The Daily Grind: Running on MMO time

by Krystalle Voecks Dec 9th 2007 at 10:15AM

Filed under: Grouping, Opinion, The Daily Grind

As anyone who has ever raided can tell you, people who are late can be annoying. They come screaming online at the very last minute, spend time grabbing reagents and making apologies, and unless you happen to be in a game that allows for you to teleport/summon them to your location, you have to wait for them to get there. Of course, on the devil's advocate side of things -- life happens. They may have just finished getting children into bed, just gotten home from a late class, or had to deal with insanity at work that prevented them from being at the keys on time. From my personal point of view, this is also where you tend to see the "casual" mindset bump up against the "hardcore" mindset. (Note: using the terms loosely here.) People whose sole focus is getting on and raiding view this as a particular flaw in the other person's game style. "I was here on time, why can't you be here?" The people whose intent is just playing with friends may well be irked, but more often than not, you'll hear things like "That's okay, RL > game." (And it's probably best to note that I'm not referring to the habitual offenders who are always late, no matter what they try.)

In World of Warcraft, you see guilds lose members or disband over this -- casual guilds won't sideline raiders for being late, and those who lean more towards the hardcore side of the table will grow resentful of what seems to be a guild culture that allows tardiness. Eventually, the hardcore people in question will either /dramaquit in a fit of "you all suck", or if they are in power, there may be a shift in the guild's focus towards more hardcore strictures that make the guild hostile to half of its population. Of course, without those changes, you will lose some people anyway. (Unless you're very lucky and get the rare person who can just say "Sorry, this isn't working for me" and leave on good terms.) It's a lose-lose situation more often than not.

So today we'd like to ask you about your time habits in MMOs, and what your thoughts are on keeping real time versus MMO time. It is certainly argued that people being tardy are disrespectful of other people's game time. The people who have other responsibilities that supersede gaming might argue that in real life you'd be no more likely to stomp off in annoyance if they were 10 minutes late to meeting up with you at the movies. In either case, raiding and even some grouping situations (like Task Forces in CoX) can often bring out the rancor from both sides. Do you think that it's acceptable to be late every once in a while, or do you think that being late at all in a situation where other people are depending on you is out of the question? Do you find it hard to enjoy your gaming because of other people's tardiness issues, or are you on the other side of the coin and feel that people setting times on attendance place too much of an emphasis on MMOs in general. Is it just a question of mindset -- those who treat the situation like a job (you should never be late for work, so why do so in game) versus those who, as illustrated above, may view it as more of a social gathering (like going to the movies) than anything?

Tags: casual, featured, hardcore, raiding, raiding-is-serious-business, tardiness, the-daily-grind, timeliness

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jeromai said on 11:08AM 12-09-2007

If there's a group activity that's prearranged and set at a specific time, I like people to do their best to get there on time.

If you can't make it, let people know, so that there isn't a lot of standing around and waiting and wasting other people's time. At least alternate plans can be made. RL -is- more important, but surely you value your online friends enough to at least say "sorry, can't make it on time today."

Unpredictable stuff happens. A few sporadic late arrivals is no biggy. When it's chronic, that's a problem.

10-20 min tardiness for something that'll take a few hours is fine. Past 30 mins is pushing it for me.

If we're all going to be casual about it, then say so. "Let's try to meet at 8pm, and if we've got enough mass, then we'll do this and that." That's fine. Maybe we'll delay it until 10pm, whatever. If I need to leave early, I'll go.

If it's "8pm - such and such a raid / task force, etc," then by 8.15, everyone who wants to participate had better be there, and the thing should be off by 8.30ish.

LiQiuD said on 11:23AM 12-09-2007

I've played both sides of this equation.

I led a competitive guild in Guild Wars for about 7 months. People that didn't show up on time for Guild vs Guild were benched until they started showing up on time. The only way around that was to post to our forums saying you would be late / out etc. I did however always grant a 15 minute immunity...if you were more than 15 minutes late, say hi to the bench for me.

In CoH/CoV I would frequently schedule Task Forces. I would always tell everyone to be ready early, because at the appointed time, if you weren't there your spot was gone. If scheduled for 8:00 PM, at 8:01 I would see if anyone wanted any of the spots open. It might seem a little harsh, but I used to typically do 2-3 Task forces a night, and this was almost a necessity so that things wouldn't get way out of schedule.

I understand real world needs, I have 3 kids...but if you're going to commit to something, commit to it, and make it happen. Show others the respect you expect to receive from them.

Anyway, just my $0.02.

Nollind Whachell said on 5:27PM 12-09-2007

Speaking of wasting time in a community, you guys seriously need to figure out the kinks with the Blogsmith system. I just spent 10 to 15 minutes typing up a comment only to have it lost. Normally I click back to reapply it (as it has happened numerous times before) but this time I couldn't recover it.

Either make the system so you can post like a blog or have a login that indicates when you're logged in (so you know ahead of time) and even if you time out, it temporarily holds your comment while you login again. I mean the blogging system that I use for my personal site does this, why can't you do the same? All in all, while I enjoy the content here, I'm pretty much tired of my time being wasted.

Coherent said on 3:44PM 12-10-2007

The topic of this post is only an issue when you're adventuring in a 25 man dungeon. It's no problem at all for 5 or 10 man content. That's the problem with having large, tightly structured endgame adventuring groups. It's difficult to get the exact same people to log on at the exact same time so that you can all play this "game" together.

With a more flexible endgame adventuring structure, some imaginative gamesmithing, this wouldn't be such a problem. You DON'T HAVE to build encounters to make it difficult for players to assemble a successful group.

Just brainstorming alternatives, I can toss up several different ideas: Allow raids to hire NPC adventurers to fill empty raid slots; Allow understrength raids to fight bosses to a draw rather than a death, resulting in less loot; Split endgame raids into teams to accomplish specific lesser objectives racing against the clock or each other...

There are a LOT of gameplay innovations that could be used and developed to the point of allowing a much more flexible schedule.