Drama Mamas: Playing on multiple levels with different groups and partners

Sometimes having so many appealing playstyles to choose from makes deciding how to settle in to play WoW more difficult, not less. That's certainly the case when you're trying to enjoy the game with multiple sets of groups and partners -- for example, guild raiding twice a week, leveling and exploring with a significant other, and battling the enemy in battlegrounds now and again with a crew of longstanding gaming friends. Is it even possible to connect all those threads into an enjoyable gaming week without blowing every last minute of free time (and then some)?

Fortunately, you can learn to combine different playstyles and groups. The trick is learning how to adjust your expectations and approach from group to group and partner to partner. Never assume that everyone "needs" or wants to cover the same content or achieve the same type of goals in the game. With a little time management and a lot of clarity among gaming partners, you can enjoyably indulge in WoW on multiple levels without the time crunch and without any drama.
First Up: Time management

Before you even think about carving up your week into WoW sessions with separate groups of people, be certain that you have time management firmly under your belt.

Prerequisite: Does the time you'll spend with other groups impinge on your responsibilities and relationships with work, family, or significant others? If all signs point to smooth coexistence, you're ready to move on to making sure your play time fits into the stream of the rest of your life. Read the video gamer's guide to time management for tips and advice.

Are we having fun yet?

The next step is to decide who you want to have fun with and identify what each of you thinks would be fun to do in game –- and therein lies your greatest challenge. Let's look at some common scenarios and then flip back to some classic Drama Mamas resource links to help you work through your plan. Combine ingredients, mix until smooth

Despite your best efforts, trying to juggle too many WoW groups could bring the whole thing crashing down on your head. The more you divide your attention, the more opportunities there are to trip up –- or you could simply find yourself overbooked. Some of the best-laid plans will simply fail to rise, leaving you with a doughy partnership that nobody's especially keen to bite into.

Don't be afraid to say no or to stop doing something that isn't fun any more. Leaving a guild or regular gaming group doesn't mean goodbye forever. You can still keep in contact with friends you don't play with regularly.

Talk, talk, talk to your WoWmates, and try again. Or try something different. Or try something that's not WoW. Sometimes, the best solution is stepping away for a change of pace. Ever considered a casual night of homebrew and Hearthstone? ... Dodge the drama and become that player everyone wants in their group with advice from the Drama Mamas guide to preventing multiplayer drama. Got a question? Email the mamas at robin@wowinsider.com. Tags: advice, drama, featured, guild-advice, guild-drama, partner, playing-wow, significant-other, warcraft-advice, wow-advice, wow-drama, wow-drama-guide, wow-player-guide, wow-q-and-a

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Is It Time To Shoot “Levels” In The Head?

Veteran MMO designer and blogger Richard Bartle is back making waves in the MMORPG community again this week – this time, with a vitriolic rant against the concept of a “level” in MMORPGs.

He’s arguing that “levels” make no in-game sense, that they separate friends from playing together, and that it would be trivial to come up with a better solution:

“Example: suppose you have some kind of secret agent game. Player characters have gone through training in their backstory and are now ready for the field. They’re all just as good as each other. You don’t have to have completed a thousand quests to be able to figure out how to use some over-powered sniper rifle: it’s the same as any other sniper rifle, you just aim and pull the trigger. You don’t get to use the heat-seeking drone bomb only when you’ve killed a hundred enemy agents, it’s not rocket science, you can use it straight away if you can get hold of one. The only difference between you and the experienced player is that you’re not yet trusted by your agency yet your colleague is. Your colleague has completed five hundred missions in places like Oslo and Vienna and Rome and Algiers, and is now trusted to go to Moscow and Warsaw and Prague and Shanghai. ”

And The Ancient Gaming Noob responds to his post in turn, with a discussion of both why levels eventually fail so badly, and why developers keep implementing them in the first place:

“Except, of course, people keep making level based games like this. Are they mad? Do they hate us?

The thing with levels is that they are simple. They are easy to create and explain. They are usually visible to other players, so everybody knows about where you stand in the game. While there are many ways to gate content… factions, quests, or currency could all be implemented quite easily as gates… nothing is quite as simple or as visible as that level number attached to your character.”

What do you think? Are levels disastrous?

Tagged as: levels, richard bartle

If you enjoyed this article, check out our other posts from these categories: General MMO Interest

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