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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 1573344" data-attributes="member: 151">Partly agree and partly disagree.  The problem with most MMORPGs, IMHO, is that while they CAN foster such relationships, they often DON'T.  After the MMORPG explosion calmed down some, I found many folks who would only play MMORPGs with folks they knew in real life.  Why?  Because the first generation of MMORPGs hadn't yet come to grips with the 'jerk' factor.  The second generation addresses it, but I consider "City of Heroes" to be the first truly 3rd-gen MMORPG, and it effectively handles such problems very well.  It will be interesting to see how World of Warcraft, D&D online and Middle Earth Online handle them.  Several of my players are members of guilds, superhero teams and so forth.  I was once amongst their number, and only one of my players has never been so at one point or another.  The issue is that MMORPGs needs must cater to so many different play styles, they often reduce to numerical exercises, 'Fed-Ex' quests and 'Get the foozles in this order' quests.  Not the stuff of interactive legends.  I would argue that the previous and current crop of MMORPGs really aren't the same level of interactiveness or rewards that a PnP game is, because by necessity, they can't be.  On the other hand, when you have to spend 12 hours completing a quest with some folks (sometimes repeatedly for weeks), you tend to get as well acquainted as any message board, at the very least.  When I was playing Asheron's Call, we became very friendly with some the members of our alleigence tree, and had quite the esprit d'corps...as far as that went.  I know that my EQ playing friends (who have all pretty much moved on to City of Heroes at this point) all got into some very political situations amongst their guild, had their own forum and mailing list, and certainly had some social relationships that would end up carrying over past the game itself.  This internet thing is wacky, that I can be carrying on daily gaming conversations with folks I've never met. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  I wouldn't say that it's anonymous, so much as different.  The dynamic is not the same, because online personas can sometimes be different, or perceived as different.  However, I've also found that folks I liked online tend to be folks I liked in person, so what does that tell you? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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