Apartment Hunting Taught Me About MMO Communities

I spent the weekend (and much of last week) once again looking at apartments. In my little corner of SoCal there seems to be a trend. You either have really, really nice (and expensive) or really, really ghetto. We finally found something right in the middle that’s newer and has all of the amenities. Of course, the whole place is at capacity and we’re on the waiting list with a deposit check and application in their office so that we can claim the place the moment a space opens.

While looking at apartments I found myself trying to survive the boredom. What do I do when I’m bored? I compare everything to MMORPGs. I started to make connections between communities for apartments, and communities for MMOs. The communities we looked at all had the same features: Gyms, pools, hot tubs, parking, relatively same floorplans, etc. What varied place to place was the community.

Some of the communities you could tell right away were terrible. The leasing office and staff were unresponsive or unhelpful — even downright rude some places. At others the office staff was so perfect you just wanted to give them a hug. The place we’re wanting to get into always stocks the office with things like water and cupcakes. The community manager is always chipper, informative, and gives off a complete sense of, “I’m here to make your life better.” People in the community seem active yet quiet and mature, friendly, and clean. We’ve gone back several times to look around because we just love the atmosphere.

MMO communities are very similar. An MMO with a good community feels actively ‘managed’. Everything feels like it runs smoothly. When someone voices a concern it’s heard and you feel like you have a representative who will listen. MMOs with great community teams have thriving forums where participants in the community all contribute to keeping things active and inviting. When an MMO has a true community you feel like you belong and like it’s an actual ‘community’ and not like you’re simply occupying a space within a compound.

I’ve noticed a trend toward a lack of community management and involvement. Either people just don’t care, or theres a misconception floating around out there that streaming on Twitch, posting on Reddit, and tweeting are enough. There’s too much broadcasting and too little real interaction going on.

MMOs need qualified community managers and teams. These are NOT PR people meant to spin news. These are NOT forum moderators. These are NOT underpaid lackeys meant to simply generate discussion topics. These are members of the core team who should foster and be responsible for the growth of the community. The community manager should regularly sit in on and meet with the development team and be accountable for ensuring the game’s design is coinciding with the community’s desires.

This is lacking in the industry today. Not enough importance is being placed on it, and that’s yet another contributing factor among many others leading toward the shallow and impersonal experience we now call the MMO genre.

So, much like choosing and living in an apartment, the community can make or break an MMO. The community can be unappealing because it’s full of obnoxious people, or it can simply not exist because it wasn’t well nurtured. In the flip side, the community can be amazing, thriving, and an integral part to why people stick around for years.