the social aspect to ensure a loyal and growing player base. Even FPS games have a substantial proportion of players who are not just looking for shooter action, but who rather enjoy the social aspect of hanging out with their friends more than the gameplay itself. Catering to those players is absolutely not a bad thing.
I see several suggestions here for a neutral zone where all the factions can gather. This must never happen. There must never be any communication of any sort between factions. This is a very basic social engineering design principle. Why do you see so much trash talk in FPS titles? Why dont you see that level of trash talk in an MMORPG like WoW? Because games like WoW do not allow opposing factions to talk to each other. What would they say? Mostly obscenity, bragging, mocking, harassment - none are things that are conducive to building a positive social environment. The factions are enemies to each other. No communication must ever be allowed between them in the game.
However there are other possibilities. For example, there can be up to 2000 active players per continent. Why not create a separate staging area for each faction where people waiting in line to get into the fight can hang out?
Eg. There are 3 continents, and all are full with 2000 players each. However there are another 1000 players waiting around wanting to play. What do they do? Why not put them into the neutral staging area. While there they can chat, go hang out in the cantina, check out instructional videos or general action videos (ie. YouTube videos), watch a giant holographic globe of the world spinning around showing faction control zones, set up private rooms for 'discussing strategy' or whatever it is that roleplayers call it these days, etc. Players in the staging area can choose to enter a queue to get into the fight and walk around while they wait, which is better than staring at a screen showing how many other people are in the queue ahead of them. Some players would probably choose not to enter the queues at all and just hang out in the staging area all day. Good for them. They would probably be spending a lot of money on costumes too.
Further social events could easily be organised through this hub. For example, the great annual race to circumnavigate the continents, or the monthly contest to see who can kill the most (insert opposing faction) players.
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2012-06-28, 10:00 AM
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