The Guild Gap

As a disclaimer, I like Tobold's blog. I like it even more now that he's stopped focusing on WoW and has branched out more.

Anyhow, today he makes an interesting point about the impact of large, co-ordinated guilds on PvP. And wonders just how games will be able to allow more casual players to compete with the hardcore. It seems an obvious, if unfortunate, dilemma because asking a random group to compete with a dedicated PvP guild is like asking a pick-up team to play against a professional basketball team. Sure, sometimes you get Larry Bird or Kobe Bryant in that PUG but not only are you much more likely to get the alternative, the established team has built-in advantages when it comes to communication, familiarity, and strategic sophistication. The PUG should and will lose a lot against the sort of team you want to develop if you have a game with anything like a PvP focus. And that's how it should be.

The question is what do all the people who aren't completely hardcore doing in a game like that? How are they kept encouraged and from leaving? As pointed out swiftly in the comments section, a viable model for encompassing both casual and structured PvP play exists in Guild Wars. And the key is providing several different options for PvP formats. Increasingly more intricate and commitment intensive tiers that lead one from a starting point of not having a clue to higher levels of play as you come to understand the game's mechanics and arcane sundries (And by concentrating on only a few of those formats so as not to overly segment your player base and provide a clear-cut progression. Which is where GW really fails. As the game's worn on different formats have proliferated, making it fragmented between players who prefer one type over another and, as the population sinks, increasingly difficult to find groups to play with. They would have been better off, I think, to have simply revamped the existing formats with each expansion, adding new twists and features while taking care of old problems, rather than trying to bolt a new one on with every chapter.) and become more skilled.

At the same time, you need to make sure you have low barriers of entry in the beginning level formats in order to combat the rising tide of competence. The longer people play the game, the better they get at it, and getting involved in competitive PvP requires more and more knowledge of obscure techniques and the areas where the rules are in your advantage than the developers can or will ever be able to include in a tutorial. It's not just that the bad players are driven out, it's that the good players continue to get better. But there's also a continual drain on the player base as players leave the game for whatever reason. And in order to avoid a completely insular group of hardcore players completely closed off to new entries, you have to make sure the game has an avenue for players to travel to the higher levels of play. Otherwise, just like WoW's endgame devolves into massively time intensive raids which only interest those dedicated enough to invest in performing them, so, too, does your PvP game devolve into a bunch of elites running around blowing everyone else off the map. Which makes the game unfun for everyone involved - there's almost as little enjoyment involved in winning a blow-out as there is in being blow-out - if you're there for the challenge, at least.

The difference, though, between GW and upcoming PvP-centric games like Age of Conan or WAR is that you'll be subscribing to those games. Which drastically alters the picture. People like to win. They don't like to lose. And there are very few people who are going to continue to pay for the privilege of getting steamrolled on a regular basis. Which just makes more casual formats where there are low risks and low rewards - where winning is easy and losing painless - that much more important. Not only will they be a place for players to blow off steam or the hardcore to fool around, they'll also serve as a place for the social aspect of the PvP side of things (Always an underappreciated aspect, if you ask me. PvPers aren't antisocial, they're just assholes with an opinion of their own abilities that's constantly inflated by positive feedback. Social networking, making relationships, it's all vitally important to competitive players.). Places where those not in one of those rare awesome guilds can meet or be noticed by the gatekeepers who'll usher them behind the velvet rope of the higher formats.