WoW social user interface

So I quit my guild with all my characters, and some of them being in a city at the time I typed /gquit, I noticed that I automatically joined the new "City - Looking for Guild" chat channel, which was patched in recently. That was annoying, because that channel automatically takes over the channel number 5, and my previous private chat channels now all changed to one number higher, which is confusing. But what was even more annoying was the realization how the Looking for Guild channel was useless. With a /chatwho 5 command I could see that there were very few people in that channel. On a server which is over one year old, not many people don't have any guild tag at all. And many of those that are searching for a new guild are still carrying the guild tag of their old guild, often some small guild that went inactive over time. So people recruiting members for their guild don't use the Looking for Guild chat channel, they use the City - General Chat to advertise their guild.

The other social user interface in which World of Warcraft is deficient is the Looking for Group functionality. There are a number of ways to find a group, each of which has its difficulties, and many of the difficulties are just due to the interface being bad:

1) The offical system is the meeting stones which are placed in front of every small dungeon. You can click on the stone, or access it remotely from any inn, to join a group with other people that also clicked on the stone. There is a hidden algorithm which tries to get well balanced groups together, but loosens the restrictions of well-balancedness over time, rather forming an odd group than letting people wait forever. There is absolutely no control, you don't even see who else is waiting. It is a bit of a lottery with bad odds, so very few people use it, which results in few groups being formed, most of them badly balanced, which makes even less people join it. Another disadvantage is that only dungeon groups can be formed that way, and you can't even specify things like whether you want to go to the living or undead side of Stratholme, or which part of the Scarlet Monastery you want to go.

2) So to get more control over pickup groups, people use the Looking for Group chat channel. There you can specify that you are looking for a group for some quest, or some specific dungeon part, and you can say which classes you want, or minimum levels, or whatever else you think is important. The big disadvantage of that channel is that it is only covering one zone. Your best chance is the "City" LFG chat channel, which covers all the cities of your faction. If you don't want to shout yourself, but wait until a group to a place you want is looking for people, you are forced to stay in the city. If you go out to do kill some monster or gather resources solo, you can't listen to the channel any more. Previously you could trick the chat system into still displaying the Ironforge or Orgrimmar chat, even if you weren't in these places. But since the cities of each faction were joined in a common City channel, that isn't possible any more. In the zones, especially big zones like Barrens, you are likely to hear people looking for group for a certain quest, but less likely to hear them shout for a dungeon group, even if the entrance to that dungeon is in that zone.

3) Many groups are formed by using the guild chat channel. Guild chat has the big advantage of reaching people in all zones. The second big advantage is that you have probably a higher degree of trust in your guild members to not play very badly, or leave the group early, or roll need on loot they should have greeded, or show any other negative behavior which is generally associated with bad pickup groups. The disadvantage is that your guild is a much smaller group than all players online, thus finding a large enough group isn't always easy. And you don't get to meet new people.

4) The last method of getting a group together is by sending direct tells to potential members. If you are looking for a level 40 to 42 priest for Scarlet Monastery, you can use the /who command to find them all, and send each of them a tell, asking whether they would like to join. A variant of this is having a friends list and sending tells to them. Obviously asking a stranger, or even a friend, to join your group has a very high risk of them saying no, because they have other plans in the game, or aren't planning to be online long enough. It is a desperate measure usually only used for filling the last spot, when all else failed.

Now compare that to a game like Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO). In DDO you have a looking for group interface with buttons for level ranges and accepted classes. In the comment field you can put exactly what quest you are planning to do, or which dungeon you want to tackle. Finding all groups which would take your class and level is a breeze. And even starting a new group is very easy. The LFG user interface works server-wide, and by not relying on chat channels people that aren't looking for a group aren't bothered by it. This is the sort of functionality that World of Warcraft should have. Instead we don't even have a server-wide LFG chat channel.
- posted by Tobold @ 9:19 AM Permanent Link