Social media in MMORPG

I will talk about a social media website in line with a new MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) named Final Fantasy XIV. Indeed, most of the previous MMORPG -which is kind of social media too- involved that you have to make some groups or guilds with other players to make progress in the game. You can meet your fellows « in game », but most of groups/guilds use also a personnal website such as a forum to schedules the events and other stuffs, to share the experience and also talk about real life in a special section. Those forum are very common in the MMORPG world.

But Square-Enix compagny, with his latest game Final Fantasy XIV, avaible since october 2010, found a good tip to satisfact FFXIV’s players. On this official website, http://lodstone.finalfantasyxiv.com, which take at first the rôle of a guide to the players, with news (such as game’s update), Square-Enix made a special section for players; indeed, the video game and this website are linked together, so, when you log in on this website, all your character’s attribute are visible (avatar’s name, avatar’s face, level, guild’s affiliation); and when you go to the player special section, there is an automatic access to yours own guild’s forum, created and hosted by this website.

Square-Enix knew about the importance of those kind of forums in the MMORPG, that’s why they made this service. So, people don’t have to wait someone from the group/guild to make a forum, don’t have to be bored about registration, because everything goes automaticly.

If you are neophyte in MMORPG, you will probably wants to know why those forums are so important, taking into account that to play a game, you just have to go to the game (and just talk with other players in game for MMORPG). The reason is there are two kind of way to play MMORPG; you can just play for fun, doing your own stuff, and sometimes play together with an other player you just met, but in most of MMORPG, if you play that way, you miss a big part of the possibilities of the game, because the most intersting things to do have to be played with lot of others players, and need an important coordination. And that’s why forums are so precious. For example, I talked about time schedules earlier; indeed, I will take in example from an other MMORPG from the same compagny (Square-Enix); Final Fantasy XI. In this game, there is a really popular event called « Dynamis ». This event can host fifty four players in a special zone and run for one to five hours (without any break), also, it’s really difficult to beat the challenge, and you can have lot of good items for your avatar in.

That’s where the forum works well; considering it’s a difficult challenge, you need experimented players, so no way to just ask random people in game if you want to have a chance to beat it; you also need forum to set up the appointment; because more than fifty people to wait can be really long and bad. And finally, you can set up which items go to who in advance, to avoid drama and unfair distribution.

To conclude, even if the previous example illustrate how MMORPG forums are the more commun used, that’s also stay a link between players, because of the support, they can tell about everything and share lot of stuff, about in game life, and in real life.

Cédric B.